Escape Route Surprise

You've been held prisoner in some kind of base or headquarters, but you've broken out of your cell. You run headlong through the place, find a door, thrust it open, and you're…

…face-to-face with a pack of snarling tigers. Or a ticking bomb. Or a thousand-foot drop.

Nope, not getting out that way.

This trope occurs when the escape suddenly becomes impossible, impassable, or deadly. Versions include:

• The door is in an aircraft, on the edge of a cliff, or is the opening to a sheer wall just waiting for some poor fool to dive through. Frequently, the hero avoids falling only by their death grip on the doorknob. Sometimes paired with Plummet Perspective. May prompt a No Escape but Down decision.
• The escapee finds themselves on the deck of a ship, or in an airlock. No immediate danger of falling, but they'll have to reevaluate their escape plan.
• The door opens into a room full of enemies, ravenous beasts, or a rocket about to launch (with them at the bottom). The escapee often won't notice the danger until they run in, slam the door behind them, then burst back out.

(Since this scene is often the first indication that the hero isn't in a normal building or underground, a work being listed here could be a spoiler.)

A subtrope of From Bad to Worse, and a likely hazard of The Chew Toy. Can be combined with Door Focus.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The Promised Neverland: When Norman tries to escape the farm by climbing the wall— only to find himself facing a steep drop in all directions.

Comic Books

• The Sensational She-Hulk: In the graphic novel, a rogue group of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents try to capture She-Hulk on the streets of New York. When she fights back, the agents have her — along with some nearby bystanders — teleported to their base. She leads the civilians in their escape through the base, only to find themselves outdoors on the deck of a flying Helicarrier. (Shoulda seen that coming.)
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): In one issue of the Sonic Universe side series, Antoine is attempting to escape a Battle Bird Armada base and flings open a door... only to find it opens into empty air, as it's placed on the side of a cliff face.
  Antoine: WHO PUTS A DOOR LIKE ZAT IN A PLACE LIKE ZIS?!

Films — Animation

• Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero: Barbara Gordon escapes from her cell, crawls through the duct work, and discovers she's on an oil platform.
• The Great Mouse Detective: Ratigan's Right-Hand Cat Felicia is being chased by Toby, Sherlock Holmes' dog who is helping Basil. She hops atop a high wall and smugly taunts her pursuer before jumping to the other side... where the Royal guard dogs are kept.
• Twice Upon a Time: Rod Rescueman has just saved Flora Fauna from being taken by a giant ape, only she was actually performing in a nightmare. Angry at Rod interrupting her big scene, she storms out of his home. Too bad it's a blimp floating hundreds of feet in the air.

Films — Live-Action

• Casino Royale (1967) Woody Allen, as spy Jimmy Bond, escapes a firing squad by throwing a smoke bomb at the soldiers and climbing over the wall — landing next to a guy being shot by another firing squad.
• Dark City:
  • One of the sheer-wall variety [1], apparently a side-effect of the continual changes in the architecture. The hero is saved when he jumps to a chimney sliding into place.
  • Later, the hero and his allies attempt to leave the city entirely, and break through the wall that surrounds the city only to find that the city itself is floating in deep space.
• Face/Off: When Sean Archer (John Travolta), wearing the face of Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage), is in prison and needs to escape, he instigates a riot. Upon escaping, he finds himself in an oil rig in the middle of the bay.
• Hardcore Henry: Henry and Estelle escape from her lab, chased by guards. He opens a door and nearly falls from the airplane.
• In Mad Max: Fury Road, Max's first escape attempt from the Citadel is foiled when he runs through the caves and out a door where he suddenly finds himself at the edge of a cliff high above the ground. He jumps out and latches onto a swinging hook, but he keeps swinging back toward the War Boys and they manage to pull him back into the tunnel. Watch the scene here.
• Star Wars: Luke and Leia discover in A New Hope that they took a wrong turn while fleeing from a squad of stormtroopers, and nearly tumble into one of the Death Star's many bottomless conduits.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Detective Eddie Valiant, while sleuthing the eponymous question, mistakes the Butter Face Lena Hyena for Jessica Rabbit, and flees from this haywire Stalker with a Crush. Eddie finds a door labeled as a men's rest room, and runs in, shutting the door behind him. Only then does Eddie notice the room is outside the towering building, and that it has no floor. Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress takes it from there.

Literature

• The selfish mayor of The Books of Ember flees from an angry mob that have learned the mayor has been stuffing himself with provisions. The glutton waddles into the provision storage area, and locks the door behind him. Sigh of relief. Until he feels the touch of a giant mole that has tunneled its way into the room, and smells how plump and juicy the mayor is. Bon appetit.
• Discworld: The Ankh-Morpork prison cells in Going Postal are designed with a single loose block that the prisoner can pry out with a spoon and elbow grease. Prying out the block reveals, rather than a tunnel, a new block with fresh mortar and a brand new spoon. The same cell also has a grate in the floor that a previous prisoner slipped through. When asked whether it leads to the river, the guards merely say, "You'd think that, wouldn't you."
• The War Against the Chtorr. In "A Rage for Revenge", McCarthy is captured by a Chtorran-worshipping cult. Early on he finds a door unlocked and opens it...to find a man-eating Chtorran worm on the other side. He quickly shuts the door and gives up the idea of escape.

Live-Action TV

• The Star Trek: Voyager episode "The Chute": Harry Kim is in prison, apparently underground. All he needs to do is get past the chute's security measures and climb up to escape. He climbs, but discovers he's really on a space station.

Video Games

• In Final Fantasy VIII, the main characters break out of their prison cell, fight through monsters to the bottom floor of the prison, and open the door to find a solid wall of sand. Turns out the prison is a giant burrowing device partially submerged beneath the desert sands.

Web Animation

• In Lackadaisy, Lackadaisy's Getaway Driver Ivy, trapped in a shed and about to be discovered by Marigold Gang's gun-toting mercenary Serafine, bolts for the nearest side door, only to find Serafine's brother Nico right behind it. He offers a smug "Hi." before she slams it shut and bolts, whereupon he puts two bullets in the door where she was just standing, then kicks it open.

Webcomics

• Superego: It happens, when Samuel Herbert opens a hospital door. Heroes find out that the hospital is hanging in the air.

Western Animation

• In the DuckTales (1987) episode Sphinx for the Memories, Donald Duck doesn't want to be possessed by the Garbled One, so he runs away from the Garbled One's followers. He runs down a short corridor dead-ending in a door and hides on the other side of it. Peeking through the almost-closed door, he overhears one of his pursuers say "He wouldn't be foolish enough to hide in the jackal pit, he'd be torn to shreds." Donald Duck looks over his shoulder, realizes the room he's hiding in is full of jackals, and exits with all due haste.
• The Flintstones Trying to escape the lair of Dr. Sinister, Fred and Barney run through a door and shut it behind them. (Beat) Then they run back out, slamming the door to keep the snarling crocosauruses from catching them.
• Red Hot Riding Hood: While the Wolf is trying to escape from Grandma's penthouse apartment, he sees a door next to a flashing sign reading "EXIT". He does, only to realize that it leads directly outside the building (remember, penthouse means very high up); he manages to get back inside, and the sign now reads "SUCKER".
• SWAT Kats has the episode "The Wrath of Dark Kat" in which our heroes penetrate the villain's Elaborate Underground Base. Dark Kat, however, shunts a river of lava into the heroes' passageway, compelling them to retreat. Razor and T-Bone discover their route ends at a deep chasm, and Dark Kat sees their vehicle plunge into it. Fortunately, Razor's glove o' tricks saves their tails.

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