Someone's been gassed or attacked in a small, enclosed space. The attack may be a poison dart, or they've been beaten, shot, stabbed, etc. If it's gas, the gas is usually white, but it can sometimes be blue or yellow or bile-green. It's rapidly filling the area while the victim struggles to breathe and get out. There's a window, or a door with a window, or a door made of glass. If they can just get to the other side, they'll be safe. But the attack has injured them, or the gas is affecting them, causing them to get weaker and lose consciousness. While their initial panic-filled moments may be spent yelling for help and beating on the glass, it doesn't break. They get weaker and weaker, and sloooowly they collapse. The final scene is their hand slowly dragging down the window towards the floor. If they've been the victim of a violent attack, expect their hand to leave a bloody smear running down the window.
Sub-Trope of both Deadly Gas and Knockout Gas. Bloody Handprint and Wall Slump may also come into play. Sister trope to Dead-Hand Shot.
Compare Glass Smack and Slide, which is a comedic trope played for laughs.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Higurashi: When They Cry combines this with Bloody Handprint in the first arc, when we see Keiichi's bloodstained hand slide down the interior of the phone booth where he's calling Ooishi from.
Films — Animation
- Monsters vs. Aliens: When Gallaxhar traps the giant Susan in an extraction chamber to extract the Quantonium out of Susan, she tries striking the glass to break free, but is too weakened to do so. With the Quantonium surrounding her, all that's visible of her last attempt at the glass is her outstretched hand before she slowly collapses.
Films — Live-Action
- Subverted in The Incredible Hulk (2008): When Bruce Banner is caught in the glassed-in bridge at Culver University, soldiers shoot a couple of canisters of knockout gas in with him, then lock both doors. The gas fills the hallway and obscures Banner from view. His hand slaps the glass... and it cracks. Then his arm and hand start to swell, showing that he's begun to transform into the Hulk.
- Played with in King Kong (1976). Kong is captured when a pit is dug in front of the door to the giant wall. The pit is filled with gas and camouflaged with branches. Kong breaks through the gate and falls into the pit, succumbing to the gas. His final scene is his hand rising slowly out of the gas pit, only to sink back down as the gas overcomes him.
- In Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Ethan is trapped in a small room and forced to watch Lane execute an innocent shop girl. Lane then fills the small room where Ethan is trapped with gas, and Ethan drags his hand down the glass as he succumbs.
- Phantasm II: When Liz and Mike are locked in the hearse, a beaten and bloodied Reggie slams into one of the windows, smearing two bloody handprints down the glass as he collapses.
- Psycho: This is played with when Marion dies, except the final image is of her hand dragging down a shower curtain.
- Inverted in Resident Evil (2002) when a hand slamming against the glass is proof that something very bad is about to happen, as the dead scientists in the sealed room aren't so dead, after all. There's also a scene where multiple people are trapped in a room filling with gas. Practically all of them are beating against the glass and then having their hands slide down as the slowly succumb.
- Star Trek:
- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: Spock puts his hand against the glass door of the warp core chamber after repairing the warp core, but filling the chamber with lethal amounts of radiation in the process.
- Star Trek Into Darkness: Kirk puts his hand against the glass door of the warp core after being fatally irradiated.
- Titanic (1997): A non-lethal version; the camera shows a car in the cargo hold with the windows fogged up. A hand slaps against the glass and slides down. No poison gas; just Jack and Rose engaging in some Auto Erotica.
Live-Action TV
- Breaking Bad: In "Gliding Over All", Walt's hired thugs engage in a series of killings in three prisons to eliminate all remaining witnesses; one poor bastard is trapped behind a locked door and repeatedly stabbed. We see his hand smearing his own blood down the door's glass as he dies.
- CSI: Miami: Episode 3.05, "Legal", features a popular club whose restroom walls are clear until the door is closed, when they become opaque. A young woman is stabbed to death inside the ladies' room and the camera's POV is from the outside, showing only her hand hitting the wall and leaving a bloody smear as it slides down the glass.
- Monk: In "Mr. Monk Takes a Vacation", Sharona gives her son Benjy a quarter to put in the telescope thing that some tourist spots have so he'll give her some peace to sunbathe. After a bit of looking at random things, Benjy focuses it on a window at the hotel where they're staying and sees a struggle, ending with a body sliding down the glass, leaving a bloody hand streak.
Video Games
- BioShock: Julie Langford ends up getting gassed by Andrew Ryan for aiding Jack, and in her final moments, writes the combination to her safe on the fogged-up window. She only just finishes writing it before succumbing, dragging her hands down the window as she does so.
- Call of Duty:
- Call of Duty: Black Ops: In "Project Nova", Dimitri Petrenko and some other Russian soldiers are gassed with Nova-6 as a test run by Dragovich and Kravchenko while Reznov is Forced to Watch with a glass window between them. In his final death throes Dimitri beats his fists on the glass before his hands drag down the window as he succumbs.
- Call of Duty: Black Ops II: At the start of the game, a man is trapped inside a vehicle that is on fire. Mason attempts to break him out with a shovel to no avail, witnessing this man perish after his burnt hand drags down on his side of the window.
- Dishonored: If Morgan Pendleton is killed by way of sabotaging the steam room, he'll run up to the window into the room and bang on the glass before he dies, his hand sliding down the window.
- Outlast: In the Whistleblower DLC, a variant is trapped in one of the decontamination chambers and suffocates on the gas flooding it. You arrive just as he leans on the glass and slides down, succumbing to the gas.
Western Animation
- Parodied in Ed, Edd n Eddy. Eddy's hand slides down the glass shower door as Lee starts kissing him in the shower.
- Also parodied in The Mighty B! in the episode "Hive of Darkness" when Bessie is trapped in her hive-shaped clubhouse with bees, her hand slides down a window full of honey.
- What If…? (2021): In the episode "What if... Zombies?!", this occurs in a flashback scene showing how the zombie apocalypse started in the first place, in which the zombified versions of Janet Van Dyne and Hank Pym attack Scott Lang. A Gory Discretion Shot of them eating him ensues, but we see his hand sliding down the glass as he's attacked.
