Sometimes creators will set the audience up for a seemingly inevitable confrontation between a trapped hero and the approaching villain only to subvert the showdown by letting the hero disappear offscreen in the last possible moment, bordering on a Deus ex Machina way out. It certainly leaves the pursuer and the audience mystified. A second view shows the hero hiding out the window, under the floor, around the corner, under a bed, in the ceiling, in the closet or behind a curtain.
This trope usually comes in three distinct flavors:
- Interrupted infiltration: Bob is snooping around a room he doesn't belong in. Suddenly, he looks up as he hears a noise. The camera cuts to Alice entering the room and it seems she must surely discover Bob. However, she moves along quite relaxed as she sees nobody there. Apparently just as suddenly, Bob had sneaked away at the last second when we weren't looking.
- Chase Scene: Bob needs to flee from a bunch of mooks or some other advancing danger and runs headlong into a dead-end passageway, there to discover that further retreat is impossible. He's trapped, seemingly with no avenue of escape except to charge at the pursuing adversary. Cut to the pursuers arriving at that spot. But instead of facing Bob, the place is now empty with no explanation given as to how the escape might have happened.
- Hide & Seek: Alice is hiding in some enclosed space and Bob is out looking for her. The camera focuses on the door that separates the two, then cuts to Bob approaching the door from the outside. The music swells. After several suspenseful cuts back and forth, Bob kicks open the door. Bang! ... Alice is gone. Likely to happen in cases where the villain is Searching the Stalls.
May lead to a Decoy Hiding Place situation. Can overlap with Cliffhanger Copout if this is split across two episodes (with the protagonist getting cornered at the ending of one episode, and their implausible escape at the beginning of the next).
Subtrope of Bait-and-Switch and Offscreen Teleportation. Supertrope to Empty Elevator. Contrast Cut Apart where the audience is tricked into believing that both pursuer and persecutee are at the same location, while they are not.
Examples:
Anime & Manga
- Cipher Academy: In the first chapter, Iroha is sitting in a library, when he sees a girl (Kogoe) rush in pleading for help. On the next page, Kogoe's pursuers burst into the library, and nobody seems to be there except for Iroha. A few panels later, Kogoe is shown just barely managing to remain hidden behind Iroha's chair (and if you look at the previous panels again, you will notice parts of her clothes poking out).
Films — Animation
- A rare villainous version in Bolt. Bolt and Penny observe a mook receive his orders from the villain Doctor Calico. The pair shadow this mook as he leaves the building, turns left, and walks down an alleyway. After he makes a right turn, Bolt and Penny come to the corner, and peer around it. Surprise! the mook is gone, and that part of the alleyway is a dead end. Suddenly, a steel panel slides into place, preventing Bolt and Penny from leaving the way they came.
- In the prologue of Brave, little Merida plays hide & seek with her mother. In one scene we see her hiding underneath a table but when the mother checks there a second later, Merida is gone. The next shot reveals Merida hiding in another spot that required Offscreen Teleportation to reach.
- In Incredibles 2, Violet and her two siblings are infiltrating the evil lair, when Jack-Jack makes a noise that alarms one of the guards outside. Violet sees the guard approaching through the door window and scans the room for escape routes. Cut to the guard bursting through the door, finding the room empty. Then the camera slowly pans up the air duct below the ceiling, where the kid heroes have escaped into in no time.
- In Inside Out, when Riley sneaks downstairs to steal her mom's credit card while she is on the phone, Mom turns around just as Riley takes the card out. When Mom looks up, Riley's vanished.
- In Toy Story 3, during the Great Escape from Sunnyside Daycare, Woody and the three aliens try to sneak behind Big Baby in the yard. They almost passed it but then one of the aliens falls and makes a squeaky noise, which catches Big Baby's attention. The camera then takes the perspective of Big Baby and approaches the spot where the toys were last seen, only to find it empty. The next shot shows Woody and the aliens hiding under a bucket close by.
- Happens twice in Zootopia:
- Nick and Judy are trapped in a cell at Cliffside and the mooks are about to open the door and find them. Judy asks Nick if he can swim and he affirms. Cut to the door swinging open and the mooks entering. When they come to the cell Judy and Nick were hiding in, they only see the toilet flushing.
- Later, when Judy and Nick break into Doug's train car and find the toxic flowers, the camera abruptly pans over to the door and we see Doug entering. He walks straight to the spot where Judy and Nick were standing a second ago, but they are gone. Then the camera pans below the table where we see our heroes hiding.
Films — Live-Action
- Tony Stark pulls an implausible escape in Avengers: Endgame, when he travels back in time to infiltrate a meeting at the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters. We see him listening in on the discussion when the camera pans away from his position to show mooks entering the room. They walk past the spot where Tony was hidden but now he is gone. The next scene shows him hiding in another spot.
- Occurs twice in Die Hard. McClane has sneaked into the villain's lair. Then a mook enters the room where McClane was just seen. By the time the camera pans back to his original position, McClane is gone. The next scene reveals that he is now hiding behind a stillage. The mook walks up to said place with anticipation, steps around it and starts shooting... but McClane is gone again.
- High School Musical: Gabriella and Troy are trying to secretly practice the song they'll perform during call-backs to avoid any interference from Sharpay. In one instance, Gabriella is singing in the girl's bathroom when Sharpay happens to walk by. Sharpay stops and heads into the bathroom to figure out who's singing. Sharpay walks through, but no one's there so she leaves. Gabriella then pops out from an alcove by the sinks. This became something of a meme
because there was simply no way for Sharpay to not see Gabriella given the angle and lack of cover.
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: A teenage Indiana Jones is trying to escape several pursuers while on a circus train. He ends up in the caboose (which is full of magician's equipment) and hides in a box. When a pursuer enters, the box opens but Jones is gone. The pursuer opens the rear door of the caboose and sees Jones running away down the railroad tracks. The box was a special magician's box with a hidden escape mechanism.
- Grifter Johnny Hooker from The Sting flees from an armed thug sent by the vengeful Big Bad, running into an alley behind a diner, which presents him with a dead end. The gunman is only moments away from cornering and killing Johnny then and there. Apparently, adrenaline gave Johnny enough strength to lift a steel manhole cover, and escape into the sewer below.
- No Country for Old Men: Near the film's end, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell arrives at a crime scene while the hitman Anton Chigurh is still there, leading audiences to expect these characters to finally meet and have their showdown. But Chigurh somehow evades Sheriff Bell, with no explanation.
- In The Patriot (2000), the British dragoons under Tavington have just burst into Martin's sister-in-law's mansion looking for his family. One of Martin's younger sons is hiding under a dining room table as Tavington is searching the room. When he goes to look under the table, it appears that the boy will be discovered, but it turns out he crawled out while Tavington was briefly distracted by one of his men.
- A double fakeout in the original Spider-Man film. Peter sneaks into his room before a dinner party, and guests come up to investigate the noise. A pan of the room shows it empty — then we see him hiding on the ceiling. Just as they leave, a drop of blood falls from his arm. Someone sees the blood on the floor and looks up... at an empty ceiling. He walks to the window and looks out, again seeing nothing — then a pan down shows Peter has teleported offscreen under a balcony.
- Happens in Triangle, when Sally is chased by "Mean" Jess across the Ghost Ship. At one point the camera is focused on Sally leaning against a wall, panting. Then the camera pans around to show Jess arriving at the same location a few seconds later. The camera pans back to where Sally was standing seconds ago... but she's gone.
- In X2: X-Men United, Mystique shapeshifts into Lady Deathstrike in order to gain access to Colonel Stryker's office. While she is sifting through his computer files, the real Lady Deathstrike approaches the office. On her entering Mystique is gone. A couple of shots later we see her moving behind Lady Deathstrike, now in the shape of a janitor pretending to be cleaning out bins.
Live-Action TV
- Burn Notice:
- In "Fight or Flight", Fiona puts her own life on the line to blackmail Michael. Fiona finishes a quick task using the client-of-the-week's computer, while Michael keeps watch from outside and stays in touch with her over the phone. Then a bunch of Colombian gangsters roll up to the house, so Mike tells Fi to get the hell out of there—but she refuses to budge until Mike promises to give her a key to his apartment. They argue for a bit, and by the time Mike relents, the Colombians break through the back door and enter the house—but when they reach the computer room there's no sign of Fi.
- In "Trust Me", Michael is forced to improvise while he's sneaking into his mark's office, and winds up converting his cell phone into an audio bug right there. As he's doing this, two scary-looking guards approach the office door. There's a shot of Michael in the office, as he finishes hiding the bug. Then there's a shot of the guards opening the door and walking into the office—and then Michael emerges from the bathroom, directly next to the office door.
- In Dark (2017) episode "Dark Matter", Jonas has to steal diesel from a tank. He almost gets caught by a guard who patrols around the tank but when the latter turns the corner where Jonas was hiding, the latter is gone. The next scene shows him hiding behind a wall some distance from the tank.
- In Day Break (2006), Hopper is in the back of a van and watches a weapon deal going down outside. Then the villain approaches the van ... he opens the back door ... Hopper is gone. Apparently, he sneaked out to the front.
- In Fargo episode "Who Rules the Land of Denial", Nikki is chained up to Mr. Wrench while both try to hide in the forest from two killers sent after them. One scene has them hiding under a tree stump upon which the camera pans over to the pursuers approaching. When the camera pans back to the tree stump, our two fugitives have inexplicably vanished.
- Played with in The Wire. Omar is on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against Marlo Stansfield and Marlo's entire gang, which now holds the Baltimore underworld in a stranglehold. To escape a trap set for him, Omar has to jump out the window of a fourth-floor apartment building. When the hitmen who ambushed him run to the window and look outside, Omar has vanished without a trace. The gang tries hunting him down, searching the ground floor of the apartment building, questioning locals, going to multiple hospitals to see if Omar checked himself in for injuries, etc. Nothing turns up any trace, and they lampshade that it seems impossible. Only when they give up looking in the area is the truth revealed; that Omar broke his ankle jumping out the window, but immediately limped or dragged himself into an open janitor's closet and locked it, then kept quiet while they searched the area, causing them to miss him.
Western Animation
- In Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Blue Spirit", the Blue Spirit clings to the underside of a carriage in order to sneak into the villain's lair. At the gate, a guard comes close to check the underside and when the camera pans over to where the Blue Spirit hid, he is gone. The next shot shows him in the back of the carriage.
- The Simpsons:
- In episode "The Boy Who Knew Too Much", Bart is chased up a mountain by Principal Skinner. He hides behind a rock and shakes in fear. Skinner approaches the rock, but when he reaches for Bart behind the rock, he is gone. Apparently, the boy jumped onto a bypassing car while Skinner was distracted for a moment.
- In "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming", Sideshow Bob escapes this way. He starts off locking the Colonel's bathroom from the inside and teases him from there which makes the Colonel break open the door. Inside he finds nobody and leaves. Then the camera pans to the bin basket with Sideshow Bob inside.
