Super Window Jump

Nice entrance. Either you’ve never heard of a door or you don't mind pulling glass out of your shorts.

"Attention mafia types. Stop hanging out in buildings with skylights. They'll only get broken."

— Chris Hastings, The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Issue 3 Page 6 Alt Text

The modern spin on the Sheet of Glass. Simply put, to get to or from the scene in a hurry, they jump through a window; a closed window. The shards of glass flying everywhere make it very dramatic.

Supernatural beings (especially vampires) love doing this. Humans can do it too but usually have the benefit of a motorcycle taking the impact. Ninjas, certain dark superheroes, and Special Forces do it via skylights from the ceiling, the latter normally using rope.

The power of the supernatural, body armor, being Made of Iron or Nigh Invulnerable, or dramatic entrance/exit is required to prevent one's skin from being torn to ribbons by this maneuver. Wrapping a cape or long jacket around yourself in a tumble helps too. In television and film, this visual effect is achieved thanks to using carefully crystallized sugar to stand in for glass. Needless to say, trying this with a real-life window can get you killed, since not only is non-Hollywood window glass tougher than you'd think, there's also all the lacerations you'll get from large shards, no matter what protective clothing you may be wearing - Don't Try This at Home.

Truly cool people never need to use the door. May cause an Impact Silhouette. See also Soft Glass, compare Dangerous Windows. Compare Fast-Roping and Crash in Through the Ceiling. Contrast Destination Defenestration, where someone is thrown through a window against their own will. A sub-trope of No Escape but Down (when used to exit the scene) or Big Entrance (when used to enter it). Not necessarily related to The Window or the Stairs, despite the name.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Otcho in 20th Century Boys does a very impressive one, not in the least because he's over 55 years old.
• In The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, the scene described below in Literature is quite dramatic. During Moff Potter's murder trial, Tom finally confesses to witnessing Injun Joe commit the murder. The villain tries to kill Tom, but is forced to flee by the sheriff and he leaps through the courthouse window, in slow-motion, with nary a scratch. But then, Injun Joe is pretty strong, not to mention huge and therefore invulnerable.
• In Angel Beats!, this happens twice in the first episode. It's more played for laughs since the characters didn't exactly do it on purpose. Or with a secure landing.
• In the CG-animated Appleseed, several cyborgs bust through the stained glass windows of a church to surround Deunan. In the sequel film, Briareos does it. Twice.
• An immortal leaps out a window in Baccano! to escape the one thing that can truly kill him.
• Berserk's Skull Knight does this to a solar eclipse when he rides in to save Guts and Casca during the Eclipse.
• Sebastian and Grell in episode 17 of Black Butler, through stained glass, to rescue Ciel.
• Suzaku does this through stained glass in episode 16 of Code Geass - as per Lelouch's plan, of course, since Suzaku isn't that flashy.
• In Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door, Spike jumps through a train window to get to the villain. He shoots the window first, so it'll shatter easily, and is apparently protected from injury by just being that badass.
• In a manga chapter in Doraemon, the titular character does this at the sight of a mouse.
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Batou bursts through the window of a hotel room to rescue Imakurusu from the DEA.
• Great Teacher Onizuka: When rescuing Miyabi and her friends, Onizuka combines this with Dynamic Entry and Fast-Roping from a freaking blimp to crash through the hotel suite window.
• In GTO: The Early Years, Ryuji escapes Saejima and Kamata's No-Holds-Barred Beatdown by jumping through a plate-glass window (with his hands still tied behind his back).
• In their climatic fight scene in Gunslinger Girl: Il Teatrino Pinocchio throws Triela through a (closed) window, only to have her smash through another window after him just moments later.
• Mori the Ninja Maid does this in Haruhi-chan. Just for this trope, she and her butler partner get out a trampoline so that she can do this on the second floor of the school. "I'm just a passing maid!" Kyon: LIAR! Given her later abilities, she probably didn't need the trampoline.
• In Hayate the Combat Butler, Hayate jumps through (or is thrown through) windows without any protection, as just one of his near-superhuman abilities. Klaus does this later on, as well, but he was spoofing an immortal vampire at the time.
• America from Hetalia: Axis Powers did this twice in episode 13 of the fifth season. The first time he ended up with a shard of glass stuck in his forehead, although he was uninjured the second time. When a little kid asked him why he went through the window, he claimed it was because he had just gotten back from Hollywood.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Stardust Crusaders: Joseph and Avdol get out of the women's bathroom by jumping out of the bathroom's window, partially because Mariah did the same, and they wanted to get away from the embarrassing position of being thought of as peeping toms.
  • Golden Wind: To prevent Rolling Stones from coming into contact with Bucciarati when it is in a free-fall, Mista jumps out the nearest window to catch and slam it into the ground before he's rescued via Car Cushion.
• In the first episode of K, before the opening, Misaki Yata does this into a gangster's hotel suite, on his skateboard, from the roof of the building across the street, establishing early on his views on the idea of practicality vs. awesome.
• Lupin III has many characters doing variations on it. The titular thief has bailed through several windows, open and closed alike, in the course of his career. Lupin III: Part II had Jigen do it just before shooting down a helicopter with a revolver in the first opening sequence.
• Subaru of Lyrical Nanoha jumps through glass windows at times, but it is eventually justified since she's revealed to be a cyborg.
• Phantom Renegade from Medabots pulls this off occasionally.
• In the first episode of Murder Princess, a group of bounty hunters burst through a palace window on a motorcycle with balls of fire for wheels.
• My Love Story!!: Episode 4. Takeo leaps through a 3rd floor window of a restaurant that's on fire. He lands safely and embraces his girlfriend, Yamato, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he's on fire. Luckily he's Made of Iron, so he's unharmed.
• Naruto: The Fourth Raikage (Ay) is prone of jumping out of windows (including his own office window) because it's faster than using doors and stairs. If he's not doing that, he will crash through walls instead.
• Nichijou: When Mio sees her crush walking arm-in-arm with another girl, the first thing she does is jump headlong out the window and start running. And that's only the beginning...
• In the anime version of Ouran High School Host Club Nekozawa jumps through a second story window to save his little sister. Just from a cat, but it was still cool.
• In the PandoraHearts anime, the Baskervilles make their first appearance by jumping through the windows in the church where Oz is having his coming-of-age ceremony. Given the Baskervilles' near-invulnerability to physical injuries, it makes sense that they are not shown to be injured as a result of this.
• Used totally straight in the Princess Tutu episode "Black Shoes", when Fakir jumps through a window to face the Dark Magical Girl, and then proceeds to pick up a glass shard from the window to use as a weapon. He has no powers that would protect him from the glass, and he's only wearing his school uniform...he's just fond of being very dramatic and badass.
• B-Ko smashes a window in the palace section of the alien ship in Project A-Ko to get in. She's protected by her special (and skimpy) armour but somehow C-Ko, sitting motionless in the room, is unsliced.
• The various from Ranma ½ would indulge in this from time to time, but there was a subversion early in the story: after being tossed out an open (third-story) window, Ranma bounces back up from a tree branch to get back inside... only to smack solidly on the pane of glass when Akane closes the window on him.
• Anita does this to rescue Nenene in R.O.D the TV, she does, however, cut a little "X" in the glass before impact.
• In Saint Seiya, when Seiya is attacked by Shaina at his hospital room, he jumps through the window to escape from her, though it's somewhat downplayed due to the fact that the window is covered by curtains. Shaina quickly follows him shattering the remaining glass.
• Spoofed in the "New Year's Cleaning" episode of Sgt. Frog, where Keroro does a Super Window Jump into the bathroom to tell Natsumi she's not cleaning the bathtub properly... only to get knocked back out the window for getting broken glass all over the floor. In one episode, Keroro is watching a movie where a hero jumps through a window into the villains' lair. He actually thought it was open, though.
• Zelgadis in Slayers does this as his stylish return to the series, also providing some much-needed reinforcements for the heroes.
• Matsuri busts through a stained-glass window early on in Sola, but she's immortal, so whatever.
• In Sumomo Mo Momo Mo, Uma Kamen bursts through a stained glass window in an outfit FAR too small to avoid the death of a thousand razors. None of the debris even reaches the ground to harm the non-martial artists in the wedding ceremony.
• In Tokyo Shinobi Squad, shinobi frequently burst through windows when they're in a hurry, particularly when they're trying to assassinate someone.
• Abel Nightroad, from Trinity Blood does this twice, and even says something about it. "This is becoming something of a habit for me, it seems.
• In an early episode of You Are Being Summoned, Azazel, a Gonk NEET does this in an attempt to escape Akutabe. It goes as well as you'd expect.
• Seto Kaiba did this once in the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime; so did Edo Phoenix in GX.

Comic Books

• Assassin's Creed: Templars The Black Cross does one of these... then ruins the moment by saying that, as much as he does it, he can never stop glass from getting everywhere.
• Batman:
  • At least he typically has an armored costume to handle the glass.
  • In "A Black & White World", one story in the Batman: Black and White anthology series, Batman comes crashing down through a glass ceiling while the Joker is mid-speech. It turns out they're actors (...in a comic book), and as they head to the canteen after the shoot, Joker points out that Batman always gets the big dramatic splash pages, while Batman admits he wishes that he got to make speeches.
  • Like his mentor, Robin usually plays this one straight, but in one of the last issues of his own comic, the Boy Wonder tackles someone through a large window, and the internal monologue mentions, "I'm going to be picking glass out of my hair all night. Remind me why I just wear a domino mask again?" This becomes Harsher in Hindsight later on, when half of his head is horribly burned in an explosion because of the lack of protection.
  • Batgirl: Year One: In the second issue, Killer Moth jumps out of a window to escape from Batgirl.
  • Lampshaded by Catwoman in Knightfall. Chased and outnumbered by enemy agents, she got into an empty room. She broke the window with a chair, hide behind the desk, and think "Let's see how stupid they are". The gunmen appear, saw the broken window, and understood that she jumped there. Hidden behind the desk, she thought "Very stupid!"
  • Lampshaded by Shiva in an issue of Birds of Prey when Cheshire jumps out of a window and Black Canary jumps out after her.
    Shiva: Perfectly good set of stairs...
• In Bookhunter, the Library Police's SWAT teams regularly smash through windows during arrests, and Agent Bay does likewise when he needs to get to the roof via fire escape in a hurry.
• Code Name: Gravedigger: In Men off War #12, Gravedigger rescues a captured major from Gestapo headquarters and—with the colonel in his arms—jumps through a closed window on the second floor to land on top of truck the colonel's squad have placed there for this eventuality..
• Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Scrooge McDuck did it with a horse. Twice.
• Subverted early on in Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol - Crazy Jane telekinetically smashes through a plate glass window, then ends up with shards in her hair and blood streaming down her face. Cliff then gives the shop owner the Doom Patrol's address so he can send them the repair bill.
• Edge of Spider-Verse (2023): This is how Kraven the Huntsman introduces himself to Princess Petra (a.k.a. Spinstress), dramatically smashing through a stained glass window after having leapt off a giant bird. Petra assumes he's attacking her, and yells that there was a perfectly good door. He does not get any more restrained.
• This is how the protagonists enter and exit a rather badly damaged building in the first Gemini Storm issue.
• In Gravity Falls: Lost Legends, Ford exits the Mystery Shack doing this, and Stan complains that he should have used the door.
• Hide: To escape from his family, Kevin jumps out a window.
• Iron Man once used this trope on a skylight when stopping a hostage situation, while using his repulsors to destroy the glass shards to make certain he didn't accidentally kill the hostages himself.
• In Just Imagine... Stan Lee Creating the DC Universe, Superman jumps through a window to enter a building, leaves momentarily, then jumps through a different window when he comes back.
• Made explicit in Dynamite's The Lone Ranger comic.
  Tonto: You could have used the stairs.
  Lone Ranger: No one talks about the people taking the stairs. They don't spread stories about them. They don't make them greater than what they are... or something to be feared.
• Lucky Luke expects to have to get out this way when he enters a building, so he always parks his horse under the window. The only time it ever inconvenienced him in any way was when he did it through the wrong window and, instead of a dramatic horseback escape, got a painful stomach landing.
  • Once, he landed on a horse that wasn't Jolly Jumper. When JJ arrived, he explained to readers that he has his friends stationed under each of the saloon's windows, as he couldn't know which one Luke would escape through.
• The minor Marvel villain Mad Dog had what was largely considered his moment of awesome when he attacked his ex-wife Hellcat's wedding; Just as they get to the part where the priest asks if anyone objects, he bursts through the stained glass of St. Patrick's Cathedral.
• Mr. Beaver jumps from a helicopter into a building through a window in the first issue, rolling on the floor and doing a perfect landing.
• Ms. Marvel (2014) has Kamala doing an undignified belly-flop version through a villain's skylight, with a comically dismayed expression. She lampshades it with "Man. That is way harder than it looks in the movies."
• Raptors: The cover of the third album depicts Drago and Camilla bursting through a large plate glass ceiling window while looking down on their family's ancestral sword. The scene in the comic is somewhat different, in that it happens during a fight between the pair and Aznar, who is thrown up through the window onto the roof.
• In Robyn Hood: I Love NY #11, Robyn jumps through a closed window as part of her High-Dive Escape to get away from Alina Rose. Robyn is already pretty badly wounded at this point, so it is hard to tell if jumping through the glass cut her up any worse.
• Scion: Ethan, Ashleigh & Skink do this from the Raven castle to escape from Bron. They land in water.
• The Simpsons: In "Hail to the Cat", Lindsey Neagle does one of these to escape the Simpsons living room after Lisa pokes several holes in her claim she hasn't stolen Lisa's idea for a political ad.
  Homer: Man, and all this time I've been using doors like a sucker.
• Sin City: Windows are made of Soft Glass since Marv and other characters have jumped out of windows in order to escape multiple times. In fact, in at least one instance, Dwight escaped by being thrown through a window. They are always unharmed, of course.
• Various incarnations of Spider-Man comics have Spidey regularly performing the trope as an entrance to shake up goons.
  • Subverted in an issue of Ultimate Spider-Man, where Spidey attempts to enter Kingpin's skyline headquarters in this manner, only to discover the hard way that since his previous visit, Kingpin has had shatterproof glass installed. The three panels of Spidey hitting it then sliding down are tremendous.
  • Miguel O'Hara, the Spider-Man of 2099 tries to just open a window to slip out of his high rise apartment, but the windows are "sealed for [his] safety".
• Superman:
  • In The Strange Revenge of Lena Luthor, Supergirl villain Blackrock breaks into a mobster's illegal gaming parlor by crashing through the window.
  • In The Phantom Zone, Superman flies through a closed window to reach his friend Charlie before he is mind-controlled into doing something stupid.
• Parodied in one issue of Tales Designed to Thrizzle where two perpetually-frightened kids keep having people barge into their room by jumping through the windows. The third jumper lampshades that there's a three-for-the-price-of-two sale on windows at the store, so by breaking the third window, she was saving money.
• Characters from The Trigan Empire used to get away with this, despite the bare arms and legs exposed by their pseudo-Roman outfits. Trigo, for example, once escaped a room full of baddies by leaping through a window with his bare arm covering his eyes and his sandaled foot leading and maybe kicking the glass. Not a drop of blood anywhere!
• Rorschach from Watchmen jumped through a window to escape a building he had set on fire. Of course, it ended up pretty badly for him because he landed in a trash can, preventing escape from his pursuers, but still, he didn't seem to have any injuries from actually jumping through the window.
  • Although later we see that he has sustained some lasting damage to his ankle because he "landed on it badly" during the jump, and consequently injures it again when the Owlship crash lands in Antarctica.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Wonder Woman (1942): In Judgment In Infinity, Power Girl jumps through a skylight to enter a hotel lobby and stop the Horseman of Pestilence from keeping killing people.
  • Wonder Woman (1987): When Artemis is manipulated into trying to kill Jason Blood she enters the apartment he's in talking to Diana by leaping through the skylight.
• Yoko Tsuno has to do this in the "Devil's Organ" story, to make the Big Bad believe that she was dead.
• The Ultimates: Captain America makes one in the hospital, even having just woken up from a 57 year sleep.

Comic Strips

• Eduardo Baretto raised Judge Parker above the other soap-comics with his artwork, his rendering of misandrist killer/stripper Dixie Julep diving out a window being an awesome moment.
• In an old Mickey Mouse comic strip, Mickey is so angry after an argument with Minnie he walks through a ground-floor window without even flinching.
  Minnie: Mickey Mouse! You... you!
  Mickey: If I've broken anything, I'll pay for it!
• National Lampoon: In the Nixon years, there was a comic strip starring G. Gordon Liddy, Agent of C.R.E.E.P. as an Agent Nick Fury parody — going through windows was the only way he entered or left a room.

Fan Works

• All Assorted Animorphs AUs: In "What if Tom's yeerk got the morphing cube from David first?", Rachel flies through the school's bathroom window in eagle morph in order to get outside and find Tobias.
• In the My Little Pony fanfic ARTICLE 2 it is subverted and deconstructed at the same time. Shane shoots the glass panel first to only then dive through it, and the cuts he suffered are very frequently mentioned.
• In Diaries of a Madman, Navarone does this in order to escape from an amorous in-heat Celestia, though his wings take the brunt of the impact.
• In Escape from L.A., Tom carries Eva and jumps through a fourth-storey window in order to escape from the Animorphs, who think they're still Controllers and thus a threat. He breaks several bones on impact, but fortunately he has a Healing Factor.
• Tsukune in He Who Fights Monsters does this to escape Inner Moka but he both uses a chair to break the window first and gets fairly cut up from doing so.
• In The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World; John and George, and about half the patrons of the Border Crossroads Inn, escape the hideous stench of the overflowing toilets (created by John) by going out the windows (they're only on the second floor, but still) rather than fighting their way through the crowds trying to use the elevators or stairs. As he's weakened from his feat, John sprains his ankle dropping down, but puts it to rights with a Healing Potion.
• The skylight variation is used in Kyon: Big Damn Hero when Kyon interrupts a meeting whilst holding a spy.
• L does this at one point in Light and Dark The Adventures of Dark Yagami. It is completely insane.
  "I will have to use stealth instead" said L and jumped in the broken window screaming. All this from the world's three greatest detectives.
• Calvin does this twice in The Pez Dispenser and the Reign of Terror.
• The Dark Knight continuation fanfic A Piece Of Glass has OC Breech Loader throw a chair at a window, which only cracks. She uses the weakened glass and her running momentum to smash through it and drop three stories to the ground, to escape Arkham Asylum. The Joker, who was using her much louder escape as a diversion for his own, is very impressed.
• Ruby Pair:
  • In "Meeting of Ruby Eyes", Zim and Tenn jump out a window to escape Gabo Amebo's lair. Though since Tenn tackles Zim to do so, from his perspective it's more a case of Destination Defenestration.
  • In "Beefus Megabombus", the Irkens escape the Carne Bees' hive ship by jumping out of its bridge's window, which Zim uses Skoodge as a battering ram to break.
• Shadows over Meridian: In Chapter 31, after getting a taste of Jade's full power when she easily dispatches an entire group of rebel soldiers, a crazed Vera decides to flee by leaping out a window. She doesn't get far, however, being surrounded by Samurai Khan almost as soon as she hits the ground.
• This Bites!:
  • Paulie flees out a window rather than explain where he keeps all his ropes. Conis questions why he did that instead of using the door.
  • When an angry Lola confronts Cross and Nami about Perona being inducted into the Masons, Cross jumps out a window rather than face her. Nami is incredulous at this, since she'd already agreed to take all the blame.
• In the Blood+ fic Waking Dream, Reeve pulls this off to escape from Diva after she tries to drink his blood. He gets several shards of glass embedded in his body in the process.

Films — Animation

• Ratatouille: Remy's introduction has him bursting out a window being chased by a woman with a shotgun.

Films — Live-Action

• Averted in 13 Sins. Elliot actually throws a chair through the window of the police station to smash out the glass before jumping.
• Played straight in The Addams Family, when Gomez comes back to the house to rescue Morticia. Justified in that, well, if you can survive electrocution and consider torture foreplay, a little glass isn't gonna be much of an issue.
• In Aliens, after Hudson puts some holes into the pane to soften it up, Hicks jumps through the glass window (he's wearing body armor that would protect him from cut glass), into the room where Newt and Ripley are trapped and starts wrestling with a facehugger. A very badass moment.
• Bank Shot: When the guards think they are sitting on Railroad Tracks of Doom, one of the guards jumps out of the bank's window without opening it first.
• Batman
  • Done in Batman (1989) to confront The Joker who has taken over the museum and is about to do something to Vicki Vale.
  • Batman Forever, Batman does this through a ceiling window to confront Two-Face after he crashes Edward's event. Edward tells Two-Face: "Your entrance was good, his was better."
  • Batman & Robin: Batgirl crashes through the ceiling window of Ivy's hideout to stop her escape.
• In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, this is how Batman makes his entrance into Knyazev's warehouse to save Martha Kent.
• Played for Drama in Blade Runner, when Deckard shoots Zora in the back as she tries to get away from him in a shopping arcade. Because Zora is a Replicant and therefore Made of Iron, she crashes through a succession of windows before finally dying, covered in blood.
• Used in the climax of Black Moon Rising, when Quint and Nina jump from a skyscraper to another with the eponymous super car.
• The Bourne Ultimatum is guilty of this, where Jason Bourne leaps across an alleyway, through a closed window, jumps up and immediately starts fighting the assassin sent to kill him.
• When Bragg exits Logan's hotel room via the window in Canyon Passage, he doesn't bother to open it first. He does not escape completely unscathed as the next time he is seen, he is limping.
• In Death Spa, Michael jumps through the locked glass doors of the tanning parlor. Shattered glass goes flying everywhere but he is unharmed.
• John Candy's character in Delirious writes a stained-glass window into existence just so he can crash through it on horseback into the bad guys' lair to save the girl.
• Demon Knight: After being burnt by the holy key, the Collector shrieks in pain and jumps out of the hotel through a closed window.
• In Devil Hunters (the sequel to Killer Angels, same page), the main villain blows up himself in a Taking You with Me last-ditch move, prompting the trio of heroes (Played by Ray Lui, Sibelle Hu and Moon Lee) to leap out of a tall balcony window just as the entire room behind them gets engulfed in flames. The film's final shot have Moon Lee and Sibelle Hu entirely coated in flames as they fall out the window, a stunt which was NOT supposed to happen — the film is borderline Fatal Method Acting, both actresses requiring hospitalization after the scene had wrapped, with Sibelle going through skin grafting.
• In Die Hard, John McClane does this and doesn't hurt himself, even though the rest of the movie realistically depicted him getting his feet horribly mangled due to the broken glass everywhere he had to walk on. The first kick didn't break the window, though, forcing him to shoot the glass.
• The 1979 Universal version of Dracula has Mina, now undead (Lucy and her roles were switched in this film) escaping from an insane asylum like this after feeding on a baby and being discovered by the horrified mother.
• The Fly (1986) features a rare instance of someone entering a building through this way, specifically the Brundlefly crashing into a clinic to abduct Veronica. It comes out of nowhere too, making it a very literal Jump Scare.
• Performed by Storm Shadow in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra during the last parts of the Paris chase.
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly starts off with one. The introduction of Tuco (the ugly) consists of him crashing through a window to get outside after the building he's hiding in gets stormed by his enemies. In this case, he couldn't use the door because said enemies were blocking it.
• In the original Gremlins, Billy jumped inside a window, because the door was locked and he needed to kill the last gremlin. First, however, he broke through the glass with a toy vacuum cleaner.
• Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers: When chased by members of the Cult of Thorn and then Mrs. Blankenship reveals herself as one of them and pulls a gun on her, Kara Strode tries to escape by leaping through a second story window. Though she doesn't bleed, she gets knocked out cold, allowing the Cult to kidnap her.
• The hospital climax of Hard Boiled, where the iconic Hospital escape ends with Inspector Tequila jumping out the window of the third floor carrying a baby in one hand just as the entire building blows.
• Help!:
  • The Beatles dive out the window in a pub to get away from bad guys.
  • And earlier, bad guys dive in the window of the Beatles' flat, taking them by surprise.
• Highlander. Justified twice: Immortals are immune to most injuries, and often wear big trenchcoats too.
• Hot Fuzz double-subverts this. Nicholas Angel spies a murder happening inside a flower ship and calls out for the murderer to stop, and he tosses his police baton through the window to break the glass... and then he jumps in through a different window.
• Waring Hudsucker, in The Hudsucker Proxy, sets off the events of the film by impulsively leaping to a spectacular death through the window of his company's boardroom.
  • Later subverted when a lesser executive panics about the company's future and attempts the same thing through the same window, only to find the Big Bad had the window replaced with Plexiglass.
• James Bond
  • Bond smashes through a window unaided in a highly dramatic fashion in GoldenEye as he escapes interrogation. To be fair, it's a tiled, wood-framed window, where the frame breaks first.
  • In Quantum of Solace, both Bond and one of the fellows from Quantum manage to fall through a skylight after scrapping with one another, fall onto some scaffolding, and scrap for a single pistol in order to shoot the other bastard.
  • In Spectre, Bond smashes through a window in order to escape from the meeting place of the eponymous SPECTRE after he is identified by name.
• In A Jolly Bad Fellow, Bowles-Otterly escapes from the police by throwing himself backwards through the French windows without opening them first. Of course, he has just gone Laughing Mad so he probably doesn't care about any potential injuries.
• In Julia X, Julia escapes from the farmhouse by jumping through a closed window, taking all of the glass out with her.
• The Velociraptors in Jurassic Park do this a few times.
• Kenny & Company: Kenny lures The Bully Johnny into a mean old lady's house. When she starts shooting at Johnny, he escapes by diving through a window.
• Killer Workout: After the killer murders Denise, they make a running jump through her window, drop two stories to the ground, roll, then get up and run away as if nothing had happened.
• Averted in The Krays (1991). Jack the Hat tries to throw himself through a French door to escape being killed, but just gets stuck in it, easy prey for the gangsters who simply haul him out.
• Averted in Lockout when Snow attempts to leap from one building rooftop to another, misses, slams into a window (which doesn't break) and falls to the street below.
• In Lone Hero, John escapes from the saloon by leaping out through the closed window. However, as tis is the saloon that is used for staged gunfights in the Wild West show, there is a good chance the window actually has stage glass in it.
• The Western The Long Riders (1980): An outlaw gang are trapped in a town's main street by a posse, so they escape by riding their horses through the windows of a store, then out another set of windows at the back. Why a store would also have large plate glass windows (which would have been very expensive to make and transport) on the side facing away from the main street is not mentioned.
• The Magnificent Seven (2016): Chisolm rides his horse through the glass doors of a restaurant to ambush one of the fleeing Blackstone operatives. His horse is unharmed.
• Will Graham does this to rescue Reba in Manhunter in a scene very well-timed to a diegetic In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.
• In the action film Man Wanted, Wah have to leap off a penthouse balcony after finding a Time Bomb in the same room, few seconds away from detonation. He gets saved by a Car Cushion.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • After Hawkeye runs out of arrows in The Avengers, he swings down and crashes right through a massive window. He isn't badly hurt, but his pained body language seems to imply that he got poked by a few pieces of glass.
  • While Tony Stark runs from Ellen Brandt in Iron Man 3, he jumps through a store glass window. His expression afterwards implies that it was painful at least.
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier:
    • After the Elevator Action Sequence in S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ, Cap jumps through the glass of the elevator all the way to the lobby using his shield. The lobby is also encased in glass.
    • He does another version when he chases The Winter Soldier who had just shot Fury, jumping across the street and through a window. He does have the advantage of his shield to protect him compared to most examples.
    • And earlier, when Cap grabs Natasha and jumps through a window to escape a grenade that's about to explode; in a blink-and-you-miss-it-moment, it's Natasha who breaks the window with a pistol shot just before they crash through it.
  • Thor: Ragnarok: Thor escapes Hulk's room by jumping through the window. Subverted a moment before when he tries to break it with a ball first, and it just bounces back and hits Thor in the face.
• The Matrix:
  • Deconstructed in The Matrix. Trinity jumps through a glass window and gets her face cut for it.
  • Deconstructed again in The Matrix Reloaded. Bane and Malachi jump through a skylight simultaneously. Even though they have shades on, Bane waits until the glass has settled before looking back up.
• Max Manus. Max tries to escape from the Gestapo by jumping out the window only to end up in hospital instead. Fortunately he escapes with the help of sympathetic hospital staff, and when Max arrives in Scotland for training, he's become Famed In-Story as the guy who jumped out the window.
• Men in Black:
  • Done by the Bug to effect a dramatic escape.
  • Subverted when the future Jay tries to smash through a glass door to chase a perp, but just bounces off and has to shoot the glass to break it.
• Mercenaries from Hong Kong features one in it's Batman Cold Open; the protagonist, Luo Li, is introduced killing a drug kingpin responsible for his niece's death in a penthouse, only to hear the kingpin's bodyguards approaching. He then makes a daring escape by tackling his way out the penthouse's window, broken glass and all, before landing on the back of a conveniently-parked truck.
• Played straight in Minority Report, though the people coming through the skylight were armored police officers who, impliedly, do this sort of thing on a regular basis. However, they were coming down into someone's bedroom, where they knew two people had just been having sex.
• Played for dramatic tension rather than Dynamic Entry in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Ethan Hunt has to free-climb up the outside of the highest building in the world to get to its well-protected server room. He does so using adhesive gloves, but as he's cutting his way through the glass, one of the gloves malfunctions. Cue Climb, Slip, Hang, Climb sequence, but Ethan's dropped his laser cutter so has to smash his way through the partly-cut window. It won't break, so he has to swing outwards (hanging by his one remaining glove) and kick his way through.
• More Dead Than Alive: After catching up with Luke Santee in the Ghost Town (just after Santee has killed Billy), Cain crash tackles him through anplate glass window and the pair of them crash out into the street.
• In Mortdecai, Charlie escapes from the Russians by jumping out of their window and onto Jock's motorcycle.
• In The Mummy Returns Rick and Jonathan jump through a window, land on an awning, roll off that awning onto another one, and finally jump to the ground.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge: Freddy jumps through the glass doors of Lisa's house and disappears briefly after confusion at his inability to kill Lisa (Jesse, whose body he is controlling, won't let him).
• In A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Kristen dives through the closed window of her bedroom to escape Freddy. Justified as it is a dream and she has mad acrobatic skills in her dreams.
• Subverted in The Parole Officer, when a character attempts to escape from a police officer in the bank he has just robbed by swinging out through a window, only to bounce off of it. He picks himself off the floor and sheepishly says "toughened glass" to which the officer replies "Its a bank!".
• Parodied in Polar when a stoner tries jumping through the window to escape hitmen only to bounce off the glass. After the hit team kill him and leave, the window breaks.
• Subverted and played straight in the Tony Jaa movie The Protector. Tony's character fights a gang of extreme sports enthusiasts in some kind of abandoned industrial facility. They all spend several minutes fighting, chasing, and jumping through windows, and some of the gang are apparently doing it just to be dramatic and intimidating. ^note They also attack the lead with fluorescent bulbs, because the scene apparently needed more breaking glass. Then a guy on a four-wheeler chases Jaa's character down a hallway with large window at the end. Tony doesn't jump through. He runs vertically up the glass, and backflips off as the four-wheeler crashes through.
• In Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, Remo scratches the window of a gas chamber with a henchman's diamond tooth before diving through the window. However due to Special Effect Failure the "glass" shatters a split-second before he contacts it.
• Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Alice, into the church, with the motorcycle. Slightly justified in that Alice is supposed to have weird uber-kick-ass powers.
• The trailer for the remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show shows Eddie riding his motorcycle through a window.
• Satan's Cheerleaders: When Patti turns Emmy's spell against her, the two Angry Guard Dogs Lucifer and Diablo leap through closed windows to attack her.
• Done to humorous effect in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. The scene alone is worth the price of admission.
  Knives: Is Scott here?
  Wallace: Uh, you know what? (Scott is visible in the camera taking a running start and jumping through the window to get outside to avoid meeting Knives) He just left.
  Knives: (oblivious to what just happened) Really?
  Wallace: Yeah... (Scott reaches back through the open window to grab his coat.)
• 1994's The Shadow does a variation on this. Villain Shiwan Khan jumps out a window, to be sure, but he first breaks the glass telekinetically. Farley Claymore later ends up diving through a window overlooking the lobby (three floors up) while trying to flee from the Shadow, notably after the Shadow used his powers to make him believe that it really was an exit. Well, at least the glass isn't gonna be an issue for long.
• Sheitan: The boys flee the house and pile into Ladj's car. However, while Ladj is trying to start it, the enraged Joseph (who they thought they had left unconscious inside) jumps through one of the ground floor windows—curtains, glass and all—and comes charging towards them.
• Kane escapes from the Devil's Reaper by jumping through a stained glass window in Solomon Kane.
• The eponymous character in Spawn (1997). Justified with his costume and cape acting as armor and Spawn being undead and thus unharmed even by bullets. That, and the fact that the movie hardly takes itself seriously.
• Prince Septimus does this during his High-Dive Escape in Stardust.
• Star Trek Into Darkness: Harrison crashes through a large glass window while fleeing from Spock, and gives it about as much attention as the air he was running through a moment before. Justified in that his genetic engineering makes him Nigh-Invulnerable.
• In Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, Obi-Wan jumps through the window to grab the killer-bug carrying droid. (Although, as the Darths & Droids annotation points out, you'd expect Anakin to do this instead of him.)
• Superman II, when the three Kryptonian criminals invade the Daily Planet: "When are these people ever going to learn to use a doorknob?"
• In the beginning of Super Cop 2, the titular character's Love Interest David jumps off a fifth-storey balconey after realizing there's a Time Bomb behind him. He survives by landing in a tarp.
• In Swashbuckler, Lynch jumps through the skylight at the brothel—glass and all—in order to rescue Nick and Jane from the soldiers.
• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974): Sally does this not once, but twice in the third act.
• Total Recall (1990). Richter jumps through the front window of The Last Resort brothel to escape the firefight going on inside.
• In The Tournament, Petrov enters the church by leaping through the window; immediately scattering a spray of grenades around him.
• Done during the climax of Transformers: Dark of the Moon Sam, his girlfriend Carly, and the marines they're with have to jump out of a window of a tilted building, hundreds of stories up to escape a Decepticon chasing them they don't land on the ground per se but slide along the building till they're force to shoot the glass to drop to a lower floor or else fall to their deaths.
• Undercover Brother, film version, uses this in place of a Transformation Sequence.
• Van Helsing and Anna Valerious grab Friar Carl and jump through a window to escape Dracula's ballroom guests.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit: When Roger leaves Mr. Maroon's office in a huff after finding his wife Jessica was playing patty-cake with Marvin Acme, he goes out the window, leaving a Roger-shaped-hole in the blinds and glass.
• In Wild Thing, the titular protagonist escapes from the burning Safe House by smashing out through a first-story window.
• Subverted in the Made For TV The Wild Wild West movie. After knocking down the British agent who had captured them, they try crashing through the window to escape. Unfortunately, the window features a new invention - bulletproof glass. They bounce and later on use a different tactic to get away.
• In The Wizard of Oz, Cowardly Lion turns away from the fake Wizard effect, sprints down a hallway screaming, and jumps out a glass window into some bushes.
• In X-Men: Days of Future Past, Mystique tried this to escape from Magneto. It did not work very well.
• In You're Next, Erin jumps through a window to get away from the Tiger Mask. She is seriously injured as a result.

Jokes

• Q: Bob attempts to set a world record by jumping through the windows of a 100th-storey penthouse. How does he do it?
  A: By jumping inwards, of course.

Literature

• Injun Joe's running away from the Muff Potter's trial in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
• "Angel Down, Sussex": After the alien being's human guise is unmasked, she escapes by leaping through a closed window. When one of the characters catches up to her, she appears to be unharmed.
• Artemis Fowl: Butler does something similar when he crashes through a (supposedly) impenetrable glass door.
• Interestingly, in light of the notes on vampires above, Dracula, in the Bram Stoker novel of the same name, only does this once despite his preference for windows above doors. In other instances, he either slides into cracks between the window and frame, or he has something else break the glass for him. In the example of this trope, however, it's daytime and he can't change forms, but is still tough enough to just leap through the pane.
• The first Franny K. Stein book, Lunch Walks Among Us, had the Pumpkin-Crab Monster jump through a window after kidnapping Franny's teacher Ms. Shelly.
• In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, believe it or not: Severus Snape does this. With an Impact Silhouette, no less.
• Mistborn: The Original Trilogy: The Final Battle of the first book takes place at the top of a tower whose exterior wall is made entirely of a single, cylindrical sheet of multicoloured stained glass. Vin, whose Mistborn powers include Not Quite Flight and shooting coins, enters by first piecing the glass with a series of coins, then crashing through the weakened section. The scene is written from the perspective of one of the villains, who first sees a single coin shoot through the glass and roll across the floor, then more coins, then POW. Brandon Sanderson knows how to write awesome.
• In The Sour Lemon Score, Parker escapes from George Uhl's ambush by diving through the farmhouse window when Uhl shoots Bernie Weiss. The house is so dilapidated that he takes most of the most of the window frame with him.
• Rachel Griffin: Used in The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin: the eponymous Rachel fails to open a window with magic and is forced to crash through it on her Flying Broomstick. The result is not described directly, but Rachel has difficulty persuading the next person she talks to that I Can Still Fight!.
• Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not: In "The Locked Cell Murder", Amelia Van Helsing enters the story by leaping through the skylight of a warehouse to save Holmes from a gang of cultists.
• Skulduggery Pleasant does this all the time. Museums, private houses, villas, evil lair... no window is safe. His lack of any wounds is justified, as he's a walking skeleton.
• The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge. The Stainless Steel Rat does this the first time he's captured by the Grey Men. Only to find their leader has posted two guards outside the window.
• Star Wars Legends: Allegiance has Mara Jade performing this trope, though she uses fancy Force-assisted acrobatics to cut a round hole before she actually hits it. She does this to both a stone wall and a window, and notes that the window was much easier.
• The Thinking Machine: Averted in "The Ghost Woman". A cracksman jumps through a closed windows anfd vanishes into the night. However, Van Dusen notes the amount the amount of blood on the broken glass, and states that one cannot crash through a closed window and fall 20 ft. to the ground without sustaining serious lacerations and injuries. He reasons the man would have had to seek medical attention, which is how he locates him.

Live-Action TV

• A 24 Day 8 episode deconstructed this; a suicide bomber broke out of the window when he was surrounded by Jack Bauer and his crew, but ended up limping as he walks into the oxygen chamber.
• In The Adventures of Superman, George Reeves as the title character wouldn't bother finding a window — he'd just break through a wall. (One, he's Superman, dammit — and two, foam and papier mache debris was cheaper and safer than stunt glass.)
• Agent Carter has a tragic variation in the first season. Chief Dooley, trapped into a thermal suit that is building up toward an explosion, jumps out a window to avoid taking anybody else with him. He shoots the window first to weaken it, and injuries from the crash aren't an issue at this point.
• Arrow
  • Oliver Queen often does this in his Arrow guise as a Big Entrance. This backfires when he bursts in on Thea Queen this way and she responds by throwing a handful of broken glass in his face.
  • In "Left Behind", a flashback scene shows Oliver's first attempt at this while working for ARGUS in Hong Kong. He fails to break the window even though his partner shoots the glass right before he hits it. After kicking the glass for a bit, he ends up entering.
  • Combined with Outrun the Fireball in "Canaries" when Oliver and Roy Harper do this to escape from a suicide bomber by leaping through his apartment windows just after he presses the detonator.
  • Oliver first meets the Black Canary when he's surrounded by a SWAT Team, only for the Canary to smash through an overhead skylight, then break every other sheet of glass in the room using her sonic device so she and Oliver can jump out the window while everyone else is clutching their ears in pain.
  • In Season 6, Oliver is on trial for being the Arrow, so an Identity Impersonator enters the courtroom by crashing through the overhead skylight to further sell the idea that he's the real Green Arrow.
• The A-Team does this frequently. Usually by Murdock. One specific example occurs in "Say It With Bullets", where, during the raid on one of the villains' hideout, Hannibal and B.A. jump through the window to go after the bad guys. As usual for television, shards of glass fly everywhere, but they're not hurt at all.
• Happens in the finale of Birds of Prey (2002) when Barbara and Dinah swing into their villain-occupied headquarters through the gigantic clock tower window. Keep in mind Barbara is paraplegic.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel heroes and villains are fond of this (the original film had an especially good one-take example).
  • Buffy and Faith actually use this as a weapon in "Bad Girls" when they burst into a vampire nest through a painted-over window in broad daylight, setting one vampire on fire and causing the rest to flee in panic.
  • In "Homecoming" Buffy and Cordelia are fighting a demon inside an abandoned shack when someone fires a grenade into it. Buffy grabs Cordelia and jumps through one window. The demon jumps through another window...only to bounce off the shutters, falling back onto the grenade.
  • Spoofed when Angel does this and later complains about being billed for the broken window.
• CSI: NY: During "Exit Strategy," a sniper hits the Crime Lab with a hail of bullets through Mac's office window. Seeing Lindsay cowering in a room across the hallway, he crashes through the glass wall, grabs her and pulls her to safety. Neither of them are cut by the glass... or hit with any of the shots still being fired (A few others are, none fatally, tho.)
• In Danger 5, this is done Once per Episode by no one other than Hitler. The Danger 5 team, having fought their way through another slew of improbably freakish bad guys, will confront Hitler only for him to escape through the nearest window. Head first. Sometimes while he's duel-wielding machine guns. And in a Running Gag, it's always Stock Footage from the first time he does this. Our heroes only succeed in killing him (or so they think) when they finally corner Hitler in an undersea base which doesn't have windows. In Season 2 this is replaced by a Running Gag where they keep crashing through the walls of the cheap sets.
• Happens in one episode of Doc Martin when a young girl decides to jump off a moving car into a store window because she's uncontrollably hyperactived due to her mom having been giving her perscription drugs that were completely inappropriate for a child. The girl is very badly injured from this and Martin has a tough time treating her injuries to keep her alive long enough for an ambulance to arrive and get her to the hospital.
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Android Invasion": The Fourth Doctor opens the door of a UNIT office to find his Evil Knockoff Robot Me, slams the door shut, and then leaps sideways through the window down onto the carpark storeys below.
  • "The Seeds of Doom": The Fourth Doctor crashes straight down through a ceiling skylight to ambush the enemies in the room, defeating them all in the confusion with only his bare hands, retrieving someone's gun, pointing it at the room and announcing "I win."
  • "The Girl in the Fireplace": The Tenth Doctor crashes through a window — on a horse, no less. Technically it was part Time Portal, part mirror, but 100% awesome!
  • "The End of Time": The Tenth Doctor throws himself through a skylight. Only that time it actually hurt. And was horrible.
  • "Closing Time": The Doctor comes to rescue Craig from the Cybermat by leaping through a closed glass door.
  • "Heaven Sent": The Twelfth Doctor jumps out of a window and falls from a great height into the sea. The impact is enough to make him lose consciousness, but he isn't otherwise injured. He'd also thrown a chair out the window beforehand, which in addition to letting him calculate how long he has to fall while in midair, also presumably took enough of the glass with it that he could just dive through.
• Ray Kowalski on Due South did this on a motorcycle once.
• In Father Ted, Father Jack repeatedly exits the parochial house by jumping through the window, whether it's fleeing in terror from a nun or just because he can't be bothered to use the door. Subverted when they install the Plexiglass. The window remains undamaged as Jack bounces to the floor.
• Claire Bennett does this on Heroes to get away from the Petrelli clan. And honestly, if Mama Petrelli cornered me in my real father's office, and he were on her side, and I knew I'd regenerate from any wounds I suffered anyway, I'd jump out a 10-story window, too.
• Done a couple of times in Highlander: the Series. It helps when you know you're immortal and will heal within minutes.
  • Slan Quince both enters and leaves this way when he first introduces himself to Duncan. (Complete with rubber sword blade hilariously boinging around in the slow-mo exit after hitting the window frame.)
  • Richie Ryan escapes out a second-story warehouse window on a motorcycle.
• In The IT Crowd, Denholm Renholm nonchalantly steps out of a thirtieth-floor window during a board meeting to off himself when some "irregularities in the pension fund" are exposed.
• In Jack of All Trades. During a But Now I Must Go scene the masked hero tosses a coin to a flunky, saying it's for the broken window.
  Flunky: What broken window?
  (Jack gives a boisterous laugh and jumps through the window, shutters and all)
• A Running Gag in "La Oficina" sketch of the Chilean show Jappening con Ja is having Espina open one of the office building's windows (and the office itself is located in one of the top stores of a rather high building) and throw himself off it whenever his "beloved" boss lectured him, screaming "Me castigo jefe, ME CASTIGO" ("I'm punishing myself, sir, I'm punishing myself!"). Then he would return to the office completely unharmed.
• Major Crimes: In "Hindsight, Part 4", Amy and Coop arrive a motel just as a suspect flees a shootout by diving through a closed window. He gets up still shooting.
• Col. Flagg tries this in an episode of M*A*S*H, after telling the others in the room to look away since he has to leave like the wind, traceless. Crash.
  Hawkeye: [Looks out the shattered window] "The Wind" just broke his leg.
• In the Miami Vice episode "Baby Blues," Crockett and Tubbs dive out of the windows of a building as it explodes behind them.
• The Title Sequence of The New Mike Hammer had Stacy Keach jumping out of one window, across an air shaft, to smash through a window on the opposite side.
• Mission: Impossible: In "The Princess", the assassin twice escapes by jumping through a closed window. No reason is given why they do not open it first.
• Gambit was fond of doing this when he was racing to the rescue in The New Avengers. He comes crashing through the window of a folly in "Dead Men are Dangerous", and a health farm in "the Deadly Angels".
• Poirot: In The Veiled Lady, when both Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings are cornered by the police for burglary, Poirot distracts them, allowing Hastings more time to run toward the windowed back door exit with the special Chinese fortune box in his hands. But by then the door is locked, so Hastings gets an awesome moment by jumping out through the window, smashing the glass from inside.
• Probe's "Quit-It": After breaking into one of the houses to steal the "Quit-It" drug, Austin is caught by Abbey, who then tells her parents. In order to escape, Austin leaps through a nearby window.
• The Professionals
  • The original intro had Cowley running a team of CI5 agents (including Bodie and Doyle) through a battle course, including a scene where they have to simultaneously dive through four free-standing French doors, do an Unnecessary Combat Roll and come up firing. It was replaced by the more familiar 'car smashing through a plate-glass window' sequence.
  • In "Servant with Two Masters", Cowley turns up at the CI5 training area. We then see Bodie and Doyle sitting on a ledge holding ropes. They then jump off the ledge and swing through a window glass and all, landing on a mattress at Cowley's feet.
  • In "First Night", CI5 weld a pointed steel Battering Ram on the front of a truck-mounted lift platform—which an Uzi-armed Bodie is riding—to smash through the upstairs window to a room where an Israeli minister is being held hostage.
• When Seth Green gets Punk'd, the setup involves a supposed raid on an illegal casino, requiring at least one federal agent to enter by somersaulting through a window. In the post-prank interview Seth Green recalls thinking "that was really unnecessary".
• Season 2 Opener of Sanctuary has Ashley and her squad of near-vampires entering sanctuaries throughout the world through their skylights and proceed to tear things apart.
• The Scarlet Pimpernel (the 1999 miniseries): In the first episode, Pimpernel throws himself against a closed window in order to escape from Chauvelin after those two confronted each other in a French café.
• SCTV - hippie tv show host Dr. Braino (John Candy) gets too high and does it - then does it again in the only other skit he's in.
• In Sherlock, one of Anderson's theories about the Reichenbach Fall involves Sherlock crashing through a window after bungee-jumping off the roof.
• In Smallville, Kyla Willowbrook died attempting one of these. Clark does this all the time, but that's justified.
• Spaced had a brilliant moment with Simon Pegg and a surprise window exit.
• Daniel Jackson pulls this in an episode of Stargate SG-1. He has to shoot the glass ahead of time, but manages to get through without injury (of course, the radiation on the other side was not so accommodating).
• Sam and Dean in Supernatural do this to escape from the demon Alistair. Unfortunately for them, they aren't made of steel - the following scene has them pulling shards of glass out of their bodies, and Dean even having dislocated his shoulder from the fall. It's logically treated as a Godzilla Threshold sort of thing, with their options being "jump out the window and hopefully survive" or "stay inside with the angry psychopathic demon with skills in torture who just laughed off our magic demon-killing knife."
  • Played straight, parodied, and lampshaded in "The French Mistake", the one where Sam and Dean end up swapping places with the actors who play them in the TV series Supernatural after being thrown through a window to get there (literally Breaking the Fourth Wall). On the other side, they've ruined the shot of the boys coming through the window, so the director and showrunner decide to fudge it with a freeze-frame (which we see going into commercial).
• S.W.A.T. (1975). Rod Perry does this in the Title Sequence, rising completely unharmed with his AR-15 in the fire position.
• John does this in the pilot of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Granted, he's trying to get away from a Terminator.
  • He does this again in the season 2 premiere, when he's trying to escape from Cameron after she'd temporarily gone rogue.
• In the second episode of Third Watch, Maurice "Bosco" Boscorelli tackles an armed felon and they both go through a second floor window.
• Van Helsing (2016): In the episode "Save Yourself", when Sam realizes he's losing his fight with Vanessa, he flees by jumping out a window, falling about three or four stories and vanishing by the time Vanessa and Julius reach the ground floor. This is treated as a case of Sam being Made of Iron, as Julius notes that even a vampire shouldn't be able to just walk away from a fall of that height.
• Walker, Texas Ranger:
  • During the tear-jerking final act of Season 4's "Flashpoint", this happens voluntarily to two IRA Terrorists after their leader (the father of one of the victims) is killed by Walker and Trivette, deciding it's better to die than go to prison.
• Wanted: Dead or Alive: In "The Martin Poster", Andy Martin escapes from Josh by jumping through a closed window and running off with no cuts, abrrasions, bruises or any other damage.
• Myka, Pete, and Claudia of Warehouse 13 all get trapped inside a house stored at the eponymous Warehouse. If they try to leave, the house simply warps space so that they are instead entering the house again. So Pete does the (semi) logical thing to do and jumps through a window instead. ...Which causes him to jump in through the window right next to it.
• White Collar: Neal grabs a banner, cuts one end free, and dramatically swings across a courtyard and straight through the window on the other side.
• Omar Little did this to escape certain death on The Wire. Unusually for the trope he was badly injured by the move, but it was from a fourth-floor window. This was taken from Omar's real-life inspiration, Donnie Andrews, with one difference: Donnie jumped from the sixth floor. The TV show had to turn it down to make it believable, and even then...
  Marlo Stanfield: That's some Spider-Man shit there.
• The X-Files, episode "Colony": One of the clones jumps through a closed window to escape the alien bounty hunter.

Music Videos

• Tori Amos executes a particularly random one a few seconds into the music video for "Pretty Good Year," jumping into a building. The scene replays in reverse at the end. Chalk it up to the 'supernatural creature' category.
• Billy Idol rides a motorcycle through a stained glass window in the video for "White Wedding".
  • Harsher in Hindsight: While it didn't involve crashing through windows, he would later be injured in a motorcycle accident several years later.
• In the "I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)" video by Meat Loaf, there's a scene where the Beast character drives through a window on a motorcycle and causes a chandelier to crash for good measure.
• Metallica music video "I Disappear" has Danish drummer Lars Ulrich jumping through a window to escape an exploding building, Die Hard style.
• In Yellowcard's "Ocean Avenue", one guy jumps out a second-story window to escape a pair of pursuers. Repeatedly, because of a "Groundhog Day" Loop.

Pinball

• Foo Fighters (2023): Once Area 51 Multiball concludes, the band makes their escape from the complex by jumping straight through a window.

Theme Parks

• At Universal Studios:
  • Yogi and Boo-Boo in The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera escape the haunted castle in the Scooby-Doo scene by going right through a window.
  • In Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast, during the Rugrats scene, Jimmy and Carl exit the characters' home by smashing right through an upstairs window.

Video Games

• ANNO: Mutationem: After Ann takes down several of Loki's thugs, he escapes by jumping out of an apartment window. Ann pursues him by jumping out the same window and doing a Casual High Drop.
• Assassin's Creed: Revelations: Altaïr crashes through the big window behind the Mentor's chair during his escape from Masyaf. It's a bit of a Despair Event Horizon since he's forced to leave the castle he called home in the hands of the Big Bad, not to mention the fact that he's leaving his wife's corpse in the garden.
• Used as one of many possible takedowns in the Batman: Arkham Series.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops: Double points here.
  • Once during the campaign, while zip-lining INTO a window.
  • In multi-player, diving through a window into a prone position, then offing an opponent within 2 seconds or so will get you a gamerscore achievement.
• In Chrono Cross, Serge in Lynx form and co. smash through another stained glass window to escape a Nigh-Invulnerable robot.
• Marle in Chrono Trigger does this (in slow motion) to rescue her father on trial. Bonus points, though a stained glass window.
• Doable in Command & Conquer: Renegade. Most windows that are big enough to jump through are breakable, which means if you get pinned down in the upper floors of that Hand of Nod you can make a hasty exit through the window.
• The first Crash Bandicoot pulls one of these off during its minimal backstory. Wherein Crash escaped the lab by running out the window.
• Deus Ex Universe:
  • Possible in Deus Ex, but only with ceiling glass, and unless you have something soft to break your fall or the right augments it will likely result in broken legs.Impossible to do with windows, as they have to be shot or otherwise broken before making the jump.
  • Also doable in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, again only with ceiling glass, and only in one spot while infiltrating the port in Hengsha. You do need augments to avoid killing yourself in the process, but it can be done completely stealthy (by activating your cloak before breaking the glass).
• Die Hard for the NES allows you to jump through a window, out of a building from thirty stories up. This kills you.
• Ensemble Stars! has Shu falling in Love at First Sight with Nazuna and jumping from a second-storey window to talk to him.
• Hilarious example in Fate/stay night: in the Heaven's Feel path, Shirou and Kotomine have to quickly escape from a castle. Kotomine jumps out the window, and Shirou, after a moment's hesitation, follows. Problem is: they're on the eighth floor, and Kotomine is a very experienced magus who knows how to soften his landing. Shirou barely avoids crippling physical damage (he notes it's a miracle he didn't break anything), and afterward all his companions are staring in wonder at what a colossal idiot he is.
• Lampshade hung in Final Fantasy Legend II: The main character's father always leaves buildings through windows, leaving the other characters wondering aloud what the point is.
• Half-Life: a scientist does this rather awesomely, only to die moments later. This is commented on in Freeman's Mind.
  • It's entirely possible he'll run toward you, and even if he doesn't, you can save him by killing the zombies before they can hit him.
  • Averted in the Black Mesa remake, where a zombie behind the scientist throws him through the window.
• In Hatoful Boyfriend, Anghel Higure seems to jump through his school's windows at least once a week.
• The intro to Jak X: Combat Racing has Jak drive through an aquarium and into a bar in order to rescue Daxter.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Link, in wolf form, has to break through a window to get into one of the buildings. It's not particularly dramatic, but it is effective without being harmful to Link.
• The Matrix: Path of Neo has a few examples. Notably, the SWAT teams on the skylight version, and Neo doing a normal window version to try and save somebody, being Made of Iron Neo doesn't take any damage.
• In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Snake can use this as an alternate escape route to escape the Ocelot Unit at Rassvet. However, the shattering glass will alert troops, so a better idea would be to punch out the glass before sunrise. Snake can also somersault though select windows in Granin's lab.
• Played to the hilt in Mirror's Edge, where Faith goes through windows just like she goes through doors: with a hefty kick or shoulder charge and nary a pause. This is a Dystopia with a giant nanny state and a very overworked janitorial staff, so presumably safety glass has been mandated by law ''everywhere''.
• Nidhogg has the Wilds stage, which features buildings with glass windows that a player can break and/or dive kick out of.
• In Octogeddon, the terrified humans escape the buildings attacked by Octogeddon this way. Amazingly, despite jumping from the highest floors of six- or ten-story buildings, they do not splatter on the ground - they land perfectly safely and run away as his they jumped from the lowest step of a staircase.
• Parasite Eve: On Day 5, after Dr. Klamp spills the beans on his role, Eve combusts all living beings in the museum, Daniel and Maeda narrowly escape by jumping out a second floor window.
• Averted with PAYDAY: The Heist. SWAT will usually use explosives to destroy windows before rappelling inside. You can't jump through a glass window yourself; you have to shoot out the glass first.
• Persona 5: At the end of The Caper that serves as the game's Action Prologue, the protagonist escapes the casino he's robbing by jumping straight through a multi-story window and landing unscathed several stories below. His Mission Control calls him out for showing off and implies the only reason he did it was because it was "a stylish way to end a job." After all, he was trying to be caught.
• Possible by crouch-jumping through a window in Postal 2, though realistically you take a bit of damage. The police also tend to get very perturbed when you do it around them.
• Prince of Persia:
  • In Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame, the Prince begins his escape from the palace by jumping through a window. The gameplay begins at the exact moment he breaks through the glass.
  • Level 4 of Prince of Persia had a Super Mirror Jump, which is how the Prince's Living Shadow gets away from him.
• Professor Layton and the Curious Village: After Layton reveals that Chelmey is really Don Paolo, he exits Reinhold Manor by smashing through a closed window.
• The NES game Rescue: The Embassy Mission had your rescue operatives do this, as shown on the cover.
• Resident Evil:
  • Resident Evil 3: Nemesis: When Nicholai has Carlos gunpoint, one of their wounded teammates pulls out a grenade, prompting Nicholai to jump out a window before it went off.
  • In Resident Evil – Code: Veronica, Steve jumps through a window in Bullet Time, a Shout-Out to the opening of The Matrix, to save Claire from a Bandersnatch.
  • In Resident Evil 4, Leon is capable of jumping through windows without injury, simply by covering his face, which is good, because he tends to exit buildings this way. He also almost never climbs down a ladder. Leon really takes it to the extreme in this game. Almost any window you can walk up to can be leapt through with no consequence (and thanks to the giant flashing button on the screen, it's encouraged). It's worth noting you can break a window and still jump through it, but it often just has Leon hop over the windowsill instead of diving through it. Hell, even Ada, who's wearing a skin-bearing qipao, can pull it off exactly like Leon, without getting a scratch.
• Secret Files: Defied, in the second game. If you have Bishop Chester Parrey examine the window in the second room, he dismisses it as an escape route, as it's too high to jump.
• Shadow Guardian: The Alexandria mission begins with Jason attacked by an enemy helicopter in his hotel. He escapes by jumping out a third-floor window, landing on an unfortunate mook, before retrieving the mook's machine-gun and starting a shootout with other mooks.
• Sly 2: Band of Thieves: In the opening level, Sly jumps through one of the museum's windows to reach the rooftops. Carmelita follows after him with the same route.
• Sonic Adventure's Speed Highway has a tall building with a glass structure jutting out the sides; Sonic breaks the glass by standing on it for a second. From there, he runs down the building without being injured by falling shards.
• The original Syphon Filter has Logan jump through the Expo Center lobby's glass ceiling 50 feet up. He jumps through another window to enter Rhoemer's cathedral stronghold.
• Team Fortress 2: This is Saxton Hale's preferred way of entry. To top it all off, he manages to succeed doing this while jumping from a plane without a parachute!
• In Timecrest, the Player can peer pressure Ash into doing this to quickly leave a room before Petora returns. Doing this results in Ash breaking a few bones and locking them into becoming an earth mage.
• The eternally cheerful and friendly Papyrus in Undertale tries to encourage the protagonist to make friends with his friends, including the Hot-Blooded Hero Antagonist Undyne. His idea of leaving the two of them alone to get acquainted is to blatantly lie about needing to use the bathroom (not only do monsters generally not have that function^note Specifically, monster food is made of magic and is digested completely, leaving nothing to, ah, pass through. If a monster were to eat human food, that would be different, but there's none of that available in the Underground anyway., Papyrus is a skeleton) and then take a flying leap out the window, leaving glass shards in the house. If you look out of the window, Undyne just mentions that Papyrus usually nails the landing... so not only does Papyrus regularly do this, apparently this time he failed in some unseen but comical manner.
• Averted in the old click and drag game Uninvited, any attempt to break the windows to get out of the haunted house lead to you bleeding to death; no you can't clear the shards with a chair or something; it just doesn't work.
• WarioWare Gold: Besides 5-Volt smashing the window with her fist to look at 9-Volt in Sneaky Gamer, one of the things that 5-Volt has that never appeared in Game & Wario was, after a Scare Chord, doing this to enter 9-Volt's room. It's so quick, it can catch the player off guard if they are not prepared for this.
• X-COM:
  • All units in XCOM: Enemy Unknown can, and will, bash their way through glass windows when they need to get to point B. Justified, as your XCOM soldiers are wearing body armor (and later Power Armor), the aliens are rather callous towards their infantry and most are strong enough anyway, and any surviving civilians during Terror missions are probably desperate/terrified enough that they won't care about the potential injuries.
  • XCOM 2 records every single broken window and kicked-in door across all games and posts the total to the official website. As of June 2017, the total cost of repair stands at nearly $14 trillion for 21 million broken windows, amongst other damages.

Web Animation

• Helluva Boss: Blitzo tries to perform a Dynamic Entry by invoking Super Window Jump, but since he did so through a thoughtless spur of the moment and entered head-first, he instead lands flat on his face.
• RWBY: In the Volume 4 Character Short, Ruby could exit the tower through the entrance she was tossed through; instead, she floats up the tower to smash through the huge, round window. Aided by her Semblance and Huntress training, the leap sends her soaring through the air, momentarily silhouetted by the broken moon, towards the Beringel she's fighting. It signifies the come-back part of the fight, where she finally gains the upper hand and defeats the monster.
• Team Fortress 2 - Meet The Pyro: The BLU Sniper leaves a burning building via a second story window.

Webcomics

• In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Dr. McNinja gets the jump on some thugs by entering the warehouse via the skylight. This comes immediately after he asks himself "What would Batman do?"
  • A few pages later, Donald McBonald pulls one.
• The creator of Antics said "if I ever draw a window, you better believe something is about to bust through it".
• Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures: Dan did this off-panel.
• Dominic Deegan ends up doing one here. Sorry, haters, but it's just an Imagine Spot; he's not leaping to his death.
• Ellen tries this in El Goonish Shive shortly after her creation and subsequent Clone Angst, with added coolness from making her duplicate (or original?) throw her at the window. The coolness factor is negated when the window lacks any glass. And is a story up. THUMP.
• Byron in Guilded Age does this early in the story when the group comes to rescue Frigg. In his internal monologue, he mentions it's a good way to shake your opponents and build up your own confidence.
• In Homestuck, Roxy's favorite means of transportation involves jumping through portal windows, though she tends to break them first. Dirk however, in the "[S] Dirk: Synchronize" animation, does several bona fide breakings through windows on his rocket board.
• Scarlet from I'm the Grim Reaper does so twice. The first time is heavily justified in that Brook already ripped two of her limbs off. She needed to escape fast and didn't really have anything to lose by falling a few stories.
• Plasma-Man has done this at least twice in The Incredible and Awe-Inspiring Serial Adventures of the Amazing Plasma-Man.
• Sal Walters, one of the alien-enhanced abductees in It's Walky! jumps in and out through upper story windows more often than not, leading comments from her boyfriend about all the broken glass. The Big Bad eventually gets to cause an excellent anticlimactic moment with Sal-proofed windows. (She then promptly bursts through the floor, but it was a good try.)
• One webcomic by the Belgian cartoonist Jeroom Snelders, in which a dad jumps through a window to avoid giving his son The Talk, has become a meme.
• Invoked in this Least I Could Do strip ... and immediately subverted in the next one.
• In Magick Chicks, Tiffany pulls one on a glass door and is promptly informed that there was a doorbell.
• Subverted in Megatokyo: "Great Teacher Largo" jumps through a window to escape Ping, and badly hurts his leg. It later bites him in the rear in a DDR match.
  • Of course, he does heal astonishingly fast.
• In The Order of the Stick, this is one of the special abilities of the Dashing Swordsman prestige class, which is demonstrated right after Elan takes a level in it.
  • The trope is discussed in this strip, where Elan explains that Dashing Swordsmen are immune to damage caused by broken glass for precisely this reason.
  • This happens again, but it's the third dramatic entrance on the whole page. (It's pointed out that There Was a Door, but it wouldn't have made for a suitably Big Entrance).
  • Elan's mentor in Dashing Swordsmanship evidently performed this to enter a dentist's office. Luckily for the dentist, the window was left glass-free, reducing cleanup and replacement expenses.
  • Happens to not just Elan, but to Belkar and Miko too. Given that they're already bloodied from their fight, it's impossible to tell whether any of the wounds are from the broken glass. And of course, being moderately-high level D&D-based characters, they're explicitly far more durable than real-life humans.
• Panthera uses this here when the Ovid building is collapsing because of Oosterhuis and they all need to get out immediately.
• In The Rifters it's not very obvious, but this is how Jo gets into Carnby's tower (see here).
• In Stand Still, Stay Silent, Emil decides to set a building on fire upon escaping it along with Sigrun after finding out it's troll-infested, but in the heat of the moment forgets that Lalli may still be in it. Lalli escapes via doing this from a 2nd floor window. Lalli is later seen getting small glass shards out of his clothes.
• In Stick Man Stick Man, a Corrupt Corporate Executive pulls one to escape. The height aspect is Lampshaded.
• In xkcd, this is the logical conclusion to worrying about relationships.

Web Originals

• Parodied in Code MENT. When Lelouch jumps out of a second story window, a corresponding clip from Resident Evil 4 plays as a sort of "stunt double".
• One DarwinAward was given to a banker who ran into a window to show how strong it was. When the window was installed on a skyscraper. However, it was subverted in that the window didn't break, the frame holding it did.
• Homestar Runner features its own take on this, with Strong Bad's action hero alter ego Dangeresque, who often goes out of his way to make this exit (preceded by his catchphrase "Looks like I'm gonna have to jump!")
• The first and second seasons of International Moron Patrol featured Roger doing this... then falling flat on his face.
• The Nostalgia Critic ran off-screen and did this upon learning that the kid in Jingle All the Way was played by Jake Lloyd, the same actor as Anakin "Annie" Skywalker:
  Critic: * crash* Aaaaaahhhhh....! * thud* My God what a tall building!
• Adam Dodd in v3 of Survival of the Fittest escaped a grenade thrown into the barracks he was hiding in by jumping off a cot and through a window, somehow avoiding injury.
• In the Whateley Universe, Tennyo does this during the Halloween invasion of Whateley Academy, to get two students she's carrying out of the line of heavy machine gun fire aimed at her.

Western Animation

• Aqua Teen Hunger Force: In "Monster", after Shake becomes possessed by a demon, he's jumps out the window of a hotel building to land in one of the fountains.
• Batman does this regularly in Batman: The Animated Series. Despite the Joker knowing enough about the silliness, he does a super window jump (from a considerable height) of his own in Mask of the Phantasm. But then again he is aware of his own Joker Immunity.
• Terry naturally follows suit in Batman Beyond.
  Drug Boss: No deliveries tonight, thanks to Batman.
  Batman: [crashes through the skylight] Somebody mention my name?
• Blue Eye Samurai. Despite living in Japan, Fowler has had glass windows installed in his island fortress, so Mizu does the expected Super Window Jump...by throwing Taigen through the window, having hauled him up the wall to get there.
• Boldsteed, a horse, does this in episode 20 of Boo Boom! The Long Way Home when rescuing his four friends from the industrial laundry they are being trapped in.
• Cybersix: In Episode 6, the Monster of the Week grabs Cybersix and proceeds to fly out towards the window to drop her outside.
• Stewie does this in one episode of Family Guy; when it happens he's replaced with a very noticeable Stunt Double.
• In the Futurama episode "Less Than Hero", the mayor attempts to summon the New Justice Team (actually Fry, Leela, and Bender) while they're right in front of him in his office. In order to not blow their identities, they quickly make up excuses; Fry declares that he can't take life anymore and jumps out through a window, and instantly returns in-costume through a different window.
• In The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, when Billy is scared by Grim and Mandy dressed as clowns, he throws himself out the window to escape, then immediately reenters the house, only to be scared again and jump out the other window. This continues until every window is broken. When Billy realizes he's run out of windows, he runs over to a neighbor's house, politely knocks, enters the house and jumps out ''their'' window.
• Jonny Quest does this in one episode of Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures, a clip that's shown in the Title Sequence.
• The Legend of Vox Machina: Vax leaps through a second-floor window in an attempt to escape the Briarwood vampire-and-necromancer duo who have him hopelessly outclassed. Soft Glass is averted: by the time he hits the ground, he's badly cut up and has implied internal injuries, and is in need of immediate medical attention from Pike.
• Subverted for laughs at the start of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Dragon Quest". Fluttershy rushes towards a closed window in panic, enters a "ready to jump" pose, and... gently opens the window in an exaggerated manner before continuing her jump.
• Private Snafu: In "Rumors", Snafu enters the barracks to hide by jumping in through a closed window. He then exits by jumping out a different closed window.
• Regular Show: In "Alpha Dome", when Steve tries to capture Mordecai, Rigby and Skips to keep his secret from getting out. Skips manages to escape by jumping out of the control room's window.
• Rick and Morty: In "Amortycan Grickfitti", Rick, Beth and Jerry escape their captors in the hell dimension by jumping through a huge window which Rick blew open with his Hand Cannon.
• South Park: Mr. Slave does one of these in the episode "South Park Is Gay!". Unfortunately, because it wasn't safety glass, he ends up a bleeding mess on the floor.
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series, forbidden (among numerous heavy restrictions) to depict anyone breaking through glass, has Spidey leap through always open or conspicuously, utterly windowless spaces.
• Star Wars Rebels: In "Legacy of Mandalore", Fenn Rau flies through the glass wall of the Clan Wren stronghold during his Big Damn Heroes moment.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
  • "Carnage of Krell": After Rex confronts him, traitorous Jedi General Pong Krell begins his escape from the airbase by smashing through the window of the control tower to land on the ground several storeys below.
  • "Unfinished Business": Obi-Wan Kenobi and Mace Windu lead an attack on droid forces by jumping out of some hovering gunships, smashing through a large skylight, and then falling a considerable ways further to land on the floor of the building. Their troopers follow using jetpacks.
• Casey Jones makes a dramatic entrance this way in one episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003).
• The Venture Bros.: In "The High Cost of Loathing", Rusty jumps headfirst out a window to demonstrate his hover boots, after which he experiences blood loss from all the shards of glass on him.
• Kid Flash does this in an episode of Young Justice (2010), as he is in a hurry to deliver the organs that Queen Perdita needs for her surgery before her Evil Uncle can stop it. Surprisingly Realistic Outcome occurs as he ends up fainting and getting hospitalized from the impact of running through glass and the shards falling on him.

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