"Never ever give a fragile cup to anyone with psychic powers. You're only going to end up minus one cup and pissing off the janitor."
Drama can be quite a vandal. It likes to break things just to punctuate the mood. Often takes the form of a dropped glass or other fragile item. This could often involve trying to catch it in slow motion, accompanied by a Desperate Object Catch. Yet smashing even upright things will do for dramatic emphasis.
Rage Against the Reflection, Broken-Window Warning, and A Glass in the Hand frequently are because of this trope.
A Sub-Trope of Rule of Drama.
A Super-Trope to Dramatic Drop, Slow-Motion Drop (save examples where it's Played for Laughs).
Compare Super Window Jump (awesomely breaking glass to herald one's appearance or retreat), Glass-Shattering Sound, Grievous Bottley Harm, Rockers Smash Guitars, and Symbolically Broken Object.
See also Sheet of Glass.
Examples:
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Advertising
- The first "Cleaner Close" advert for Daz washing powder features a middle aged woman named Maureen berating her son for fooling around with a 'grubby girl' in the middle of the local pub (because the bra she found was grey instead of white). When she hands the bra back the girl says "But that's not my bra." Cue the shattering glass.
Anime & Manga
- AKIRA has a particularly memorable scene in which Tetsuo breaks the window of his hospital room as his powers awaken. He also steps on a glass cup as he stumbles away from the Espers, in a rare aversion of Soft Glass.
- Betrayal Knows My Name: Reiga does this deliberately with a wine glass in episode 7.
- In Black Clover, for comedic effect Magna's sunglasses shatter whenever he's greatly surprised, including when the Black Bulls take second place at the Stars Festival and he isn't chosen as a Royal Knight.
- The first Bondage Queen Kate OVA briefly cuts to a pane of glass cracking and then shattering to symbolize the loss of Kate's virginity.
- Parodied in Crayon Shin-chan, with Shin Chan picking up a book, asking for his mother Misae to repeat the bad news, and then dropping the book he is holding. This happens quite frequently in the manga and the anime.
- Death Note: The first opening has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment where a glass statue of Light falls to the ground and breaks.
- GaoGaiGar: As far as intentional breaking goes, they have Break In Case Of Monster of the Week glass covering a button as part of the over-the-top emphasis.
- Girls und Panzer: When the Maus fires its 128mm cannon for the first time, all the windows on both sides of the street are shattered by the force.
- Hellsing: there are two examples:
- The Major deliberately drops a glass of champagne after dedicating a toast to the impending attack on London by Millenium.
- The second being when Alucard's wine glass falls and shatters (in slo-mo!) before the start of his fight with Luke Valentine.
- K:
- In the first episode, HOMRA's introduction is punctuated by Misaki's Super Window Jump, on his skateboard, from the roof of the building across the street. Because he can.
- Used comedically in episode 3, when Misaki and Rikio come into Bar HOMRA fighting and crash into the bar, causing Kusanagi to drop the glass he was polishing, which falls to the floor and shatters, reflecting his screaming face on the way down.
- Kill la Kill features Satsuki and the Elite Four drinking a toast of sake before throwing their cups to the ground just before the Great Sports and Culture Festival and their impending open rebellion against Ragyo and the Life Fibers.
- The Little Mermaid (1970's version) has Marina dramatically dropping a mirror on the floor after the prince told her that he's marrying another princess whom he believes saved his life when in reality it was Marina who saved him.
- Naruto: during Haku's backstory when Haku's father has just killed his mother and is about to kill him.
- Pokémon: The Rise of Darkrai: an hourglass does this near the beginning when it's knocked off of Tonio's desk by the spacetime distortions.
- Princess Tutu: In one episode, Fakir smashes through a window in order to confront the Dark Magical Girl (Mytho, however, just decided to use the door).
- Ranma ½: Happens in episode 85 when Ranma accidentally falls into Akane's dish of pot stickers which causes it to fall and break. Cue Akane getting down on her knees and staring at it with a broken expression while dramatic music plays in the background.
- Saint Seiya: Cygnus Hyoga pulls this when stuck in an ice coffin by his own master, Aquarius Camus.
- The Story of Cinderella: One episode features Cinderella and her stepsisters being hired to clean the royal palace. The palace has a large china doll that has been in the royal family for generations. While cleaning the hallway, the stepsisters get into a fight and knock the doll off its pedestal, breaking it into pieces. As a result, the stepsisters are told that they won't be forgiven for it and are subsequently fired.
- Umineko: When They Cry does this with its Eyecatch. It actually comes straight from the visual novel, which would use the effect whenever there was about to be a time lapse in the narration.
- Parodied in Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun. Anytime Ameri's father Henri hears anything that can be remotely interpreted as Ameri being in a relationship with Iruma, the lenses on his glasses burst into pieces before going back to normal. The first time this happened, it did so four times in a row, the absurdity of which Iruma lampshades.
Iruma: How do they keep breaking?!
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: Pegasus has his wine glass shattered after receiving a threatening message from Yami Yugi.
Comic Books
- In Asterix Cleopatra breaks the vases closest to her when she gets into an argument with Caesar.
- Jason Todd's costume display case has this happen a lot in Batman. Maybe less now that he's alive.
- Star Wars: Darth Vader has a subdued but no less dramatic example, when Vader in his room on a Star Destroyer receives a report from Boba Fett, revealing that the Rebel pilot who destroyed the Death Star is named Skywalker. Vader goes silent, Fett lets himself out, and as Vader flashes back to his life with Padmé while his fist shakes with Force energy, the windows before him become more and more cracked until they're just on the verge of shattering.
- In Watchmen, Laurie throws a bottle of perfume against Jon's Martian palace, which of course shatters as well.
- X-Wing Rogue Squadron: Plourr Ilo pours out her wineglass and then tosses it into the air to shatter when it falls, punctuating what she'd been saying about the tyranny of the nobles.
Fan Works
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): When Mothra lets loose her Alpha Call from high altitude to rally the Titans for war against Keizer Ghidorah, the sheer force of it shatters the windows of Monarch's Yunnan outpost.
- Done with a cup of coffee when Shadow is freed in Calvin & Hobbes: The Series.
- Shows up as a result of a lot of power and anger in the Danny Phantom/Beetlejuice crossover, Say It Thrice. When Betelgeuse observes Sanduleak through the reflections getting far too close to Lydia with some rather unpleasant plans in mind, Betelgeuse's frustrated anger shatters all the reflective surfaces in the real world.
- An episode of Rose of Versailles Abridged discusses this.
"In a specific trope that amps up drama, break things."
- Done with a wine glass in A Taste of the Good Life when Ebby decides not to throw herself Off the Wagon and to continue trying to regain her daughter's trust.
Films — Animation
- In Turning Red, the 4*Town sign that Ming drops shatters this way to punctuate her rampage.
Films — Live-Action
- Bicentennial Man: Andrew's accidental breaking of young Little Miss's favorite glass horse figurine leads to his first demonstration of creativity as he carves her a new one out of wood. This replaces the scene where he creates a wooden necklace in the book.
- The snow globe when the title character dies at the beginning of Citizen Kane.
- Played for laughs in the George of the Jungle movie. Ursula, the heroine, nervously reveals to her parents - during a reception held for her and her fiance - that she no longer wishes to get married to her fiance. Her parents respond with a cheery, "That's OK, dear. We understand." The Narrator then quips, "Just kidding!" before Ursula's mother lets out a harrowing scream and promptly drops her wine glass, shattering it on the floor.
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has Voldemort causing a shockwave during a spell that shatters every window in The Ministry Of Magic lobby.
- The Russian admiral in the film version of The Hunt for Red October drops his tea while reading Ramius' letter.
- Done surprisingly well in Iron Man. After learning that his weapons have been sold to a terrorist group without his consent and seeing the news report about how they're being used to terrorize an Afghan village, Tony Stark gets up and in a moment of fury/surprise uses his new and improved pulse-blasting gloves to shatter the windows of his shop.
- La Haine begins with a shattering Molotov bottle in representation of the riots of Paris's ghettos.
- In the extended edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Aragorn gets into a Palantír staring match with Sauron, who shows him a taunting vision of a dying/dead Arwen. The Evenstar pendant she gifted him with falls to the floor and shatters very prettily and dramatically into glittering bits, though he's later seen wearing it, so it was apparently a hallucination. The shot of the pendant shattering is shown before this scene, divorced from context, throughout the trilogy; it symbolises Arwen's dependence on Aragorn's victory to survive.
- Manhunter and Red Dragon has the killer at large; Francis Dollarhyde who leaves slivers of glass embedded in his victim's eyes. In the climax of the former, he's shown shattering a mirror as he prepares to kill his blind girlfriend.
- Mirrors: As might be expected in a movie about (evil) mirrors. Both the normal version (when Anna lets herself get re-possessed in the mirror chamber) and a version with a Moment of Silence (when all the spirits are freed) occur.
- In the film version of The Natural, Roy Hobbs' home run ball shatters the stadium lights.
- In Andrei Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice, the first sign that World War III is about to break out is when low-flying jet fighters shake the house, causing a pitcher full of milk to fall and shatter.
- In Snow White & the Huntsman, where the queen's phantom army seem to be composed of black glass when killed, and in the climactic fight where amorphous humanoids composed of shards which fall from the queen's castle's ceiling fight the heroes. Her magic mirror though is composed of highly polished magic metal rather than glass.
- The "Line Must Be Drawn Here" scene from Star Trek: First Contact, in which Captain Picard loses his temper, shouts two Big Nos, and smashes the glass case holding his models of previous Enterprises. The camera even holds for an extra moment on the model of the ship from the television series sliding off of the shelf before it hits the ground.
- Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker : Kylo Ren forcefully smashes Emperor Palpatine’s Sith Wayfinder, to try and force his enemy, Rey, to join him by angering her and giving her no other way to get to Exegol
- Lampshaded and deconstructed in the Bollywood movie Taal: upon hearing his nephew is going to marry the daughter of a musician (basically a commoner), Manev's uncle smashes a glass on the floor. Manev then proceeds to smash seven glasses on the floor, and then says, "If smashing a glass makes your argument more valid, then I have smashed seven glasses on the floor, so my argument is seven times more valid."
- In the film version of Twilight, Rosalie shatters a glass bowl of salad in rage when she learns that Bella has already eaten and her family's efforts to cook for her were in vain.
- The climax, taking place in a mirror lined ballet studio also has this in spades.
- Done with a dropped coffee cup at the end of The Usual Suspects.
- The Movie of Watchmen does this: when Laurie figures out The Comedian was her father, she freaks out and punches a pillar of Jon's Martian glass palace, which leads to the whole structure shattering around them. It's pretty awesome.
- The World Is Not Enough shows Renard punching clean through a glass table in frustration, showing his utter inability to feel pain.
Literature
- Animorphs: Taylor, AKA Sub-Visser 51, smashes her coffee mug after the real Taylor surfaces to warn Tobias against trusting the Yeerk infesting her.
- Alice, in Breaking Dawn.
- In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry overhears Aunt Marge insulting his mum and dad, and loses control of his magic, making the glass in Marge's hand shatter.
- In Shaman Blues, the gutted ghosts first show that they are a formidable threat when they come too close to Witkacy's car, shattering the windows with their mere presence.
- Averted in Spaceship Medic by Robert A. Heinlein. The protagonist does a Dramatic Drop of his coffee on receiving some bad news, but because he's on a spaceship in the future it's made of unbreakable glass.
Live-Action TV
- A particularly cliched Portent of Doom used in Filipino soaps: when a character is about to die in a scene, there is a quick cut to his (or a close friend's) house showing a glass falling and breakingnote , and all his friends or relatives present reacting in shock to it. It then either cuts back to show whether he died, or was just badly hurt, or, an authority calls up to bring the bad news.
- Arrow: Laurel drops a plate when she learns that her sister Sara is alive.
- Babylon 5 used it in the episode where Sheridan's dead first wife shows up at his door and Delenn drops a snowglobe to shatter in extreme slow-motion against the floor.
- In the Korean Drama Bad Boy, a priceless glass mask is shattered against a wall.
- Batwoman (2019). Kate Kane has her stepsister deliver a mobile phone to Commander Jacob Kane of Crow Security that he can use to contact Batwoman, but her father responds by smashing it against the wall in a rage, forcing Batwoman to make contact directly.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: in "Passion":
- Angelus flinging the Orb at the chalkboard right next to Jenny's head as she ducks. "Must be that shoddy gypsy craftsmanship."
- Giles heads up the stairs in his apartment with a bottle of wine and two glasses - and drops them seeing what's been set up for him.
- In Game of Thrones, Tyrion knocks a wineglass off the table during a meeting with his father and his bannermen as a metaphor for the chances of securing peace with the Starks and Jaime's release from them now that Joffrey had killed Ned Stark.
- Interview with the Vampire (2022): In "Like Angels Put in Hell by God", Louis de Pointe du Lac confronts his boyfriend Lestat de Lioncourt about the song the latter wrote as a Valentine's Day present because he's so offended that Lestat's mistress Antoinette Brown sings it. Louis drops the record in front of them to demonstrate his hatred of it and the disc shatters. (Please note that this is not an example of Vinyl Shatters because the scene takes place over a decade before large-diameter vinyl records were mass-produced, so the phonograph record is made of shellac.)
- Iron Fist (2017): When Madame Gao turns up in his apartment unexpectedly, Harold Meachum drops a glass in shock, and she orders him to get down on his hands and knees on the broken glass as a sign of submission.
- The Lost episode "The Glass Ballerina" begins with the titular object falling in slow motion and shattering.
- And the "Man In Black"'s shattering of the Metaphorical Wine Bottle of Metaphors at the end of "Ab Aeterno".
- Used at the end of the pilot of Sliders, and again with Mrs. Arturo in "Double Cross".
- The penultimate episode of Spaced Series 2 uses a slow-motion dropped wineglass to illustrate the shattering of trust and friendship when Marsha finds out that Tim and Daisy aren't a couple and have been lying to her for years.
- Star Trek: Voyager. In "Year of Hell", Voyager finds itself in a war zone and keeps getting hammered by aliens with more powerful technology. Captain Janeway is searching through the ruins of her ready room and finds her lucky coffee cup is intact, which she takes as a good omen. Then they're attacked again, and as Janeway rushes for the bridge the vibrations knock the cup off the table so it shatters on the floor.
- Supernatural:
- The opening credits for season six.
- When an angel manifests their ear-piercing true voice it blasts out any and all windows in sight.
- In "Heart", Madison drops the coffee pot when she finds Nate's body.
- In the Season 7 finale, Meg smashes the Impala into the Sucrocorp sign to cause the maximum amount of distraction. Or maybe she just did it to piss off Dean?
- In the season four finale of The West Wing, when President Bartlet finds out Zoe, his youngest daughter has been kidnapped, he drops his drink glass.
Music Videos
- A common trope in 1980s music videos. Russell Mulcahey (the director of Highlander) started his career by directing many, many music videos in the 1980s. He practically invented the "glass object shattering in slow motion" motif used so often in the TEN videos he did for Duran Duran.
- Watch the music video for "I Don't Love You" by My Chemical Romance. Right after the Subdued Section, everything shatters.
- Subverted in the R.E.M. video "Losing My Religion"; in the beginning of the video, a pitcher of milk falls and spills on the floor but doesn't shatter.
- X Japan's videos for, among others, "Week End" and "Jade" feature this trope.
Podcasts
- In the Wolf 359-episode "Do No Harm", Lovelace insists on obstructing Hilbert to make sure he doesn't attempt to put more viruses in Eiffel's system - while Eiffel is in critical condition. Minkowski finally has enough and orders Lovelace to leave. When she tries to argue, Minkowski throws something made of glass at the wall, causing it to shatter.
Minkowski: Leave. Now.
Theater
- In Next to Normal, Dan dramatically smashes a music box.
Video Games
- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night: "What is a man?! *tosses wine glass* A miserable little pile of secrets! But enough talk! Have at you!"
- Dracula does this quite a lot over the various Castlevania games.
- He also does it in I Wanna Be the Guy. Just like everything else in the game, the wine glass can kill you.
- One of the scenarios in the Interactive Fiction game Constraints places you in the unlikely role of a vase on a shelf, waiting for the right dramatic moment to plummet to the floor.
- In the first Dead Space, you'll run into a corridor with glass panes on the walls. Every single one shatters in some shockwave, announcing the arrival of something worse... Nope, just kidding; it's a jump scare.
- In Deltarune Queen has a glass handy for exactly this purpose just to make a dramatic point. And then, still a little sauced on battery acid, immediately smashes down another one that explodes; apparently she also had an Extra-Dangerous Glass for whatever reason.
- The Prototype boss on the penultimate floor of the Administrator's Tower in Fairune 2 uses this when breaking out of it's containment pod.
- Hakaiou: King of Crusher have this happening in the opening scene. After the alien bug bit you, you then drop your cup of milk. Including a close-up of the cup landing on the floor and shattering in slow-mo. He also does it in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
- Near the end of Mass Effect 3, Shepherd can shatter Kai Leng's sword with an interrupt.
- In Persona 3, characters would summon their Persona by placing the gun-shaped Evoker to their head and pulling the trigger —and a flurry of blue "shards" would fly out the other side of their head, with the sound of glass breaking, to symbolize their own minds shattering in order for their inner selves to manifest. The same effect is used when the Protagonist (the only one who can switch Personas at will) "shattered" one Persona for another during battle, to represent his original personality breaking to make way for a new one.
- Persona 4 used basically the same motif and sound effect, except that instead of their minds breaking via gunshot, the Tarot cards symbolizing the character's Persona would fly apart when struck by his or her weapon of choice. The Protagonist's "mind shattering like glass while changing Personas" part was removed, however, and only the sound effect remained. This is because, unlike the third game, the characters of 4 have earned the ability to summon their Personas at will, instead of needing to trigger them in moments of life or death.
- In some of the bad endings of Streets of Rage 3, Mr X is shown with his back to the camera holding a glass of wine in his hand, which he then shatters by tightening his fist around it.
Visual Novels
- Ace Attorney:
- Diego Armando in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations, Case 3-4, grows so full of Tranquil Fury at recent events as to shatter a ceramic mug full of coffee in his bare hand.
- Barok van Zieks from The Great Ace Attorney has a seemingly endless amount of wine chalices that he either crush with his hand or toss into the torch behind him for emphasis every time he makes an argument in court or just simply to intimidate the defense. Most likely a reference to Castlevania's Dracula to go along with van Zieks' vampire motif.
Web Animation
- RWBY: In Volume 6, Salem learns that her Arch-Enemy has returned to help the heroes working against her. After spending two volumes as the picture of tranquil menace, her response to the news is a scream of rage and frustration that telekinetically shatters every single window in the room. Her subordinates have to leave swiftly as the glass cracks to avoid being shredded to death in the explosion.
Web Comics
- The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: I swear, more windows get broken in this comic.
- In Darwin Carmichael Is Going to Hell, Az drops and shatters his bong as soon as he sees Ginny walk in, setting the stage for the dramatic confrontation that ensues
.
- In El Goonish Shive, Sarah drops her glass, which immediately shatters, after hearing Tedd interpret an almost illegible note from his dad as advice not to be thinking of proposing to Grace at his age.
- Chapter 8 of Gunnerkrigg Court starts with a flashback to a glass of water falling and shattering.
Web Original
- The SF Debris review of "Signs and Portents"
Western Animation
- In the Clone High episode "Sleep Of Faith: La Rue D'Awakening", a pencil somehow shatters into a million pieces when Abe drops it from exhaustion after spending countless nights trying to help Cleopatra study for the PXJT.
- In the second episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Nightmare Moon does this to the depowered Elements of Harmony. There is even a shot of Twilight looking with shock as the shards fall to the ground.
- Near the end of the Steven Universe episode "Keystone Motel", Steven grabs his plate at the diner when Ruby smashes the table. He then lets go and lets it shatter on the ground. This is so radically out of character for him that Greg, Ruby, and Sapphire all take it as a sign something has gone seriously wrong.
