If the ridiculously Slow Doors in your Elaborate Underground Base close downwards, rest assured that some character will inevitably make their way through a doorway Just in Time by rolling under an almost-closed door.
Sometimes, they make it a little faster, but in doing so execute their escape a little too recklessly, leaving something lying on the floor just inside the door. At which point there will be just enough time for their hand to come reaching back in and pulling it out. This is usually an explicit Shout-Out to the trope naming moment in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Rarely do people make the doors close upwards to prevent this exploit. In that case, the character will throw themselves through the gap.
Another problem for the captors: The doors close in sequence, instead of all at once (or, perhaps better, outside doors first, then the rest, moving inward). If they all closed at once, the hero would make it through one or two doors before being completely locked in. Although there is still the option of making it past all the doors except for the last where you have the Roll.
If there is a Lock Down occurring, it is extremely likely that someone will attempt this.
May or may not involve a Fedora of Asskicking. Iconic Items, Plot Coupons, MacGuffins seem particularly prone to needing this sort of retreival, with their importance justifying the risk, matched on the Skewed Priorities side by whatever shiny object the Lovable Rogue is currently willing to risk their life for and the Big Eater's bag of snacks.
See Death by Materialism for cases where the character doesn't quite nail the timing.
Often combined with an Indy Escape in a Raiders of the Lost Parody.
Examples:
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Advertising
- A 2022 Nissan Rogue commercial starring the actress Awkwafina has her running toward a lowering door. She slides under it, then reaches back under it to grab the electronic key for the title vehicle, which she then drives away in.
Anime & Manga
- Bleach anime episode 263. The zanpakuto spirits Senbonzakura & Zabimaru are trying to escape the Research Division's building as walls are coming down to trap them. Just before the last wall reaches the floor they slide under it and through a suddenly-opening door.
- Gunslinger Girl. Rico and Henrietta slide under a closing door during the attack on the terrorist-occupied nuclear power plant.
- In Macross Plus, we get the "corridor of doors closing in sequence" version as Myung and Guld race through; the doors are justified as being firewalls (and there IS a fire going on); unfortunately for them, one closes on Guld, who stoically uses his back as a barrier to protect Myung. Which is only possible because Guld, being half-Zentraedi, is more accurately described as a mountain — though it still causes him quite the injury there.
- In the OVA adaptation of Tales of Symphonia, Lloyd does this to get to Kvar alone. Unfortunately, he then proceeds to get his ass handed to him until Kratos and Sheena show up to save the day.
Asian Animation
- BoBoiBoy: As BoBoiBoy escapes an alien spaceship, Adu Du's Robot Buddy Probe chases him while the exits are being secured, causing the corridor's doors to slowly close. One of the doors closes on Probe's hand, which shoots out two homing missiles towards BoBoiBoy. He just manages to barrel roll down the last door before the missiles hit the closed door instead.
Comic Books
- Robin (1993): When Damian infiltrates the batcave he sneaks in through the cave system, sliding, running and rolling his way through several doors that slam closed when a proximity sensor is triggered by his presence on the way. The last one actually slams shut on his fingers, meaning his hand is bloody by the time he burst into the cave demanding to see his father.
- Star Wars: Darth Vader. Given that Dr Aphra is an Evil Counterpart to Han Solo and Harrison Ford's other famous role, this happens on a couple of occasions when dealing with those famous Slow Doors. The only difference is that she's wearing a close-fitting aviator's cap, so doesn't lose it in the process.
- Superboy (1994): In the cross-over with Suicide Squad Deadshot slides through a blast door Captain Boomerang figured out how to close just before it slams shut, shooting at his attackers in the room he was coming from the whole way.
- In Violine, Violine's father uses soap to slide under a quickly closing door. No hats are involved, though.
Films — Animation
- In April and the Extraordinary World, Darwin runs at full speed and then dives, flattening himself out, to pass under the rapidly closing blast door of the rocket.
- In Chicken Run, Ginger gets to the closing oven door easily, but Rocky is stuck falling into pies. She wedges the door open and runs back for him, then makes it out of the oven with the Indy Hat Roll. Complete with Ginger reaching back for her hat.
- In Cinderella III: A Twist in Time, the prince rides a horse under a closing gate of iron spikes. The horse audibly sighs in relief after they make it through.
- Massively spoofed in The Incredibles, where Elastigirl manages to get stuck in a whole series of Slow Doors simultaneously.
- In Recess: School's Out, the kids manage to escape Dr. Benedict's base, as the door is closing, save for TJ.
- Gnomeo and Juliet desperately slide under the descending manhole cover as they follow Sherlock and Watson into the sewer in Sherlock Gnomes.
- In Shrek 2, when Shrek, Donkey and Puss escape the Fairy Godmother's potion room, Puss pulls this to grab his hat before the door closes.
- Tangled does this with Rapunzel and Flynn escaping into the cave from beneath the giant falling rock pillar. Flynn manages to grab the previously discarded frying pan at the last second.
Films — Live-Action
- In a variant, Tamara from 2012 slips into a rapidly-closing opening in the hull of The Ark after reclaiming her dog, then briefly reaches back through it at the last second to flip off Yuri, the sugar daddy who'd left her behind to die.
- Marty McFly makes use of the maneuver in Back to the Future Part II. At the school dance in 1955, Marty dives under a table to escape Biff's gang, leaving just enough time to grab his own Indy-esque hat before trouble arrives.
- Cowboys & Aliens has this as one of several obvious shout-outs to Harrison Fords' earlier movies.
- Fanboys does a combo parody of both the above examples, by having Hutch dive through the blast-door-style security door of Skywalker Ranch's memorabilia room, then reach back through the shrinking diamond-shaped opening for an instant to flip off the Ranch's guards.
- Subversion: in The Fifth Element, the archaeologist's panicked assistant opens fire on the peaceful aliens inside the Egyptian temple, unwittingly activating a self-defense locking mechanism in the Element's chamber. Although most of the aliens and their human contact escape, the last one is too slow to make it through and shoves its hand between the stone slabs to pass the key on to the human monk. (Presumably, the alien itself was crushed by the door.)
- In Hanna, as the eponymous character escaped the CIA holding facility.
- Occurs in the the movie of the comic book Hellboy. At one point, Hellboy and another character are running to get through a door in an underground catacomb system. Both make it, but just as the door is about to close on Hellboy's tail, he flicks it out of the way Just in Time.
- The classic example is Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, with the addition of reaching back for his hat at the last second (hence the trope name). In Raiders of the Lost Ark he reaches back for his whip.
- Parodies often mix the two movies. They use the Raiders of the Lost Ark setup, i.e the giant boulder, but have the stand-in for Indy reach for a hat instead of the whip. They might be confused, or they might simply be combining the more memorable trap and the funnier thing to reach for.
- Played for drama in Justice League . When Steppenwolf shows up to take the Mother Box from the Amazons, Queen Hippolyta orders the chamber sealed. As she runs past them holding the Mother Box, her Amazons smash the supports bringing down huge stone doors, with the last two using their Super-Strength to hold one up long enough for the Queen to slide underneath just before it crashes to the ground. Steppenwolf is breaking out moments later, so it's implied that every one of those Amazons was killed doing a You Shall Not Pass!.
- The same happens in Zack Snyder's Justice League, but this time the chamber collapses into the ocean, giving the Amazons who remained prisoners inside less chances of surviving.
- Rather more mundanely than some of the other examples, Martin Riggs nonchalantly drops to the floor and rolls sideways under a shutter at the villain's embassy front in Lethal Weapon 2. Still very much a badass action when performed by him though.
- The Mummy Trilogy uses this sort of thing a few times: a notable example is during the climax of the first movie, where a trap causes the temple to collapse, and in trying to escape the treacherous Beni makes an impressive just-in-time slide under the crushing ceiling... only to end up trapped in a room with thousands of man-eating scarabs.
- In Paddington (2014), the main character attempts to escape in the Natural History Museum as a lockdown was triggered. His iconic red hat falls off during his slide under the closing door, and he manages to retrieve it just in time.
- In the opening museum heist scene in Red Notice, Dwayne Johnson's FBI profiler rolls under a nearly-closed security door after Ryan Reynolds' art thief. (Who then deploys a smokescreen, before both characters crash through an ornate window and wind up hanging from a rooftop by their fingertips.)
- The Return of the Pink Panther. After the guard discovers the theft of the Pink Panther diamond, he triggers the activation of the security system and causes the door to the room to close. The thief rolls under the door and out of the room just before it closes.
- In the film Saturn 3 starring Kirk Douglas, Kirk and his girlfriend are alone on a space station that is being taken over by a robot. There's one sequence where they have to run through a corridor full of closing doors that close in sequence, as the trope dictates; however, they don't quite make it and the last door closes in front of them.
- A scene from Spaceballs parodies the Star Wars example. The characters dive through a blast door just in time, but there's a cadre of Spaceballs waiting for them. They get away anyway, though, because, as the lieutenant shockingly points out, "You idiots! You've captured their stunt doubles!" The door also closes notably faster after the characters jumped through.
- Star Trek: Generations. When there's a coolant leak in the warp core reactor, the Enterprise engineering crew evacuates the area. Geordi La Forge is the last person out, rolling under the descending door just before it closes. Unlike the example with him below, the door was almost closed this time making it more justified.
- Another Harrison Ford example, predating Indiana Jones, is the original Star Wars. Avoiding a security lockdown and being followed by stormtroopers, Han Solo jumped through the diamond-shaped opening that was formed by the blast doors closing. Interestingly enough, later movies depict the blast doors closing far too fast for any sort of maneuver like this — even The Phantom Menace, whose events predate A New Hope chronologically by 32 years.
- Eberts Little Movie Glossary even calls this trope the Harrison Door.
- Swarmed has a variation. Washburn takes cover from the wasps inside an empty plastic dumpster... then opens the lid again to snatch his hat, which fell off during his escape.
- J.B. at the climax of Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny. He has the Pick but security is trying to lock him in, so he does a Power Slide through the door as it shuts.
- In Titanic (1997), just after the iceberg hits, the workers in that particular engine room flee before the watertight doors close. Unfortunately, one or two don't make it...
- In the original Total Recall (1990), Quaid does this right after arriving on Mars, while the doors are going down to seal off the area from the outside atmosphere (or lack thereof).
- In Witness, Amish boy Samuel Lapp, who is hiding in a toilet cubicle after witnessing a murder, crawls underneath the wall to the neighboring cubicle by the time McFee (who is kicking the cubicle doors open) gets to his cubicle. Samuel reaches and grabs his hat just as McFee opens the door.
- In X2: X-Men United, Mystique slides under a door while flipping off the men shooting at her.
Literature
- The Nancy Kress novel Probability Space includes literary equivalents of this. An act of great stupidity requires our protagonists to fly their ship through a closing jump gate to escape annihilation. They repeat this just in case. Then they realize all the jump gates, everywhere, are closing, and they must fly through a series to get back to Earth before they're stranded. All but one of these is a close enough call to qualify for an Indy Hat Roll.
- In The Relic, panicked party guests try to flee the museum as the security doors are activated. Some don't make it and are caught and crushed by the steel doors. Seeing as what the rest were trapped with, they were probably the lucky ones.
- In Sorcerer Conjurer Wizard Witch, Edwin and Geneviève escape under a lowering portcullis in the nick of time on a motorcycle, leaning over so far to fit under that they'd certainly have fallen off if it hadn't been a Cool Bike borrowed from a sinister vigilante who had it designed specifically to be able to pull off stunts like that. Even so, one of the teeth of the portcullis catches Geneviève a nasty gash, so it's a good thing she has a Healing Factor.
Live-Action TV
- In Babylon 5, Zack Allen dives under the docking bay doors in the third series after he has led most of the station's Night Watch members there in a double-double cross. This clip also appears in the titles.
- Battlestar Galactica. Boomer (in a stolen Raptor) flies out of Galactica's landing pod as it's retracting into jump drive position (to prevent her taking off). She doesn't make it undamaged though, smashing one wing and having to jump while still dangerously close to Galactica.
- A subversion in Blake's 7, when they raid the decoy Star One base — they get out, but only because Gan sacrifices himself to hold the door for them.
- Spike does this while escaping the Initiative on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
- Subverted in the Doctor Who episode "Dalek". Adam and Rose are fleeing from the Dalek while the Doctor is forced to close the door to the room where he, Van Statten and Diana Goddard are hiding. Adam makes it in time by rolling under the door. Rose doesn't.
- In "Asylum of the Daleks", Rory doesn't roll; he does a power slide.
- The Doctor does one under the closing tomb door in "The Rings of Akhaten"; rolling back to retrieve his sonic screwdriver.
- In "Under the Lake", the Doctor dives under a rapidly closing door as the base floods.
- Averted on Lost; instead of diving under the Swan Station's closing doors (which are quite fast), Locke pushes a toolbox under it to wedge it open. Further averted/subverted when his leg gets crushed while he tries to crawl through the opening and the toolbox collapses.
- MacGyver (1985) has one moment of the hat roll when they are trapped in an Ancient Indian Death Trap and Dalton reaches back to grab his pilot hat, much to Mac's irritation.
- Indiana Jones is nicely parodied in Malcolm in the Middle when Hal ditches his job at a department store to attend a party. While the Indiana Jones theme plays, Hal outruns a beach ball rolling after him, dives under the closing shutters, and reaches back for his car keys in the nick of time.
- Jordan does it in an episode of Scrubs to escape a hospital quarantine lock-down. She even, for the first and last time in the series, wears a fedora to grab.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation:
- The Epic Geordi Maneuver, used by LaForge when the big blast doors close around the warp core on "The Best of Both Worlds".
- The Enterprise herself pulls the nearest available equivalent to escape a Dyson sphere in "Relics".
- Torchwood
- Gwen Cooper in the episode "Ghost Machine".
- Subverted in the episode "Exit Wounds", in which Owen gets trapped in a nuclear power station that's about to go up, and doesn't make it to the door in time. He actually does die. He was technically dead already. But there was that glove...
- On the White Collar episode "Countdown", Neal slips into an elevator just as the doors close, complete with the Indy homage as he reaches back to grab his hat.
- Xena: Warrior Princess, episode "The Xena Scrolls": Alice is Gabrielle's umpteenth granddaughter in 1940ish. She is an archaeologist and so she does the hat-roll.
Video Games
- The penultimate mission of Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War has sliding doors that close off the tunnel after you destroy your target. They all close in different directions and there are other obstacles, so flying through the tunnel at top speed is a bit tricky. The trope is inverted when entering the tunnel: You can run into doors as they're opening.
- Chrono Trigger: After the party restores power to Proto Dome while inside the Factory, they soon have to escape as security goes haywire and the doors in the corridor leading to the power generator start to close. They slip through the first set of slow doors in time, but Robo has to race ahead and hold the last set open.
- Used in F-Zero GX. In one of the story missions, you have to escape from a reactor that's about to explode, all while the twenty something blast doors in a straight line are slowly closing in sequence. If the player stops (and doesn't mind dying), you can see the doors never actually close, they leave barely enough room for the player to drive through.
- In Jak II: Renegade, the Tomb of Mar refuses to allow the young heir to go through the trials and starts to close. Jak then dives underneath the stone door, grabbing Daxter just as it slams down.
- In Final Fantasy IX, this is done by an airship through quickly-closing humungous doors. Doubly awesome in that a much faster craft, which is chasing it, fails to make it through the doors and crashes spectacularly.
- Reference to original example: a lot of doors make you do this in Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb.
- LEGO Jurassic World: Owen does one early in the Jurassic World section; since he doesn't wear a hat, the thing he drops and has to reach back for is the LEGO piece representing his hair.
- In Mass Effect 2, Jack pulls an Indy Slide during her rampage through Purgatory.
- Shepard also gets one in the third game on the geth dreadnought. S/he and his/her team are walking directly toward a giant gun that they disabled - only suddenly it's not disabled anymore, and about to fire. The team runs through a nearby door and Shepard dives underneath it just as it slams shut.
- In Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition and Ori and the Will of the Wisps, the Dash is primarily used to dodge sequential Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom and slide under timed doors, and even has a rolling animation when performed on the ground in the latter game.
- The doors/grates in Prince of Persia and Prince of Persia 2 open when you step on the appropriate pressure plate, then slowly start closing after a few seconds (unless you step on another pressure plate which makes the door close instantly). Sometimes you have to use this stunt to get through. In the Classic remake, the Prince has a dive-roll move to aid in this.
- There is a notable subversion in the first game where there is no way you can reach the door in time. If you wait some time though, you get rescued.
- Resident Evil
- In Resident Evil – Code: Veronica, you have to escape the general area of a breached biohazard containment room. On the first time, Claire does this. Strangely enough, she doesn't at the second time.
- Used in a ridiculous manner in Resident Evil 5. While escaping a Mayincatec death trap, Chris and Sheva feel the need to dive across one another under a Slow Door. Such is their style, the Quick-Time Event involved cuts straight to three cutscenes of the move from different angles, in case you didn't see how ridiculous it was the first time.
- Skies of Arcadia has a scene similar to the above, involving an airship and an enormous gate.
- In Sonic Adventure 2, one of the stages forces you to outrace timed doors as Sonic. While most doors give you plenty of time to slip through, there are some that'll force you into doing this.
- The point-and-click adventure game Spud! has this in a cutscene, complete with hat retrieval.
- Super Metroid has two hallways each with a sequence of doors slowly closing from the top (one of which even adds a collapsing bridge). You're not supposed to be able to get past them until you have the Speed Booster item, but a speedrunning technique called Mockball
allows you to roll under the closing doors just in time.
- The Tomb Raider series does this from time to time.
- In Yakuza 0 one late-game sequence has Majima trying to pull this on gates in the Den of Desires. How well it works depends on if the player pushes a button in time.
Web Comics
- Furry sci-fi webcomic S.S.D.D. did this one, using the "Door comes up from the ground" version, much to the chagrin of the protagonists.
Western Animation
- Sunny Bridges does it in the Class of 3000 episode "Eddie's Money"; grabbing his hat with his feet for a few extra style points.
- One of the many trademark Indy moves executed by Numbuh Five of Codename: Kids Next Door. Complete with reaching back for her fallen hat in "Operation: L.I.C.E." — although this time it's a trap: this is not her hat.
- Fillmore!: In "Masterstroke of Malevolence", Fillmore and Ingrid slide under the closing security door in the museum as they chase after Leo.
- Spoofed in an episode of Futurama; a falling door is stopped by Zoidberg, who throws himself forward and wedges his claw between the door and the floor. Hermes then uses his previously-referenced Olympic-level Limbo ability to make it through the gap.
- Jonny Quest TOS episode "The Fraudulent Volcano". Jonny and Hadji crawled on their hands and knees under a closing security door — Hadji just made it by throwing himself forward.
- On the Justice League Unlimited episode "Task Force X", Plastique and Deadshot do this to escape from a nuclear reactor on The Watchtower they sabotaged as blast doors are closing. They pull off with the first door but don't make it in time for the second (Captain Atom saves them).
- Bobby and Joseph played this in King of the Hill. Joseph quickly rolled under the closing garage door, but Bobby, being chubby and physically inept, rolled and crawled too slowly and damaged the door.
- Done in the original My Little Pony cartoon of all things, as part of an Indy Escape scene.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- Toyed with in "Read It and Weep", where the adventurous, hat-wearing pony in Rainbow Dash's book slides toward a closing door, only makes it about halfway through, and quickly slides out from under it as it closes. When Daring Do stands up, her hat is still on.
- Played straight in "Daring Doubt". Rainbow Dash and Daring Do (again) fly through a mobile floor atop a temple as it is closing; Daring Do leaves her pith helmet behind but grabs it just in time.
- The Simpsons
- Similarly, Homer Simpson once recognized that a couple of suspicious-acting men were in fact chiropractors, because of their skill at getting under a closing garage door.
- Bart also does this when he lifts Homer's change jar in a specific send-up of Indy's adventures, complete with actual Indiana Jones music and Bart grabbing his hat from under the closing door.
- Marge did one of these with the closing garage when she finds the police career to be exciting in "The Springfield Connection."
- Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "Once Upon A Planet". Captain Kirk leaps through a sliding rock door in the side of a mountain just before it closes.
- Several times in Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
- In "Blue Shadow Virus", Ahsoka Tano leaps through the doors just as they're about to be shut to contain the titular virus.
- In "Children of the Force," Obi-Wan and Mace Windu have to dive beneath a closing door to escape. Mace drops his lightsaber and has to use the Force to pull it back just before the door slams shut.
- In the Total Drama: Pahkitew Island episode "Scarlett Fever", Jasmine and Shawn slide under a closing door while being chased by robot animals inside the island's underground base. Jasmine then realizes she dropped her hat on the other side of the door and reaches for it just before it closes, and then punches out a robot head that was biting onto the hat. It helps that Jasmine is a Shout-Out to Indiana Jones.
