r/TopCharacterTropes • u/MammothPenguin69 • 16d ago

Hated Tropes Stupid Contrived Survival Stories

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  1. 12 Feet Deep - Two idiots decide they absolutely positively MUST go swimming in a pool after it's closed. An incredibly contrived sequence of events happens so they get stuck in a pool. So the movie can happen.

  2. Frozen (not that one) - Three idiots decide they absolutely positively MUST get on a ski-lift after it's closed. To the point of bribing the operator who for some stupid reason doesn't say anything. Do the movie can happen. Also, Wolves are not that aggressive. They are typically shy and avoid humans.

  3. 47 Meters Down- Arguably the most believable scenario on this list. It's still really stupid.

  4. Fall- Two idiots decide to climb an abandoned radio tower without proper equipment that would make escaping their predicament trivially easy. Stop me if you've heard this one before

so the movie can happen.

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u/ErikMogan 16d ago

In the defense of Frozen-not-that-one, the lift operator leaves (for the life of me I can't remember why) and tells another operator who takes his place that there are still a few people up there. He sees a couple of stragglers come down the mountain and assumes that's what the other guy meant, so he shuts it down.

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u/National_Sandwich175 16d ago

Most mountain resorts have ski patrol do final runs down the mountain with the specific purpose to make sure there is no one left on the lifts or trails. The chances of this happening are slim, Although I think I heard a woman got stuck overnight in a gondola last winter.

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u/PassionateMilkshake 16d ago

Thats crazy, at least it was a gondola. Back when I worked as a lifty in order for the Frozen scenario to NEVER happen, you just call last chair (to the lifty waiting at top) and close the entrance. Then after the chair gets to the top.... we cycle the chairs to flip them up so they don't get covered in snow/ice. Only short lifts had chairs that didn't flip up. (like the kids hill or the park trail) It would have been impossible for Frozen to happen where I worked, the gondola might be a different story.

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u/hodorspenis 14d ago

Well, thankfully not all resorts are like yours so that we were able to receive the gift of the documentary called Frozen (Not That One).

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u/phoneacct696969 16d ago

The frozen movie scenario actually happened in big sky Montana in 1999. They sued for a lot of money.

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u/Bitter-Marsupial 16d ago

Which frozen? the no not that one or the yes that one

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u/Eastern_Rip7018 15d ago

The one with all the singing and the princess with magical ice based powers, obviously.

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u/o-055-o 15d ago

I heard the princess actually ate one of the tourists, it was brutal.

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u/PainStorm14 15d ago

Pretty privilege at it's finest

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u/Lailowla 15d ago

They also universally have something they put on after the last people, generally just a big orange cone, so that the operator at the top knows when there are no more people coming for a certainty.

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u/badgersprite 15d ago

This isn’t quite the same as getting stuck on a ski lift but I remember hearing a real story about a couple that got left behind on a mountain somewhere in the US or Canada because the tour leader who took them up there for some reason was just like “huh, they aren’t here. Guess that means they made their own way back to the hotel, I don’t need to report this to anyone” and the couple who had nothing with them only survived because they found the body and supplies of another guy who had gotten lost and died a year earlier

I assume things have gotten better since then but a lot of real stories like this where something does go wrong seem to start with a person wrongly assuming someone they’re responsible for is accounted for so that part of the movie seems based on true stories like this

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u/chompytown 15d ago

A lady got stuck in the gondola at Heavenly village in South Lake Tahoe a few years back. She was there over night and didn’t have her phone. The gondola is enclosed so she was somewhat protected from the cold.

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u/mermaidpaint 15d ago

In 2016, a group of teens trespassed onto Olympic Park in Calgary at night. They went down the bobsled track, not knowing a barrier had been set up. Two of them, identical twins, were killed.

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u/nicodepies 10d ago

As a Ski Patroller, yeah we do that.

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u/Much-Jackfruit2599 14d ago

Why would you need a patrol for the lifts? Shouldn’t it be enough to mark one chair and have the lift run a full circle?

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u/wimpyroy 16d ago

First operator had to go to the bathroom i remember right.

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u/XanderWrites 16d ago

No, the bosses were forcing him to work the next weekend which he had already requested off. So his friend covered for him while he ran off to deal with that. Friend then was an idiot.

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u/ErikMogan 16d ago edited 16d ago

I had the vague notion that it was something to do with overtime or scheduling, but I refuse to watch the movie again to confirm.

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u/XanderWrites 16d ago

It was the stupid "It's my brothers wedding! I'm the best man!" thing

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

[deleted]

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u/Antiing 15d ago

Lol wtf that's random as hell

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u/AgentSmith2518 15d ago

The new guy had to go the bathroom, which is why he shuts it down. Sadly I just watched this movie yesterday.

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u/5WattBulb 16d ago

Also in defense of that, ski resort employees are either morons or are conpletely high all the time, even the ski patrol. Ive been yelled at on several occasions at different parks when they "close" a run. They close the bottom, BEFORE they close the top, so we start going and then run up against a fence. No we couldnt see it from the top asshat.

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u/Barlow04 16d ago

I watched it at a game night with my wife's cousins and a few of us got high. We made sure that even if the characters weren't, someone was high during that plot for the realism lol

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u/Gullible_Shoulder_70 16d ago

No need to defend the movie. It’s pretty decent. OP has a chip on his shoulder. We got a Comic Book Guy level virgin here making posts.

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u/5WattBulb 15d ago

I definately enjoyed the movie. I think that anyone who has ever gone skiing/snowboarding has had that nightmare or at least thought of that scenario at least once.

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u/thatisascarecrow1 15d ago

I saw it probably ten years ago and don't really remember much, except that I enjoyed it

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u/NewAudience6075 15d ago

It's an awesome movie and you did a great job.

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u/Lori2345 16d ago

And not just a few it was specifically three people. Then unfortunately for the main characters the guy didn’t know another three people were already on their way down so it was six people the new guy needed to wait for before shutting the ski lift.

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u/Aero_Molten 16d ago

I thought it was crazy that Iceman couldn't just build an ice slide for them to slide down. Like, c'mon dude you're literally in your element.

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u/boodabomb 16d ago

The problem with that movie is all of the super-contrived ways that they keep the story going.

They try to climb on the wire the escape and it slices up their hands like razor-wire (not how that works)

If they jump down they get eaten by wolves (not how that works)

The movie has to invent problems in order to validate the premise. Which means it’s a probably a shitty premise.

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u/banjospieler 15d ago

Also the ski area is closed over a Holiday weekend. That ski area wouldn’t even last a season with a business model like that.

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u/7x00 15d ago

I still loved the movie haha it's a guilty pleasure.

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u/Excellent_Nothing_52 12d ago

So it insists upon itself?

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u/foxguy2021 16d ago

My biggest problem with this movie is how the script writes off using the guide wires to climb to the nearby ski lift pillar to climb down using the maintenance ladder. Having the main character explain the guide wires are too sharp. Fair enough.

The problem is how later one of the characters uses the guide wire to get down and is killed off screen. Then our third and final remaining character uses the same guide wire to get down which then fails because of a loose bolt.

The movie wrote off an escape route and than ends up having not one but two characters use that escape route.

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u/BlockedbyJake420 16d ago

Yep! This movie is awesome, and I’m not convinced OP actually watched it. Also, his note about wolves actually being more docile… Yeah, that would’ve made an entertaining fucking movie!

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u/soapforyourbutt 15d ago

The first lift operator is my friend Ed Ackerman! We were texting about this recently.

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u/fgiveme 15d ago

My wife and I got stuck on a gondola lift once. Not sure if the operator doze off or went to the toilet, but he didn't see us entering. They close at 5pm when we were halfway up.

It was scary moment when the thing suddenly stop, then I called the hotline number in the carriage.

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u/Miami_Mice2087 16d ago

This one actually happened. If you search "news people left on ski lift overnight" there are many incidents from the past 25 years.

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u/MammothPenguin69 15d ago

The thing that got to me about Frozen was how much effort the characters put into making sure the movie happened. The setup was SO specific, it was almost like the characters were trying to get stranded.

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u/Lord_Tiburon 15d ago

Yeah, it's pretty clear that the movie happens due to a tragic mixup

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u/some_randi 15d ago

Iirc it was the lift controller and the guy letting people on the lift had a miscommunication. It went something like, there's one couple still on the mountain and shortly after another couple came down so the lift controller assumed that there was nobody left on the mountain and shut down the lifts and left.