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?