And this was after going to school and becoming literate was made law.
"Any fool does not believe in signs; he's such a goon! He may start out ice skating, but he's drowning pretty soon!"
— Jiminy Cricket, I'm No Fool Having Fun
Rule of thumb: if the narrative in any action, mystery, or genre work draws attention to the fact that the ice over a body of water has just formed, chances are good someone will fall through that ice before the story is over. Ice-cold water being what it is, there's a fifty-fifty chance that character will then drown or freeze. If there's a close-up of an actual warning sign, it is in fact almost an unspoken guarantee that someone will ignore it.
Possible variations include being unable to get a solid grip on the surface ice or getting turned around underwater, creating a kind of natural Drowning Pit. Even if the victim does manage to break through to the surface, or if they're pulled out and rescued, there's still a strong possibility they may succumb to hypothermia, pneumonia, or otherwise catch their death of cold.
People rarely walk on ice by choice, thin or otherwise, unless there's no alternative — the bridge is out, or they're being pursued. While occasionally a character in fiction will stumble out onto snow-covered ice without realizing it, it's far more common for them to know exactly the risk they're taking, so that their death or misadventure is partly on their own heads: it may be An Aesop about how they were too stubborn or headstrong, possibly someone who pushed their luck too far too often, or maybe they were just too much of a Cloudcuckoolander to really appreciate the danger.
In lighter works a character skating on thin ice is a common sight gag. In this case, expect Harmless Freezing to be in full effect, and in a cartoon, the character may immediately bob out of the hole as an instant ice cube.
A subtrope of Chekhov's Gun. Often the outcome of going over an Inevitable Waterfall in winter. Compare A Crack in the Ice, where a character falls through ice or snow into a crevasse. See also Failures on Ice. Contrast Frigid Water Is Harmless, where falling into near-freezing water is no big deal at all.
As this can be a Death Trope, all spoilers are unmarked. Proceed at your own risk.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- During the sled chase of Doraemon: Great Adventure in the Antarctic Kachi Kochi, the sled Nobita, Doraemon and Shizuka were on had the misfortune of going over thin ice above a chasm, falling all the way down a Bottomless Pit. Luckily Doraemon was in control of the sled's Automated Robot Wire, currently in the form of sled dogs, and quickly converts the wire into a rope to grab the nearest ledge. Cue Suneo and Gian backtracking to drag their friends out of the chasm, with Doraemon further turning the Robot Wire into humanoid figures to help out.
- To Your Eternity: In the first episode, the unnamed boy falls through thin ice during his expedition, but doesn't suffer anything other than getting soaked. However this is still where he receives the injury that ultimately kills him.
Asian Animation
- Lamput: In "Snow", the combined weight of Specs Doc and half of Lamput causes the ice below them to start to crack. Lamput taunts Specs Doc by nearly letting the ice crack, but he goes away and a single leaf is what makes Specs Doc fall into the cold water below instead.
Comic Books
- In one Archie Comics story, Reggie bets Archie that he can skate across a pond, despite the "Danger - Thin Ice" sign posted. Reggie proceeds to skate fearlessly, since he'd paid a little kid a quarter to put up the warning sign. But when the kid shows up at the pond late — complete with fake sign in hand — Reggie has a major Oh, Crap! moment, just before falling through the ice.
- Wonder Woman Vol 1: Hypnota tries stringing a trip wire across a thinner patch of ice when she learns Wonder Woman is coming to a Holliday Girls hockey game with the intent of committing a murder that looks like an accident. While Diana does trip and fall through the ice, as an Amazon it doesn't really phase her and instead of trying to find the hole she fell through she just punches her way through a different spot in the ice.
Comic Strips
- Garfield: Played with in the April 18, 1987 strip. There is a warning sign for thin ice, but the section Garfield and Arlene are standing on should still be safe. But since Garfield is so heavy, it makes no difference and he falls through it anyway.
Garfield: Hey! This ice isn't thin!
Arlene: Neither are you. - A one-panel strip in Gaston Lagaffe shows him having fallen under the ice, with mademoiselle Jeanne watching in horror. Thankfully he's wearing SCUBA gear, but has trouble finding the exit...
- In Striker, this is how the real Kurt Panzer died - he was forced to walk across an icy river by a bully, and when the ice broke, the bully just watched (and made his friend Klaus watch too) as Kurt drowned. Klaus proceeded to beat the bully to death with a tree branch, and was so traumatised by the whole ordeal that he repressed it for years and ultimately came to believe he was Kurt Panzer, going on to enjoy the successful soccer career that his friend had deserved to have.
Fan Works
- Vow of Nudity: Haara and the saber-tooth tigers chasing her have to contend with this after she lures them onto a frozen lake and collapses a chunk of cliff onto it, relying on her dexterity to navigate the new ice floes and avoid plunging into the frigid water with her pursuers.
Films — Animation
- In An Angel for Christmas, the kids walk on ice when cutting down a Christmas tree, the ice inevitably cracks, and they lose the tree in the river.
- In Balto, the main character fights a bear over a frozen lake that then gives way. Balto ends up trapped under the ice and has to be saved by the polar bears Muk and Luk, who until then did not know how to swim.
- Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas: Forte sends Belle and her friends into the forest to get a tree, but they end up on a frozen lake, and the ice breaks, causing Chip to fall in and forcing Belle to dive in after him. She manages to save Chip, but slips back under the ice, and is narrowly saved from drowning by the Beast.
- In Ice Age: The Meltdown, the Pack go up the glacial wall that surrounds their valley and find out that the top is very thin when Diego, who is afraid of water, falls through. Turns out the glacier has melted into a reservoir held back by an ever-thinning dam of ice that threatens to burst open and flood the valley.
- The "Once Upon a Wintertime" segment of Melody Time is about two couples — a human boy, his girlfriend, a rabbit and his girlfriend — playing in a frozen river. Both couples break up and the girls walk away, passing a "Danger — Thin Ice" sign. The boy rabbit sees the sign and tries to show the girls, but they ignore him, so he sticks the sign into the ice in a fit of rage. This causes the ice to crack, and the girls end up on an ice floe headed for a waterfall, with the boys trying to rescue them.
- In Rankin Bass' Jack Frost, Elisa is skating when the evil Kubla Kraus rides his iron horse across the ice, causing it to break up. Kubla Kraus makes it safely to shore without even noticing what happened, but Elisa is sent careening toward an Inevitable Waterfall on an ice floe. Fortunately, Jack Frost, who secretly loves Elisa, uses his icy breath to re-freeze the water, saving her life. Since the entire plot is very much like a wintery Gender Flip of The Little Mermaid, this scene corresponds to the mermaid saving the prince from drowning.
- In Rise of the Guardians, Jack falls through thin ice and drowns after becoming trapped under it when saving his little sister from the same fate while they were ice skating.
- The Finnish short film Varokaa heikkoa jäätä, shown every Autumn and Spring on the local television series Pikku Kakkonen, shows a bear who attempts to get to a house by crossing a frozen lake and falling through the ice, forcing the boy Heikki who was with him to save him. The short was specifically created to teach kids why it's a bad idea to walk on ice.
Films — Live-Action
- In Alexander Nevsky, the Rus are preparing to meet the invading Teutonic Knights on Lake Chudskoenote when Alexander is warned that the ice is thin and might crack. In response, Alexander notes that the Germans' armor, not to mention their warhorses, are heavier than those of the Rus, with the implication that the invaders are at greater risk from the ice's condition. During the ensuing battle, the famous "Battle on the Ice", the retreating German force blunders onto or is driven onto a section of the lake where the ice is relatively thin, and many of the knights drown when the ice gives way.
- In Alpha (2018), Keda falls under a frozen river while pursuing his friend, the wolf Alpha. He's eventually able to cut his way out from under the ice with his hunting knife.
- Billion Dollar Brain. General Mindwinter drives his private army across a frozen lake to invade Communist Latvia. Unfortunately the Soviet air force is expecting him and bomb the ice, and his troops die fighting each other to hold onto the slippery floes. It's one of several homages to Sergei Eisenstein that Ken Russell put in the movie.
- The faith-based film Breakthrough has this as an inciting incident. A young boy falls through a thin patch of ice, and is rendered comatose after being under water for fifteen minutes before the EMT's rescue him.
- Weaponized by Peter in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Maugrim the wolf challenges Peter when they meet on the quickly-thawing river, daring Peter to either kill him or prove he is unfit by sparing him. Peter instead drives his sword into the ice and tells Lucy and Susan to hold onto him, allowing them to be safely swept away as a group when the patch they're standing on breaks from the ice, essentially creating an impromptu raft.
- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny: Silent Wolf's battle against Iron Crow and Wei-fang takes place on a massive pool whose surface is frozen by a thin layer of ice, which cracks and spreads apart every second as each combatant tries lunging at each other. Wei-fang ends up falling through the ice and into the freezing cold water, until Silent Wolf pulls him out seconds later.
- In Damien: Omen II, Bill Atherton is playing hockey with a group of people on a frozen river. He accidentally skates onto a thin patch and falls beneath the ice. The current quickly sweeps him away, despite the valiant efforts of the other players to track him under the ice and break him out.
- The Dark Knight Trilogy:
- In Batman Begins, as part of Bruce's Training from Hell, Ducard breaks the ice underneath him and plunges him into the icy depths.
- In The Dark Knight Rises, Bane's Kangaroo Court sentences people to death by exile, which is implemented by forcing the defendants to walk on the thin ice of the river until they fall through and are swept away by the currents.
- A chase scene early in Daughter of the Wolf have Gina Carano's character falling through ice while pursuing her son's kidnappers over a frozen lake, narrowly drowning in the process until one of the mooks she's after had a change of heart and pulls her out.
- In the film adaptation of The Dead Zone, Johnny has a premonition about three boys falling into ice and drowning due to wearing heavy hockey equipment during a game.
Johnny: The ICE... is gonna BREAK!"
- One of the titular rooms in Escape Room (2019) is built to look and feel like an arctic cabin on a frozen river. The puzzle itself involves using a pre-cut hole in the ice, but a separate part eventually cracks and Danny falls through. The other are unable to save him before the current pulls him too far away from the hole, and they lose sight of him under the ice.
- In Five Feet Apart, Stella and Will share an impromptu date on the surface of a frozen lake. The ice breaks under Stella and she briefly drowns, but Will is able to resuscitate her with CPR.
- In Frozen River, the protagonists smuggle immigrants from Canada into the US by driving them over the frozen St. Laurence River. Naturally, the ice eventually breaks and they are forced to flee their car on foot.
- In The Good Son, Henry exploits this trope when trying to kill his little sister while they're ice-skating, pushing her into the thin area where the ice cracks and she falls in.
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1: Harry is nearly drowned by the horcrux in Slytherin's locket when he breaks open a hole in a frozen pond in the Forest of Dean and jumps in to retrieve the inconveniently placed Sword of Gryffindor.
- In It's a Wonderful Life, the first flashback we see is to George's childhood where he rescues his younger brother Harry after he falls through the ice. In the alternate universe where George was never born, it's revealed that the same thing happened, but Harry died because George wasn't there to save him.
- In Jumper, David discovers his teleportation abilities when he goes to retrieve something that bullies threw onto the frozen river and falls through, then panics and finds himself and several gallons of the river water in an aisle of the library.
- Jurassic World Dominion features a scene where Owen Grady and Kayla Watts flee a Pyroraptor across a frozen dam, with the added danger of falling through the ice.
- King Arthur (2004): A huge battle scene occurs where Arthur, Guinevere, and their allies takes on an advancing army of Saxons on a massive ice pool. When the Saxon army proves too much for Arthur and his troops to handle, the battle culminates with Dagonet, the largest and strongest of Arthur's men, pulling a Heroic Sacrifice by using his axe to smash the ice's surface, sinking himself and most of the Saxon army into the freezing cold water to their deaths.
- In The Knight Before Christmas tween girls Claire and Lily go out to play in the snow but get caught in a blizzard and Claire stumbles out on to a frozen lake which begins to crack. Luckily protagonists Cole and Brooke (Claire's aunt and her love interest) find them in time for Cole to talk Claire though how to safely get off the ice whilst he tries to also safely get to her, by both of them getting down and crawling whilst spread out flat on the ice to minimise the surface pressure.
- Discussed in The Mighty Ducks when Gordon Bombay drives his limo onto the frozen pond to meet his new team and then takes them for a spin on the pond. Charlie Conway's mom is absolutely livid at Bombay and doesn't accept his assurances that the ice wasn't going to crack.
Mrs. Conway: They send you over here to coach the team and you endanger their lives!
Bombay: What danger? Look, I grew up on the ice! I know when it's safe to drive on!
Mrs. Conway: How do you know?
Bombay: I just know, okay?
Mrs. Conway: Well listen, Mr. Zen Master. You may be in tune with the ice universe, but when it comes to my kid, "I just know" doesn't cut it! - In Mr. Deeds, Babe falls into a frozen lake and gets trapped under the ice, leading to Deeds having to save her by breaking through it with his "black (frostbitten) foot."
- In the Troubled Backstory Flashback that opens No Time to Die, a young Madeleine Swann runs across an iced over lake while fleeing Lyutsifer Safin who's come to kill her. No surprise, she falls through it, and Safin even shoots at her through the ice, but he ultimately spares her life and pulls her out.
- The Occupant 2025. In order to reach an army base and safety, Abby and a Russian soldier have to walk across a frozen lake. Unlike usual for this trope the lake is covered in snow so they can't see where the thin spots are. The Russian falls through the ice and Abby ends up Going in Circles in a snowstorm ending right back where she started.
- Invoked early on in The Snowman (2017) when the mother commits suicide by driving her car onto a frozen lake. Watch it here
. Creates a Bookend to the climax in which the villain dies by breaking through the lake's ice too.
- In the Swedish war movie Svart Krabba (English title: Black Crab), six soldiers are chosen for a Suicide Mission to courier a Secret Weapon through enemy territory by crossing the frozen sea on ice skates, with this trope as a constant threat.
- In Till Death, the entire film takes place around a cabin by a lake, in the dead of winter, with the lake frozen over. In the climax, Bobby and Emma brawl on the surface of the frozen lake, with Mark's corpse handcuffed to Bobby. Bobby attempts to stab Emma, but stabs the ice instead, causing it to eventually break under them. Emma is able to fight off Bobby swim back to the surface, using the knife to cut a hole in the ice to escape.
- The iconic climax of Way Down East is a variant — Anna runs across an ice-covered river in a snow storm, and passes out due to hypothermia on top of a small ice floe. David runs out to rescue her, jumping from ice floe to ice floe, but the ice keeps breaking up, threatening to separate both of them and wash them over the Inevitable Waterfall that lies beyond.
Literature
- The 26-Storey Treehouse: One of the pirates accidentally falls through the ice when they're all skating.
Ten unlucky pirates learning how to skate, one cracked through the ice, and then there were eight.
- The Baby-Sitters Club: In one of the Little Sister stories, Karen's classmate Bobby falls through the ice on a local pond. Fortunately, the class had recently had a safety lesson where they learned how to rescue a person who's fallen through the ice, and Karen and Nancy are able to use this technique to get Bobby to safety.
- Cassie Dewell: In Badlands, a Hate Sink enforcer for The Cartel falls through the frozen Missouri River in the middle of the night during a police chase and drowns when the police decline to pull him out.
- In the Distant Prologue of the Dirk Pitt Adventures novel Vixen 03, the eponymous aircraft suffers engine trouble and is going down in the mountains. Fortunately the crew see a snowcovered field and successfully land on it...until they realise too late they've landed on a frozen lake which cracks under the weight of the aircraft, drowning them yet preserving their cargo of Deadly Gas in the cold water.
- In The Dolls From Doll Street, the story "Sliding on Thin Ice", has the dolls fall through some thin ice. They did see a sign which said, "Danger, No Skating", but (not out of deliberate Loophole Abuse, they were just naive) thought that sliding without skates was OK. When Bernard the dog saves them, he tells them off, saying that they should know not to skate or slide on thin ice, but they pointed out that they didn't know it was thin ice, as the sign didn't specify.
- Firefox Down has pilot Mitchell Gant make an emergency landing of the Firefox on a frozen lake in Finnish Lapland. The plane comes to rest above an air bubble, which couldn't support the weight of the aircraft, causing it to sink in to the water, nearly taking Gant along with it. Later in the novel, as Gant takes off from the frozen lake, more cracks appear in the ice but the Firefox is too fast for them to cause any harm.
- The Cruel Twist Ending of Handle with Care sees Willow falling through the ice on the family's backyard pond after she tries to imitate her older sister Amelia's ice skating.
- Harry Potter: In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry intentionally breaks a hole in the ice over the pool in the Forest of Dean and swims through the icy water beneath in order to retrieve the Sword of Gryffindor.
- In Little Women, Amy tries to join Jo and Laurie at ice skating. Jo, who is still extremely angry over having all of her writing burned by Amy, declines to warn her that she's getting near a dangerously thin patch. Amy plunges through, and Jo is immediately guilt-stricken and bolts to rescue her.
- Magic Attic Club: In the first book, a young Ellie falls through the ice during a skating party. Fortunately, by the end of the evening, her family has managed to warm her up and she's on the mend, and her survival is confirmed when the girls realize that she's the same person as the woman who owns the attic they time-traveled from.
- The Poet: In the backstory. Crime reporter Jack McEvoy is haunted by the death of his older sister, years ago, when they were children—she dashed out onto thin ice to rescue him and fell in herself. So when his brother Sean kills himself Jack is driven to write about his brother's suicide.
- In The Sight, Fell falls through ice and drowns but he later turns out to not actually be dead.
- In the A Smart Girls Guide To book "A Smart Girl's Guide to Sticky Situations", one page teaches you to survive a fall through ice.
- The Terror. After years of thick ice blocking their escape, a scouting party reports open water, which has frozen over by the time they haul the boats there. They then have to haul the heavy sledges and boats across the thinner ice, looking for an open lead, knowing that if they fall through they'll drown as they're stuck in harness. So Captain Crozier orders several mutineers to haul the lead boat. They survive, but a tent-full of his marines drowns when a crevice opens under their tent at night.
- In Uncle Tom's Cabin, Eliza dramatically escapes slavery by crossing over the partially frozen Ohio River, jumping from ice floe to ice floe, with the ice threatening to give in the whole time.
- Warrior Cats:
- In Night Whispers, Flametail decides to go play on the ice with some other members of his Clan. The ice shatters, and he falls through, drowning. Jayfeather attempts to save him, but is stopped by Rock, and so though Jayfeather lives, Flametail dies.
- In Fire and Ice, an earlier book, Graystripe tries to catch a vole over an icy river and falls through the ice. He ends up being rescued by Silverstream.
- Happens to two of the protagonists during the harsh winter in 'Lost Stars' - Rootpaw earlier in the book, and later Bristlefrost. Both end up being rescued.
Live-Action TV
- Camelot inverts the trope, with the ice being dangerously thick. Excalibur (a human woman in this retelling) attempts to flee from Merlin after he kills her blacksmith father, taking the sword that Merlin commissioned with her. She tries to row a boat across the nearby, warm, lake to escape him. Merlin enchants the lake the freeze so that the boat will be caught in the ice and he can pursue her. However, she accidentally falls overboard before the ice reaches her, but then becomes trapped beneath it. By the time Merlin reaches her, she's managed to plunge the sword and her arm out of the ice, allowing him to steal it. To his credit, he immediately tries to use the sword to break the ice and save her, but the ice has become too thick and she drowns/freezes.
- In A Christmas Carol (2019), this is the cause of Tiny Tim's death in the Bad Future: rather than dying of his illness as in the book and other adaptations, he falls through thin ice while skating and drowns. When Scrooge comes back to the real world, he prevents this by sprinkling gravel on that patch of ice so no one will skate there.
- One episode of Emmerdale sees Victoria fall through the ice of a frozen pond, and become trapped underneath. She briefly drowns, but her friends are able to pull her out and revive her. She's left traumatized by the ordeal.
- On Fargo: Season One, this is how weak-willed Villain Protagonist Lester Nygaard meets his end — running from his final comeuppance and over the repeated warnings of the police, he charges out onto the middle of the frozen lake, falls through and drowns. Of course, running on thin ice is a fairly apt metaphor for what he's been doing since murdering his wife in the first episode.
- In The Great, this is how Peter dies, after having foolishly ridden his horse across a frozen lake. Catherine and Grigor witness this and are traumatized. Petrov and Elizabeth later try to retrieve the body by cutting a hole in the ice and swimming down, but are unsuccessful.
- The Mickey Mouse Club: In the I'm No Fool episode "I'm No Fool With Having Fun", it talks about how it's foolish to skate on thin ice as you may drown.
- In the Korean Drama Mirror Of The Witch, Seori falls into an ice-covered lake while being pursued by the bad guys. She ends up trapped under the ice and struggling to escape, leading to a cliffhanger ending to the episode. As shown in flashbacks after the Time Skip that follows, she is able to escape due to a combination of the activation of her shaman powers and a fortuitous rescue by her bodyguard.
- In Merlin (1998), Vortigern and Uther's armies clash on the banks and the surface of a frozen river. Merlin weaponizes this by using a combination of his own magic and Excalibur to break the ice under Vortigern's feet, then seal it back up with him trapped underneath.
- Moimi Glazami: Trying to escape the cops in the flashback, Tkachuk crosses the river and drops under ice part way, which gets him arrested when he climbs out.
- The Outer Limits (1995): In "Nest", Matt Archer was sucked under the ice and died while playing hockey with his brother Robby and their friend Jack Burrell.
- In the season 1 finale of Riverdale, Cheryl is Driven to Suicide due to the recent death of her twin brother. The others try to stop her, however she still accidentally falls through the ice.
- Sesame Street: In the "Ernie Learns to Skate" filmstrip, Ernie is bullied by Bad Barney, who is an expert ice skater and teases Ernie when he tries unsuccessfully to ice skate. Near the end of the strip, Barney skates towards a sign that says "DANGER - THIN ICE", but since he Never Learned to Read, he thinks the sign says "FOR GOOD SKATERS ONLY". The ice breaks and Barney falls into the water. Bert and his friends waste no time in rescuing Barney.
- In the Smallville episode "Cool", Sean Kelvin and Whitney play a game of catch with a football on the shore of the frozen Crater Lake. Sean misses his catch, and hikes out onto the lake to retrieve the ball, while Whitney leaves to join a nearby teen party. The ice promptly breaks under Sean, and he is unable to find the entrance hole when he swims back to the surface. He passes out and sinks to the bottom, with several shards of Kryptonite waiting for him. In the morning he awakens, and manages to break out of the frozen surface, now transformed into an Ice Person.
- In Through the Dragon's Eye, Gorwen encounters a sign warning of thin ice. Thanks to the literacy skills he's developed through the series, he's able to read it and avoid the danger.
- Victoria: In the Christmas Episode "Comfort and Joy," Prince Albert falls through thin ice while skating and is trapped underwater. After a hard struggle, Victoria manages to rescue him.
- Yellowjackets: In "It Chooses", When Natalie and Javi are running from the others who are trying to kill Natalie, Javi falls through ice into the water below and drowns.
Music
- Kate Bush's song "Under Ice" goes from a picturesque story about skating to pure Nightmare Fuel in under two minutes.
- Pink Floyd used it as a metaphor in The Wall.
If you should go skating on the thin ice of modern life
Dragging behind you the silent reproach of a million tear-stained eyes
Don't be surprised when a crack in the ice appears under your feet
You'll slip out of your depth and out of your mind with your fear floating out behind you
as you claw the thin ice. - "Halvdan the Black" by Leaves' Eyes describes the death of the eponymous King of Norway by making an ill-advised trek across a frozen lake (adapting a story that appears in several of The Icelandic Sagas).
- The Metallica song "Trapped Under Ice" involves someone falling through a crack in an ice sheet and drowning/freezing to death.
Tabletop Games
- Chutes and Ladders: Square #47 has a boy skating on thin ice near a sign that says NO SKATING. The chute takes the player to Square #26, where the boy has fallen into an icy lake.
- Don't Break the Ice centers around knocking blocks of ice loose while keeping the guy in the center from falling through. The game ends when someone's move causes the figure to fall through.
Video Games
- 102 Dalmatians: Puppies to the Rescue: In the level "Ice Festival" there is one spot of ice that is thinner than the rest. Nearby is Jasper who is fishing. Domino or Oddball (whoever you are playing as) will surprise him and lead him to the ice. Jasper notices the sign upon stepping on it and slowly moves off of it to avoid cracking it any further. Then your puppy barks at him to further provoke him, he runs back onto the ice, and the ice breaks, sending him into the water and freezing him.
- Batman: Arkham City: The icy pool with the shark in the Iceberg Lounge has thin sections. Batman uses an "ice thickness scanner" to traverse it.
- In the Club Penguin minigame "Thin Ice", you play as a black Puffle who has to melt all the ice across a pond before moving on to the next level. If you get trapped in the middle of the pond, you have to start over.
- This can happen in Conquests of Camelot while you're crossing the frozen lake. You need to use either the Lady of the Lake's crystal heart or Gwenhyver's magic rose to get across safely.
- The Cold Open for D4 begins with a young girl walking out onto a frozen river or lake, in plain sight of her father. She wanders up to a snowy owl just before the ice begins to crack underneath her. Then the scene cuts away — a decade and a half later, that girl, Peggy Oldmann, turns out to have been the murdered wife of Defective Detective David Young, with the opening flashback serving to give the audience some idea of what she might have been like before her death.
- Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard: The highest floor of Frozen Grounds features a space whose surface consists of an ephemeral layer of ice that is unsafe to stand on. The player's character party has to wait until night falls so the cold temperature hardens the layer and makes it safe to pass over.
- An early act in Fahrenheit has Lucas seeing a child walking close to a pond covered in ice and know that the child will fall into it. They do, and Lucas has to decide whether to risk police notice to save the child.
- Hail to the Rainbow: The last, and largest "Hunter" drone fought at the end of Chapter 12, whose arena is atop a frozen lake. You slow down the boss by shooting at the ice, getting it stuck and damaged by the cold; after defeating the boss the following cutscene shows the Hunter struggling half-submerged through the broken ice trying not to fall in; but just then, several other Hunters started approaching. You deciding to holster your weapon instead of finishing off the Hunter and realized all the robots you've been battling the entire game, including their lowest-level drones, are actually intelligent - the freed Hunter boss instead leads its mooks away from the area leaving you alone.
- Life is Strange: Double Exposure: In the third episode Max chases her doppelgänger—actually Safi shapeshifting as her onto a frozen pond, which duly breaks, dropping them into freezing cold water. Max almost falls in herself as she rescues them, only avoiding this fate by swapping the whole broken ice sheet for its unbroken counterpart in the other timeline.
- Mario Party 3: The first board, Chilly Waters, has a frozen lake in the middle. If two players walk across it, the thin layer of ice cracks, forcing them to run to the southeast part of the board to safety.
- Mr. Bones have a level titled "From Beneath The Ice" where he must outrun a crumbling ice lake. Fall into the icy water twice and it's game over.
- One puzzle late in Penumbra: Overture involves crossing a frozen lake called Lake Utuqaq to find a hand clutching a crowbar on the other side. Because the ice breaks into floating geometric chunks when Philip tries to cross it, Philip has to either balance himself on the pieces, or use debris to bridge the gaps. A note left by a dead explorer named Joe Freeman also outlines the symptoms of falling in frozen water.
- One area of Scars Above sees you on a frozen pool and surrounded by monsters. You can actually use the environment to your advantage - by shooting at the ice and tricking monsters to fall through the ice, into the freezing water. They'll be frozen instantly, and turn into Literally Shattered Lives with any weak attack.
- Gluttony/Luce from SINNER: Sacrifice for Redemption is fought on the Frozen Sea, an area where the ice can break from attacks and falling into the ice-cold waters will damage your health. Unfortunately Luce is immune to the cold - if he falls through broken ice, he simply re-emerges elsewhere in the arena and continues battling.
- In Sonic Adventure, in Big's section of Ice Cap, there are thin ice spots that Big can open when he either jumps on them or tosses boulders at them. Under the first one is where Froggy is found, and these thin ice spots also lead to secret passages where bigger fish are stored. These fish are needed to complete the B and A rank missions.
Web Media
- Pirates SMP: The waters surrounding the Ice Wall are established from the get-go to be partially covered by ice and too dangerous for anyone's ships to get through. On Day 128, just after an attempted duel at the Ice Wall and making a significant Friend-or-Idol Decision, Apo shoots out the ice under himself, by accident or otherwise, causing him to fall into the deep sea and his friend Acho to dive in after him to save him, ultimately leaving Apo in a days-long coma until the start of the finale on Day 134 (i.e. for over a week in-universe).
- In Stand Still, Stay Silent when Emil and Lali are separated from the group and trying to catch up, they end up chased out onto ice by trolls, at which point Emil falls through the ice almost immediately since he's bigger than Lali and carrying a lot more weight in equipment.
- In this Wally and Osborne strip, Osborne falls through the ice when ice skating on a pond despite the clear "THIN ICE!" warning sign.
Western Animation
- Alfred J. Kwak: In episode 5, which takes place in Alfred's youth during winter, after Alfred goes missing and his adoptive father Henk (a mole) sets out to find him, he encounters a frozen lake with a sign warning about thin ice, and worries that Alfred fell through the ice and drowned. Alfred actually fell into an empty well with the school bully Dolf and is stuck there, before they're discovered by the hungry cat Krabnagel. In the climax, Henk saves Alfred by distracting Krabnagel, who then pursues him onto the ice and because of his much larger weight ends up breaking it. However, Krabnagel survives thanks to Harmless Freezing, as he returns in later episodes.
- Doug: In "Doug's Christmas Story", Porkchop notices a sign on a pond warning about thin ice and tries to get Bebe off of it, but he accidentally bites her and the populace assumes he meant to deliberately attack her. Much later, everyone goes to the pond to retrace the incident and Porkchop finally brings attention to the sign just before Bebe falls through; of course, Porkchop saves the day and is vindicated.
- The closing gag of the Josie and the Pussycats (1970) episode "The Midas Mix-Up" has Shipping Torpedo Alexandra send her cat Sebastian to trip up Josie while she and Alan are ice-skating together. Sebastian, however, slips on the ice and begins sliding out of control. In a panic, he deploys his claws and starts cutting grooves in the ice as a braking mechanism. As Fate would have it, his claw grooves encircle Alexandra, who hears the distinct crackle of failing ice just before her section gives way. She falls into the water, which results in nothing worse than an "Everybody Laughs" Ending.
- The Loud House:
- In the episode "Snow Bored", the kids try to convince brainy Lisa that snow days are f-o-n fun, Lola tries to show Lisa how enjoyable figure skating is. Lisa makes fast calculations in the snow to predict when Lola will fall through the ice. She's a second off.
- In "Twas The Fight Before Christmas", Lincoln, Lori, and Shelby decide to go to the Store to buy a new spatula and exercise ball in an attempt to stop the feud between their fathers. The store is on the other side of a nearby frozen lake, and they run across it to take a shortcut...but realize too late the ice is too thin to walk on and without warning, the ice cracks, leaving them stranded in the middle of the lake, and since nobody remembered to bring floaties, this leaves them in danger of drowning until the fathers come to their rescue.
- In the Martha Speaks episode Skits On Ice Skits when he was a puppy ended up on thin ice and nearly drowned when he chased a hockey puck too far.
- The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: In "The Magic Earmuffs", Pooh, Rabbit, Tigger and Roo are on the ice after a hockey game, when the ice breaks apart, trapping them on ice floes headed towards an Inevitable Waterfall. Piglet ends up proving his inner courage by skating to their rescue – and then saving himself too, despite losing the "magic" earmuffs that he thought made him able to skate, proving he can do it without them.
- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: In "That's Snow Ghost!", Scooby and Shaggy, riding a snowmobile while running from the titular ghost, crash into a sign reading "DANGER - THIN ICE". They end up taking a dip in the water and are subject to Harmless Freezing.
- In the Thomas & Friends episode, "Terence Breaks the Ice", Terence takes a shortcut across an icy pond to collect a Christmas tree needed for the Earl of Sodor's Christmas party. Terence's weight causes the ice to break, and Terence begins to sink into the pond. It's up to Thomas to pull him out before he sinks completely.
- The 1986 Finnish PSA animation short titled Varokaa Heikkoja Jäitä! ("Beware Weak Ice!") is about a creepy-looking bear falling into a frozen lake because he didn't beware weak ice, and is infamous for terrifying children.