Elevator Floor Announcement

• Main
• All Subpages
• Create New

"Ground floor: Perfumery, stationery, and leather goods, wigs and haberdashery, kitchenware and food. Going up... " —Are You Being Served theme song

A Stock Phrase associated with department store elevators, which in Real Life often emit a prerecording that lists the "departments" of the current floor. (In the days of live elevator operators, it was typically the operator's job to do this.)

Typically the formula is two normal items and a plot relevant item, though this can be mixed up by having another mundane item after the plot-relevant item. The plot-relevant item is often jarringly discordant with the other mundane items: see Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick.

If the department store's policy is "We Sell Everything" then the resulting Long List can sometimes become an Overly Long Gag.

Often The Elevator From Ipanema.

Always included as part of an Elevator Gag. Also invoked as a Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner for someone "dramatically" entering or ascending to a floor.

Examples of Elevator Floor Announcement include:

Anime & Manga

• Transformers Cybertron used this once, to fill part of the Stock Footage Fighter Launching Sequence.

Optimus Prime: This elevator could use a few windows. First floor, housewares.

Comic Books

• Nightwing and Robin are about to enter a hidden base. The control panel hidden in the tree makes an elevator rise out of the middle of the lake. They start slogging to it and Nightwing quips, "Step right in. Next floor, toys, games, electronics, center of the Earth."
• Raven in Teen Titans Go

Fan Works

• Used in the third part of the Yu Yu Hakusho Abridged movie. "First floor: homicidal ex-partners".
• In With Strings Attached, there's a scene where the four have been shrunk, but George manages to get himself back to normal height. When he picks up the others to put them on his head (he can't carry them in his pockets because he's naked), he says “Top floor, hair oil, wigs, dandruff.” The others are too agitated to laugh.

Films -- Animation

• Appears in Flushed Away during the big finale:

Le Frog: Top floor! Lingerie, housewares, and certain doom!

Films -- Live-Action

• The Audience Participation lines for The Rocky Horror Picture Show use this trope during the elevator ride early in the movie:

"First floor, lamps and curtains. Second floor, stupid questions. Third floor, stupid answers. Fourth floor, absolutely nothing. Fifth floor, show me something tall, green, and sexy! It's Bryant Gumby! It's Kermit the Fag! It's Janet Reno in a Star Trek outfit!"

• • Of course, every location has different lines, but another one goes:

"First floor, pineapple-shaped dildos. Second floor, stupid questions. Third floor, midget's room. Fourth floor, Stevie Wonder's room. Fifth floor, who's that guy all dressed in green? That's no man, it's a gay marine, don't ask, don't tell, HOO-AH! "First floor, weird musical numbers. Second floor, stupid questions. Third floor, strange answers. Fourth floor, Stevie Wonder's workshop. (Don't worry, he can't see it either!) Top floor, mad laboratory."

• The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T has a song about all the tortures in the good doctor's dungeon:

First floor dungeon Assorted simple tortures Molten lead, chopping blocks and hot boiling oil Second floor dungeon Jewelry department Leg chains, ankle chains, neck chains, wrist chains, thumbscrews and nooses of the very finest rope Basement dungeon EVERYBODY OUT!

• • The third floor dungeon was cut from the film for some reason:

Third floor dungeon Household appliances. Spike beds, electric chairs, gas chambers, roasting pots, and scalping devices.

Literature

• Marco makes a joke along these lines in Animorphs, book 7, The Stranger.

Marco: (elevator music is playing) Top floor. Ladies shoes. Children's apparel. Everyone out.

• The Ministry of Magic in Harry Potter has an elevator that announces and describes the departments are on each floor -- the punchline being that the Department of Mysteries is referred to only as the Department of Mysteries.
  • "Also housewares, ladies' lingerie, and blatant traps for idiot children."
• Star Wars Expanded Universe: Castin Donn wishes the Empire would label the insides of its turbolift tubes. (Don't even ask why he's inside the elevator shaft. Just don't.)

Live-Action TV

• This kind of announcement message was used straight in the theme tune of Are You Being Served, which made sense, since it was set in a department store.

Ground floor: Perfumery, Stationery and leather goods, Wigs and haberdashery, Kitchenware and food... Going up! First floor: Telephones, Gents' ready-made suits, Shirts, socks, ties, hats, Underwear and shoes... Going up! Second floor: Carpets, Travel goods and bedding, Material, soft furnishings, Restaurant and teas... Going down!

• Taken to extremes, as usual, by Monty Python's Flying Circus, in episode 41 ("Michael Ellis"):

Basement: Dangerous gases, viruses, contagious diseases, restaurant and toilet fixings. Ground floor: Menswear, boyswear, effeminate goods hall, ill health foods. Mezzanine: Tableware, kitchen goods, soft furnishings, hard furnishings, rock-hard furnishings. First floor: Complaints. Second floor: Cosmetics, jewellery, electrical, satire. Third floor: Nasal injuries hall, other things. Fourth floor: Granite hall -- rocks, shales, alluvial deposits, feldspar, Carpathians, Andes, Urals, mining requisites, atom-splitting service. Fifth floor: Complaints. Sixth floor: Complaints. Seventh floor: Leather goods. Eighth floor: Roof garden. Ninth floor: Television aerials. Tenth floor: Fresh air, clouds, occasional periods of sunshine.

• • Later on in the same store, a "Lift Woman" (elevator attendant) calls out:

Lift Woman: Second floor... stationery, leather goods, tribal head injuries, cricket bats, film stars, dolphinariums. Lift Woman: Third floor... cosmetics, books, Irish massage, tribal head-gear, ants... but not complaints about ants!

• One episode of M*A*S*H:

Hawkeye: Here we are. First floor. Lingerie, sportswear, elephant accessories and recuperating patients.

• Kari spoofs this in one episode of Myth Busters:

Kari: Aaand on this level, we have lumber, explosives and women's lingerie. Grant: (wide-eyed Aside Glance)

Music

• "Love in an Elevator" by Aerosmith has an introduction in the video based on this trope. The album version too:

"Second floor, hardware, children's wear, lady's lingerie. Oh, good morning Mr. Tyler...going down?"

• "Paco!" by Ladytron.

Ground floor: ladies' clothes, sportswear, stationery First floor: kitchenware, furnishings, confectionary Second floor: children's toys, back to school, many more Fourth floor: electronics, fake antiques, and lingerie

• Industrial band Coil covered the Are You Being Served theme song on their final album. (Your guess is as good as mine.)

Radio

• On the old Abbott and Costello radio show, during World War II, Mel Blanc (acting as Bugs Bunny), was an elevator operator in a department store, quoting "Cigarettes, Nylons, Rubber Tires, Gasoline, Sugar, and other picture postcards!" -- each item listed was rationed for the war effort.
• On Adventures in Odyssey episode "The last great adventure of the summer" Agent Cat's Paw announces "Top floor: Lady's shoes, hand bags, international spies."

Theater

• "Elevator Song" from the musical Top Banana.

Video Games

• Halo
  • The level The Library has a segment titled "Fourth Floor: Tools, Guns, Keys to Super Weapons".
  • Halo: Reach has section 1 of the level Long Night of Solace: "First Floor: Beaches, Aliens, Top-Secret Launch Facilities".
• Used in Tomb Raider: Chronicles:

Zip: Bing! Ground floor. Depart here for gun-toting refrigerator men and long walk back upstairs!

• Daxter in Jak II: Renegade: "Ding ding, third floor! Body chains, roach food, torture devices!"
• Gears of War 2:

Baird: Bottom floor! Sporting goods, lingerie, and one bitch-ass queen!

• Captain America: Super Soldier:

Cap: Top floor! Ladies hosiery and anti-aircraft guns.

Web Comics

• During the Battle of Azure City in The Order of the Stick, Xykon says "DING! 8th floor: Men's Outerwear, Sporting Goods, and Rifts in the Fabric of the Universe." as he floats up the side of the tower.
• In Adventurers, Khrima's personal rival, helping out Eternion, makes an appearance with Lumi with this line. He even appears in a cosmic elevator of some sort.

Garshak: Ding! Third floor! Cookware, men's socks, battles for the fate of the universe, and giftwrapping!

• This Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures strip.
• This Angel Moxie strip.

Alex: Top floor, big angry demon lords.

Web Original

• Referenced in this Failblog caption.
• Paw of That Guy With The Glasses uses "Level two! More mountains, snow, icicles, and owls!" in his Let's Play of King's Quest V here.

Western Animation

• The Batman, "The Everywhere Man". The title villain uses "Penthouse Level! Nefarious plots, brilliant schemes, doomed heroes."
• Appeared in Cyberchase a few times.
• Flash in the Justice League two-parter with Etrigan, "A Knight of Shadows".

Flash: Ding! Fifth floor -- hardware, sporting goods, evil sorceresses!

• Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends:

Iceman: First floor, bees! Second floor, bees! Third floor -- biiiig bees!

• The Spectacular Spider-Man:

Mysterio: Second floor. Toys, Housewares, Superhero Defeat!

• From Spider-Man Unlimited:

Spider-Man: Basement level! Household linens, kitchenware, superheros in need of breathing space!

• On Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Bloo does this while riding the house elevator with Mac. Halfway through he runs out of things to say and pesters Mac for ideas.
• Played straight in an episode of Rocko's Modern Life, with Rocko announcing the departments on each floor. Every floor sold "underpants".
• The Looney Tunes short Hare Conditioned, 1945:

Bugs Bunny: Fifth floor! Rubber tires, sugar, bourbon, butter, and other picture postcards!

• • See the Radio example above for the Late to The Punchline moment in this gag.
• Aladdin: The Animated Series has the Genie pull this off in one episode after rescuing the rest of the cast; "First floor, amazing rescues, ridiculous fight scenes and happy endings!"
• In the Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy episode "3 Squares and an Ed", upon reaching the basement via Double-D's specially lubricated laundry chute, Eddy says:

Eddy: Bottom floor: Dryer lint, paint cans, lonely socks, and mildew! (Edd lands through a different chute) Edd: ... and arachnids!

• One episode of One Hundred and One Dalmatians: The Series has a variation of this: the puppies (and Spot) sneak into Cruella's enormous ride-through closet, which shuttles them along as a prerecorded voice points out the various sections along the way. And the last one listed is "lingerie".
• The Monkey King in Jackie Chan Adventures:

"Third floor: housewares, ladies' undergarments, puppets!"

Real Life

• Marlon Brando, of all people, worked as an elevator operator. He quit because saying "lingerie" out loud embarrassed him.