Submaximal spaces and door spaces play an enigmatic role in topology.In this paper, reinforcing this role, we are concerned with reaching two main goals: The first one is to characterize topological spaces X such that F(X) is a submaximal space (resp., door space) for some covariant functor F from the category Top to itself. T0, ρ and FH functors are completely studied. Secondly, our interest is directed towards the characterization of maps f given by a flow (X, f ) in the category Set, such that (X, P(f )) is submaximal (resp., door) where P(f ) is a topology on X whose closed sets are exactly the f -invariant sets.