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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere
- 141 statements
- 26 feature instances
- 74 referencing feature instances
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Also known as an Oubliette, the Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere is the least dramatic Death Trap of all. Not being an elaborate plan of disposing of enemies, the sealed room is usually more of an opportunistic ploy — the good guys have gone into an Abandoned Mine or ancient crypt or isolated cave of their own volition, and the villain just takes this lucky chance to seal them in forever. Of course, forever turns into the twenty minutes or so it takes the hero to find an alternate way out, hidden door, or occasionally to be rescued. Sometimes the stakes are raised by having the room slowly fill with water, lowering a bladed Pendulum of Death or hearing the hiss of poison gas. The quiet solitude of this trap can be used to effect a Locked in a Freezer plot between two characters. Sometimes the tension of this Death Trap is increased by use of a good old-fashioned slowly-sealing door, which the good guys fail to squeeze through at the last second, or using a very small and unventilated space like a bank safe where the trappee will theoretically soon run out of air. This trope might have roots in the Greek myth of Antigone, who performed funeral rites for her dead brother — a traitor to the state — and was sentenced to death by her uncle, King Creon. The death sentence was, simply, being sealed in a cave to die of hunger/dehydration. In the play by Sophocles, Creon later had regrets, but when he tried to let her out she had already hanged herself (It is a tragedy, what did you expect?). This trap is often encountered in Medieval settings — the original Oubliettes were cellar rooms at the basement of the heaviest fortified tower in the stronghold, called the donjon (hence dungeon, an alternative spelling) with access only through a trap door at the upper floor. See also Tailor-Made Prison and Closed Circle. Compare And I Must Scream and Maximum Fun Chamber. Super-Trope to the various structures with No Entrance. |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_1543f8a | type |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_1543f8a | comment |
In Zero Time Dilemma, 9 people are trapped in another warehouse in the middle of the desert. This time, the rule is that 6 people must die in order for the door to be opened and just like the prequel, the door only opens once and anyone who didn't leave are trapped. | |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_2ac52633 | comment |
Pooh nearly suffers this fate in Pooh's Grand Adventure by getting trapped in a pit in a cavern with walls that are too slippery to climb, with seemingly no possibility of rescue because his friends think that he was killed. Before getting rescued, he realizes that he is never alone so it isn't so bad. | |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_2cfe43cb | comment |
The episode "No Way Out, No Way In" of Adventures in Odyssey has Mr. Whitaker waking up severely injured and in need of medical attention in a room with no doors or windows and no memory of how he ended up there. His only hope of survival is to convince the mentally disturbed man that lives in the room to go get help. | |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_2d936cf8 | comment |
In Acts of Vengeance, Loki gathers several supervillains together for a scheme against The Avengers. Among the group are the Red Skull and Magneto. The Red Skull was Adolf Hitler's right-hand man. Magneto is a survivor of The Holocaust. So, in the Captain America portion of the crossover, Magneto takes the opportunity to seal the Skull in an underground chamber with just enough water to survive, but no way to escape. The Skull is eventually rescued by his henchman Crossbones, who has to hire a Seers-type Occult Detective to find him. | |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_37f1c1bb | comment |
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): Twilight and Fluttershy fall into an abandoned one of these in the first story arc. A trap like this is of course no problem for Fluttershy, a pegasus... especially since Twilight just teleports them out anyway. Twilight helpfully defines the term "oubliette" for the target audience. | |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_40ad46c8 | type |
Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere | |
Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_40ad46c8 | comment |
Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit is about three people locked in a hotel room. It turns out they've died and gone to hell. Their punishment is to have to suffer each other's company for the rest of eternity. As the protagonist famously says: "Hell is other people." | |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_42ef3233 | comment |
In The Amazing Digital Circus, the cellar is where many abstracted creatures are locked away so that they do not rampage through the circus or do further damage. These monsters used to be people, but they lost stability while trying to leave the software. The tortures in the simulation along with the inability to die caused them to become so insane that they get corrupted and start spreading the glitch. | |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_4d6ad22f | type |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_4d6ad22f | comment |
In Virtue's Last Reward, 9 people are trapped in a warehouse not knowing the exact location. They are forced to play a game where they need 9 points to open a door that leads outside. However, the door only opens once and once it closes, it stays closed forever trapping whoever didn't make it outnote Leaving before accumulating 9 points is not an option either, as doing so will cause the device on their wrists to activate a toxin that would kill them. | |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_5ae0bec6 | comment |
The basement in WWE fanfic series Mind Tricks. | |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_6658d35c | type |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_6658d35c | comment |
Some of Samuel Beckett plays (Waiting for Godot, Krapp's Last Tape) have elements of this. | |
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Superman: Red Son: The Soviet Batman attempts to trap Comrade of Steel in a bunker permanently illuminated with Red Sun lamps. However, Superman manages to break free with Wonder Woman's help. | |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_6ac55ec7 | type |
Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere | |
Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_6ac55ec7 | comment |
Dungeons & Dragons: The effective purpose of the spell "imprisonment" is to trap the target in a sealed chamber, deep underground. Granted, they are in a magically sustained stasis until the end of the world (or the spell is removed by its reverse, "freedom"), so it isn't actually played for drama after the effect, except possibly as a Fate Worse than Death. Also the spell "maze" for a similar effect which the target will eventually escape on its own. |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_7460586f | type |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_7460586f | comment |
In Archer, at one point Barry kidnaps Malory and locks her, Bound and Gagged, in an underground chamber with air provided by a pump. The rest of the main cast have to help him before she runs out of air. However, since she's a Retired Badass, her escape makes up the B-plot of the episode. | |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_7832b74c | comment |
The episode "Friend Ship" of Steven Universe features Peridot attempting to trap the Crystal Gems inside a very old, abandoned gem spacecraft. Fortunately, her inability to work the archaic technology (as well as Pearl and Garnet making up after a recent conflict and being able to fuse into Sardonyx once again) enables them to catch up to Peridot so she is forced to escape, leaving them with a way out as well. | |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_86c3beca | comment |
In Girl Genius, the acting troupe manages to stumble into an oubliette. The traitor asks if anyone knows how to get out and then, when everyone answers in the negative, escapes via grapple gun. | |
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In The Onion's reality TV series parody, the eponymous Sex House appears to be this. | |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_8a40bf3c | comment |
Ultimate Comics Thor: Loki was trapped by Odin in the Room Without Doors on the Island of Silence... until he managed to escape. | |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere | |
Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_9525e74d | comment |
Madness Combat: Scrapeface was locked inside of a room somewhere in Nevada. His hands were locked inside of a trap. Despite not having arms, his hands have a magnetic pull towards his body. The trap sealed the hands away and pulled them upwards above the ceiling, repeatedly scraping both them and his body on the concrete walls. | |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere | |
Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_a9cb14fc | comment |
Baron Lyron Evensong, a minor darklord of Ravenloft, is cursed with a version of this trope. Every evening, he's compelled to return to the music room of his residence and close himself inside, remaining until dawn. To the rest of the world, he's there overnight, but to him the world outside the room vanishes and leaves him stuck there for 100 years: magically-sustained and ageless, but stir-crazy and bored out of his mind. Any unfortunates he can lure into staying in the room with him through dusk experience this trope also... unfortunately for them, without the benefits of agelessness. | |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere | |
Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_b4fe32c9 | comment |
Invader Zim features a rather unique version of this: A Room with a Moose. It is a dimension that consists entirely of just that: one room whose sole occupant is a moose. You can't get any more "In The Middle Of Nowhere" than a pocket dimension with no means of escaping it. | |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere | |
Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_bba9da2d | comment |
Zero Escape series: In Virtue's Last Reward, 9 people are trapped in a warehouse not knowing the exact location. They are forced to play a game where they need 9 points to open a door that leads outside. However, the door only opens once and once it closes, it stays closed forever trapping whoever didn't make it outnote Leaving before accumulating 9 points is not an option either, as doing so will cause the device on their wrists to activate a toxin that would kill them. In Zero Time Dilemma, 9 people are trapped in another warehouse in the middle of the desert. This time, the rule is that 6 people must die in order for the door to be opened and just like the prequel, the door only opens once and anyone who didn't leave are trapped. |
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Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere | |
Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere / int_bc848d30 | comment |
In SpongeBob SquarePants, Squidward temporarily ends up in a blank, white "void" as a result of a time-traveling mishap. Though he's initially delighted by the solitude of the place, the experience quickly turns into a nightmare as his every spoken word becomes visible, turning into garishly-colored fonts that quickly fill up the screen. Attempting to run away in any direction only takes him back to his starting point. (Fortunately, he quickly breaks through the "floor" of the room and falls back into his time machine.) | |
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Part 2 of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic's season 2 finale opens with Twilight having been trapped in a secluded, crystalline cavern. Princess Cadance's imposter explains that these are the caves beneath Canterlot, which have been almost entirely forgotten and block all sounds made from within, meaning that Twilight has no hope of being rescued (the implication being that she'll eventually die of thirst or hunger). Fortunately, Twilight is so powerful that, in a fit of rage, she manages to magically blast her way through the magically-resistant crystal walls. | |
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Star Wars Rebels, "Path of the Jedi": Masters whose Padawans failed the test remain trapped in the hall of the Lothal Temple forever, as the temple will only open for both Master and Padawan in either direction. This ensures that a master who failed their padawan by taking them on such a vision quest when they weren't ready dies alongside their student instead of going on to take on any more padawans. | |
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The musical has both Radames and Aida sentenced to this, with Amneris interceding to give them the small mercy of being allowed to endure it together, but also makes it a little happier by revealing that Aida and Radames find each other in a later reincarnation. | |
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Fighting Fantasy does this a lot as part of their And I Must Scream Game Over endings. You might get stuck between two identical rooms that leads to each other thanks to being trapped in a time lock (Crypt of the Sorcerer), sealed in a room without any windows and the only exit being a locked door that you don't have a key to (Trial of Champions), dragged into a mirror dimension which is just a blank void (Death Trap Dungeon), captured alive and sent to a prison abyss (Slaves of the Abyss), trapped in another dimension because your dimension-travelling MacGuffin teleports away without you (Spectral Stalkers) amongst several others. It goes without saying these are typically the worst Non-Standard Game Over scenarios. | |
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