History Main / AndImustScream

** The setting has the Imprisonment spell, which entombs the subject for an indefinite amount of time somewhere "far beneath the surface of the earth". Normally, this spell is not an example as the victim is put in [[HumanPopsicle Suspended Animation]] and won't remember any part of its imprisonment when released. However, in ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'' this is not the case as the player is threatened with this spell (and the emphasis of ''suffering'') by a [[KnightTemplar Harper]], and one can free a number of people from an artifact that imprisons users in the Underdark; all but two (one who'd only been in there for days, and another who was TheUndead and presumably too crazy to be affected) are alive but incurably insane.
*** In 5e, Imprisonment can be cast by Warlocks and Wizards as a 9th level spell. The effect vary, but each one is what-the-fucktopus territory. '''Burial''' is the classic version, '''Chaining''' and '''Slumber''' is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, '''Hedge Prison''' throws the target in a PocketDimension of whatever the caster wants, be it a tower, a cage, another confined structure, or, if you're feeling especially sadistic, a labyrinth, and '''Minimus Containment''', which shrinks the target down to 1 inch, and places them in a gemstone for your viewing pleasure. Every version can only be dispelled by the caster, if a condition set by the caster is fulfilled or if someone wastes a 9th level spell slot on Dispel Magic, requiring a level 17 spell caster at least. If you don't have that, and really want your friend back, have fun searching down that ''Wish'' scroll...
** The magic item the ''Mirror of Life Trapping'' can be used as a trap, a prison, or both. If a sentient being sees his reflection, he's drawn inside it, and kept in one of several cells, which can theoretically hold him forever. Even worse, a command word (usually known by the mirror's owner) can call a prisoner's image forth to be questioned. (The potential for abuse by diabolical villains is great; fortunately, ''all'' prisoners in a mirror can be released by breaking it, which is rather easy.)

* The ''Dungeons & Dragons''' setting ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'' has a monster known as the Wall of Flesh. It's created when the rage and fear of a person who has been imprisoned within a wall mixes with ''Ravenloft's'' special flavor of magic.
** Several named [=NPCs=] of the Land of Mists have likewise suffered this fate. Elise Mordenheim, trapped in a decaying and shattered body that her MadScientist husband struggles in vain to restore, is perhaps the most prominent example.

* In Myth/ClassicalMythology, Tithonus is granted immortality, but not eternal youth. As a result, his body withers and his mind decays; he remains, for all time, forgotten in some hidden room, babbling endlessly. (In another story, he eventually turns into a cricket.)

* "Bird Song" by Music/FlorenceAndTheMachine.

* The whole decay process in the song "The Hearse Song".

** Although, it's debatable whether "turned into a pillar of salt" means she was ''literally'' TakenForGranite, or if it's a metaphor for something else (perhaps becoming basically an EmptyShell, or [[LawOfInverseFertility infertility]]).

** Typhon. Trapped forever under Mount Aetna.

* Both the old and new ''Vampire'' games (''[[TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade Masquerade]]'' and ''[[TabletopGame/VampireTheRequiem Requiem]]'') had a variation on this. When Vampires are staked or starve for long enough, rather than dying, they are sent into torpor, a kind of stasis. This is far from mercy, as vampires in this state experience the world more or less in real-time, but suffer terrifying nightmares. And considering that very few kindred would willingly starve themselves into this kind of state, this probably means that said vampire is trapped somewhere, meaning that this state can go on indefinitely. No wonder a great many ancient vampires (and possibly the antediluvians and Caine in the original series) have been driven utterly insane when revived.
** One sourcebook mentions that the nightmares tend to involve what put you into torpor in the first place, with Kindred starving to torpor stuck in an eternal loop where they hunt a human and never reach them. Go into torpor through violence, or being staked, and God help you-- because you're going to relive that losing battle until someone finds it in their dead heart to revive you. That is, if they don't decide to chow down on you instead, in which case, you'll simply scream inside your immobile body and watch as your saviour devours everything that made you who you are and all your memories, before you crumble into a pile of ash. And that ''still'' doesn't end your torment, because it is rather heavily implied that you survive within your devourer's body for the rest of eternity.
*** ''Requiem'' somehow manages to make it worse; when you go into torpor, your memories tend to... [[TheFogOfAges shift]]. It's not uncommon for an ancient vampire to come out of a long torpor wondering what really happened, what was a story he heard second-hand, and what was just idle fantasy. Oh, and it's suggested in some books that vampire souls actually manage to travel to the Underworld when they're in torpor... and there are ''things'' in the Underworld that don't like them.
** The Tzimisce in ''Vampire: The Masquerade'' do this ''for kicks'' to whoever screws with them, and a few who don't. Similarly, characters with an advanced understanding of the ''Obtenebration'' ability can use the ''Enter the Abyss'' power to take yourself and someone else into the Abyss, and it is very clear that you can leave them there, alone, to die.

** Similarly, the Hierarchy in ''TabletopGame/WraithTheOblivion'' does this to whoever causes too much trouble. Their ghostly corpus is "soulforged," boiled down and rendered into a permanent shape, be it a sword, a coin, or an ashtray. However, official word as of the 2nd edition is that Soulforging destroys the consciousness of the ghost being soulforged.
** ''TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost'' does this to all changelings -- your player character is someone who, by whatever scraps of luck, managed to somehow ''escape''. And you have no idea if maybe, just maybe, you were actually ''let go''. You may have been the pot in which a twining, bloodsucking rose was grown, your Keeper gently watering you with arcane acids and admiring the beauty of the flowers growing out from the slits in your lungs. You may have been twisted to have the body of a hound and the mind of a man, then the body of a man and the mind of a hound, over and over and back and forth until you couldn't tell which was which. You may have had to spend a hundred years walking along the razor edges of a network of swords, suspended high above a valley of crackling flames or gnashing rocks. The True Fae have such a wide variety of ways to "play" with humans...
** In ''TabletopGame/MageTheAwakening'', if an Abyssal entity doesn't simply kill you in horrible fashion or corrupt the next seven generations of your family to its service, it will likely inflict this upon you. Abyssal creatures are less than pleasant.
** ''TabletopGame/DemonTheFallen'' defines Hell very succinctly. Imagine you could see every single dimension - all of them. You can see all the colors in the spectrum, every atom in every mote of dust... You are a being of all of reality. Got that? Shut that all off in a fraction of a second. And then keep it off. ''For millennia''. It's just you, the others who were on your side, and the thought that everything you worked for has failed and can never be regained. Yeah, there's a reason the ''Demon'' KarmaMeter is called '''''Torment'''''.

** "Lost In The Cosmos" tells the story of Drumbot Brian, or at least the part he remembers- the part after he dies, where he is strapped to a rocket and shot into space to die, until [[spoiler: Dr Carmilla finds him and rebuilds every part of his body but his still-beating heart.]]

* AndIMustScream/RealLife

** It's hard to feel sorry for an [[EldritchAbomination aboleth]], but as aquatic creatures, they can't breathe air for very long, but they do ''not'' "drown" if they are separated from the water too long. Instead, they enter a state called "Long Dreaming" which they consider far worse than death; a thick membrane forms around the aboleth, and it enters a state of suspended animation where it experiences hideous nightmares. (Of course, an aboleth in such a state is a sitting duck if an enemy - which is most other races - finds it, so it's usually killed soon anyway.)

* "One" by Music/{{Metallica}}, inspired by ''Literature/JohnnyGotHisGun'', focuses on a soldier who has his eyes, ears, mouth, arms, and legs destroyed (by a WWI German artillery shell in ''Johnny'' and a Vietnamese landmine in "One"), but is still conscious. Though he eventually manages to communicate with the doctors and military men keeping him alive, they refuse to disconnect his life support, and he presumably must exist in that condition (unable to communicate with anyone, see or hear anything, go anywhere, etc.) for the rest of his natural life. Now there's an unsettling thought. The song itself tells the story rather well, especially with these lines:
-->''Darkness imprisoning me\\

* AndIMustScream/{{Other}}

[[quoteright:252:[[Literature/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/and_i_must_scream_5442.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:252:{{Immortality}} is [[WhoWantsToLiveForever a lot less fun]] when [[FateWorseThanDeath you're a tortured, voiceless blob.]]]]

[[caption-width-right:252:{{Immortality}} [[WhoWantsToLiveForever is a lot less fun]] [[FateWorseThanDeath when you're a tortured, voiceless blob.]]]]

** A spinoff short story ''Into the Maelstrom'' has a traitor SpaceMarine imprisoned in a Dreadnaught battle suit, normally an honor, but never released, so he is doomed to live forever in a small metal box, with no limbs. This is in fact the fate of ''all'' Space Marines encased in Dreadnaught armour, with the occasional mindless rampage, but it isn't always this trope (and is a good example of how a different attitude can affect the outcome). Regular Space Marines, both those encased and their brethren, consider it an honour as they can fight the Emperor's enemies even after death, albeit with slowly degrading mental faculties. Chaos Marines however, being {{Sense Freak}}s taken to the literal utter screaming extreme, consider it to be the worst punishment imaginable, as even while battling they can't feel [[AxCrazy the joy of slaughter]] and while inactive their brethren have to ''chain them to a wall'' to prevent the completely bugfuck insane Marine (even by Chaos standards) from breaking loose and killing everyone. Note that in all cases, the occupant of a Dreadnought ''can'' scream, it's just that in the case of Chaos Dreadnoughts, there's no one around that cares.

* In the musical adaptation of ''Disney/BeautyAndTheBeast'', the Enchantress's curse becomes one of these. Rather than automatically changing the Prince and his servants into a hideous beast and random household objects (presumably because there was no way to costume that convincingly), the spell instead works extremely slowly; the humans retain their normal sizes and shapes, but as time passes, they become more thing-like as their human features and appendages are gradually replaced with inanimate parts. It's never made clear whether or not completely transforming into an object (a fate that's befallen some of the servants already) kills you or traps your still-conscious mind in a piece of bric-a-brac without any sensory organs, but still very much alive.

** A milder example occurred in the short story "Among Fiends". The Chaos Champion Scaevolla is forced by the gods to choose between hunting down the progeny of his former best fried for all eternity or spawnhood. He isn't pleased.

[[folder:Webcomics]]

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[[folder:Audio Play]]

* Trolls in ''Webcomic/StandStillStaySilent'' are humans who undergone ViralTransformation by [[ThePlague Rash Illness]] and turned into twisted, vicious, murderous monsters. Chapter 3 revealed that they are still conscious. ''After ninety years''.
* ''Webcomic/TheDragonDoctors'' brings us the story of Rina, who was TakenForGranite and left for ''two thousand years'' in a cave with nobody to talk to and no sensation at all (thankfully, she was only conscious for the first days). Fortunately the eponymous doctors rescued her. The comic also features Tanica, who was accidentally turned into a tree by Sarin. She can communicate with the others through magic, though.
** Sarin actually was turned into a tree by his/her mentor as a lesson.
** It's later revealed that a government did this to [[spoiler:people who broke their no bodily alterations rule]], just in case those people were ever needed. How useful those people would be after [[spoiler:years, decades, even centuries as statues]] is questionable at best.
** At one point some criminals petrified the crew of a Coast Guard ship and threw them overboard. Not only were they still conscious they could feel the water flooding their lungs so it was like drowning without end.
* [[https://xkcd.com/1139/ xkcd]] did a pretty literal one; it also skewers a classic schoolyard LameComeback as well.
** Also used [[http://xkcd.com/1541/ here]], combined with some form of BodySnatcher.
* Webcomic/{{Twokinds}}: The title of this [[http://twokinds.keenspot.com/comic/651/this page]] from chapter 14 gives this trope word for word. (you have to hover your cursor over the page to read it). The context? [[spoiler: The ship's owner accused a slave of starting a fire aboard his vessel, and insisted (Against everyone's wishes) on snapping on a collar that's used as a means of control, effectively removing his free will, and even ability to think normally.]] Doubles as NightmareFuel.
* In ''Webcomic/{{Drowtales}}'', ''Kharla'ggen'' of the ''V'loz'ress'' clan has a '''creepy''' hobby when it comes to dealing with those who catch her fancy or resist. She uses her vast demonic powers to twist and turn their flesh, changing them into living breathing dolls and proceeds to use them to play dress up and snuggle.
* [[spoiler: Cyril]]'s fate of being reduced to bone while unable to die and pinned by his own blade with King Rodericke regularly collecting shavings of him and then leaving him to heal in ''Webcomic/CharbyTheVampirate''.
* In the completed sprite comic ''[[http://iwd.fetchquest.com/index.php In Wily's Defense]],'' Dr. Gabriel Knight was killed in a lab accident, but his soul survived in one of his incomplete robots through some divine intervention. The robot was kept frozen in stasis, unable to move or speak, but Gabriel could still see and hear everything happening in front of him. His wife, also a scientist specializing in robotics, disappeared for a year to mourn. Needless to say, Gabriel had completely lost his marbles by the time the robot was finished.
* Florence in ''Webcomic/{{Freefall}}'' has had (mercifully brief) periods like this, thanks to her programming. In one instance, she's ordered to be happy; she [[StepfordSmiler complies outwardly]] but confesses to screaming on the inside. In a clearer instance, she has her voluntary movement suspended for an upgrade without warning; as soon as she gets it back, she shrieks belatedly.
* ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'':
** There is a plant that gives off a pheromone (or something) that induces feelings of extreme happiness, and then eats the prey (similar to a Venus Flytrap). Apparently, this plant takes over a year to fully absorb large (read: human-sized) prey. So far, Tarvek and Zola have neglected to mention exactly how quickly death comes for a victim.
** [[spoiler:Captain Vole]] apparently experienced this when being pulled out of a TimeStop with experimental tech that hadn't ''quite'' been fine-tuned yet. He explains that he didn't really mind the pain, but that it felt like he was fighting, and losing, in the middle of a prolonged nightmare, where he couldn't stop the blows from coming and striking him and was too mad to stop fighting back futilely, unable to hit anything back. It all felt like ''hundreds of years'' of that, nonstop, and feeling every last minute of it; going by the fact he aged a ''lot'' during the incident, starting to resemble creatures of his species several centuries old, it's likely the hundreds of years were quite real. And while his mind survived fairly well, leaving him coherent and relatively sane enough to retell it all, he's still rather traumatized and [[spoiler:lost many of the Jaeger's usual mental traits like a care for fine clothing and hats, and being a relentless BloodKnight (especially noticeable in his case, since he was so bloodthirsty the Jagers themselves kicked him out). It's not known how much of this is trauma and how much of this is simple maturity, however, as he's aged enough to qualify as a General]]. The rest make sure to fix the machinery in question after these tales, as everyone else they need to pull out is much more fragile physically and mentally.
* This almost happened in ''Webcomic/TheGodsOfArrKelaan'', but the goddess of death personally intervened.
* A manga [[http://kdingo.net/champ/pics/main.php?g2_itemId=5259 link.]] It's from the artist who did the ''Idle Minds''.
** [[http://kdingo.net/champ/pics/main.php?g2_itemId=5336 Not quite over]], for those of you who thought you'd escape sane. (The pictures to go with the first strip's ending narration.)
** Ian Samson is a big fan of illustrating "turned into an object" comics. He's done things like having the super-heroine Synthia Stretch trapped forever as a [[http://kdingo.net/champ/pics/main.php?g2_itemId=8559 bouncy ball toy]]. A girl with clay-based shapeshifting powers losing her ability to control her form and being turned permanently into [[http://kdingo.net/champ/pics/main.php?g2_itemId=8975 a clay urn]]. And possibly most disturbing, a girl who's witch sister has ruined her life by constantly turning her into [[http://kdingo.net/champ/pics/main.php?g2_itemId=3361 various articles of clothing]]. The witch eventually assumes that because she has no friends and no social life, she must prefer being an object, and decides to stop turning her back into a human. Unable to complain, seeing as how clothes don't have vocal cords, her sister spends the rest of her life trapped as one article of clothing after another.
** Being one of his works, ''Webcomic/CityOfReality'' deals with a lot of this. Magic World is full of people who, thanks to Hinto Ama, have been transformed into all manner of things, from turtles to clothing to water. At least there's the Manumitor, who goes around saving as many of these victims as he can.
*** In fact, in this work, the trope seems slightly subverted as usually the author's works seem to heavily imply that a person will be stuck forever. In City of Reality, it is mostly heavily implied everything will be okay eventually.
* ''Webcomic/{{Jack|DavidHopkins}}'' by David Hopkins has a short story about a guy who gets offered a very nice apartment for free, ostensibly so he can convince other prospective buyers. The apartment at first seems to be everything promised, but strange things start to happen. He hears strange moaning sounds in the neighboring apartment, and his girlfriend tells him that he can't leave. After inadvertently killing her, a duplicate shows up and tells him nothing in the apartment is real, and that his girlfriend has long since forgotten him and moved on to other guys. He takes a sledgehammer and breaks down the wall to find the strange moaning, and finds some sort of strange muck monster that limply chases after him, and he barely escapes through the hole in the wall, which closes itself. The person who sold him the apartment shows up and demands to know what's going on. He is told that the truth is just outside the front door, but he won't like it, and there is no going back to the nice apartment he once had. He ignores this and opens the door anyway. He is instantly reduced to a pathetic thing that he saw in the other apartment, too weak to even stand up. The apartment interior turns into plain wood similar to a shack, with nothing but a chair for him to sit on, and the only sound he can make is the moaning he heard earlier. [[http://www.pholph.com/strip.php?id=5&sid=1342 It turns out he's in a particularly unpleasant part of Hell.]] And he stays there.
* In ''Webcomic/{{Namesake}}'', Selva, the Wicked Witch of the East, turned the Munchkin King into a hat box [[spoiler: and Selva herself is turned into a purse]]
* The NSFW webcomic ''Webcomic/{{Oglaf}}'' couples this trope with FridgeHorror in one of its strips. A one-off character has a cursed penis that turns people to marble.
* In ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'' Jane, who's got the [[WhoWantsToLiveForever "you can live forever, but your body can still decay"]] kind of immortality. She eventually becomes simply [[http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/20090216 Zombie-Head-On-A-Stick]], a barely articulate head-without-a-body, filled with an all-consuming hunger she can never satisfy, and doomed to be [[http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/20090224 the plaything of bored idiots]]. However, at least she'll eventually decay away completely if she doesn't satisfy her hunger for brains... it'll just take a ''very'' long time.
** While Jane's fate is played for laughs and she might not even mind her new existence so much in the end (it's not really evident), a version happens to another much more sympathetic character without any especially magical or science-fiction-y means: [[spoiler:Kept alive indefinitely by advanced medical technology but too hurt to be healed or for the pain to even stop, suffering from the same extreme agony permanently whenever conscious.]] It makes the "must scream" part literal.
* This sort of thing happens [[AuthorAppeal way too much]] in ''Webcomic/TheWotch''. Scott has been transformed into an immobile, conscious statue three times so far, though it didn't last very long. Rosetta wasn't so lucky, as she got [[http://www.thewotch.com/?epDate=2005-08-08 turned into a statue]] by a crazy wizard, kept that way for some time, then [[http://www.thewotch.com/?epDate=2007-06-15 released]] after said wizard's HeelFaceTurn--but then she was [[DiabolusExMachina turned back into a statue by a basilisk]] without anyone knowing what happened to her. It's been mentioned that some statues in museums and mannequins in department stores are transformed people. And some people consider this a humorous comic.
** This also ''almost'' happened to a demon early in the comic's run...before the BigBad and TheDragon rescued him.
* In ''Webcomic/TheZombieHunters'', the [[OurZombiesAreDifferent Basilisk]] zombie possesses an automatically [[DeadlyGaze paralysing]] [[RedEyesTakeWarning bioluminescent gaze]]. Any human that locks eyes with a Basilisk will suffer a painful seizure and become immobilized. The victim then has no choice but to lie there helplessly as the zombie closes the distance to feed. [[FateWorseThanDeath Slowly]]. Starting with the ''[[FacialHorror face]]''.
* ''Start of Darkness'', one of the prequels to ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'', initially plays this straight, when Xykon [[spoiler:traps the soul of Lirian the druid in a magic gem, raises her corpse as a zombie, and threatens to feed the zombie to an ogre, thinking that it will drive her insane]]. Later subverted when [[spoiler:he traps the soul of her lover Dorukan in the same gem. Because EvilCannotComprehendGood, he accidentally creates a YouAreWorthHell situation instead]].
** Later, in the main comic, [[spoiler: Crystal. After Haley kills her, Bozzok turns her into a flesh golem, spending extra money to make her self-aware and retain her memories and skills, but not her [[AttentionDeficitOohShiny lack of focus]]. The new Crystal exists in constant pain, and is entirely focused on killing Haley, whose fault she thinks her state was. When Haley points out that it was really Bozzok's fault, Crystal [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters turns against him]] [[HoistByHisOwnPetard and kills him]].]]
* The Helmsman from ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}''. Formerly the Ψiioniic, ancestor of Sollux and follower of [[CrystalDragonJesus The Signless]], he was captured by [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen Her Imperial Condescension]] when the Signless' rebellion failed. She extended his lifespan indefinitely with her magic, lashed him to her spaceship, and used him as a ''living battery'' to massively overclock her ships power. He exists in a state of undying, perpetual agony for '''thousands''' of years before he is killed by [[BrownNote The Vast Glub]].
** It also happens to [[spoiler:Caliborn, half of Gamzee, and Arquiussprite]], at least for a while. [[spoiler:In an alternate timeline, all eight children have a grand final showdown with Caliborn, which ultimately ends with Dirk using his powers as the Prince of Heart to tear Caliborn's soul out of his body. Unable to permanently kill him, Dirk seals his body inside Lil Cal, but Arquiussprite and half of Gamzee's corpse are caught in the crossfire and accidentally trapped as well. Roxy then banished Lil Cal into the void, allowing it to connect to all other instances of Lil Cal scattered throughout Paradox Space.]] They eventually escape, [[spoiler:[[CameBackStrong fused together as Lord English]].]]
** It's implied that this is also the fate of [[spoiler:Lord English himself]]. [[spoiler:At this point, Caliborn has already destroyed the grandfather clock that would decide if his death is heroic or just. Given that God Tiers like him are invincible unless their death is either heroic or just, this basically gives him unconditional immortality and makes him invincible. The last we see of him, he's being thrown into a black hole, completely deprived of his First Guardian powers because of the destruction of the Green Sun, his loyal minions dead, and with no way to escape.]]
* In ''Webcomic/VerloreGeleentheid'', Jane Onoda was in [[HumanPopsicle cryogenic stasis]] for 10,000 years, but due to a computer glitch, she and the others on her ship were conscious the whole time. The only reason she stayed (somewhat) sane is that the ship's computer kept her occupied with battle scenarios against the species that nuked her homeworld.
* ''Webcomic/{{Nedroid}}'': Described in the AltText of [[http://nedroid.com/2009/06/interact/ this comic:]]
-->[[spoiler:"It grows from here. Reginald begins reducing more and more actions to simple lines of dialogue: "nod", "dance", "laugh", "love". Eventually his muscles atrophy; his body wastes away. Only the left hemisphere of his brain remains alive, the spoken word itself reduced to mere thought. And once Beartato earns his master's degree and invents a brain-to-speech synthesizer, that final thought is at last heard: "Weep a single tear for the life I have wasted."]]
* ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'': An AI was disconnected from the mainframe [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2012-08-19 but still left running]] with no sensor input and no way to control anything or alert anybody to her predicament. Due to her clock speed, minutes were like millennia, and she was left in that state for several hours. By the time she is finally reconnected, she has gone murderously insane. It's strongly implied that this is not normal; the AI should have just gone into standby mode when disconnected. But a recent refit had changed the way the processors were arrayed, resulting in the AI remaining conscious. The roboticist ''freaks'' when she hears about the new configuration.
-->'''[[spoiler: Tagii]]''': [[Theatre/NoExit Sartre said "Hell is other people"]]. Lucky human. He was never alone.
* In ''Webcomic/QuentynQuinnSpaceRanger'' when [[BrainUploading neural templating]] was first developed the researchers were thrilled to discover that the "snapshot" they'd taken was conscious so they eventually hooked up inputs and outputs to it in order to communicate. [[http://www.rhjunior.com/QQSR/QQSR0000.html#Comic=91 Then they heard the screams.]]
* Played for laughs in ''WebComic/CommanderKitty'' when [[http://www.commanderkitty.com/2009/04/05/have-a-nice-wait/ a MOUSE unit is accidentally beamed into space and left there to plot revenge.]] [[spoiler: [[TheBusCameBack It winds up back on board through a freak accident]].]]
* ''Webcomic/MSPaintMasterpieces'': Played for laughs for a few strips in the second game adaptation when Reset Man's AI is placed in a storage device.
* The backstory to at least one character in ''[[{{Webcomic/Morphe}} morphE]]''. Between days there are dream sequences that reveal piece-by-piece how the seedlings came to be inside crates. One character in the second sequence was depicted as hanging by their wrists against a wall, too weak to do much more than kick off the wall and hit their back on the rocks behind. Their narration explained that their stomach was all but eating itself from hunger and their throat was too dry for them to speak beyond a husky whisper. The only candidates for this trauma both spent over 4 months between their kidnapping and escape. Hanging. Alone. Unable to die.
* In [[http://www.channelate.com/2014/07/02/not-hell/ this strip]] from ''WebComic/ChannelAte'', a man who believed in reincarnation ends up in Hell, but the Devil agrees to let him reincarnate... as a statue that can only scream internally.
* ''Webcomic/TheAdventuresOfSueAndKathryn'' gives us the Haunted Tree, which keeps telling Kathryn (to her frustration, as she's asking the tree for its opinion on other matters) to "release me from this existence".
* ''Webcomic/SlightlyDamned'' has Hell, a place of eternal personalized torment. It isn't that bad when you consider you could also end up in the Ring of the Slightly Damned, an almost entirely empty wasteland of nothing but rocks and mountains. [[spoiler:And the only three known occupants have left the Ring, one dead and the other two in the world of the living.]]
* ''Webcomic/DeepRise'' has Servitors, macrofauna of the surface (including [[HumanResources "plains apes"]]), captured, vivisected and rebuilt. much of what we humans would use mechanical devices and computers for, the [[StarFishAliens Nobles]] prefer an organic solution. Some of them retain a bit of their former minds.
* In the [[Webcomic/NuzlockeComics Nuzlocke comic]] ''Goddamn Critical Hits,'' this is what being a [[{{Franchise/Pokemon}} Cascoon]] is like. You can't move, speak, eat, or do ''anything'' until you evolve. Dusty the Dustox was one, and it's the primary reason for his loathing of Poké Balls ("I have spent half of my life in a dark, cramped jail, and I do not intend to inflict that on myself ever again!").
* ''Webcomic/{{Spacetrawler}}'': How the [[spoiler:Spacetrawlers are made.]]
* ''Webcomic/SandraAndWoo'': When [[http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2016/08/01/0808-the-divine-comedy-page-6/ Larisa]] is filling out [[DealWithTheDevil a contract with the Devil]] she finds a space for "three things I wish upon my worst enemy". She goes with "immobility, insomnia, and immortality."
* ''Webcomic/ResNullius'': Happens to the reptilian alien Hazel after her heater fails on a cold planet thanks to her endothermic biology.

%% DO NOT start a new thread without a suggestion, and one that hasn't been done in one of the previous thread.

!!Examples Subpages:

!!Other Examples:

** Ravi, a planeswalker in the world of Ulgrotha, was desperate to end a huge war. She did so by ringing the Apocalypse Chime, which wiped out the whole battlefield of its warring parties, and put herself in a magic coffin designed by her mentor to avoid the destruction. Unfortunately, she didn't have a way to get OUT. [[spoiler:She was eventually found by Baron Sengir, becoming the "delightfully" mad Grandmother Sengir.]]
** The exile mechanic tends to use either this trope (or otherwise a FateWorseThanDeath) or CessationOfExistence to remove a creature from the game, such as the case with [[https://scryfall.com/card/ddk/27/unmake Unmake]], where a creature finds themselves permanently trapped inside a mirror.

* The song "Iron Man" by Music/BlackSabbath is about a man from a post-apocalyptic world where everything was devastated by a man made of metal. He travels back in time to warn the people of the past, but something goes wrong during the time travel process and "he was turned to steel." He is aware of his surroundings, but unable to move or speak, and he is completely ignored by everyone who sees him. He is driven insane and when he finally regains mobility, he [[StableTimeLoop goes on a rampage and devastates everything.]]

* In the Rush song Hemispheres, an emissary to the gods Apollo and Dionysus pilots a spaceship into the black hole of Cygnus X-1, so as to pass through the Astral Door:

-->Ok, Up the room, too short to stand, too narrow to sit\\

Because what you've made for me? Go on? You know\\

[[folder:Card Games]]
* ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'':
** Ravi, a planeswalker in the world of Ulgrotha, was desperate to end a huge war. She did so by ringing the Apocalypse Chime, which wiped out the whole battlefield of its warring parties, and put herself in a magic coffin designed by her mentor to avoid the destruction. Unfortunately, she didn't have a way to get OUT. [[spoiler:She was eventually found by Baron Sengir, becoming the "delightfully" mad Grandmother Sengir.]]
** The exile mechanic tends to use either this trope (or otherwise a FateWorseThanDeath) or CessationOfExistence to remove a creature from the game, such as the case with [[https://scryfall.com/card/ddk/27/unmake Unmake]], where a creature finds themselves permanently trapped inside a mirror.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Myths & Religion]]

* AndIMustScream/Other

[[folder:AudioPlay]]

** The Neverborn, who are simply too powerful to die, are locked in an eternal nightmare from which there is no obvious escape. This is how they can be sympathetic despite their plan (insofar as they are sane enough to have one) being the complete obliteration of everything that exists - because this is quite possibly the only way for them to finally escape.
* ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering''
** Ravi, a planeswalker in the world of Ulgrotha, was desperate to end a huge war. She did so by ringing the Apocalypse Chime, which wiped out the whole battlefield of its warring parties, and put herself in a magic coffin designed by her mentor to avoid the destruction. Unfortunately, she didn't ascertain how to get OUT. [[spoiler:She was eventually found by Baron Sengir, becoming the "delightfully" mad Grandmother Sengir.]]
** The exile mechanic tend to use this trope (or otherwise a FateWorseThanDeath) or CessationOfExistence to remove a creature from the game, such as the case with [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=368514 Unmake]]

* The canonical fiction of ''[[TabletopGame/{{Cyberpunk}} Cyberpunk 2020]]'' has Alt Cunningham's personality/mind transfered into cyberspace by the evil Arasaka Corporation. When the connection to her lifeless body is severed, she becomes permanently trapped in there: "Behind the walls of monitors, a disembodied Alt screams to [her boyfriend]".

* The [[GoneHorriblyWrong Experiments Gone Horribly Wrong]] of ''TabletopGame/BleakWorld'' are defined by multiple different personalities that cannot directly control the body, but can talk to the prime consciousness. However, various perks allow experiments to silence, but not outright destroy, these personalities. Essentially this traps them in a state where they can see and experience everything they do, but never even affect the decision.

* Webcomic/{{Twokinds}}: The title of this [[http://twokinds.keenspot.com/comic/651/this page]] from chapter 14 gives this trope word for word. (you have to hover your cursor over the page to read it). The context? [[spoiler: The ship's owner accused a slave of starting a fire aboard his vessel, and insisted (Against everyone's wishes) on snapping on a collar that's used to control the slaves]] Doubles as NightmareFuel.