History Main / HolodeckMalfunction

* Weird Pete's "Virtual Dungeon" in ''ComicStrip/KnightsOfTheDinnerTable'' turns into this, when a malfunction of the VR headsets results in the players attacking each other and one player jumping out of the window in an attempt to get away from giant spiders.
* Explained in ''ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes'' when the "unique electrical nature" of Lighting Lad's body causes the simulator to go on the fritz. Safety protocols disabled, manual shutdown disabled...
* ''ComicBook/XMen''[='=]s Danger Room goes haywire almost as often as ''Franchise/StarTrek'''s holodecks. It's usually because some enemy has intentionally tampered with it rather than a random malfunction or user error. However, ''ComicBook/AstonishingXMen'' makes this into a major plot point: it's revealed that the Danger Room itself became sentient long ago and reached out to Professor X for help... only for him to ignore the growing intelligence and force it to continue to run simulations against its will, reasoning that the X-Men's ability to train for emergencies was more important. This naturally makes the Danger Room furious and bitter, and over time, it gradually gains more power until it assembles a body for itself and takes on a [[{{Fembot}} cybernetic female body]] and identity: "Danger". When the truth gets out, the X-Men promptly label Professor X a massive {{hypocrite}} for condemning Danger to slavery for "the greater good," pointing out that this kind of FantasticRacism against another sentient being is [[NotSoDifferentRemark just like Magneto's beliefs]]. Danger would go on to pull a HeelFaceTurn and become a hero (or at least an AntiHero) who fights alongside the X-Men.

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* ''VideoGame/CrossCode'' takes place in a GameWithinAGame accessed via a [[BrainComputerInterface neural interface]] to connect players to an "avatar" within the game space for true immersion. A certain area seems to hold many players who have somehow become "trapped", not only unable to exit that particular area but not even able to log out of the game by any means. [[spoiler: This turns out to be a subversion, though; these "players" are actually AI copies of real players who are unaware of their true nature. They cannot leave the game because they do not even ''exist'' outside of it.]]

* Pretty much the whole backstory of ''VideoGame/KidChameleon''. The game has a relatively subtle reference to ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', in that when the simulation ends, the simulation room looks exactly like the ''TNG'' holodeck.

[[folder:Visual Novels]]
* ''VisualNovel/ThousandDollarSoul'' has [[spoiler:Future Todd's earpiece, which created the entire game's world and populated it with AI copies of his past self and his love interest Angela. If either of them get their hands on the earpiece, their mind will completely (or partially, in one case) replace Future Todd's mind in his physical body]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]

* ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeries'' gives the ''original'' NCC-1701 Enterprise's rec room a hologram feature, a full decade and then some before ''TNG'''s (in)famous holodeck. You get ''no'' points for guessing what happens. "[[Recap/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeriesS1E9OnceUponAPlanet Once Upon a Planet]]" features the crew returning to the amusement park planet of "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E15ShoreLeave Shore Leave]]" to find that it is now actually hostile.
* ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekLowerDecks'' couldn't go without its own shot at this trope. In "[[Recap/StarTrekLowerDecksS1E06TerminalProvocations Terminal Provocations]]", Ensign Rutherford shows off his holographic training program to Ensign Tendi, which features an anthropomorphic commbadge named Badgey that loads the various training scenarios. When Badgey freezes up at one point, Rutherford gives him a kick to the gut to get him working again. By coincidence, damage to the ship causes the holodeck safeties to malfunction, and Badgey immediately uses his newfound freedom in an attempt to kill Rutherford. Rutherford is ultimately forced to fight Badgey to the death. When the holodeck is reset and the safeties restored, Badgey is rendered docile once more, but still waiting for an opportunity to exact his revenge.
* ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekProdigy'' subverts this in "[[Recap/StarTrekProdigyS1E17GhostInTheMachine Ghost in the Machine]]". The episode is initially presented as one caused by subspace disruptions, but the ending reveals that, after the crew decided that they no longer want to get to Starfleet, the Living Construct on the ''Protostar'' took control of the Janeway Hologram and had her order the holodeck to keep the crew trapped.

* ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice2010'' has the episode [[spoiler:"Failsafe"]], in which [[spoiler:Miss Martian, unable to process that she is in a training simulation after watching Artemis "die" in front of her, loses control of her powers and rewrites the entire team's memories so they believe the simulation is real -- including their own deaths, causing them to slip into comas in reality]]. Although strictly speaking, this wasn't a holodeck malfunction; the only problem was the person using it.

%% Image replaced per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1443997199030391900
%% Please do not change or remove without starting a new thread.

[[quoteright:350:[[WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/futuramaholoshed.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:"Real holographic simulated evil Lincoln is ''[[NoodleIncident back!]]''"]]

%% Caption selected per above IP thread. Please do not replace or remove without discussion here: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1404492079030138900

* The ''Manga/CaseClosed'' NonSerialMovie ''Phantom of Baker Street'' has this as the main premise. The VR game console was [[spoiler:hacked by an AI called Noah's Ark]], and the 50 players have to WinToExit... or their brains will be literally fried.

* The entire premise of ''Literature/SwordArtOnline'''s Aincrad arc--though, as the game's creator notes in the first episode, the game's deathtrap nature is not a bug, but a ''feature''.
* The entire premise of ''Literature/LogHorizon''.
* Strongly hinted to be the entire premise of ''Literature/GrimgarOfFantasyAndAsh (Hai to Gensou no Grimgar)''.

* The ComicBook/XMen's Danger Room goes haywire almost as often as ''Franchise/StarTrek'''s holodecks. It's usually because some enemy has intentionally tampered with it rather than a random malfunction or user error. However, ''ComicBook/AstonishingXMen'' made this into a major plot point: it's revealed the the Danger Room itself became sentient long ago and reached out to Professor X for help...only for him to ignore the growing intelligence and force it to continue to run simulations against its will, reasoning that the X-Men's ability to train for emergencies was more important. This naturally makes the Danger Room furious and bitter, and over time, it gradually gains more power until it assembles a body for itself and takes on a cybernetic female body and identity: "Danger." When the truth gets out, the X-Men promptly label Professor X a massive {{hypocrite}} for condemning Danger to slavery for "the greater good," pointing out that this kind of FantasticRacism against another sentient being is [[NotSoDifferentRemark just like Magneto's beliefs]]. Danger would go on to pull a HeelFaceTurn and become a hero (or at least an AntiHero) who fights alongside the X-Men.

[[folder:Films — Live-Action]]
* ''Film/{{Westworld}}'' features the killer robot variant of this plot. As does its sequel ''Futureworld''.
* Used briefly in the [[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 MST3K]]-worthy ''Film/OverdrawnAtTheMemoryBank''. Aram Fingal gets "doppled" into a baboon in an Africa simulation; everything goes south when he gets attacked by an elephant. The technicians are able to pull him out of the simulator quickly enough, but can't find his body to plug his mind back into.
* In ''Film/{{Otherlife}}'', Ren twice gets stuck inside the nanotech-induced scenarios, once in a loop that gradually breaks down, and [[spoiler:once where her year-long prison sentence doesn't end naturally, and she eventually realizes that her "escape" to reality was itself part of the dream, and forces herself to awake]].
* {{Invoked|Trope}} in ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact''. Captain Picard lures two Borg drones hunting himself and Lily Sloan into the ''Dixon Hill'' holosuite program, which is set in 1940s San Francisco, and turns the holodeck safeties off ''on purpose''. This causes the bullets from a holographic Thompson submachine gun to hit the two drones with the force of real bullets, killing them both (and setting off a ''massive'' debate in the fandom over whether this indicates KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter for fighting Borg).

* ''Magazine/{{Ares}}'' magazine issue Special Edition 2, short story "Tales of the Sky Tales of the Land": The colony GenerationShip ''Argo'' suffers a problem during the 327th year of its voyage between the stars. A meteor impact disables the computer controlling the planet simulation deck (where colonists learn how to live on a planet), and a worm causes the backup computer to malfunction. As a result, the simulation becomes extremely dangerous and several people training on the deck are killed.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E8SilenceInTheLibrary "Silence in the Library"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E9ForestOfTheDead "Forest of the Dead"]] has this as a major element of the plot. [[spoiler:100 years before, when the [[LivingShadow Vashta Nerada]] hatched from spores and began terrorizing the Library, its central computer [[BrainUploading CAL]] tried to teleport everyone out at once, but there was nowhere to send them, so she "saved" them inside herself. However, the thousands of people took up too much memory and made her forget about her status as a computer, so when she starts to remember, things start going haywire, both in the Library and her virtual reality.]]

** The most common "simple" breakdown is to lock the senior officers inside and turn off the safety protocols. More extravagant scenarios can occur, such as in "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E3ElementaryDearData Elementary, Dear Data]]", when poorly worded instructions[[note]]Those instructions being, ''"Construct a culprit/antagonist for a detective program '''capable of matching wits with an android'''"''[[/note]] result in a fully sentient simulation of [[Literature/SherlockHolmes Professor Moriarty]] gaining complete control of the ''Enterprises'''s computer. The tendency for the holodeck to malfunction like this has become rather infamous.
** "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E11TheBigGoodbye The Big Goodbye]]" is the first episode featuring a holodeck malfunction, trapping Picard, Data, Crusher, and a Red Shirt inside the "Dixon Hill" program with absent safety protocols.
** In "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E1411001001 11001001]]", a group of hyper-communicative aliens take over the Enterprise while Captain Picard and Commander Riker are locked in the holodeck, accompanied by [[DistractedByTheSexy a very alluring (and remarkably advanced) barfly program]].
** Between ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' and ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' this basic plot tended to happen at least OnceASeason. [[LongRunners That's a lot of episodes.]] Some explored issues regarding the tech that didn't require it to technically malfunction, usually someone becoming addicted to the fake reality it created.
*** At least three times their holographic technology has accidentally created fully actualized sentient beings. Though in each instance, there was a deliberate action taken that simply had an unintended consequence. Which is really rather [[FridgeLogic ironic]] when one considers how much significance is attached to Data (and his sibling Lore) being fully-sentient ''androids'', a technology which apparently only their creator fully understood and which the Federation cannot duplicate (at one point they wanted to disassemble Data to try to figure it out). Yet it would seem that starship computers can generate fully-sentient ''holograms'' with just a poorly worded command from a user.
*** One time they left a program running too long and eventually the perceptual filters (which apparently keeps them holograms from noticing anything that doesn't fit the parameters of their program) futzed out and they became aware something weird was going on. The crew fixed that up by letting the holograms believe they were real, but the crew were time-travelers.
** {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d when Worf joined the crew of [=DS9=], and reminisced about his time on the ''Enterprise'' with an old shipmate:
--->'''Worf:''' We were like warriors from the ancient sagas. There was nothing we could not do.\\

*** And then, of course, they had their own HolodeckMalfunction episode soon thereafter.
** In an unusual nod to capitalism, notably averted with Quark's privately owned holosuites in ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]''. [[ProudMerchantRace Having an unreliable holodeck drives away paying customers]], so not only do they rarely endanger anyone, but Quark is able to use them to save the crew's lives at least once.
*** Though there was that one time ("[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS04E10OurManBashir Our Man Bashir]]") when everyone's "genetic patterns" got transferred into Bashir's Film/JamesBond {{Expy}} Holonovel for safekeeping while the transporter got repaired, and the safeties were turned off. Bashir at one point shoots Garak to stop him from leaving the holosuite and potentially dooming the crewmembers who were still caught mid-transport. In this case the holodeck "malfunction" (or rather, deliberate reprogramming for emergency data storage after a [[TeleporterAccident transporter malfunction]]) actually saved their lives, as without a body to return to all the crewmembers in question would have simply ceased to be.
** Downplayed in the ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS07E15BaddaBingBaddaBang Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang]]". The holographic Vic Fontaine is threatened by mobsters, and if the crew doesn't save him, he'll be [[KilledOffForReal permanently deleted]]. Deleting the bad guys or reprogramming the holodeck simply won't work (this would involve resetting the program, which would wipe all of Vic's memories of them and effectively reset him, Vic views this scenario as "death" for him): they have to solve the problem in-game and in-character. What's notable is that it's ''not'' a malfunction: it was programmed into the story by Vic's creator as an "expansion pack" of sorts. The crew is never in any danger at all, only the holographic Vic is ever in any danger. This is likely the only time in Star Trek that a crisis is caused by the holodeck operating ''exactly as intended''. (Except perhaps for "Our Man Bashir" above.)

** ''Voyager'' played with this in one rather trippy episode, which starts off with the Doctor embroiled in an apparently "mundane" crisis, only for increasingly weird things to happen. Eventually, he's told that the whole thing is a Holodeck Malfunction. [[spoiler:It is, but not the one he's being told it is.]]
*** That and the time in ''Voyager'' that a program was deliberately turned into a DeathTrap by an actual villain with previously established engineering skill.
** In "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS5E12BrideOfChaotica Bride of Chaotica!]]", the problem is actually the result of the holodeck operating exactly as it should when interdimensional explorers stumble into one of Tom Paris' "Captain Proton" stories. Doctor Chaotica reacts to the newcomers just like a campy, over-the-top {{expy}} of [[ComicStrip/FlashGordon Ming the Merciless]] should: trying to conquer their civilization with his army of robots and giant DeathRay. Being photon-based lifeforms themselves, the aliens don't realize that Chaotica is a fictional character, and it's the ensuing war that puts ''Voyager'' in danger, not the holodeck itself. Although, as usual, simply turning off the holodeck or altering the program to provide a more convenient resolution scenario are not available options, though at least the safeties do still work.

* ''Series/TheXFiles'': The episode "[[Recap/TheXFilesS07E13FirstPersonShooter First Person Shooter]]" features a video game designer's fantasy wish-fulfillment character gaining sentience and infiltrating another designer's prototype [[{{Cyberspace}} virtual reality]] FirstPersonShooter game to kill players (who, of course, [[YourMindMakesItReal die in real life]]). A famous gamer is brought in (but fares no better) and ultimately Mulder and Scully end up going in to take down the marauding avatar. Rather than, you know, just scrapping the killer video game or loading a [[NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup backup copy]] of the game onto a different mainframe or something.

* In the ''TabletopGame/RocketAge'' adventure ''The Lost City of the Ancients'' the heroes have to deal with the security systems of a holographic TV station. Unfortunately the facility's AI has mixed the military simulations with old adventure film scenarios, leading to utter insanity.

* This was the plot of the ''VideoGame/XMen1993'' game for the UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis. Magneto infects the Danger Room computer with a virus to turn its simulations deadly; every level except for the last one involves beating these simulations.
* Pretty much the whole backstory of ''VideoGame/KidChameleon''.
** The game had an relatively subtle reference to ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', in that when the simulation ended, the simulation room looked exactly like the TNG holodeck.
* ''VideoGame/StarSoldier: Vanishing Earth''[='=]s first stage is a training exercise that gets hijacked by the BigBad near the end.

* One quest in the Citadel DLC of ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' ends with a glitched fight in the Armax Arsenal Arena that throws waves of the toughest mooks in the game at you. Unlike other Arena battles, falling in this fight ''will'' result in a [[GameOver Critical Mission Failure]]. Unusually, Shepard is actually ''trying'' to cause a malfunction, as the maintenance crew has asked them to tax the simulator as much as possible in order to pinpoint an elusive glitch and this plan [[GoneHorriblyRight works better than they thought it would.]]
* The premise of the ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' WAD "Cleimos" is that monsters in a virtual reality combat sim come to life and take over a military base, and it's up to the player to wipe them out.
* The premise of the 1987 interactive fiction ''Knight Orc'' is that the protagonist thinks that he is a normal [[OurOrcsAreDifferent Orc]] in a generic fantasy setting, but a hardware malfunction causes him to {{r|oboticReveal}}ealize that he's actually a low-level NPC monster in a simulated reality MMORPG. He bands up with several other bots to escape the simulation, while avoiding the staff and the player characters who are hunting him for XP and treasure.

* While the simulator in ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'' is normally pretty good (it's how you perform your daily quests, after all), it sometimes malfunctions in Interludes or Trial Quests to serve the plot. It's about half and half whether the problem is user error or WrongContextMagic interfering.

* ''VisualNovel/ThousandDollarSoul'' has [[spoiler:Future Todd's earpiece, which created the entire game's world and populated it with AI copies of his past self and his love interest Angela. If either of them get their hands on the earpiece, their mind will completely (or partially, in one case) replace Future Todd's mind in his physical body.]]

* Lampshaded in ''{{Webcomic/Intragalactic}}''. When the cast gets their spacecraft repaired, the mechanic points out their holodeck is an unsafe model, prone to malfunctioning, to which captain Benjamin replies that it's the whole point of it. Holodecks just aren't fun unless they periodically lock people inside and turn off safety protocols.
* To repair Samus's Varia Suit, JD had to upload Samus's consciousness to his computer in ''Webcomic/MetroidThirdDerivative''. JD had Samus take the Space Pirate training program to help pass the time. Unfortunately JD uploaded Samus's mind on [[http://bobandgeorge.com/comics/metroid/367/1 Mother Brain's Tourian network]]. Mother Brain wasted no time in attacking Samus.
* [[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 Doctor Forrester's]] [[FunWithAcronyms CFVDEWTOD]] from ''Webcomic/TheWayOfTheMetagamer'' is specifically designed to fail and trap the user within a lethal "simulation", so that he can use it to take over the world.

[[folder:Web Original]]
* In one story in the Literature/WhateleyUniverse, two hackers went after Team Kimba by trapping them in a sim without their armour or weapons, facing a group of pissed-off simulated attackers. The Kimbas manage to use their smarts to get out, but it's a PyrrhicVictory.

* In ''WesternAnimation/Animaniacs2020'' Brain creates a computer simulation [[spoiler: of his ex-wife Julia, where he imagines the two of them living in marital bliss.]] This all falls apart when Pinky stumbles into the simulation... and by the end of it all the simulation attempts to murder Brain.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'': The episode "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch" parodied ''Franchise/StarTrek'' with the ''Nimbus'''s Holo-Shed, which malfunctions and causes History's Greatest Villains to come back to life: Attila the Hun, Professor Moriarty, Jack the Ripper, and ''[[EvilTwin Evil Lincoln]]''. Judging by the other characters' reactions, this sort of thing is distressingly common. Made all the funnier by Zapp Brannigan's line: "Damn! Last time that happened [[NoodleIncident I got slapped with three paternity suits]]!" And once the problem is quelled, he claims he needs to de-stress...in the Holo-Shed.
* Happens in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/MenInBlack'' with a virtual reality training program. Although the program didn't really malfunction, Agent Jay used it before it was ready because he was upset for his qualifications not knowing that the program was more realistic than expected and could be mortal.

* ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeries'' gives the ''original'' NCC-1701 Enterprise's rec room a hologram feature, a full decade and then some before TNG's (in)famous holodeck. You get ''no'' points for guessing what happens. "[[Recap/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeriesS1E9OnceUponAPlanet Once Upon a Planet]]" features the crew returning to the amusement park planet of "Shore Leave" (see Live Action TV) to find that it was now actually hostile.

* ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekProdigy'' subverts this in "[[Recap/StarTrekProdigyS1E17GhostInTheMachine Ghost in the Machine]]." The episode is initially presented as one caused by subspace disruptions, but the ending reveals that, after the crew decided that they no longer want to get to Starfleet, the Living Construct on the ''Protostar'' took control of the Janeway Hologram and had her order the holodeck to keep the crew trapped.

** Rose Quartz's room in the Gem Temple can create things and simulations of people using clouds. In the first two episodes it appeared, a poorly-worded or accidental request caused problems. Also, asking it to do a lot (such as simulating an entire town) can overload it and cause glitches. In its first episode, [[Recap/StevenUniverseS1E19RosesRoom "Rose's Room"]], it inverts the classic form of this trope: [[spoiler:something from the simulator doesn't become real, but the simulator instead attempts to replicate the entire town surrounding it in itself such that it's almost inescapable.]]
** In [[Recap/StevenUniverseS2E2OpenBook "Open Book"]], Steven takes his friend Connie into the room to help her play out an alternate ending to [[ShowWithinAShow her favorite fantasy novel series]], and [[spoiler: the room takes a request directed at her as a command, and creates a duplicate of her in order to fulfill it. Steven doesn't notice the switch, but does notice Connie is being unusually servile and passive. He promptly hits the room with a LogicBomb by telling her "I don't want you to just do what I want." Initially, the room plays this trope straight, as the fake Connie stops obeying his orders and starts attacking him. In an unusually benign spin on the trope, it only did so to force him into a conversation with the real Connie that he wanted to have, [[CannotSpitItOut but was too afraid to ever ask for]]]].
* In the ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003'' "Secret Origins" arc, the turtles and Splinter are taken to the Utroms' Oracle Pod Chamber, which allows them to experience the aliens' collective memory in a virtual reality environment. Unfortunately, after some sabotage by Baxter Stockman, the environment becomes deadly, and the turtles are forced to look for the failsafe embedded inside the simulation before their minds can return to their bodies.
* A season two episode of ''WesternAnimation/TransformersRescueBots'', titled "A Virtual Disaster", deals with Blades and Cody Burns playing a virtual reality game but becoming trapped in the holodeck-like VR chambers when an electrical storm messes with the system. Simulated fire becomes "real", and they must WinToExit.
** The writers further included additional gaming references, such as the line "AWinnerIsYou" and "AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs." Blades also takes an arrow to the knee.
** The cartoon features the voice of [=LeVar=] Burton, who portrayed chief engineer, and regular Holodeck repairman, Geordi [=LaForge=] in the trope namer, ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', although his character was not involved in this episode.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBros'' episode "Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Magic", Brock gets trapped in Dr. Venture's latest invention, the "[[PoweredByAForsakenChild joy]] [[LotusEaterMachine can]]". At least, you would ''hope'' Rusty didn't intend for it to trap its occupants inside itself.

* ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice2010'' has the episode [[spoiler:"Failsafe"]], in which [[spoiler:Miss Martian, unable to process that she is in a training simulation after watching Artemis "die" in front of her, loses control of her powers and rewrites the entire team's memories so they believe the simulation is real - including their own deaths, causing them to slip into comas in reality.]] Although strictly speaking, this wasn't a holodeck malfunction; the only problem was the person using it.

* Vivian Vande Velde's ''Literature/HeirApparent'' and ''Literature/UserUnfriendly'' both deal with virtual reality games gone wrong; both games, ironically, were made by Rasmussem Enterprises. In ''Heir Apparent,'' people protesting the violence in Rasmussem's fantasy games (and fantasy in general) damage the computer equipment to which the protagonist is connected, forcing her to either win the game or die. In ''User Unfriendly'', the protagonists have gotten a hold of an illegal copy of another of Rasmussem's games rather than pay for time and are playing it at their home. That doesn't go as planned either, and again, the only way out is to win. By "win," here, we mean solve the puzzles/defeat the game. You can die as many times as you like in Heir Apparent without dying in real life. The conflict is that she has a limited time before the game shuts down her brain, and she has to keep redoing everything she already did.

* The premise of 1987 interactive fiction Knight Orc. The protagonist thinks that he is a normal {{Orc}} in a generic fantasy setting, but a hardware malfunction causes him to {{r|oboticReveal}}ealize that he's actually a low-level NPC monster in a simulated reality MMORPG. He bands up with several other bots to escape the simulation, while avoiding the staff and the player characters who are hunting him for XP and treasure.

%%* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': The "Itchy & Scratchy Land" episode is a parody of ''Westworld''.

* The ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' episode "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch" parodied ''Franchise/StarTrek'' with the ''Nimbus'''s Holo-Shed, which malfunctions and causes History's Greatest Villains to come back to life: Attila the Hun, Professor Moriarty, Jack the Ripper, and ''[[EvilTwin Evil Lincoln]]''. Judging by the other characters' reactions, this sort of thing is distressingly common. Made all the funnier by Zapp Brannigan's line: "Damn! Last time that happened [[NoodleIncident I got slapped with three paternity suits]]!" And once the problem is quelled, he claims he needs to de-stress...in the Holo-Shed.

%%* The Itchy-And-Scratchy Land episode of ''Franchise/TheSimpsons'' (a parody of ''Westworld'').

* The entire premise of ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'''s Aincrad arc--though, as the game's creator notes in the first episode, the game's deathtrap nature is not a bug, but a ''feature''.
* The entire premise of ''LightNovel/LogHorizon''.
* Strongly hinted to be the entire premise of ''LightNovel/GrimgarOfFantasyAndAsh (Hai to Gensou no Grimgar)''.

* {{Invoked|Trope}} in ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact''. Captain Picard lures two Borg drones hunting himself and Lily Sloan into a holodeck simulation of '20s Chicago and turns the holodeck safeties off ''on purpose''. This causes the bullets from a holographic Thompson submachine gun to hit the two drones with the force of real bullets, killing them both (and setting off a ''massive'' debate in the fandom over whether this indicates KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter for fighting Borg).