Cardboard Prison / Video Games

Cardboard Prison in Video Games.

---

• Batman: Arkham Series
  • The intro of Batman: Arkham Asylum takes pains to show off Arkham's new "improved" security system. It takes all of 10 minutes for the Joker to not only break his bonds, but take over the asylum and free all of the inmates. Unfortunately for the Arkham staff, a good bit of work had already been done for him. He arranged a fire at Blackgate Prison to get his mooks on the island, and Harley already had control over the security system. Mostly it serves as a massive Worf Barrage as soon as the credits finish rolling. If the Joker just overpowered this small army with no significant casualties, what chance does one guy with a buncha toys have?
  • In the prequel games, Blackgate Penitentiary suffers three major security breaches over a four month period (two of them over the course of one night). Then-City Councilman Quincy Sharp uses these incidents to claim that Blackgate isn't capable of holding the more dangerous criminals Gotham is producing and lobbying for the reopening of Arkham Asylum, which would hopefully be more secure.
    • A side-quest in Batman: Arkham Origins reveals that the architect Cyrus Pinkney designed his buildings with a style that was said to drive away evil. One of those buildings was Arkham Asylum. This wasn't quite what he had in mind.
    • At the end of another side-quest in Arkham Origins, after Batman defeats Black Mask and leaves him to be arrested, the latter mocks the former's reliance on the justice system, stating that he'll probably be bailed out of prison soon. Then again, he's still locked up in Blackgate in Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate, and he only escaped because an explosion caused by careless guards provided a distraction.
  • Averted in Batman: Arkham City. You would think that a giant prison made out of part of a city would be easy to escape from, but only Black Mask managed to escape before the events of the game, and he's recaptured. Of course, since the whole point of Arkham City is to round up Gotham's criminals and have them exterminated, it makes sense that the prison is virtually escape-proof.
• Zigzagged in Kingdom Hearts II. When Organization XIII puts Kairi in the Soundless Prison, her cell has bars far enough apart that she could easily escape. However, when she does escape, it's with help from Naminé creating a portal in the back of the cell.
• The general majority of prisons in Rockstar Games, prominently Bully and the Grand Theft Auto series, are this. You get caught for [INSERT HEINOUS CRIME HERE] and your punishment? They take away a bit of cash and some easily replaced weapons. That said, Bully does punish you if you get caught enough or during class hours... by making you do a short detention minigame, or forcing you to attend class (which you can fail for no penalty).
• A politician in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City off-handedly states in a radio interview that letting criminals off easy is standard practice to save money on prisons.
• Zigursky Prison, also known as "The Zig", in the MMORPG City of Heroes.
  • Its walls are so permeable that bands of escaped prisoners freely roam the streets of Brickstown, the zone in which it is located — and all the bosses and archvillains who take advantage of its apparent revolving-door policies. The tutorial in the counterpart City of Villains has your character escaping the Zig as part of a massive prison break.
  • Also, some mission maps contain prison areas where your character goes if defeated. When you wake up, all that stands between you and freedom are some guards and a door that can't take more than a few good shots from whatever powers you have.
  • An extreme example of this is the final mission of the "Faultine" series: between when you get the MacGuffin and when you get the mission to destroy it (about 30 seconds), the villain you defeated to get it escapes from the Zig.
• Parodied in Toonstruck. The guard has a sensitive nose that can be irritated by dust from your cell's doormat, incapacitating him. If you're locked up again, he acquires a gas mask which you persuade him to take off. If you're locked up again, the guard has quit in disgust, leaving a note that the key is under the mat.
• Prisons in Monkey Island games are never renowned for their security.
  • You're thrown into a prison hut at one point in The Secret of Monkey Island. The natives (who imprisoned you) go through more and more elaborate door security systems if you keep getting captured, even using anachronistically futuristic technology. They never notice the Guybrush-sized hole in the floor...
    Native: The only thing confounding us more than how you keep escaping is why you keep coming back.
  • The prize must go to the Flotsam Island Jail in Chapter 4 of Tales of Monkey Island: to get out, Guybrush simply says he wants to see his lawyer — which happens to be Guybrush himself. You can also tell the guard to go get some food for you, then try to take advantage of a loose window bar (which turns out to be a bit less loose than it seems at first) or a soft spot in the wall (with solid steel directly underneath).
• Dragon Age: Origins:
  • In the expansion, Awakening, there is the new party member Anders, an apostate mage who has escaped from the Templars seven times.
  • It's laughably easy to escape Fort Drakon in Origins too, if you let Ser Cauthrien take you away. There is only one easy to fool guard (and he has the cell key) in the same room as your cell, and all of your equipment is in one chest — that is also in the same room. The cell isn't even one of those special doors that can't be lockpicked. There are also spare guard uniforms a couple rooms over too.
• Cody from the Street Fighter series has spent every game since Final Fight in jail. This doesn't hinder him at all because he's so badass he just breaks out whenever he feels like it. He always turns himself in after the current tournament is over.
• In the video game of Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego?, all the prisoners you've managed to capture in the first half are conveniently busted out by Carmen so you have to capture them again in the second half. The bars of the prison cell are upgraded to lasers to prevent this from happening again.
• In Marvel: Avengers Alliance, there are numerous missions where the Mooks are escapees from Ryker Island or the Raft. There is also the Wrecking Crew, a quartet of villains who serve as Bosses/Mini-Bosses. No matter how often the player Agent defeats them and sends them back to prison, they're back a few missions later.
• The Saints Row series usually just skips the prison and has the cops kill you outright, but the second game takes gleeful delight in this trope. The FIRST mission of the game has the player and one other convict break out by stealing the guards' weapons and then a boat and blowing up everything trying to stop them. Then, a few missions later the player has to break back into the prison with a bomb to free a drug dealer.
• The prison in the third game of The Spellcasting Series is a variant: the local sheriff is quite good at fixing exploits that can be used to escape so that they cannot be used again, but there are also more ways to break out than there are opportunities to get arrested.
• In Undertale, Papyrus' attempts at containing the player if he captures them is basically his shed with bars so wide you can walk right through, a note asking the player not to escape and the shed being locked from the inside.
• The Perpetual Testing Initiative DLC for Portal 2 has the player enter a universe where Cave Johnson is the warden of a prison in space, where the only doors are force fields because of Rule of Cool. Reality Ensues.
  Cave Johnson: I'm gonna be brief. Because I'm dying. Because I got shivved. A lot. I just wanna get it on record that using force fields for doors in a space prison is a bad idea. You know what would have been better? Regular doors. With locks. Locks that don't open when the power goes out. Man, those blue force fields looked good, though. Every time I saw one, I thought, "Wow. I am in space." Still though, a door made out of paper would have been better in the long run. Would have at least slowed 'em down for a second.
• Fallen London: New Newgate is intended to be The Alcatraz, what with being inside a massive stalactite with the zee below, only reachable through dirigible, but in practice it's this. All players start there, so everyone has escaped from it at least once, they can all keep escaping by just stowing away on a dirigible, they'd throw Unfinished Men in there and not reinforce the bars so they can't just break them open, and they've got a candle-eating Face Stealer problem so huge you can bribe the guards with candles so they'll let you out early.
• The Legend of Zelda: A few of these examples are Stealth Based Missions:
  • The prison in the Gerudo Fortress in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is easily escapable by simply Hookshoting yourself onto the wooden awning and jumping right out. The guards, especially the ones you fight when freeing the carpenters (those having a special spin attack that deliver an instant KO at which point you end up in their prison), may capture and imprison you on sight, yet, they don't bother to take away your weapons.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker has a few to go around:
    • The Forsaken Fortress, where Link's younger sister, Aryll, is taken to after she was mistaken for the pirate captain, Tetra, later revealed to be Princess Zelda and kidnapped by the Helmaroc King, has a prison for Link if he is caught infiltrating the fortress, which is easy to escape from via a secret passage. During his first visit to the fortress, Link loses his sword after being launched in by Tetra via catapult, and while making his way to the tower to get it back, he has to avoid being spotted and imprisoned by Moblins and searchlights (the latter of which Link needs to deactivate by killing the Bokoblins operating them) by hiding in barrels, and also during this time, while trying to avoid being assaulted by rats. During either the first or second visits, or post-visits where the fortress is completely abandoned, Link will be put in that particular prison cell by a Floormaster.
    • During his quest to awaken the Sages of the Earth and Wind Temples, if the assigned Sage is captured by a Floormaster, they are put in a cell in a vital room of the respective temples. For Medli in the Earth Temple, she is imprisoned in a cell in a room containing a ReDead statue, and Link can easily free her by placing her under his control via the Command Melody and have her fly out. As for Makar in the Wind Temple, however, he is imprisoned in the central room with a large stone statue serving as the door, and Link needs to find the Hookshot to pull it down and open it (while wearing the Iron Boots, since they make Link heavy enough to have large items pulled towards him).
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds: Getting caught by the cult around Dark Palace has Link thrown into a cell in the middle of the courtyard he's trying to sneak through. Because the game's whole gimmick is turning into a painting and maneuvering across walls, Link can walk right out. Justified in that, if it weren't for that gimmick, it would be impossible for Link to get out.
• In Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara Croft is captured by Trinity soldiers and thrown in a prison so old and dilapidated that she's easily able to escape within seconds. Of course, it also helps that Trinity didn't bother posting any guards in the prison, and they conveniently left her equipment right outside her cell.
• Edna & Harvey: The Breakout: Zigzagged with the Asylum the player has to escape. On one hand, an average of three patients escape their cells per day. On another, none of them have so far made it past the walls surrounding the asylum.
• In Ghost Trick, the Special Prison holds prisoners protected by national secrecy. However, if the prison's generator is off-line, then all cells open automatically, even though this means the bars have to slide up (i.e. this requires power). All the internal phones are knocked out as well. Justified, as this is because the prison is less a prison and more a holding chamber. The prisoners are only captive due to being under the influence of the Manipulator, and the people in charge of the facility are more interested in studying this mysterious phenomena than actually punishing the people inside. Inspector Cabanera wholly believes the prisoners are innocent.
• There are several prisons and asylums that Twinsen can find himself imprisoned inside in Little Big Adventure, but all have a trick that makes escaping incredibly easy, such as walking around your cell until a guard enters and tells you to "Stop squirming", or shouting for a guard that there's a loose stone in the cell wall which you could use to escape and beating him up when he investigates.
• In Maniac Mansion, you're thrown into a basement prison if one of the Edisons catches you. However, a brick can be pushed by one of your party members, allowing a second to walk free. A key that unlocks the basement door can also be found, allowing any of the characters to escape.
• Prayer of the Faithless: Asala castle has a standard prison, but it's not capable of holding Aeyr, who has Soulfire abilities that work independently of his equipment. He only stays in prison out of the hope that Mia will eventually give up on trying to rule Asala and agree with his view that humanity isn't worth saving. In all endings, Vanessa escapes by knocking out the guards and stowing away on the Odyssey ship.
• Deconstructed in Injustice. After his Face–Heel Turn, Superman ordered Arkham Asylum to be closed for good and relocate all of its prisoners to more secure detention facilities. He even pointed out in an interview how silly it was that Arkham is still in operation when it can't hold prisoners properly or reform them. Arkham is infamous to have a shoddy security record and high recidivism rate, and its inmates are frequently shown escaping at will — and those who are considered to no longer be mentally unwell and discharged tend to re-offend.
• Dragon Quest III: At one point, a king has the party thrown in jail... along with all of their weapons, items, teleportation spells, and a key that can unlock any door. Though this is averted in a sense, since the guard who threw you in there hints that he is aware of the king's treachery, and is actually trying to help you.
• In Dishonored Corvo does manage to easily escape from being imprisoned by the Whalers in the Flooded district, though it may be more justified both by the fact that the prison is clearly made of improvised materials in a facility not built for holding purposes. Corvo's superpowers also give him an advantage.
• The cells in the paradise police station in Postal 2 certainly qualify as this, at least to the Postal Dude. All the cell doors open if the fire alarm is set off which can be done quite easily with the box of matches the Dude gets to keep when he is detained, which begs the question as to why the police never seem to confiscate his matches no matter how many times they arrest him.
• At a certain point in Stray, the cat gets locked in a cage over deep water after the Sentinels capture them and their allies. Unfortunately for their captors, the cat easily breaks the lock by swinging the cage against a pipe. Justified considering that those same captors have only locked up robots before and therefore never had to consider something as small and agile as the cat.
• Horizon Zero Dawn: Zenith created an AI abomination by merging their Brain Uploading selves, then locked it in a cyber-prison for experimentation. Unfortunately for them, the AI eventually realized that since Zenith left all other nations on Earth to die, and thus had no rival nations to contend with, it hadn't improved its cybersecurity - or its passwords - for a thousand years, and immediately broke out of its cell, infesting the entire futuristic techno-society in hours.