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Please note that we have added a consequence for failure. Any contact with the chamber floor will result in an 'unsatisfactory' mark on your official testing record, followed by death. Good luck!
Another day, another death course.
The linear version of the Death Trap, the Death Course is a gauntlet through which a hero must pass, using all his acrobatic skills, guile, Le Parkour, and witty bravado. Essentially a sequence of Booby Traps.
These can be found in:
Any of the pitfalls included under Death Trap may be used in the Death Course, along with a few mobile classics of its own:
The Death Course makes a mundane walk in the park into a slightly less sadistic version of football training camp. It's common in video games where hazards are commonplace, and action series.
Examples:
Live Action TV
- Angel runs through one of these to save Darla's life, though it should be noted that this was set up for the explicit purpose of testing the mettle of applicants to a specific and quite powerful supernatural favor.
- British game show The Crystal Maze (hosted by Richard "Riff-Raff" O'Brien of Rocky Horror Picture Show fame) presented a much-toned down version as the central set piece of the program.
- Mac Gyver features several death courses, some linear, some (implicitly) not, typically they are associated with his arch-nemesis Murdoc. One particularly blatant episode (which has a rather "Man with the Golden Gun" feel) involved a reformed Murdoc enlisting Mac's help to save Murdoc's sister, and being forced to traverse a linear Death Course by Murdoc's former mentor appropriately called "Death Row".
- The game shows Legends Of The Hidden Temple, Viking: The Ultimate Warrior and Sasuke (known as Ninja Warrior in North America) have these either as stages or take place within them entirely. (The games in Takeshis Castle, known in America as MXC, are too separated to count.)
- The obstacles in Knightmare - the only children's game show where you could (virtually) die by being impaled on spikes, sawn in half by giant blades, having your head knocked off by flying bits of masonry, falling into bottomlessness after stepping on the wrong tile of an Indiana Jones-style causeway, and so on and so forth.
Anime
- Hanaukyo Maid Tai La Verité has one hidden under the front lawn of the mansion.
- In Full Metal Alchemist, Ed discovers one of these on his way into the Fifth Laboratory. After the first few traps, though, he gets sick of it and transmutes the hallway to have perfectly smooth, unbroken walls and walks straight through.
- The offshore oil rig/cathedral from roughly the middle of Sailor Moon's third season. Complete with flying panels and completely different panels that shoot apparently invisible darts.
Manga
- The Dog Race in Deadman Wonderland features swinging pendulum blades, flamethrowers, electrocuted water, and a disintegrating floor that empties into a pit of spikes. Because DW is a publicly open prison/themepark, the horrific deaths and disfigurations that result from this race explained as "special effects" a la a stunt show.
Film
- The Indiana Jones films, but most notably the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark, as noted above.
- In Galaxy Quest, the characters are moving through a spaceship based on the one in the TV show they starred in. When there's a Death Course down one corridor, one asks why the heck such a thing would be in a spaceship. The answer is, of course, because it was in the TV show.
- The execrable Dungeons And Dragons movie from 2000 had a Death Course used for training in the Thieves' Guild, which the hero had to run. By purest coincidence, the guildmaster was played by Richard O'Brien, who used his Catch Phrases from The Crystal Maze.
- The opening of the "Weird Al" Yankovic movie UHF is a loving parody of the famous Indiana Jones sequence, right down to the giant rolling stone ball. However, this one can navigate and turn corners.
- The horrible Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone has Niki (Molly Ringwald) going through the heavy metal version of this, just to end up facing the Big Bad anyway.
- Let's not forget the path into Alcatraz in The Rock.
- This troper doesn't understand why Sean Connery had to roll through the fire to escape originally. Rolling through the fire takes him in; to get out he just has to open the door, as he does in the film to let the SEALS in.
- James Bond movies:
Literature
- In the Alex Rider book Eagle Strike, Alex is thrown into an exact replica of a Aztec level of a video game by the game's creator. This features darts, slippery surfaces, a robot snake which is a real snake in body armor and two Aztec gods (guards in costume).
- Matthew Reilly's books Seven Deadly Wonders and The Six Sacred Stones- almost all the action sequences take place in Death courses.
- In the Discworld books, it is heavily implied that Lord Vetinari has one of these set up in the passage that leads to Leonard of Quirm's cell. Or maybe that's just what he wants you to think.
- Leonard apologizes earnestly for designing it, so it is far more likely to be true.
Western Animation
- Kim Possible has faced many, notably an ancient monkey temple in Cambodia in the episode "Monkey Fist Strikes".
- The Raiders deathcourse is parodied at the beginning of The Simpsons episode "Milhouse Falls in Love."
- In The Spectacular Spider Man, The Green Goblin sets up one of these for Spider-Man and Tombstone in a refinery with No OSHA Compliance, stuffed to the gills with bombs.
- In a episode of Mucha Lucha, Rikochet ends up taking on soccer, and is doing a rather... challenging drill. As examplified by his coach: "You must run the course like your life depends on it! Because, a matter of fact... it does!"
- In Danny Phantom, Fright Knight's entire castle is a Death Course!
Video Games
- Tomb Raider, in which most of the tombs are equipped with diabolical anti-raider devices.
- Prince Of Persia, since day one, has had these in every castle of the ancient world. There are some paranoid sultans out there, apparently. (In Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, it's slightly more reasonable — the Death Courses aren't activated until partway through, whereupon the Prince helps a guard set them off to deal with the invading menace. Only after the fact does he realize he's just trapped himself behind the security... and it does nothing to the enemies. He actually notes this aloud.)
- Arguably, most parts of the God of War series not concerning killing undead skeletons are Death Courses.
- However, the game has two areas that are intentional Death Courses, rather than being naturally inhospitable or dangerous due to damage: The Temple of Pandora (including the Cliffs of Madness), and Hades. The Temple of Pandora is justified, as it's explicitly designed for the sole purpose of killing anyone unworthy of obtaining Pandora's Box. Hades seems justified at first, as they wouldn't want people escaping... then Fridge Logic kicks in, and you realize that they wouldn't need a Death Course to keep people from escaping if they didn't have a Death Course over the River Styx for people to grab onto and avoid falling in. Ooops.
- This editor got the impression that the Hades death course was setup by Hades (the god) to let Kratos out. Who do you think the old man at the end of it was anyway?
- Zeus. Same voice actor, calls him son (which comes into play in the second game), has the requisite white beard... though the fingers in his head were awfully Hades-ish...
- Sly Cooper has had its share, as well.
- The Crash Bandicoot games are mostly a combination of the various types of Death Courses, with most of the pitfalls included.
- The Ratchet And Clank games have a few, most often arranged as futuristic game-shows like "Annihilation Nation". One of these is literally called "Path of Death", another simply "Death Course."
- Lampshaded in Rachet And Clank: Up Your Arsenal, where, upon being told that the only way to retrieve a mission-critical item is to run through the Annihilation Nation death course, Rachet responds nonchalantly with the quote at the top of this page, much to the surprise of his companions.
- Most Platformer levels, in fact, including the Super Mario Bros and Sonic The Hedgehog games.
- Creating these are the whole point of the Deception trap-simulation games. Extra points for combos! Spring Wall+Giant Flaming Boulder+Floor Spikes+Electric Chair+Lava Wall= 1 very dead pursuer. Clearly these creaky old mansions are not held to OSHA standards, either.
- Two words: Black Mesa.
- But at least it was up to OSHA standards until the catastrophic end of the world.
- Hello, and welcome to the Aperture Science Enrichment Center.
- Both Max Payne games have a level where you have to run through a building as it is burning down around you, escaping by finding the "safe route" out of the fire and generally straight into the arms of the baddies.
- The final level on the path to the fourth ending of Drakengard involves having to fly your dragon in, around, and between legions of cosmic horrors. If you take three hits or so from their homing attacks, you fail.
- Quest for Glory 1 has two of these, the first played straight, the second played for laughs. In the first, there are brigand archers on either side of the room, a trap door hidden under a rug (with a "Walk here" sign on it, written kinda shakily as if the writer were laughing at the time), two tripwires, and a bridge that dumps you into a pit if you walk on it. The second death course is designed by the brigand warlock (who is actually the old court jester following the cursed daughter of the baron, who leads the brigands), and considering his nature, it almost makes sense that the room completely and totally defies logic. Doors will fall off their hinges and dump you into pits, which causes you to roll through a hole in the wall on the other side of the room and into another pit... which then dumps you out of the same exact hole. It doesn't help that the warlock himself is throwing things at you the entire time, and laughs while you roll along. Additionally, the room has Escher Physics, and walking through a door on one end brings you out on the other side. It actually hangs a lampshade on it with one of messages "M.C. Escher would love this place."
- The most fun part of the game Evil Genius was creating death courses for the AI heroes to attempt. The more elaborate they were, the more points you got if they tripped them.
- The K'chekrik Gauntlet in Heretic 2.
- The Gauntlet in Nox, through which prospective Warriors must fight their way to show they've got what it takes.
- Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks has a good number of these.
- We seriously got this far without mentioning I Wanna Be The Guy?
- Dwarf Fortress lets you build these as a very effective method of keeping your fortress safe from invaders. Interestingly, you can make an auxiliary entrance which invaders are forced to take when your drawbridge is up or your main entrance is sealed off in some other way. This entrance, of course, can be extremely long and extremely deadly.
- The final mission of Thief:The Dark Project.
- Oni Island in Okami is a huge deathtrap... which is apparently entertainment for the local youkai. There are even rules for these areas posted on a small, hard to miss sign right before them. And don't get me started on Tobi, the game master for the largest of these death courses...
- In Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, the Death Star level is basically a series of Laser Hallways on steroids! Do the words "Commence Primary Ignition" mean anything to you???
Tabletop Games
- In Roborally, each of the players navigates a robot through a Death Course created by a bored central control computer.
Webcomics
- Kind of subverted by good old Eight Bit Theatre: To become the bearded warriors and therefore told the earth orbs location the light warriors are suppossed to go through the four hundred bearded trials of strength
 which black mage solves (almost) single-handedly by hadokening the whole course.
- In Reality Experiment, one of the main characters has to run a death course to return to life after being killed. The price of failure is eternal torment. However, after being asked by the Grim Reaper('s assistant) to try to avoid the grinding gears at the beginning, since it jams the whole course and takes forever to clear up, the character throws the Grim Reaper into the gears to jam the whole course and run back to life.
- Most of Castle Heterodyne in Girl Genius has turned into one of these by the time Agatha enters it.
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