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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.
What is this thing? I mean, it serves no useful purpose for there to be a bunch of chompy, crushy things in the middle of a hallway! No, I mean we shouldn't have to do this, it makes no logical sense, WHY IS IT HERE?!
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. Sometimes, there are Dungeon Bypasses available.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- 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.
- 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
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.
- The Lost Jewelled Temple Of Doom Of Offler The Crocodile God (from Reaper Man) contains one of these, successfully traversed (for the first time) by Death. Hearing his progress, the priests note that "a chap with a whip got as far as the big spikes last week."
- Small Gods features this as a security precaution against visiting dignitaries from hostile lands. They didn't count on the main character's photographic memory.
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.
- MacGyver 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.
- The title character of "The Girl Who Was Death", an episode of The Prisoner played like a '60s spy movie, set up a death course for No.6 in a movie set/ghost town, with appropriate obstacles in the butcher's, baker's, and candlestick-maker's shops, like triggered machine guns, trap doors, deadly electrified spikes, land mines, and poison-laced exploding candles.
- Grame makes a deathcourse for the sole purpose of committing suicide with in one episode of The Goodies - and ends up walking blindfolded through the whole thing unscathed in order to answer the telephone.
- Stargate has a couple of these. Firstly in the Season 2 episode 'Thor's Chariot', and then in the Season 7 episode 'Evolution, Part 1'.
- An episode of, wait for it, The Lucy Show(!) has one of these - Lucy's bank built it to protect its vault in order to entice Jack Benny to keep his money there. Naturally, she has to give Benny a "tour".
- For that matter, Jack Benny's never displayed (if you discount the Looney Toons cartoon version) vault.
- The New Avengers uses one of these disguised as a British agent training course. Agents would be shot with harmless little darts to show whether they passed. The villains poisoned the darts.
- The Avengers loved this trope. Another episode had a Death Course in the form of an agent-killing automated factory
Tabletop Games
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.
- And the second and third games actually have special areas that change to more ominous music and (in some cases) turn the Death Course factor up to 11.
- 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 Ratchet 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.
- The first Genesis\Mega Drive Sonic game has the Labyrinth Zone boss in particular, which has spikes and fireball traps, and rising water.
- 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 eldritch abominations. 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.
- 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???]
- Force Grip + Annoying Lightning-proof Stormtrooper + Death Star Superlaser Component = Sith Glee!
- Jack Vambrace, Treasure Hunter, is first introduced to us in Wild ARMs escaping from one of these in an ancient ruin.
- This guy once created a level in Mega Man Powered Up where the entire floor and nearly every platform were made up of Spikes Of Doom. The player was forced to continuously take damage from something non-lethal and use the Mercy Invincibility to get to the next non-lethal damage inducer in order make it to the end, and he could only take damage when absolutely necessary or he'd run out of Hit Points before making it to the items that would only heal enough to let him survive the next hit. A One Up was placed at the very beginning so the player could torture himself as many times as he wanted.
- N+ in all its incarnations is just a ninja Le Parkouring through some especially (wait for it) egregious Death Courses.
Comic Books
- This is Arcade's MO - for a fee, he'll capture heroes and put them in a death trap (Murderworld) of his own devising. One wonders why villains don't just pay him to capture and collect their unconscious foes.
- Because that's Arcade's 'thing'. He's gotta put them through the Death Course, that's where the fun is!
- The X-Men's Danger-room, in its first incarnation, is on of these, although controlled by the participants.
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.
- Then again, it was originally one of these by design; it was also alive, and since it was damaged, has gotten crazier.
- Dr Mc Ninja was hired to infiltrate an ancient temple full of these, blocking a tennis robot which supposedly destroys the world if it's not beaten in tennis.
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!
- The Thundercats episode Tower of Traps is, well, exactly as it says. It features a octopus type monster, swinging blades, trick stairs, and more. Fun for everyone involved!
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