Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
"Slower than 'haunted house' spiked walls but not quite as slow as 'evil scientist' spiked walls."
"I could have killed him when I had the chance, but no... I had to get theatrical." — Doctor Regulus, Legion of Super-Heroes
Dr. Evil: Scott, I want you to meet daddy's nemesis, Austin Powers. Scott: What, are you feeding him? Why don't you just kill him? Dr. Evil: No Scott, I have a better idea. I'm going to place him in an easily escapable situation that would allow an overly elaborate and exotic death. — Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery
Ricochet: "If'n he breaks loose, or if I throw this big switch on the wall, he gets zapped, ground up an' roasted... it ain’t gonna kill him, but it do dump him inna thousand-meter drop fulla old cables and nasty sharp edges, and at the bottom of it all... the ol' standby, big-aft fraggin' vat o' acid! You gettin' alla this, Megsy?" Megatron: "I do believe so. You weren't satisfied with merely one cliche deathtrap, so you went with five." Ricochet: "Anythin' worth doin' is worth overdoin.'" — Transformers, Do Over
A bizarre and sadistic means of an Evil Overlord to attempt to murder a hero in some potentially horrific fashion.
Usually hand-waved by the villain remarking that simply shooting the enemy is too easy a death for them and instead comes up with something considerably more dramatic.
However, the villains typically make the mistake of not closely observing the heroes and they figure out a way to escape just in time — a form of Genre Blindness to which supergenius supervillains are uniquely prone.
The hero is often (but not always) delivered to the Death Trap via a Trap Door. See Booby Trap.
Types of deathtraps:
See also Death Course.
open/close all folders
Examples
Comics
- Detective Comics #824 parodies the ''Batman'' TV series by suggesting that with some villains, it's just a quaint routine; the Penguin traps Batman in a death trap that Batman easily escapes from — and when Batman challenges Penguin as to this, Penguin admits that he knew Batman would escape, and that he wouldn't have even bothered if he thought that Batman wouldn't ("I even left your utility belt on.")
- Note that the Penguin had "reformed" at the time, and had the public image of a law-abiding businessman. It wouldn't have exactly done wonders for his reputation if Batman actually died in his nightclub.
- For the Riddler, however, it's implied to be part of the same crippling Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder which compels him to leaves clues and riddles about his crimes.
- Although victim to the usual power fluctuation of comic book universes, The DCU's Darkseid never attempts to kill Superman by using his consistently effective vaporizing Omega Beam. Rather, he prefers to inflict pain by slow and agonizing methods, from which Superman inevitably breaks free.
- The Marvel villain Arcade always uses elaborate death traps, intentionally providing his victims a chance at escape however slim, because he's in the business for the fun of it. That is psychologically understandable, but considering that his business is assassin-for-hire, one wonders how he finds any customers.
- To be fair, Arcade is rich enough that he doesn't really need the money to begin with, and so his deathtraps are more for his entertainment than anything else. He also markets his deathtraps to others, setting up obstacle courses that villains sometimes use to train themselves.
- Lampshaded and played straight simultaneously in the X-Men's first confrontation with Doctor Doom: He captures them, places them in situations which could kill them, then explains that he doesn't care if they escape or not. If they don't, he's rid of them; if they do, he gains valuable information concerning their skills and powers. Either way, he benefits.
Films
- Bond. James Bond.
- The Saw series of films are based entirely around a pyschopath drugging a person or a group of people and placing them in a room where to escape death they must either kill someone else or mutilate themselves. Normally, once having done one of these two things, they die anyway, either because they had to do something else, or because the Deceptive Disciple made the trap. Notable among examples of the Death Trap as actually doing what it was intended to do.
- Lampshaded and mercilessly parodied in the Austin Powers films. See, e.g., the second page quote, or this exchange, also from the first movie:
Dr. Evil: All right guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism.
[guard starts dipping mechanism]
Dr. Evil: Close the tank!
Scott Evil: Wait, aren't you even going to watch them? They could get away!
Dr. Evil: No no no, I'm going to leave them alone and not actually witness them dying, I'm just gonna assume it all went to plan. What?
Scott Evil: I have a gun, in my room, you give me five seconds, I'll get it, I'll come back down here, BOOM, I'll blow their brains out!
Dr. Evil: Scott, you just don't get it, do ya? You don't.
- Lampshade hung in The Jewel of the Nile. Heroes Jack Colton and Joan Wilder (the latter an author of romantic adventure novels) wind up captured by the villain, who hangs them both over a well, then explains that Jack's rope has acid slowly being dripped on it, while Joan's rope is being gnawed on by rats, creating a race as to who will fall first. Jack demands to know where he got the idea for such a ridiculous setup, and Joan admits it's from one of her books.
- In Return Of The Killer Tomatoes, Dr. Putrid T. Gangrene leaves our heroes trapped in an experimental chamber where they will be turned into tomatoes after a timer runs out! Then he leaves. Just shooting them would be wrong for a mad scientist of his caliber.
- The miraculous escape from an inescapable deathtrap is superbly spoofed in the 1983 film Bullshot. The dastardly Otto von Bruno completely immobilises the hero "Bullshot" Crummond with a Converse Forcefield. As soon as anyone opens the door it will Reverse The Polarity and detonate the stick of dynamite in Bullshot's mouth. Otto is, needless to say, rather disconcerted when Bullshot later turns up alive.
"When you directed Dobbs to the room where I was paralysed, there was one small thing you hadn't accounted for — that he would be wearing a regimental club tie which is 100% silk! The static electricity temporarily neutralised the forcefield, giving me time to take advantage of the inflammable properties of the brandy that you offered me earlier. Within the small amount of neck movement available to me under the magnetic paralysis, I formed my nasal cavity into a type of Liebig condenser, thereby concentrating the alcohol fumes in one place. I then forced the fumes down each nostril with such intensity that they were combusted by the lighted end of the dynamite, thus forming a natural blowtorch, which completely severed the fuse, rendering the dynamite totally harmless. The rest was easy."
Literature
- Averted brutally in one of the James Bond novels, You Only Live Twice, when he sneaks into a Japanese castle. He peeks through a keyhole, and sees a guy at the far end of a hallway, fiddling with something beside a door, then leaving. Upon entering, he makes it halfway across the room before the floor falls out from under him. As he falls, he berates himself for not remembering the traditional traps of such castles. And, of course, he nearly dies.
- The Pit and the Pendulum, making this Older Than Radio.
- Inverted in the Sharpe series of novels, specifically the India trilogy. It is antihero Richard Sharpe who keeps throwing his nemesis, Sgt. Obadiah Hakeswill, into a villain's recently abandoned death traps and then leaving him to die. Of course, Hakeswill always survives. In Sharpe's Tiger, Sharpe throws Hakeswill into a pit of tigers. In Sharpe's Triumph, he leaves Hakeswill under the foot of an elephant trained for executions.
- Used by Warlord Zsinj in Solo Command. While setting up a booby-trapped industrial site for the Wraiths to hit, the baddies decided it'd be fun to drop them into an incinerator. It almost works, too - they remember to send a squad of troops to demand the Wraiths hand over their explosives. The Wraiths' demo expert doesn't fall for it and throws a pack full of rations to the troops, and proceeds to get the hell out of there before the enemy realizes what the hell just happened.
- The bad guys are also smart about it. They ALSO send in reinforcements as soon as the heroes escape, cut off all communications, and send an extremely large number of troops to handle the back-up. Still fails, but they get points for trying.
- Almost every frickin' installment in the Alex Rider series includes a deathtrap at the critical plot point.
- Parodied several times in Discworld, most notably in Guards Guards:
"The phrase 'Set a thief to catch a thief' had by this time (after strong representations from the Thieves' Guild) replaced a much older and quintessentially Ankh-Morporkian proverb, which was 'Set a deep hole with spring-loaded sides, tripwires, whirling knife blades driven by water power, broken glass and scorpions, to catch a thief.'"
Live Action TV
- The Batman live-action series from the 1960s used this plot device as a typical schtick for the Cliff Hangers. The trope remains common in Batman comics; the Riddler in particular seems fond of death traps. (This is slightly more excusable in Batman, since most of the villains are insane.)
- The series The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. often involved deathtraps. Some were relatively simple, like leaving the heroes to drown in quicksand. Others were far more convoluted, such as binding the victims to a tree with dampened straps of rawhide. Rawhide shrinks when it dries, which would crush the ribs of the victims. That's not what kills them, though; it's the rifle pointed at the victims with a dampened rawhide strap attached to the trigger. See, I told you it was convoluted.
- The deathtrap as a cliffhanger was common to old Republic Serials as well as comic books, which Brisco County Jr. was an homage to. A similar homage/parody can be seen in SCTV's fake cowboy serial Six Gun Justice, where the main characters are left in a deathtrap at the end of each episode (such as being tied to a lit powderkeg, or being left trapped in a room with a wild bear) actually seen being killed, and then getting away from it at the beginning of the next episode with a ridiculous convoluted explanation as to how they got free in the nick of time.
- Wouldn't it have been great if some actual latter-day cliffhanger had been Genre Savvy enough to have an episode where they don't show the hero's escape from the death trap at the beginning, and he just pops up back at headquarters or wherever everyone else is waiting for him, says he'll explain how he escaped later, and never does?
- Expertly parodied on an episode of Jonathan Creek, in which Jonathan and Carla are trapped by villains in a cage that has been suspended over metal spikes as part of a magic trick, with the rope holding the cage set on fire... however, as Jonathan knows it's a magic trick, he also knows that there's actually a steel cable under the rope suspending it as part of the trick, so he's not particularly worried.
- In the KateModern episode "The Ice Man", Terrence locks Kate's Watcher in a freezer van. Something of an inversion, since the Watcher is the more obviously villainous of the two characters.
- TOS episode "The Jeopardy Room" of The Twilight Zone. A Soviet commissar traps a defector inside a hotel room with an hidden explosive Booby Trap. If the defector finds the bomb within the time limit, he lives. If not, he dies. The defector figures out the truth and brilliantly turns the tables.
- The Sci Fi Channel's new game show Estate of Panic simply revels in this, with each room the contestants need to search for money in having a particular "deadly" trap, many inspired from the above list.
- In Doctor Who, the Master has always used both simple booby traps and elaborate deathtraps against the Doctor and his companions. As seen in The Sound of the Drums, the Master has now become Genre Savvy enough to know his Arch Enemy will always escape the simple traps, but they're a useful means of putting additional pressure on the Doctor until he falls into the real trap.
- In the 1960s spy series The Man From UNCLE, a Death Trap was often used by THRUSH (or whatever other threat to world security U.N.C.L.E. was battling that week) as an alternative to shooting the heroes. Almost all of the two-part episodes used a Death Trap to set up a Cliff Hanger between the episodes, but the single episodes had their share of death traps, too (these were often used against only one of the heroes, setting up a Big Damn Heroes moment for the other).
Video Games
- A particularly egregious example from the 2004 video game Everything or Nothing: the villain captures James Bond and takes him to his underground mine, where he straps him to a table, points a large mining laser at him, turns the laser on, and then leaves the room, leaving not so much as a guard to notice when Bond inevitably escapes.
- The game Dwarf Fortress allows you to construct several different kinds of death traps for your enemies and / or residents, including most of the ones listed on this page.
- There is a whole series
 of games released by Tecmo where YOU are the one in control of the death traps that you set up.
- Nearly every Nancy Drew game features a form of a death trap.
- An old school game for NES called Nightshade uses this for means to continue. So basically, to continue the game, your character is put on a Death Trap that must be solved with your wits rather than merely pressing start, but of course, continuing too many times results you being put in an inescapable Death Trap that causes game over.
- Done to Sonic in Sonic Adventure 2. Dr. Eggman, who is at that point armed with a blaster and an enhanced mech, is offered a fake Chaos Emerald in exchange for Amy. Eggman knows it's a fake and tricks Sonic into placing it on the floor of a capsule, which he seals, ejects and hurls toward the atmosphere where it will blow up. The flaw is that not only is Sonic's "fake" Chaos Emerald partly real, it's via Shadow Sonic escapes.
- The Fu Syndicate's Mandarin in Vampire Bloodlines averts it until he stops averting it. The Mandarin observes every deathtrap he puts the player through, and when he sends Mooks and looks away the player has the opportunity to escape.
- Lampshaded in Crash: Mind over Mutant when Doctor Cortex orders the Grimlies to kill Crash quickly. "No games, no foolishness, no death traps that take ten flipping hours."
- In Half Life, there's the part where Freeman gets knocked out and thrown into a garbage crusher. By using the conveniently placed crates that are to be crushed along with you, you can jump up above the compressing walls. The whole thing could have been averted by a simple bullet to the head.
Western Animation
Real Life
- There was a bizarre real-life murder involving something like this. A pizza delivery man had a bomb strapped to his neck and was required to rob a bank. He supposedly had instructions for disabling the bomb, but was stopped by the police, after which the bomb exploded, killing him.
|
|
