Gelatinous Encasement

"You may have trapped the entire police department in lime jello. But you didn't trap me."

— Darkwing Duck, Darkwing Duck, "The Quiverwing Quack"

Jello is generally considered to be a rather harmless food, it wobbles around and melts in your mouth with no issues whatsoever. However, if nothing else, Jello is sticky, and plenty of fiction writers take that aspect to the extreme. It's not uncommon to see Jello or Jello-like substances used as booby traps in pieces of media. Often caused by a Blob Monster or a Gelatinous Trampoline gone wrong, the victim is left suspended in their gelatinous prison like fruit in a Jello dessert.

For encasement in ice and cryogenics, see Human Popsicle. If the character eats their way out, see Eating Solves Everything. For the opposite of this trope, in which gelatine and other gel substances are useful ways of getting around, see Gelatinous Trampoline.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Jello did a series of advertisements with The Alvin Show in the '60s, among them one where Alvin puts himself in a Jello mold after Dave tells him he needs to put "something everyone wants" in Jello.

Anime & Manga

• Animal Detectives Kiruminzoo: The packing plant on the UFO starts by squirting gel over the victim to make sure they can't escape.
• Dragon Ball GT: Rage Shenron does this to himself as a protective technique, making a giant version of himself out of slime to absorb incoming damage. Later does this to Goku and Pan using his slime tentacles.
• Gall Force: Patty and Eluza end up with a Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong when an alien slime monster captures them and zaps them with energy. The Paranoids intended on using the "contact point" to transform them into a new life form, but Patty ends up giving birth to the "new life form" after only a matter of hours later.
• Tokyo Mew Mew: Mew Pudding's "Pudding Ring Inferno" encases opponents in a giant block of pudding, leaving them open for the rest of the group to capitalize on.

Films — Animation

• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: Upon learning Sam has a fondness for Jello, Flint uses the FLDSMDFR to create a massive literal bouncy castle to impress her on a date. Comes into play with them entering it by walking through the walls and Sam cannonballing into a Jello pool, fully submerging herself.
• Hotel Transylvania: Other characters frequently get caught in Blobby, such as a scene in the first film where Drac uses him to catch Jonathan after a high-dive into an empty pool, leading to him floating in the green Jell-O-like monster.
• The Incredibles: Syndrome's security system includes cannons that fire goo balls which stick their target and inflate to trap them in a mucky gelatinous mass. Said mass is so heavy that even the super-strong Mr. Incredible can't overpower it.
• Monsters vs. Aliens: BOB is prone to do this, accidentally or otherwise. In the case of the former, for instance, he hugs Susan's mother and traps her in his body; at Susan's insistence, he oozes her out. At the end of the film, however, he does this deliberately to Derek before oozing him and chewing him out for being a "selfish jerk".
• In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf - Moon Castle: The Space Adventure, the first thing that happens to the goats' group when they land on the moon - which is depicted in this film as a Level Ate — is that most of them are encased in different giant jelly desserts that happen to be where they land. They all emerge from the jelly desserts with no problem, but not without Weslie freaking out over some small jelly hands — actually Mr. Slowy's — chasing him before it happens.

Films — Live-Action

• Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: To escape from the Highsun games, Doric urges the rest of the heroic party to jump into a gelatinous cube that is part of the Mobile Maze, and thus lowered below the arena when the blocks retract. The move would be rather suicidal in most circumstances; Doric manages to save the group by making sure the tip of her finger is touching the edge of the cube, and then using Wild Shape to turn into a garter snake which slithers in the cavity left by her body, reaching the hole and escaping. She then returns to human form and pulls out her companions one by one, before the acid of the cube can digest them.
• Galaxy Quest: Characters get transported via rocket pods that cover them in blue gel and launch them through space until arriving at their destination.
• Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. The Pearls have rifles that do this to the person fired on. Valerian escapes by quickly putting some kind of cylinder in his mouth before he's glooped—it looks like a small breathing device, but it actually releases a tiny spiderbot that cuts him free.
• Mentioned in Wayne's World. The corrupt CEO of Noah's Arcade describes their newly released game Zantar, about a gelatinous cube that grows in power as it consumes chieftains, signaling the new level. The trick is that there is no next level, so the kids at the arcade cough up money to reach a non-existent goal.

Live-Action TV

• Lab Rats: In the episode Spy Fly, Chase does this to Adam's robotic baby.
• The Office (US): Jim pranks Dwight by putting his stapler in Jello, the third time he's done something like this to him.
• The Troop: The titular monster in the episode "Taming of the Cube" is a gelatinous cube that envelops people and swaps the minds of the victims. It also had a victim before The Troop found him, who was rather unfortunate in his fate of "being instantly dissolved without even a trace of evidence."
• Wizards of Waverly Place: In the two-parter "Saving Wiztech," Ronald Longcape Jr.'s master plan involves encasing Dean in a giant block of gelatin, and disguising himself as Dean to break up with Alex and manipulate her.

Music

• California Gurls: One of the queens Katy finds in Candyfornia is trapped inside a giant green cube of jelly.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Perhaps the most famous and iconic example is the gelatinous cube. This nigh-invisible monster is a large cube of acidic ooze that unwary creatures are liable to walk right into. Those engulfed by a gelatinous cube have to make a successful Strength check to escape, or suffer a slow and painful death - though at least their dissolving remains will make the monster easier for others to spot.
  • From Eberron, the xorbeast is a roughly humanoid, glutinous creature that goes about on four stumpy legs. It can engulf smaller creatures, which places them in temporal stasis, making it perfect for abducting test subjects and raw materials for its daelkyr masters.

Video Games

• Amorphous+: The player must kill armies of various jelly-like monsters called Glooples. Some big Glooples, including Oozles, Grays and Amalgams, can kill the player character by engulfing him in their gelatinous body.
• Kirby Mass Attack: The primary attack of the Snoozroot is shooting a blob of poison that envelops Kirby upon hit.
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: In the Great Bay Temple, Link encounters a Gekko equipped with an army of Mad Jelly. The jellies will converge around Gekko, shielding him and sucking Link in for a combo if he gets too close. The solution is to freeze the giant blob with your ice arrows, shattering it on the floor to expose Gekko to damage.
• Mario Party 4: The minigame "Slime Time" starts with giant slimes falling on top of the 4 players before they push out with the slime still attached at the waist.
• Neopets: In the game "Jelly Blobs of Doom", you play as a jelly Chomby who is trying to eat the jelly blobs and grow before you, too, get eaten. The objective is to avoid the larger jelly blobs, and if you touch them, you'll get sucked in and carried across the screen, ending the game.
• Pikmin 3: The Plasm Wraith is monster made of golden goop that can change its matter makeup. It absorbs Olimar into itself and you need to knock it out with your Pikmin to get him back.
• Plants vs. Zombies: Heroes: The final cutscene of the zombie mission "Battle at the BBQ" has the zombies subdue Green Shadow by throwing her into a jello mold, much to the dismay of Brain Freeze, the zombie who made it.
• This is the default state of being for the Reuniclus family in Pokémon Black and White. They're based on single celled organisms, with a small inner body surrounded by a green fluid, presumably cytoplasm.
• R-Type: According to in-game descriptions, this is how the B-3C Sexy Dynamite ship links with the pilot for control.
• Shantae: Half-Genie Hero: The "Friends to the End!" trailer here, shows it happening to Bolo, at the wrong end of a Slimegirl hug.
• Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon: ScumSoft's security system consists of drones and pistols that encase the guilty party in a block of green Jello. If Roger screws up and gets caught while infiltrating their headquarters, this will be what happens to him. If Roger gets caught by the ScumSoft grunts while on Ortega, the narration points out being enveloped by Jello leads to suffocation.
  Game Over Message Box: As your life sputters to a close, you decide to cut down on desserts.
• Starbound: The animation for sleeping in the Slime Bed.
• Super Mario Bros. Wonder: In World 5's An Uncharted Area: Wubba Ruins, Badge Challenge: Grappling Vine I, and KO Arena: Fungi Funk, the player can walk on the firm surface of the goo and can ground-pound through it and wade inside the goo itself. The player can also begin wading through the goo if entered from underneath or from the sides. The player doesn't sink through the goo on their own and must deliberately act to move downward through it. Fireballs from the Fire Flower move through the goo as normal. Later on in Wubba Ruins, the player can pick up the course's Wonder Flower, transforming the player into a goo-like Wubba, which can swim inside the goo much more effectively (as well as move on the goo's surface itself).
• Terraria: This is mentioned to be the unfortunate fate of the Ninja that apparently fought the King Slime before the player arrived.
• Turkey Fling: In this Flash game, the player must fling a turkey as far as they can. One of the many possible endings is the turkey getting encased in jelly.
• Wayne's World (Gray Matter): In the SNES adaptation, the main antagonist is Zantar, the gelatinous cube from the in-universe game of his own name. He kidnaps Garth and it's up to Wayne to defeat him.

Webcomics

• The Order of the Stick:
  • A filler strip has Roy and Haley discussing fruit-in-gelatin dishes while fighting a gelatinous cube that's engulfed Belkar and Elan.
    Belkar: Less talk, more slashing damage.
    Elan: I'm a pineapple chunk!
  • It is later shown after Hilgya's return that dwarves organize gelatinous cubes races, with the jockeys encased within the monsters (presumably with magical items preventing them from getting digested).
• Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic has sentient gelatinous cubes glide around the passages of Black Mountain, absorbing and dissolving those foolish enough to walk into them. Since these blob monsters are transparent, they're almost invisible in the dark tunnels, though most other denizens of the mountain have excellent night vision. Goofballs caught by them can be seen frozen in place, looking either surprised or pathetic.

Web Original

• Brain POP: In the Zika Virus movie, Moby protects Tim from a swarm of mosquitos by summoning giant gelly to trap them.
• Homestar Runner: In the Strong Bad Email "winter pool", the Brothers Strong and Homestar fill the local pool with Homestar's lifetime supply of Fluffy Puff Translucent Dessert Related Substance during the winter so they can goof around on it. Inevitably, their attempt to use it for a trampoline ends with them fully submerged and barely able to move, requiring the Poopsmith to summon the King of Town to eat them free.

Western Animation

• 101 Dalmatian Street: In A Date with Destiny... Dallas and Deja Vu, Hunter repeatedly tries to get a hair off the Triple D, and repeatedly gets trapped in jello.
• Adventure Time: Finn runs into a jelly cube trying to explore the dungeon that the episode is named after. He tries his best to grab the key lodged inside of it, and he does not succeed.
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers: The 5 part pilot features a giant gelatin mold being used to create an earthquake and rob a bank. Monty throws Fat Cat into the mold, causing it to shake and destabilize.
• Combo Niños: The team can't fight El Gaseoso with just their strength, so they try to sneak up on him. They disguise themselves as one of his minions by traveling inside green gelatin.
• The Crumpets: Caprice gets catapulted into a giant gelatin mold, and remains trapped inside it for the duration of the episode "Murder Everywhere."
• Darkwing Duck: The inciting incident in "The Quiverwing Quack", Negaduck trapped the entire police force in cubes of lime-green Jello.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: In "Knock Knock Who's Ed?", the Eds' latest scam involves creating a giant cube-shaped pool of gelatin and charging the kids to bounce on it. However, Edd overestimates the gelatin's viscosity, resulting in Ed getting immersed when he dives in. Worse, he ends up devouring the whole cube by sucking it all in from the inside.
• Erky Perky: Cecil spends the majority of the episode "Sticky Situations" trapped in a block of jello after he dives directly into a jello mold.
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • In the first ever Oh Yeah! Cartoons Short: Timmy does this to Vicky, turning her bathwater into a block of orange gelatin.
  • "Mother Nature": In order to prevent the town from getting destroyed in an earthquake, Timmy wishes to encase the entire town in a mold of Gelatin Brand gelatin. They dispose of the resulting mess by launching it into Brightburg
• Futurama: Reoccurring character H. G. Blob is a gelatinous blob that eats people and suspends them within his mass.
• Grizzy and the Lemmings: "Jelly Lemmings" features the titular characters warring over gelatin desserts. This culminates in them accidentally pouring gelatin powder into a lake, gelatinizing the entire body of water... only for them to get trapped in the container submerged inside the jello lake, unable to access their dessert despite being surrounded by it.
• In the Let's Go Luna! episode "Yo, Yo, Heave... Whoa!" the circus tent gets discombobulated, leaving Señor Fabuloso encased in a giant gelatin mold. He eventually grows fond of it.
• Loonatics Unleashed: Tech Coyote invents a gel gun designed to trap villains in a cube of gelatin. This is how The Ringmaster and Otto the Odd are captured before they can make their escape. Their whole bodies are encased in gelatin, with only their heads poking out the top, allowing them to breathe.
• The Loud House: On two separate April Fools Episodes, Luan pranks her family by trapping them in Jello.
  • In the montage of her past April Fools rampage from the episode "April Fools Rules", one of her pranks is encasing her siblings in a giant Jello mold.
  • One of her prank motel's traps in "Fools' Paradise" is a collapsing floor that causes Luna to sink in another large mold.
• In the Love, Death & Robots episode "Alternate Histories", Adolf Hitler is unexpectedly killed in 1908 by being encased in a huge jello mold that abruptly falls from the sky one day. It turns out to be a misfired round from an experimental weapon created by the Russian Empire. Said weapon goes on to help Russia win World War I, as illustrated by a shot of German trenches filled with jello, and even ends the Russian Revolution before it even begins by encasing Vladimir Lenin in jello at a public rally.
• Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart:
  • In "Enemy Mime", Mao Mao fights off a blob monster that copies his every move and gets trapped in it. Badgerclops attempts to be nice to the monster, only for it to eat up the people of Pure Heart Valley.
  • The gang is assaulting the Sky Pirates' airship in "Try Hard," so Badgerclops uses a sniper rifle that shoots giant gelatin cubes that encase the target. Unfortunately, a miscommunication results in Badgerclops and Mao Mao getting caught in one and held hostage by the pirates.
• Milo Murphy's Law: A spat of bad luck in "The Llama Incident" results in a giant can of pistachio gelatin encasing Melissa from the waist up as she has to run away from an army of llamas.
• Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (2023): When The Beyonder regains his powers, he defeats Molecule Man by turning him into a baby and trapping him in a gelatin mold.
• The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show:
  • In an episode where Mr. Peabody is out of shape, they bring out a giant Jello cube for Sherman to dive into to kickstart the episode. Later gets bricked as Sherman takes a high dive and has to have his fall broken by the same Jello cube.
  • Peabody and Sherman meet Peter Cooper right as he invents gelatin, and he takes it a little too literally when they tell him to "put a little more life in it." He makes a gelatin monster that goes around absorbing people until it kills himself after having to listen to Peter speak for 30 seconds.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot: In the episode "Call Hating", Jenny hastily deals with a giant slime monster by shredding it through a gelatin factory's ventilation system. Turns out she didn't kill it, she just split into the jello cups at her school lunch. The monster encases Jenny's classmates, and she struggles to find a method of fighting it without her schoolmates taking any collateral damage.
• The Penguins of Madagascar: The titular monster from the episode "Jiggles" does this to Julien and Kowalski upon mistaking them for fruits.
• Phineas and Ferb: Happens to Candace in "Day of the Living Gelatin" after Perry's B-Plot brings the pool of gelatin to life. The gang has to save her by literally watering down the gelatin.
• The Secret Show: After being subdued by Victor and Anita, crazy twin geniuses Aaron and Darren have apparently run off with a "jelly-fier." Before anyone can inquire as to what that is, everyone and everything in the room becomes enveloped in green jelly.
• Star Wars Resistance: Torra's birthday cake in "Rendevouz Point" is a giant green jello mold, featuring a living gorg encased inside it.
• Teen Titans Go!: The episode "Laundry Day" begins with the titans fighting a slime monster. Robin finishes it off with a bird-a-rang, only for a giant blob to fall directly on top of them.
• Tiny Toons Looniversity: In "Prank You Very Much", ACME Loo gets into a prank war with Aqua Loo. During the montage of the two schools pranking each other, Aqua Loo's students dive into their pool, only to find it filled with Jell-O, courtesy of Buster and Babs.
• Totally Spies!: The three-parter "Evil Promotion Much?" features the villain using a giant pink gelatinous cube to imprison Dean and force the spies to work for him. When they try to bust Dean out, it turned out to be another trap, this time with the girls getting encased.
• Trolls Trolls Topia: Poppy and her gang get caught up in an interdimensional scavenger hunt against alternate versions of themselves. They manage to pull one over on "Pushy Poppy" by tricking her into portalling into the Desert Dimension and landing inside a giant gelatin mold.

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