Labyrinth - Television Tropes & Idioms

"I think there was a study once about how sixty percent of the girls in America lost their virginity solely because of watching David Bowie in this movie... though it's got to be a bit wonky watching someone else wave balls in front of your face."

—The Nostalgia Chick, Labyrinth review

Labyrinth is a 1986 Jim Henson film, a musical fantasy starring David Bowie's crotch and Jennifer Connelly.

Sarah is an unhappy teenager, who hides from life in fantasy tales to the point of dressing up in a long flowing dress and acting bits of script in the park. The cause of her unhappiness is her father's remarriage and the resulting half-brother, Toby, about a year old at the time of the action. One night, in a particularly big sulk, she wishes that the Goblin King (called Jareth) would come and take Toby away - which, to her horror, he immediately does. He then offers her a dream-fulfillment crystal if she'll agree to forget Toby, which she refuses. Jareth gives Sarah a chance to rescue Toby; he takes her to his realm, where she must find her way through the Labyrinth to Jareth's citadel before thirteen hours elapse. In this she is aided by various goblins and monsters whose allegiance to Jareth is highly conditional or non-existent.

Is a Spiritual Successor to The Dark Crystal, and was itself Spritually Succeeded by Mirror Mask.

The film is mainly aimed at children, but has plenty to engage an adult audience, not least ~~David Bowie's prominent package~~ the many, many tropes available for hunting...

A four-novel English manga called Return to Labyrinth began publishing in 2006. Three of the four volumes have been published so far.

This film provides examples of:

Be Careful What You Wish For - Kicks off the entire plot.
Big Lipped Alligator Moment - The Dancing Fire Gang scene (though there was a very small reference to it beforehand, it was still unimportant to the plot). It actually was one of the things that the Nostalgia Critic mentioned when The Nostalgia Chick (the one who created the trope) explained to him what a Big Lipped Alligator Moment was.
Bishonen - The creator of Return to Labyrinth actually referred to Jareth as one.
Bizarrchitecture - The M.C. Escher stairs scene
Cannot Tell A Lie - A guard who always tells the truth; its counterpart always lies. The trick isn't figuring out which is which, but posing a question that would get the same answer from either. Think on it.
- However, the rules are stated by the guards themselves, so they might not be entirely reliable...
  - No, it's stated by the bottom set of heads, who don't actually know which route she should take. The top set of heads are the ones she has to ask.
- And as the guards themselves said, after Sarah had apparently solved the puzzle:
Guard 1: Is that right?
Guard 2: I don't know; I've never understood it!
Chekhovs Gun - A line she forgot from a play.
Daddys Girl
The Danza - Toby, played by illustrator/creature designer Brian Froud's son Toby.
David Bowie: More specifically, his crotch.
Down The Rabbit Hole
Draco In Leather Pants - Jareth, both in the fandom and in the movie. Very tight leather pants.
Dream Ballet - "I'll place the moooon/Within your heart"
Drill Tank
Eighties Hair - Especially Jareth (David Bowie), who is all new romantic-y looking. How many anime characters copied that cut?
Estrogen Brigade Bait / Perverse Sexual Lust - Pretty much everyone on the internet ever wants to get into Jareth's tights — if they aren't worshipping them, that is.
Everybody Remembers The Stripper
Everythings Better With Chickens - Seen in the background, and made famous by the fans, who love them. Just try to find a fic that doesn't mention them.
The Fair Folk
Fan Nickname - The Area. Yes, the internet has named Bowie's crotch
Fan Preferred Couple - Jareth/Sarah, despite Mayfly December Romance.
Female Gaze - There's a reason the internet is more than a little bit obsessed with David Bowie's crotch.
G Rated Drug - The peach.
Gentle Giant - Ludo
Giant Poofy Sleeves - The sleeves on Sarah's fancy dress are probably bigger than Jareth's hair.
Growing Up Sucks - Pretty much sums it up.
Help Face Turn - Textbook perfect example played out between Jareth and Hoggle.
Hey Its That Guy - It's hard to pick him out but apparently one of the Fireys was voiced by Danny John Jules of Red Dwarf fame.
- Another Firey was voiced by Kevin Clash, a longtime Muppet performer, famous for his role as Elmo from Sesame Street (and Baby Sinclair from Dinosaurs).
Humongous Mecha - Guards the gates to the Goblin City.
Its All Junk - The junk heap scene that gives the trope its name.
- Incidentally, the name of this trope also succinctly describes the Memetic Mutation listed below.
Knights And Knaves
Large Ham - Bowie's (no, that's not a grammar mistake. Bowie as a whole's hamminess is comparable only to the god emperor of mankind's)
Lord Error Prone - Sir Didymus
Losing Your Head - The Fireys
Lovable Traitor - Hoggle
Malevolent Mugshot
Memetic Mutation - Every mention of Labyrinth will almost invariably make mention of "The Area".
- Including singing adapted lyrics to 'Magic Dance' (pants magic pants! You remind me of the bulge...)
- A friend, upon first watching Labyrinth, said to the onscreen Hoggle in a shot where he's cowering for mercy right at the level of said crotch, "Be careful, you'll poke your eye out with that thing!" It was eventually decided that the costume designer of the movie was either on crack or really, really liked David Bowie.
- Memetic Badass - The internet has it that the aforementioned Area is, in fact, the most powerful omnipresent entity in the universe, if not God itself. Sort of like the Flying Spaghetti Monster, only it's a crotch.
  - You make that sound like it's a bad thing. Just a crotch? Look closer, my friend.
  - Gladly.
- Memetic Sex God - Jareth, as can be garnered from the page quote
- Memetic Outfit
Mind Screw - Reciting the line from a play defeated the goblin king. Really, that's what finally stopped him. So Yeah.
- To quote a line from the Roommates fan comic: "...You were monologued to death?"
- This Troper is pretty sure it's not the line itself, but the realization of the truth within it — he doesn't have any power over her.
Mobile Maze
My Name Is Not Durwood - the only time that Jareth got Hoggle's name right had been on the occasion of "If she kisses you..." threats.
Nightmare Fuel - The Helping Hands, the Fireys, the Cleaners, the Agnes, and so on.
- The Trash Heap Lady looks, sounds, and acts almost exactly like this troper's mother-in-law.
- Not that it need be mentioned yet AGAIN, but...David Bowie's package, anyone?
Only Smart People May Pass - The entire labyrinth...although it's not really judging cleverness so much as the ability to think "outside the box".
- Is that another crotch joke?
Parental Favoritism - It seems to Sarah that Toby is her dad and stepmother's favorite. Debatable how true this is - we don't see much of her parents.
Pimped Out Dress - Sarah's ultra puffy dream dress.
Politeness Judo
Pop Star Composer - Well, who do you think?
Road Sign Reversal - Sarah draws arrows on the ground to show which path she's already taken. When she's not looking, goblins flip and turn the tiles with the arrows on them, so she loses her way.
Rummage Sale Reject - almost a literal one
Shout Out - Sarah's dream is right out of Cinderella in more ways than one.
Slouch Of Villainy - Jareth's preferred way of "sitting" in his throne.
The So Called Coward - Hoggle
Special Effects Failure - The scene with the "Fireys" - ya know, those fuzzy pink things that routinely decapitated and amputated themselves and others for fun - is notorious for having unusually bad Blue Screen special effects, even for its time. This is weird considering how good the special effects were in the rest of the movie. And that it hasn't been remedied at all in "remastered" DVD releases.
- To be fair, wispy fuzzy semitranslucent fringes are about the most difficult possible item to chroma-key.
- This troper knows people who consider the Fireys themselves are either Nightmare Fuel or Fetish Fuel depending on who I ask.
- In addition, the child switches from a real baby to a doll a few times in "Magic Dance".
  - I should hope so! It gets thrown thirty feet in the air and caught by a puppet!
  - It's a baby! It's a puppet! Baby! Puppet! Baby!
Spin Off - In manga form: Return to Labyrinth. Features an older Toby and a Not As You Know Them, grown-up Sarah.
- There's a very good reason for Sarah being Not As You Know Them - Literal Split Personality.
Spiritual Successor - The second of a Spiritual Trilogy, see the main description.
Squee - David Bowie as Jareth inspires epic amounts of rampant fangirlism to this day, while at the same time also provoking plenty of...
Squick - This troper didn't think of it this way at the time, but a 15 year-old being romantically pursued ("let me rule you!") and watched over by a stretchy pants-wearing goblin king (David Bowie at 39) could make some folks squeamish.
- This troper disagrees because it's freaking David Bowie. If anything, it's weird and psychologically squicky that Sarah might actually be pursuing herself, since the entire Labyrinth is (maybe) all in her head.
- Jareth wearing leather gloves and carrying around a riding crop isn't freaking helping.
- Gracie Lizzie has never been squicked by the Sarah/Jareth thing for some reason. But she still gets squicked by the Jareth/Toby-ness of "Magic Dance". Return to Labyrinth just aggravates things.
- When you add in the speculation that Jareth also seduced Sarah's mother, the squicky part is that Jareth has had a thing for half the family...
- Made slightly more tolerable in-context if you consider it a Mayfly December Romance. Not much, mind you, but slightly.
- It could have been much worse - Michael Jackson apparently was considered for Jareth.
  - Sppppqqqrrrsss... Someone owes me a new keyboard.
  - She's not his type, though. Phew.
  - But Michael Jackson as Jareth with Toby in "Magic Dance"... Michael's already been called out on that.
- To make things worse, rumor has it that Bowie shared a brief relationship with Jennifer Connelly (Sarah's actor) during the filming of the movie. So Yeah....
  - ! ...pix plz? Better yet, video with full surround sound? ...I need a moment.
Stalker With A Crush - Jareth for Sarah.
Tempting Fate - Never say the Labyrinth is "a piece of cake." Especially to Jareth's face. You will swiftly regret it.
Troll Bridge - Sir Didymus' bridge
Wicked Stepmother - The stepmother invokes this, saying Sarah insists on treating her like one.
Yandere - Jareth certainly has his moments...

Howard The Duck

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