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Two or more characters are locked in a walk-in freezer, meat locker, or some other small, contained space. Death is usually imminent. The characters talk a lot, often coming to a greater understanding of each other. Rescue comes in the nick of time.
Of course, in most places in real life such freezers have to be openable from the inside precisely to prevent this kind of thing from happening. The best treatments of this trope provide some explanation for why it isn't so (e.g. the lock has been deliberately sabotaged in such way, the characters don't know how to open the door for some reason or there's something blocking the door on the outside, etc.)
When done deliberately, this is a kind of Death Trap.
Sometimes used as a Framing Device for a Clip Show, as parodied in the second (yes, second) episode of Clerks The Animated Series.
If the characters are locked in, but not in peril, they are simply Locked In A Room.
One common variation is having all the characters go to a cabin, then having an avalanche trap them there. Since the peril takes place over a longer period of time, this usually allows for more Locked In A Room-style interpersonal interaction and Character Development. Another variation has the trapped characters being hostages in some sort of Sadistic Choice situation. Another, much more fun variation adds a pregnant woman and the inevitable Screaming Birth. This version usually takes place in an elevator, rather than a freezer. Sub-zero temperatures are not conducive to childbirth. Claustrophobia makes things interesting too. Another variation has trapped characters of the opposite sex warm each other with their bodies' heat, which leads to even greater understanding of each other.
Unrelated to Stuffed Into The Fridge. Similar in ease-of-escape terms but opposite in temperature terms to Sauna Of Death.
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Examples
Anime and Manga
- Used with some regularity in the Macross series. In the original, Hikaru/Rick and Minmei are trapped in actually a very LARGE area of the SDF-1, but as the ship is massive and not fully understood even by the crew, they have no way out and run the risk of starvation before being rescued. In Macross Frontier, Alto, Sheryl and Ranka are trapped in a small, hardened combat shelter (to shield them from the local area being reduced to vacuum) and the air recycling gives out.
- In the anime version of DNAngel, Daisuke and Satoshi get locked in the school freezer. In an interesting Reversal, they go in as friends, but then their alter-egos start trying to kill each other.
- Subverted in Glass Mask. Tsukikage locks Maya and Ayumi in a meat locker not to get them to understand each other better, but in order for them to better understand the characters they'll be performing in an upcoming play.
- Matsuzaka, from High School Debut, decided to lock Haruna and Yoh inside the school basement's freezer as revenge for Haruna beating her in softball during middle school. Subverted, however, in that Matsuzaka only planned to lock them in there long enough for them to start fighting over supplies (one blanket, one piece of chocolate, etc.) and eventually break up, leaving Haruna heartbroken. Completely backfired, obviously.
Comics
- Played straight in the limited series/graphic novel Arkham Asylum: Living Hell. Main character Warren White, sent to the titular madhouse to escape jail time, finds himself spending several months severely abused by the inmates and asylum employees, culminating to one night where truly psychotic inmate, Jane Doe, kidnaps White during a asylum-wide communications blackout and takes him to the freezer usually used for storing Mr. Freeze. White is then tortured by Doe, discovers that she is going to replace him using a mansuit, made with real skin, and locked in said freezer with the temperature lowered down to zero. The result is White losing several of his fingers, hair, ears and nose and upper lip to frostbite (making for some Nightmare Fuel). He is eventually saved by, of all people, the ghost of the man who White had pushed to suicide, who wished to haunt White, but ultimately ended up being unable to do so. This all leads up to White's Start Of Darkness into madness that turns him into a "super" villain.
Films
- Short Circuit 2 had Ben Jarvhi and his con man associate Fred locked in a Chinese restaurant freezer by the bad guys, and manage to type out a series of musical clues to Ben's girlfriend Sandy for her to follow and rescue them, but not before the requisite talk and coming to terms with one another.
- In the animated film Flushed Away, the hero's first encounter with the villain culminates in their being trapped in a freezer (?), about to be frozen with liquid nitrogen. Naturally, they escape within half a minute; the two henchmen we see the most of during the film get frozen instead (they went to check on the prisoners), but later get free (and aren't dead).
- The Long Kiss Goodnight sees Charlie Baltimore and her daughter locked in a freezer. Charlie uses a meathook to scrape a hole in the ground under the door, fills the hole with gasoline, and blows the door off its hinges. She's nothing if not resourceful.
- In the Kevin Bacon vehicle Hollow Man, Elizabeth Shue's character (the former girlfriend of Sebastian, the man who is now invisible) and her boyfriend are trapped in a freezer. The boyfriend is unconscious and bleeding severely, so she seals his wounds with duct tape, then rigs a magnetic device out of a defibrilator and assorted objects to open the door (which had been sealed from the outside).
- The protagonist of the French film L'Iceberg is trapped in the freezer of the fast-food restaurant where she's a shift manager. Rather than bonding with someone else, she has an epiphany of some sort (since it's nearly a silent film, it's never made clear exactly what was on her mind). Although she's discovered and freed the next morning and returns to her family, shortly afterwards she develops a compulsion first to imitate an iceberg in her sleep and then to actually desert her family to visit one.
- In the third Saw movie, a side character is not only locked in a freezer but chained by the wrists to the ceiling, naked, and periodically sprayed with cold water while the protagonist tries to find a way to free her. He fails to save her, but manages to escape himself.
- In the Danish film The Green Butchers, a number of characters die or nearly die by being trapped in a meat locker overnight.
Literature
- The Discworld novel Men At Arms has Odd Couple Cuddy and Detritus locked in a freezer as part of becoming Buddy Cops. Due to the setting, Magitek has to be invoked to justify the existence of the freezer in the first place. Cuddy got out when Detritus threw him out of a window...
- Subverted in Saki's The Interlopers. Two men arguing over a strip of land end up trapped under a fallen tree. They form a friendship, but only as a form of insurance, as they assume that one of their friends will come and save them, and both would rather live than take the gamble of possibly being shot by the other man's allies. However, they do not get saved in the nick of time as they expect, but are instead eaten by wolves.
- In Coupland's jPod, Evil Mark managed to get himself locked in a U-Store-It for four days with only a bottle of Gatorade autographed by John Madden and a pack of gum and collectable football cards. He now surrounds himself with as many edible objects as possible, including a stapler made of marzipan...
Live Action TV
- I Love Lucy, "The Freezer". They actually did this twice; there is another episode during the story arc where they go to Europe, and they get caught in a cabin in Switzerland that's buried under tons of snow.
- But in the freezer episode only Lucy is trapped.
- Alice, "Don't Lock Now"
- Star Trek Enterprise, "Shuttlepod One"
- Although, actually, the real problem here is the danger of running out of oxygen. They deliberately shut off the heating only to preserve as much oxygen as they can.
- The Babylon 5 episode "Convictions" sees this happen to G'kar and Londo Mollari in a sealed elevator. Subverted, as G'kar spends the entire affair happily hoping they'd die before being found, since it would mean Londo's death without G'kar being culpable — the first thing the two do when the elevator is unsealed (following G'kar's Big No since this means they'll both survive) is to exchange Volleying Insults indicating they hate each other even more than before.
- Equally subverted in "The Fall Of Centauri Prime": Delenn and Lennier are stranded in hyperspace in a damaged ship. When Lennier thinks they are about to die, he professes his love for Delenn. Later, she shrugs it as a spur of the moment thing.
- This is primarily to save his honor and prevent embarassment, not so much her shrugging it off.
- Red Dwarf, "Marooned": With a slight twist, as Lister is in mortal danger, but hologram Rimmer is not.
- Also subverted by the ending, where Jerk Ass Rimmer emerges with a new appreciation of "nice guy" Lister, until he learns Lister lied to his face and then destroyed Rimmer's property to cover up.
- Both The Brady Bunch and Threes Company did this more than once.
- Its Garry Shandlings Show poked fun at this device when Garry got locked in a freezer with Jeff Goldblum. Garry said in an aside, "Can you see this coming?"
- Night Court had a classic "Locked In an Elevator" episode, where Dan was locked in with a gay man and two sumo wrestlers.
- Another episode had Harry locking himself inside a tiny, airtight safe.
- One Life To Live had some episodes involving Viki and Dorian, two of the show's older characters, where trapped in a cave following an avalanche. They learned to respect each other, as well as dreamed of what it was like to be each other.
- Kenan And Kel (not to be confused with Kevin And Kell) in one episode wherein Kel mistakes the freezer for a restroom in a restaurant due to a faulty sign, which he himself knocked over just then and accidentally placed in the wrong direction. The episode eventually shows that the entirety of the restaurant, from the staff to the customers, except for one guy, are all trapped in the freezer. Eventually, that one guy needed to go to the restroom, which results in everybody but him and the main characters running out free. The three end up stuck in the freezer at the end of the episode.
- An episode of The Dukes of Hazzard in which Uncle Jesse and Boss Hogg trapped together in an airtight bank vault subverts this somewhat. The characters come to the required greater understanding of each other, even becoming friendly as the air grows thin. Of course, them Duke Boys show up in the nick of time, and after the rescue mirthfully point out the air vent in the seemingly airtight vault, turning it into Locked In A Room.
- The MacGyver episode "Last Stand" has MacGyver and a fellow hostage locked in a freezer by a sadistic armed robber. It's only part of the episode, and Mac, of course, gets the two of them out instead of just sitting around awaiting rescue, but the statutory amount of heart-to-heart talking still manages to take place.
- A clearer example of the trope, notwithstanding that no freezers are involved, is the episode "Phoenix Under Siege", with MacGyver and his estranged grandfather trapped in a room with a time bomb.
- Yet another example in "Soft Touch", when Penny and a Russian defector are Locked In A Freezer by assassins, leaving Mac to get them out. No heart to heart talk in this one though (since the two first met that very day).
- An episode of British children's show Press Gang had Spike trapped under the rubble of a collapsed record shop, only able to speak to another trapped girl through a piece of piping. She later died of her injuries. A later episode had Lynda trapped in a bank vault and running out of air.
- During season 1 of Stargate SG-1, Carter and O'Neill are trapped in Antarctica (which they think is an ice planet) when the gate malfunctions (due to it being fired at by enemy Jaffa). Carter digs out the DHD from a block of ice and tries to dial Earth, but fails since they're already on Earth. So they spend a while talking before Daniel Jackson's idea gets them rescued, right when O'Neill is about to die from the cold and a broken leg.
- In an episode of Stargate Atlantis, Rodney and a Red Shirt are flying back to base when their shuttle malfunctions, crashing into the sea. After the other guy sacrifices himself for him, Rodney finds himself in a race against time to escape, alone on the bottom of the sea as the leaking cargo hold slowly fills with water. He spends the episode arguing first with the Puddle-jumper (an inanimate object) and then with an amorous hallucination of Sam Carter.
- In another episode, Sheppard and the pregnant Teyla end up in the situation. The former references the pregnant woman sub-trope, but all that happens is Teyla has her baby kick a couple of times.
- The season 4 episode Trio has Carter, McKay, and Keller all trapped in a room in an unstable Genii mine, where they try to literally build their way out through various schemes. Also, a few children show up who could send for help, but only mock the team's plight instead. So they have to get themselves out after all.
- Desperate Housewives used this plot once in the third season.
- An episode of the Honey, I Shrunk The Kids TV series featured Wayne and his estranged brother Randy accidentally shrunk and then placed inside of a Play Doh container by a little kid, who forgot to put air holes, leaving them to slowly suffocate. Subverted by the fact that the talk causes them to start fighting and bumping against the walls, giving them the idea to tip over the container and escape.
- Season 1, episode 4 of Ashes To Ashes — Gene and Alex are locked in an airtight (and overheated) vault while searching a government facility. As is typical for any encounter involving, well, Gene Hunt, no one's feelings are directly discussed, but shirts are removed and Alex gets to come face-to-face with her fear of death.
- In a later episode, Alex, on her own, gets literally locked in a walk-in freezer.
- Only Fools And Horses has one very moving scene where Del and Rodney are trapped in an elevator — Rodney's wife has recently miscarried, and Del finally manages to get him to talk about it. It is eventually revealed that Del hit the emergency stop himself, just to trap Rodney into talking.
- Due South did this a couple of times. Once in an actual meat locker (they wrapped themselves in meat in an attempt to keep warm while they reconciled. Then in another episode they locked themselves in a bank vault (Intentionally, Fraser's idea) to prevent a bank robbery and then...rigged the sprinkler system to slowly fill it with water (also intentionally, also Fraser's idea), not only adding danger and speeding up their buddy talk but saving the day when the bank vault is finally blown open and thousands of gallons of water deluge the crooks, allowing the duo to take them out.
- There was also the time that Fraser and his superior officer, Meg Thatcher, were locked into a giant egg incubator. This lead to a certain amount of stripping, sexual tension, and a near-death near-confession.
- The Canadian show Fries with That?, being set in a fast food restaurant, tends to have such situations happen every so often.
- Eureka, "House Rules" is the embodiment of this trope.
- Benson, "Cold Storage"
- Fresh Prince of Bel-Air had like two of them. One where Wil, Carlton, and Uncle Phil are trapped ina cave in a mountain, and the other was a less perilous probably more Lock In A Room situation (but why bother putting them on different pages?) Where Will, Carlton, and Jazz are trapped in an Elevator.
- The NCIS episode "Boxed In" sees Tony and Ziva locked into a shipping container by gun-toting smugglers. It doesn't result in any appreciable change in their relationship, but it does capitalize on their Unresolved Sexual Tension.
- Similar to the Stargate Atlantis example, Booth is locked in a ship rigged to blow by the Gravedigger, with the ghost of CPL Teddy Parker, Parker Booth's namesake. Booth gets a chance to resolve some issues from his Army days.
- In the Doctor Who episode "Midnight", the Doctor goes on a shuttle tour with a handful of civilian tourists, leaving Donna behind in the belief that it's going to be a lovely, peril-free trip. Unfortunately, it turns out the diamond-encrusted, radiation-blasted planet the hotel is built on isn't as uninhabited as previously thought: the shuttle is disabled, the drivers killed by direct exposure to the sun, and something gets inside - something that takes people's voices. What follows is a horrible subversion of the show's normal Humans Are Special theme, as the other passangers descend into murderous paranoia, completely ignoring the Doctor's pleas for calm and rationality.
Video Games
- The videogame Marvel: Ultimate Alliance has this as the explantion for where the staff of a base that was taken over by AIM Troopers has gone: The were forced into a cold storage chamber, and except for some minor cases of frost bite they were perfectly fine.
- Pathways into Darkness has you locked in an airtight room at one point. A Guide Dang It to escape from, you need to equip the item that makes time go faster.
- The Silent Hill series did this several times, for example the Flesh Lip/Hanger Boss Battle where Laura locks you in a room in the hospital. Other examples: the Bug Room in the Historical Society, where James is locked in a room with bloodthirsty insects and his flashlight battery goes dead, and the Bloody Mirror Room in Evil Brookhaven Hospital (SH3), where the door locks and Heather's life slowly drains, but the door unlocks just in time, when the reflection stops moving. Not to be confused with the Boss Battle with Eddie that takes place in a literal meat freezer, where you aren't forcibly locked in.
Web Original
Western Animation
- The Simpsons, "Mountain of Madness": Where Homer and Mr. Burns are trapped in a log cabin buried underneath an avalanche of snow.
- The final moments of Clone High has everyone literally Locked In A Freezer, but that's really not an example of this trope.
- This happened to Sam in an episode of Rocket Power, although it wasn't the focus of the episode — it was to show that everyone was ignoring him the entire episode because of Otto's mischief.
- Used as a Framing Device for a Clip Show in the Totally Spies! Shoot The Shaggy Dog episode "The Elevator". The spies are locked in a disabled elevator in a high-rise building after the crook has escaped. All their gadgets have been left behind or destroyed as well. As they try to MacGyver their way out, they reminisce about events in past episodes, clips of which are shown. Eventually the elevator gives way and falls to the bottom of the shaft (No One Could Survive That), where they are pulled out by Jerry and company.
- Lucy: The Daughter of the Devil had something of a subversion; the title character was locked in a freezer at work... but the actual danger was that she was locked in with a convicted sex offender obsessed with her.
- Though it didn't involve being locked in a room, a similar situation occurred in the Code Lyoko episode "Cold War". Yumi was pinned under a tree in normal winter clothes while the temperature dropped below artic levels. Ulrich refused to leave her side despite all his efforts to save her failing. Considered a main TearJerker moment by fans.
- In one episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, Squidward runs into the Krusty Krab on a Sunday to get away from Spongebob and accidentally locks himself in the freezer, whefre he is frozen in place for a thousand years and awakens in the distant future.
- Though not a literal freezer, Iron Man in the 90's animated series falls down an ice chasm, and has to review past memories to keep his brain active in order not to die, before he can be rescued.
Real Life
- In addition to the numerous potential food thieves who have been locked in freezers, armed robbers have been known to lock restaurant employees in freezers during a heist.
- This troper heard of a man who got trapped in a freezer and was found dead in the morning, having chronicled the agonizing hours on the walls. Thing is, the freezer wasn't actually working. He died of hypothermia just by expecting to.
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