These tropes are mostly about characters or entities which have somehow been imprisoned for some reason, often through magic or other unusual methods of containing them.
Tropes:
- And I Must Scream: Being sealed away for eons can be an unpleasant experience if the imprisoned being was conscious the whole time.
- Awakening the Sleeping Giant
- Caged Inside a Monster
- Capture Balls: Portable cans.
- Cryo-Prison: Imprisoning people by cryogenically freezing them.
- Demonic Possession: Sometimes, an evil spirit controlling another being may be effectively trapped and imprisoned in their host's body.
- Deus ex Machina
- Diabolus ex Machina
- Dug Too Deep
- Eat the Summoner: A person who frees an imprisoned evil is rewarded by being eaten by the evil being.
- Evil Is Not a Toy: Someone plans to free an evil being from their imprisonment in hopes of gaining an ally, but they learn the hard way after releasing the evil being that the evil being has no interest in serving them.
- Evil Redeemed in a Can: A villain or evil entity who was sealed away does a Heel–Face Turn during their imprisonment.
- Evolutionary Pressure Cooker: Trapping a bunch of creatures together and forcing them to kill each other so that the Sole Survivor will be stronger.
- False Innocence Trick: An evil being might have to fool people into freeing them by playing on their sympathies.
- Fling a Light into the Future
- Forced Transformation (if the spell/transformation is used as a Sealed Evil in a Can, whether as a person or an object)
- Genie in a Bottle: A jinn is trapped in some sort of container, only being released whenever someone needs them to grant their wish.
- Harmless Freezing: When a person is frozen, it doesn't kill them, and they'll be perfectly fine as soon as they thaw out.
- Hijacking Cthulhu: Sometimes breaking the can works out.
- Human Popsicle: A person who gets frozen ends up regaining consciousness after being thawed out in the future.
- King in the Mountain: A legendary figure is believed to be in hibernation rather than deceased.
- Leaking Can of Evil: An imprisoned evil being is still able to affect the world while sealed away.
- Living Ark
- Living Relic
- Mind Prison: A character is punished for their crimes by being imprisoned inside an illusion.
- Monster in the Ice: Usually-living monsters sealed inside large quantities of ice.
- Phantom-Zone Picture: Imprisoning someone by taking away one of their dimensions and sticking them onto a flat surface.
- Pieces of God
- Prison Dimension: Evil beings get incarcerated in another dimension.
- Sealed Army in a Can: An entire army that's been sealed away for a long time.
- Sealed Badass in a Can: A being is sealed away because they are too powerful to be allowed to roam free.
- Sealed Cast in a Multipack: When multiple people are all sealed away.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: An evil being is sealed away for a long time before eventually being freed.
- Sealed Evil in a Duel: A good being and an evil being spend eternity trapped somewhere while fighting each other.
- Sealed Evil in a Six Pack: An evil being is divided and imprisoned inside more than one object.
- Sealed Evil in a Teddy Bear: An evil being is kept at bay by confining it in a form that is cute and harmless.
- Sealed Evil in Another World: An evil being who's Trapped in Another World.
- Sealed Good in a Can: A good being is sealed away for a long time before eventually being freed.
- Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can: A being is imprisoned by trapping them inside a living person.
- Self-Destructing Security
- Supernatural Sealing: The power to seal an object.
- Tailor-Made Prison: A prison is made solely to imprison one person.
- Taken for Granite: A living being is immobilized by being turned into stone.
- Time Loop Trap: Being trapped within an infinitely looping event, sometimes without memory of the loop even occurring.
- Titanomachy, Round Two: Someone's trying to free the Titans of Greek Mythology to take out the Gods.
- Trapped in the Host: An attempted possessor is sealed inside their intended host.
