Since corporal punishment is no longer as acceptable in the modern world, especially not in the West (or at least not in Fiction Land, anyway, as plenty of cultures still practice spanking), misbehaving children (and occasionally pets) will be punished by the following:
- Sitting/Standing in the corner (or Standing in the Hall), Dunce Cap optional
- Go to Your Room!
- You Are Grounded!
- No video games, no Internet or loss of other perks
- More restrictive curfews
- Teens may lose use of the family car
- Punishment Box
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Great Teacher Onizuka: Tomoko got sent to the corner due to a series of events that were not her fault, and her classmates kept throwing paper balls at her.
Comic Strips
- Dennis the Menace (US) Dennis the Menace gets sent to the corner at least twice a week, usually shown sitting facing towards the wall and grumbling about the punishment or what he did.
- Calvin and Hobbes: This happens to Calvin in at least one strip, where he's made to sit on a stool and wear a dunce's hat.
Film
- In ...And Your Name Is Jonah, Jonah acts up in class and is made to stand facing the wall.
- Son-Rise: A Miracle of Love: In one of the autism schools Barry and Suzie visit, a girl is put into "time out" in a locked cabinet. She screams and bangs on the walls while a guard sits calmly nearby.
Literature
- In Kim, Lurgan Sahib sent his apprentice to a corner after he tried to kill him by poisoning his food, in an odd inversion of Felony Misdemeanor. Apparently, he did it out of jealousy, as Lurgan Sahib was showing more attention to the newly arrived Kim.
- In Matilda: Miss Trunchbull makes Nigel stand in the corner on one leg with his face to the wall, because his hands are dirty. She threatens to make him stand on his head when he tries to argue.
- In Saving Max, patients who seriously misbehave are sent to what's euphemistically known as the "quiet room," a big, padded white box with only a slit of a window for food.
Live-Action TV
- Cheers: In the 11th season, Sam Malone goes about romancing a widow named Susan in order to get her late husband's classic car, which used to be Sam's car until he had to sell it. Naturally she finds out his ulterior motive. After she doesn't answer Sam's phone calls, he comes to her school — she's a kindergarten teacher — and begs her forgiveness outside of class. After he refuses to leave, Susan makes him sit in "the dog house", a cardboard dog house that's the class punishment for misbehaving kids.
- Full House: Michelle gets one from Danny in "Crimes and Michelle's Demeanor" when she gets punished for the first time after bringing her kiddie pool into the kitchen against his wishes.
Michelle: This is no fun, no fun, looking at the wall...
- Star Trek: Voyager. In "Ashes to Ashes", Seven of Nine catches the Borg twins cheating during a game and assigns them Punishment Protocol 9-Alpha. When Icheb gets angry over this, he gets the same.
- In Summer Heights High, Jonah is sent to the back of the classroom facing away from the rest of the students as punishment. However he still has to do his work there. He gets threatened with being sent out into the hall after he continues to misbehave.
- This is one of Supernanny's forms of discipline: the naughty step (or corner if you're in a bungalow) where children are supposed to sit for one minute per their age (for instance, a 5-year-old sits there for five minutes) to reflect on their actions. Should they protest or throw a fit, the stay would be extended until they calmed down.
Puppet Shows
- One episode of Sesame Street begins right after Maria had placed Big Bird in a time out for disrupting her while she was trying to work.
- In one episode of Allegra's Window, both Allegra and Rondo get put in a time out for getting too rowdy at breakfast. The rest of the episode revolves around the importance of following rules, and their mother ends the time out near the end of the episode when she sees that they both learned that.
Web Comics
- In Stand Still, Stay Silent, this happens to Sigrun. After being ambushed, the rest of the team slips into near-catatonia after the adrenaline wears off. She goes hyper instead, ranting about how AWESOME that fight was, until Team Mom Mikkel steps in and puts her in the corner so she won't frighten the New Meat.
Web Videos
- Stampy's Lovely World: During the start of Episode 137, "Naughty Helpers", Lee and Finnball start a fight, so Stampy makes them sit in opposite corners of the crafting room while he added someone to the Love Garden, and tells them to behave. He makes Lee stay in his corner longer because Lee shot Finnball dead in the middle of the Love Garden sequence and it popped up in the kill feed.
Western Animation
- In Arthur when D.W. is punished for her behavior, she's usually punished this way.
- The Simpsons: When they are narrating the history of Lisa's first word, Bart tries to get rid of the baby in many ways, including sending her in the mail, and Homer punishes him this way, even sending Bart to the corner; tough, he is already there.
- When the Muppet Babies played schoolhouse, Piggy (the teacher) sends Fozzie to the corner for telling jokes, saying that if he wants to tell jokes, he can tell them to the wall. So he does. The wall doesn't like them, either.
- In the Ni Hao, Kai-Lan episode "Kai Lan's Playhouse". Hoho is sent to time-out by Ye-Ye for hitting Rintoo.
- Recess has this happen to the kids a few times, most notably in "The Box"
- Rugrats (1991):
- While Tommy is in daycare, he accidentally destroys a boy's playdoh sculpture and is punished for this with a time out in a pen for (gasp!) five minutes.
- Angelica was placed in a time out while at a Suck E. Cheese's for attacking one of the mascots. It actually wasn’t her fault for a change. Her tickets from the arcade got stuck on the costume and she was trying to get them back. While she’s in time out, the babies try to retrieve them for her.
- At the start of "All Growed Up", Didi places the babies in a time out for messing up the living room. It was actually Angelica who did it, and she let them take the blame.
- Used for a pre-battle quip in the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "Night of the Huntress!":
Batman: You've been a bad boy, Babyface — go stand in the corner!
- Kamp Koral: In "Hard Time Out", Patrick's antics get SpongeBob sent to sit in a chair in an empty room for a time-out. Within a minute, he starts acting like a prisoner, writing Tally Marks on the Prison Wall and tattooing himself in crayon. His Sanity Slippage grows to the point of making a fake Patrick to play with as the real Patrick tries to bust him out.
Real Life
- This is essentially the trope in play in hockey. Players can be sent to the "penalty box" for a time for rules infractions, resulting in their team having to play with less than the normal number of players for the duration.
