This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Mith Removed examples:
- George Orwell used it in his novel 1984, where those who don't crack under normal Thought Police interrogation techniques are threatened with a trip to "Room 101".
- In Discworld novel Night Watch, the "ginger beer trick" has the same effect. Many threats are made and once the characters even go as far as buying a six-pack of ginger beer. It is not opened; the faked sound of a bottle opening is enough to make anybody talk.
The main thing I'm taking away from the article is that the operation of the Maximum Fun Chamber is unspecified to the audience. Room 101's method is explicitly given. Ginger beer operates on a different trope: leaving characters in the dark and giving them some things for their imagination to overreact to.
Duckluck: Regarding the name, the page says, "Named for Hazel Green's isolation cell in the webcomic College Roomies From Hell!!! (which, ironically enough, is not only shown, but is a genuinely serious threat as well)[...]," but if the chamber was shown, then it's not actually an example of this trope at all. Also, CRFH(!!!) is an incredibly obscure (and bad) webcomic, and maybe ten people on the Wiki will get the reference. Let's change it to something relevant. Also, is this trope referring to any time a torture technique is described as being terrible but is never shown, or is it referring to the tendency of fictional torture devices to have cheery euphemistic names? It can't really be both, as they're two separate tropes, but neither the main description nor the examples seem to be able to agree on which one this page is meant to be.
Incidentally, I brought this up before, but it was apparently lost in the Great Crash, and, honestly, I'd forgotten it existed (not surprising given its meager number of Wicks). Oh well, better now than never.
D Farrey: I encountered this trope in a dream. Someone informed me in said dream that there was a way to kill someone (possibly death via insanity) with a featureless white room, 5000 sheets of white paper, and endless white noise. It was called "White Death."
