History AndIMustScream / LiveActionTV

* In the ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' episode "[[Recap/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnitS7E7Name Name]]", the team encounters a woman named Anna who has so much brain damage from long-term drug abuse that she struggles to communicate and can't focus on anything for an extended period of time. It's made even worse when it's revealed later in the episode that the reason she became an addict was that when she was a teen, her stepfather used to force her to take drugs so that she couldn't fight back when he would sexually abuse her.

** There was a magic school that was enchanted so that you can't die as long as any part of your body is on its grounds. You can be [[LosingYourHead beheaded]], and your still-conscious, talking head will stay alive, even outside the school, as long as your body remains at the school. Now, [[FridgeLogic think about what that means]] for that one guy Gideon blasted into a pile of ash while there.

** The Soul Hunters' story goes to extremes in the TV movie ''[[Recap/BabylonFiveFilm03TheRiverOfSouls Babylon 5: The River of Souls]]'', in which they do it to [[spoiler:''an entire world'']]. The entrapped people become a SealedEvilInACan, because they weren't actually dying... [[spoiler:''[[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence they were evolving]]'']].

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E135TheLongMorrow The Long Morrow]]", an astronaut is sent into space for forty years. He is to be put into suspended animation, so he will be the same age when he returns, and won't have to deal with the loneliness of space. However, he releases himself from suspended animation early in the flight, so that he will be the same age as his girlfriend when he gets back. After forty lonely years in space, he returns, only to find that she froze herself to wait for him, and she is still young.

* ''Series/{{Grimm}}'': As demonstrated by Eve ([[spoiler:AKA Juliette]]), extremely-powerful [[MageSpecies Hexenbiests]] are capable of covering up various orifices in an unfortunate victim with skin flaps. Eve does this to torture a member of the Black Claw for information. After a short while of being completely cut off from the outside world by having his mouth, eyes, and ears covered up, the guy is ready to spill everything. Strangely, having skin flaps on his ears somehow makes him lose all hearing ability, even though certain animal species (e.g. snakes) are able to hear just fine with them. Hexenbiests are also able to remove the extra skin with seemingly no harmful effects.

** [[spoiler:In another instance, a copy of a criminal's mind -- after confessing -- is left in a simulated version of the crime scene with "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day" playing on the radio repeatedly. The police in control of the simulation have set it so that 1000 years a minute pass for the copy, and have stated they won't switch the simulation off until after Christmas.]]

** An episode let a character face such a fate '''twice'''. The first time, he'd been injected with an experimental anesthetic by his medical-researcher brother, who knew the protagonist was still conscious and staged the "autopsy" as a prank (!), paying back how his sibling had picked on him for years. After being revived, the protagonist dies for real, and the episode ends with him -- consciousness prolonged by the residual drug in his system -- facing a second trip to the autopsy table, this time ''with'' the capacity to feel pain.
** Also the main theme of a later episode titled "You, Murderer". We watch through the eyes of the protagonist who dies about a third through the story -- but for some reason not being able to pass on through his body. He is still fully conscious, unable to speak and can still feel pain as he continues on with telling the tale.

** In "Exit Wounds", Jack Harkness is buried alive under Cardiff, constantly suffocating, reviving (painfully), and dying again... for 1874 years. He was buried in 27 AD, then dug up in 1901, then cryogenically frozen (yes, in 1901, Torchwood could do that then) to bring him back to the present, paradox-free.

** The famous episode "Time Enough At Last", where, now that the rest of humanity has been destroyed, Burgess Meredith can finally read all he wants. Unfortunately, his coke-bottle glasses slip off his head and shatter.
** "A Kind of Stopwatch" has a man discover a stopwatch that stops time, and using it to rob banks and things like that. Until it falls out of his pocket and breaks ''while the rest of the world (and presumably the universe) is still frozen'' (unless this is just his ''point of view'').
** In "The Long Morrow", an astronaut is sent into space for forty years. He is to be put into suspended animation, so he will be the same age when he returns, and won't have to deal with the loneliness of space. However, he releases himself from suspended animation early in the flight, so that he will be the same age as his girlfriend when he gets back. After forty lonely years in space, he returns, only to find that she froze herself to wait for him, and she is still young.

** The "Soul Hunters" are a brotherhood who capture the spirits of the dying in little globes, as they believe the soul dies with the body unless it is preserved. The Minbari at least consider this a fate MUCH worse than death, since ''they'' believe the soul is reincarnated into the next generation unless it's captured first.
** The Soul Hunters' story goes to extremes in the TV-Movie ''Babylon 5: The River of Souls'', where they do it to [[spoiler:''an entire world'']]. SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome occurs when the entrapped people become a SealedEvilInACan, because they weren't actually dying... [[spoiler:''[[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence they were evolving.]]'']]
** For much of Season 4, [[spoiler:Garibaldi]] was under the influence of [[BrainwashedAndCrazy mental programming]] courtesy of [[spoiler:Mr. Bester]] that causes repeated conflicts with his comrades, eventually drives him to resign, and ultimately causes him to betray [[spoiler:Sheridan]]. When [[spoiler:Bester]] gives him TheReveal, he off-handedly says, "I can feel you, you know, the real you. Beating at the inside of your skull... screaming to get out."
* ''Series/BlackMirror'': Season 4's "U.S.S. Callister" is an extended tribute to the trope's source material, and the concept crops up in "Black Museum" as well. The 2014 Christmas special, [[Recap/BlackMirrorWhiteChristmas "White Christmas"]] had some disturbing examples:
** [[spoiler: In the near future Britain portrayed, the technology exists to copy people's minds onto computers, creating sentient copies who believe themselves to be human. A copy of a woman is psychologically tortured by a computer programmer until she consents to become a slave for her real self, running the house's computers and her real self's diary. The nature of the torture is to be left conscious, unable to even sleep in solitary confinement for a simulated time period of three weeks, then six months until she begs to be given something to do.]]
** [[spoiler: In another instance, a copy of a criminal's mind -- after confessing -- is left in a simulated version of the crime scene with "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day" playing on the radio repeatedly. The police in control of the simulation have set it so that 1000 years a minute pass for the copy, and have stated they won't switch the simulation off until after Christmas.]]

* ''Series/DarkMatter'': When the Android is hacked in the episode "Hot Chocolate", she's fully aware of her unwilling acts but unable to stop them. Later Five and Sarah send a signal through the neural link to the hacker which leaves his mind stuck in a wholly empty and featureless space. He screams at finding himself in it.

** In the episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E22SkinOfEvil Skin of Evil]]", the creature called Armus fits the trope. The result of an alien race's attempt to transcend evil, Armus is a self-loathing creature with no redeemable qualities, filled with emptiness, and living on a dead planet with no way off or any company. Picard even rubs this in, making a speech to Armus where he informs him that he's arranged to have Armus trapped on his empty planet "forever, alone and immortal". Although it's hard to feel pity for a literal pool of evil who kills for fun and really does have no redeeming qualities. The only thing one can feel pity for is that Armus had no choice in the matter of his creation.

** One episode, ''My Brother, Where Art Thou?'' features a man who can barely move and can only communicate using the word “pickles”. It’s PlayedForLaughs, but imagine how terrifying it would be to only be able to say one word and have people try to understand you.
** Another, ''His Story III'', features a patient who can only communicate through using his eye movements so that a program can speak on his behalf. It breaks about five minutes into the episode and he cannot speak for almost the entire episode. Janitor spends the entire episode talking to him to keep him company.

** "[[Recap/SmallvilleS07E04Cure Cure]]": Implied to be the fate of the immortal doctor Knox (An {{Expy}} of ComicBook/VandalSavage).
--->'''Clark''': What'd you do with Knox?\\
'''Martian Manhunter''': Your father and I had a "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it came to crime and punishment. I suggest we abide by the same rules.\\
'''Clark''': You didn't kill him, did you?\\
'''Martian Manhunter''': Knox is immortal, Kal-El. You can't kill him.
** ComicBook/LanaLang suffered a temporary case of this when ComicBook/{{Brainiac}} placed her in an "anesthesia awareness" state during the last few episodes of Season 7. According to what Brainiac told Clark, Lana was fully aware of her surroundings and in a constant state of excruciating pain, but she was also fully paralyzed so that she could do nothing to try to ease her pain or communicate with anybody else in any way. She was left in this condition for over a month until Clark finally defeated Brainiac and freed her. Brainiac could have been claiming this just to emotionally torture Clark as Lana did not seem to be suffering any psychological aftereffects from the experience when she returned as a SpecialGuest the following season.

* Annorax (Creator/KurtwoodSmith) from ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'''s "Year of Hell". Originally a benign inventor, his time-travel bungling ended up dooming his home planet. By the time of the two-parter, Annorax has ascended to EmperorScientist, wrecking the timeline ever further in a futile mission to bring back his world. The ending is an ambivalent one: time is rewound and Annorax is returned home, but a blueprint for his machine is still there. He's called away by his wife, suggesting that he could yet return to his work, trapping himself in a loop of destroying his world over and over. It depends on your interpretation.

** Demons often do this to their vessels, typically to inflict suffering because [[ForTheEvulz that's just what they like to do]]. Meg Masters described it as a nightmarish experience; [[spoiler:Azazel]] kept John conscious so he could witness Dean's death; Abaddon threatened to inflict this fate upon Dean, and that he'd experience all the horrible things she would do, up to and including [[WouldHurtAChild eating babies]].
** [[Recap/SupernaturalS03E13Ghostfacers "Ghostfacers"]] features Death Echoes, a type of ghost stuck in a perpetual loop of their final moments alive, experiencing the pain of their death over and over again and can only be released from this torturous cycle if they're shocked out of it.

** In a slight subversion, "The Rapture" has the good guys bestow this kind of fate upon another good person. Jimmy, the vessel for angel Castiel, begs Castiel to [[TakeMeInstead possess him to save his daughter from having a similar fate]]. It's essentially the fate for every human possessed by an angel. Even the "good guy" angels like Castiel, Anna, and Gabriel have been pulling this stunt for countless millennia.

** Sam and Dean use this to beat the high demon Abaddon in "As Time Goes By". First, they shoot her in the head with a bullet engraved with a demon trap, permanently locking her in her meatsuit, which she can barely move. Then (offscreen) they cut her up into little pieces, and to boot it off, bury them in cement, encasing her for at least a few thousand years. As Dean put it, she'll wish they had killed her. [[spoiler:Then they bring her up again and sew her back together, in their attempt to 'cure' a demon.]]

* The pilot episode for the ''Series/SwampThing'' TV series showed the title hero fusing the still-living body of one of the bad guys into a tree, leaving him a half-man, half-tree hybrid, in very much the same fashion as the ''Doctor Who'' example above -- although in this case the effect is even more disturbing, as the bad guy's face is left frozen in a way that very much brings Munch's ''The Scream'' to mind.

** In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS1E3TheWitch The Witch]]", Amy's body-swapping witchy mom has one of her spells turned back on her, and seemingly vanishes. At the end of the episode, it turns out she's been trapped in one of her old cheerleading trophies. She presumably died when they blew the school up at the end of Season 3, but fans speculate [[spoiler:that this somehow released Catherine to possess her daughter Amy again, explaining Amy's otherwise inexplicable FaceHeelTurn.]]
*** The comics confirm that [[spoiler:she's still trapped.]]

** Recurring baddie Frank Breitkopf injects his victims with a drug that lefaves them paralyzed but fully awake while he vivisects them. He does this in a room with a mirrored ceiling so that they can see it happen. As he's been active for around thirty years, its implied that Frank has done this to around two hundred people.

* Recurring baddie Frank Breitkopf from ''Series/CriminalMinds'' injected his victims with a drug that left them paralyzed but fully awake while he vivisected them. He does this in a room with a mirrored ceiling, so they could see it happen. As he's been active for around thirty years, its implicated Frank's done this to around two-hundred people.
** The [=UnSub=] from "The Uncanny Valley" kidnaps women, drugs them with a paralytic, and keeps them like dolls in a hellish tea party.

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E3PyramidsofMars "Pyramids of Mars"]] has it's main villain, Sutekh. After his fellow Osirians imprisoned him on Mars, he spent ''7000 years'' trapped and completely immobile, only barely able to turn his head. Unlike most examples, however, Sutekh is none the worse for wear in terms of sanity when he finally breaks out... though it probably helped that he wasn't exactly the [[OmnicidalManiac sanest being]] before either, which is what lead to him being imprisoned.

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E3PyramidsofMars "Pyramids of Mars"]] has it's main villain, Sutekh. After his fellow Osirians imprisoned him on Mars, he spent ''7000'' years trapped and completely immobile, only barely able to turn his head. Unlike most examples, however, Sutekh is none the worse for wear in terms of sanity... though it probably helped that he wasn't exactly the [[OmnicidalManiac sanest being]] before, either.

** The Season 5 episode "Déjà Vu", deals with a failed teleportation experiment that traps the main character in a shrinking time loop. While he manages to break free in the end, the antagonist isn't as lucky. He gets caught in another time loop that forces him to relive the last few seconds preceding a nuclear explosion at point blank range, most likely for all eternity.
** In the episode "Blood Brothers", Michael Deighton, a CorruptCorporateExecutive uses an experimental regenerative drug Deighton C on himself as an attempt to cure his Huntington's disease and become biologically immortal. However, it turns out the drug has the side effect of using up all of the user's cell energy, thus resulting in him being unable to die, with his body degenerated into a fragile husk as he is cursed to spend the rest of his life on life support.
---> '''The Control Voice:''' There is an old proverb which says: "BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor, for it might come true." And if your wish is for immortality, it is something you will have to live with for ''a very long time.''
* ''Series/TheOutpost'': As seen near the end of Season 3, [[spoiler: Talon's father]] Sai-vek spent four months impaled to the floor of a cave by spears, kept alive by his kinj but unable to move.

** In "Fresh Bones", a corrupt Marine general learns the secret of voodoo immortality... just in time to be buried in a coffin before he revives.
** "Soft Light" has the monster trapped in a government test lab because he's "lightning in a bottle".
** Krycek has just watched himself vomit a sentient black oil out of his mouth and eyes. He's also BuriedAlive in SealedRoomInTheMiddleOfNowhere. Boy, did he scream! [[spoiler:He got better though.]]

* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'': Kirk's predecessor, Captain Christopher Pike, was horribly scarred and left immobile while rescuing his crewmates from a radiation leak. The accident left Pike in a futuristic iron lung, able to communicate only through [[OnceForYesTwiceForNo flashing green and red lights]]. Ultimately, Pike's former science officer, Spock, decided the only humane thing to do was to deposit him on Talos IV, where the Talosians create a fantasy world for him. Pike is reunited with his lover, Vina (who had suffered a similar fate) with the illusion of perfect health. ("The Menagerie")

** "Datalore" ended with Lore being beamed into space after his attempt to betray the crew to the Crystalline Entity fails; he can't be killed simply by the vacuum of space, being an android, so he spends three years simply drifting in space until, much to his good fortune, he's found by a group of Pakleds. Understandably, he's ''not'' in a very good mood the second episode he appears.
** In "The Royale", a 21st-century astronaut is recovered by aliens, along with a pulp novel, ''Hotel Royale'', which is found in his possession. The astronaut survives by living inside in a phony construct of the fictional hotel/casino, built by the aliens to provides a suitable habitat. It proves to be an unfortunate choice, as the novel was full of [[StylisticSuck clichéd dialogue and bad writing]]. Unknowingly, the aliens had sentenced the astronaut to a sort of Hell, trapping him in a world of shallow characters and no real human interaction.
** In the episode "Skin of Evil", the creature called Armus fits the trope. The result of an alien race's attempt to transcend evil, Armus is a self-loathing creature with no redeemable qualities, filled with emptiness, and living on a dead planet with no way off or any company. Picard even rubs this in, making a speech to Armus where he informs him that he's arranged to have Armus trapped on his empty planet "forever, alone and immortal". Although it's hard to feel pity for a literal pool of evil who kills for fun and really does have no redeeming qualities. The only thing one can feel pity for is that Armus had no choice in the matter of his creation.
** Moriarty -- the self-aware hologram intended to outsmart Data in "Elementary, Dear Data" -- is still conscious when he is deactivated, and [[TheBusCameBack when he is brought back]] in "Ship In A Bottle", he speaks of "Brief, terrifying periods of consciousness... disembodied, without substance." In a subversion of this trope, he is eventually trapped in a small device running a permanent simulation in which he thinks he has escaped into the real world.

* ''Series/JukenSentaiGekiranger'': At the end, [[spoiler:Long, an immortal god of evil, is forever imprisoned in a metal ball (which is then put through a HumiliationConga]].

* In the series finale of ''Series/{{Forever}}'', Henry is forced into a showdown with fellow immortal Adam. Unwilling to kill the old bastard, Henry resorts to [[spoiler:jabbing a syringe full of air into Adam's bloodstream, causing an embolism that leaves him with "locked-in" syndrome. Adam is left alive, but unable to move, and thus unable to kill himself and regenerate. Henry ensures that Adam is hooked up to life-sustaining machines and promises to Adam that he'll stay alive for a ''very long time''.]]

** Subverted. The crew stops on a planet where the newly-declared Empress and Regent are customarily turned into [[TakenForGranite living statues]] for the eighty years it takes for the current rulers to die. However, rather than being viewed as a punishment that drives them insane, it's a duty that makes them wiser by allowing them to observe royal court proceedings; also, people can talk with the couple via a psychic headset, which no doubt helps lessen the monotony somewhat.

--> '''The Control Voice:''' There is an old proverb which says: "BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor, for it might come true." And if your wish is for immortality, it is something you will have to live with for ''a very long time.''

* Season 5 episode "Déjà Vu" from ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'' deals with a failed teleportation experiment that traps the main character in a shrinking time loop. While he manages to break free in the end, the antagonist isn't as lucky. He gets caught in another time loop that forces him to relive the last few seconds preceding a nuclear explosion at point blank range, most likely for all eternity.

** An episode took that theme UpToEleven, letting a character face such a fate '''twice'''. The first time, he'd been injected with an experimental anesthetic by his medical-researcher brother, who knew the protagonist was still conscious and staged the "autopsy" as a prank (!), paying back how his sibling had picked on him for years. After being revived, the protagonist dies for real, and the episode ends with him -- consciousness prolonged by the residual drug in his system -- facing a second trip to the autopsy table, this time ''with'' the capacity to feel pain.