History AndIMustScream / WesternAnimation

* In most adaptations, the Joker's signature venom kills people. However, to keep the body-count down, animated adaptions like ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' and ''WesternAnimation/TheBatman'', Joker venom "merely" paralyzes people with a huge grin, or leaves them unable to stop laughing. More than one fan has observed that this is far, far more disturbing. As Alfred put it in the first episode of the latter series: "Aside from the ghastly grimace, [he's] fit as a fiddle. The poor soul simply seems to be a prisoner in his own body." Fortunately, Batman is able to find a cure by the end -- this time.

* ''Franchise/DCAnimatedUniverse'':
** ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'':
*** In "[[Recap/BatmanBeyondS1E5TheWinningEdge The Winning Edge]]", it's revealed that Bane's body has withered away after years of Venom use, and he now lives in a nursing home under 24-hour life support, ironically staying alive only through the continuous infusion of more Venom.
*** Inque can shapeshift by turning into liquid and reforming. After being frozen by Terry and Bruce at the end of "[[Recap/BatmanBeyondS1E3BlackOut Black Out]]", she is placed in Gotham Cryogenics. In "[[Recap/BatmanBeyondS1E12DisappearingInque Disappearing Inque]]", Aaron Herbst, a guard at her prison who had a crush on her, is sweet-talked into helping her, but wants powers like hers in exchange. She gives him an incomplete version of the formula, leaving him an immobile half-liquid blob. As it turns out, she was fully conscious the whole time, and did ''not'' appreciate the several months Herbst spent talking to her about his sad, empty life and petty troubles. ''His'' guard is seen talking to him just as he once did with Inque, hinting that history may repeat itself, but that's unrealistic: he can't move, and doesn't know enough about the formula to instruct her on how to fully Inque-ify him were she to agree.
*** In "[[Recap/BatmanBeyondS2E2EarthMover Earth Mover]]", Tony Maychek fused with the Earth itself, for ''years''. His episode centered on his anger at his unjust fate and wanting to see his daughter again. Thankfully, it gets better for him, since he found a way to control the Earth itself, then found release when he was finally killed in a cave-in.
*** In "[[Recap/BatmanBeyondS2E19SneakPeek Sneak Peek]]", TV personality Ian Peek uses a device to become {{intangib|ility}}le but later finds that the effect spreads to his body without the device being engaged. In the end, his PowerIncontinence winds up causing him to phase through Batman's hands, through the floor, and into the Earth. The ''best'' case scenario is that the lack of RequiredSecondaryPowers will mean incineration by the mantle, or death by suffocation, starvation, dehydration, or at least old age. If not, he's permanently phased into the core of the earth. ''Forever''.
** ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'':
*** In "[[Recap/BatmanTheAnimatedSeriesE29EternalYouth Eternal Youth]]", Poison Ivy does this to a bunch of rich industrialists ([[TargetedToHurtTheHero alongside Alfred and his girlfriend]]) who she blames for the destruction of the earth's various plant species, and natural habitats. She lures them to a resort and spa, floods their bodies with a mutagen by tricking them into eating food and water loaded with it, and eventually they turn into human trees. Fortunately, Batman is able to save everybody.
*** In "[[Recap/TheAdventuresOfBatmanAndRobinE13Showdown Showdown]]", this is the ultimate fate of BigBad Arkady Duvall; most of the episode takes place in the Old West, following bounty hunter Jonah Hex and his pursuit of Duvall, who is ultimately sentenced to 50 years of hard labor for his crimes. In present day, Batman discovers that the man who'd been kidnapped by Ra's al Ghul is in fact Duvall, in reality Ra's son, and now reduced to an ancient, senile husk. Having bathed in the Lazarus Pit as a young man, Duvall gained an extended life span, [[AgeWithoutYouth but not youth to go with it]], and his prison sentence shattered his mind, as any normal man would simply have died of age or exhaustion long before finishing it. As a result, Duvall spent the better part of a century mentally broken and constantly getting older and sicker without dying, and it took Ra's until modern day to find out what happened to him and find him again.
*** Then there's Grant Walker in "[[Recap/TheAdventuresOfBatmanAndRobinE19DeepFreeze Deep Freeze]]", a [[MrAltDisney Walt Disney-esque]] billionaire who, in addition to building a "perfect" society on an island of his creation, convinces Mr. Freeze to give him the same mutations as Freeze himself, allowing him to live forever. However, after Batman convinces Freeze to stop Walker from freezing the rest of the world, Walker ends up trapped in a block of ice, lost at sea, ''completely aware of everything around him, yet unable to free himself or even move for the rest of his immortal life''. As is to be expected, the last we ever see or hear of him is his anguished scream of horror, a scream that no one else can hear. A ''ComicBook/TheBatmanAdventures'' comic follows up on his story by showing that he manages to get out (because icebergs do melt, ya know?) [[GoMadFromTheIsolation after several years of imprisonment drove him stark raving mad]] and tries returning to Gotham to get revenge upon Freeze after finding out that Freeze's condition has destroyed most of his body and the same thing will happen to him eventually. He's captured and imprisoned after Freeze almost kills him. However, these comics are generally considered to be non-canon to the DCAU, meaning he's probably still in there.
** ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'' is usually nicer to its villains than ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'', but makes an exception for Mordred: Morgaine Le Fay's spell gave him eternal youth and life, but he's stuck as a child. In "[[Recap/JusticeLeagueUnlimitedS1E3KidStuff Kid Stuff]]", when he is tricked into making himself an adult (thus causing him to disappear, as he'd cast a spell that teleported all adults to another dimension) it turns out that by breaking the youth spell, "all he has is eternal life". He's 1500 or so years old and counting, [[AgeWithoutYouth showing every bit of it]], and is now essentially immobile in a chair at his (still-youthful) mother's home... and it's only going to get worse. (At least he gets better in the tie-in comics.)
** ''WesternAnimation/SupermanTheAnimatedSeries'':
*** At the end of the episode "[[Recap/SupermanTheAnimatedSeriesS2E9ActionFigures Action Figures]]", the android Metallo is left encased in lava underneath a volcano. His InnerMonologue reveals that he is unable to see or hear anything (in addition to the loss of taste, touch, and smell from being a robot in the first place). To keep himself sane, he gives us this chilling thought:
---->''"I am Metallo, I am Metallo, I am Metallo..."''
*** ...but he gets lucky and is rescued by a criminal organization. He angrily describes his experience to Superman in the next episode where he appears, "[[Recap/SupermanTheAnimatedSeriesS2E23HeavyMetal Heavy Metal]]", the experience obviously having driven him insane and sending him on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge:
---->'''Metallo:''' Do you remember how you left me Superman? Buried in rock? I couldn't move! I couldn't see! I couldn't hear! But I could think. And all I thought about how I was going to make you pay!

* ''WesternAnimation/IronManArmoredAdventures'': [[spoiler: Justin Hammer inflicts this on Mr. Fix after he's defeated for the first time as Titanium Man. Using a nanovirus, which he'd implanted in Fix beforehand to force him to become Hammer's lackey, Justin kills Mr. Fix. Right after his physical body dies however, Hammer has his consciousness installed onto a microchip that he then installs in his supercomputer. This causes Fix to be "reborn" as an AI in Justin's computer, allowing Justin to use Fix as his slave ''forever,'' all while Fix is conscious and trapped as, what he later calls, "a digital freak". Unfortunately for Hammer, Mr. Fix, even trapped as an AI, wasn't ''nearly'' as helpless as he thought he'd be. Fighting his programming, Mr. Fix covertly orchestrates Hammer's eventual downfall by revealing his criminal activities to the world.]]

* In an episode of the ''WesternAnimation/LegionOfSuperHeroes2006'', the wizard Mordru is wrapped in a metal cocoon and sunken to the middle of the planet. It gets worse when you consider his eyes were still moving as he was buried, and the planet probably has a molten core... so he ended up either buried alive or melted. Pretty harsh for a team that works with the police and United Planets.

* In ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice2010'', Jaime Reyes (Blue Beetle) experiences a taste of this. Not only was he told that [[spoiler:in the future, he would betray the human race for the Reach]], he eventually succumbs into this prophecy despite his desperate attempts to avoid his fate. Jaime falls [[spoiler:under control of the Reach]] and as a result, he was trapped in his own mind for ''months'', unable to control is body and could only sit back and watch in horror as [[spoiler:the Reach pretended to be him, deceived his family, and betrayed his team]].

* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' gives us Koh the FaceStealer, who does ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: steals your face and leaves you as a [[TheBlank blank]]. Imagine being stuck, with ''no eyes,'' ''no nose,'' and ''no mouth'' for the rest of your life. Worse, it's possible that you're stuck like that for eternity in the Spirit World.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'' episode "Return to Spider Skull Island", Doctor Orpheus deals with two {{Jerkass}} rednecks by trapping their souls in a Homeboys figurine. They can actually be heard screaming.

*** Worse are the Cluster Gems, gem shards forcibly fused together by Homeworld during their fusion experiments. The gems that form from these shards are more like [[BodyHorror collections of loose limbs]] than anything resembling a person, the only sounds they make appear to be shrieks of agony, and they seek out other lifeforms in a desperate attempt to be whole again. There is nothing the Crystal Gems can do for these gems except poofing and bubbling them, the equivalent of a MercyKill. [[spoiler:The Cluster itself is this multiplied by a ''million'' -- a collection of gem shards the size of a small mountain embedded in the Earth's core, desperately trying to form, [[EarthShatteringKaboom which would tear the entire planet apart]].]]

** The fate of a shattered Gem. Every single shard is still alive and conscious, with a fragment of the Gem's mind in each shard and driven only to become whole once again. They can only regenerate into singular body parts, and from what we've seen so far, they cannot be fixed. All of these are reasons why shattering a Gem is treated as a ''very'' serious issue among the cast.

* In the finale of ''WesternAnimation/ActionMan2000'', this fate befalls Dr. X, the BigBad. He's gained superhuman abilities, [[TheNeedless doesn't need food or air any longer]], and becomes NighInvulnerable... and then Action Man traps him on an empty rock floating in the immense vastness of space with no means of escape. He actually does scream Action Man's name one last time as the rock drifts away from Earth.
* The ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfTheGalaxyRangers'' episode "Psychocrypt" demonstrated that after having their soul torn out ''painfully,'' those tossed in the device are fully aware of what's happened, their LifeEnergy is used to make a construct the Queen (the person who put them there) can see and hear through, forced to do her bidding. GodSaveUsFromTheQueen.