History Main / CryonicsFailure

-->--''SFDebris'' [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] this trope, which [[StarTrekVoyager the episode]] surprisingly averts.

* StarTrek adores this trope:
** The ''DeepSpaceNine'' episode "Empok Nor", where one of the Popsicles would have survived, had part of the station not collapsed through his pod.
** Scotty coded himself and a RedShirt into a transporter beam for 70 years until the ''StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' crew found the ship in "Relics". Guess which one made it out.
** The ''StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E22SpaceSeed Space Seed]]". The Enterprise finds a ship with a cargo of 84 humans, 72 of whom are still alive, in suspended animation.
** Repeated in ''StarTrekTheNextGeneration'''s "The Neutral Zone", complete with [[CatScare skeleton scare]]. (There were dozens on board... only three lived.)
** ''StarTrekVoyager'', never being one to let a good trope pass them by, had two:

* Used in an especially {{Nightmare Fuel}}ed example in the ''RedDwarf'' book ''Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers'', where every stasis tube on a ship has been broken, killing their inhabitants, except one. This half broken tube causes the bottom half of a man's body to decompose over thousands of years, while his top half remains alive. Upon being revived, he screams for two minutes straight then dies of shock.

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-->'''Wheatley:''' "The reserve power ran out, and the Relaxation Center stops waking up the bloody test subjects. And of course nobody tells me about any of this. So now I'm the one who's responsible for explaining why we've got ten thousand flippin' vegetables." [...] "So let's just get our stories straight. If anyone asks -- and nobody's going to ask, don't worry -- but just in case anyone does ask, just tell them that the last time you looked, everyone seemed pretty much alive. Not dead."//

* The ''BlakesSeven'' episode "Time Squad": of four programmed guardians in a capsule carrying them and genetic stock, three survived stasis.

* The [[HumanPopsicle coldsleep]] used by interstellar travelers in ''Webcomic/{{Freefall}}'' [[http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff2000/fc01943.png isn't 100% reliable]].

* In ''BubbleSymphony'', one of [[TheManyDeathsOfYou the many]] '''[[WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs exaggerated]]''' [[TheManyDeathsOfYou ways to die]] is getting hit by an enemy snowman's snowball, causing [[InstantIceJustAddCold an ice block to form around the character]] and quickly shatter, and then he/she dies.

* In the ''Worlds of Aldebaran'' comics, all but two of the population of the Copernicus died while in cryo-stasis. This was because of a biological computer virus, however.

* In the ''Traveller'' RPG, cold-sleep tubes, common on most ships for "Low Passage", have a certain chance of failure. Passengers in low passage often place bets on how many of them will survive the trip. The captain gets the winnings if the winner was one of the deceased.

* In ''{{Rage}}'', the protagonist is the only one from his "Ark" to survive the cryostasis.

* The ''BlakesSeven'' episode "Time Squad".

* ''{{Portal 2}}'' opens with a scene in which the protagonist wakes up after an unusually long period of hibernation in the Aperture Science Extended Relaxation Vault. During the escape, your AI companion explains that you are the sole survivor of ten thousand test subjects, the rest of whom all died when the hibernation systems ran out of power, or became gibbering vegetables due to brain damage; he's [[UnreliableNarrator not very clear]] on the subject.

* Starting from ''VideoGame/MortalKombat2'', Sub-Zero has practically always get [[FinishingMove fatalities]] that at least includes freezing his enemies... then shatter them.

* In the ''Traveller'' RPG, cold-sleep tubes, common on most ships for "Low Passage", have a certain chance of failure.

* Orolin in ''ElfQuest'', the Guider of the High Ones' Palace-ship, was in stasis inside Preserver webbing when it crash-landed on the World of Two Moons. Only when Timmain returned to the Palace 10,000 years later did she discover that the webbing was torn during the crash and Orolin never woke up.

* TheBBC's interstellar drama ''Earthsearch''mainly takes place aboard a starship, with a depleted human crew of four versus two psychopathic computers. In one episode a scheming warlord tries to blackmail the computers into letting him join the crew: he hides a military robot on board that's programmed to activate if his life signs fail. He thinks this is perfect insurance against the computers killing him by sabotaging his cryosleep pod. He's wrong.

** And that's not even counting what happened to the woman who was pregnant, or the boy who [[AndIMustScream remained conscious]].

* Almost happened to ''MegaManZero'', despite being a robot. Damaged nearly beyond repair by prolonged exposure to the elements after the lab he was being stored in caved in due to a century or so of neglect & only brought back to life with the power of a semi-mystical electrical fairy. In a later game in the series we see a similar facility with some others who weren't so lucky.

* Showed up in an episode of ''TheTwilightZone'' where four people put themselves in suspended animation with a special gas -- three of them made it, one didn't, due to a falling rock breaking his apparatus.

* Three members of the Winter Team in ''[=~7 Seeds~=]'' were mummified alive during the thousands of years they were supposed to be in cold sleep.

* In ''[=~2001: A Space Odyssey~=]'', the astronauts other than Poole and Bowman were intentionally killed by HAL forcing a malfunction in the coldsleep system, when [[LogicBomb trying to follow conflicting orders]].

* In ''[=~The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy~=]'', Slartibartfast complains that the cleaning staff didn't freeze so well... leaving nobody to clean up the bodies.
* A non-lethal but still devastating CryonicsFailure takes place in [=~Philip K. Dick~=]'s short story "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon". An off-world colonist is woken up from cryonic slumber, but [[AndIMustScream is still immobile]]. The sentient ship tries to keep him sane by putting him back in happy memories. Trouble is, he carries so much guilt and anxiety, no memory will ''stay'' happy. By the time he gets there, his mind is still pretty much shot.

* The ''[=~Blake's Seven~=]'' episode "Time Squad".

** To be fair, he had and was attempting murder from his cryo-thing. And succeeded, three out of four.
* [[Series/DoctorWho Davros]] turned {{Human Popsicle}}s he deemed worthy into Daleks in ''Revelation of the Daleks''. The rest he turned into SoylentGreen.