History Main / PeopleJars

* Aquapets. Google it. How this toy made it into production in its original form is anyone's guess, but when someone finally asked "DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything" a redesign was hastily commissioned.

* In ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex'', Aleister Crowley floats upside-down in one, having his entire body save his consciousness rely entirely on machinery. In Volume 22 of the novels, however, [[spoiler:it's revealed that he may be capable of omnipresence, appearing before Fiamma of the Right to [[CurbStompBattle defeat him]] while simultaneously still being in his jar]].

* In ''LightNovel/{{Durarara}}'', Celty's ''[[HeadlessHorseman head]]'' is kept in a little jar.

* In ''LightNovel/ScrappedPrincess'', Lord Renard plans to used followers from the Browning Church to power a WaveMotionGun to annihilate the city of St. Grendel, home to the Church of Mauser. [[spoiler:He himself is actually a Mauser inquisitor, and promptly [[LeftForDead leaves them all for dead]] when he finds out that Pacifica and her party are in the area.]]
* In the ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia'' {{OVA}}, the Asgard ranch have these.

Compare BrainInAJar, SoulJar, LivingMuseumExhibit and CrystalPrison. Contrast to ManInTheMachine, in which the subject (while still physically constrained by a container of some sort) is typically conscious, mobile, and/or able to express autonomy. See OurHomunculiAreDifferent for a common application of this trope.

* In ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann'', former BigBad Lordgenome is revived as a "[[WetwareCPU biological computer]]" after the TimeSkip, which means he's now living life as a ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}''-style head in a jar. This was also his HeelFaceTurn, as he started relaying truth and {{Technobabble}} about the Anti-Spirals and the series' backstory. In the very end, he ''does'' get his body back and goes out in [[HeroicSacrifice a blaze of glory]].

Compare BrainInAJar, SoulJar, and CrystalPrison. Contrast to ManInTheMachine, in which the subject (while still physically constrained by a container of some sort) is typically conscious, mobile, and/or able to express autonomy. See OurHomunculiAreDifferent for a common application of this trope.

Compare BrainInAJar, SoulJar, CrystalPrison and GirlInABox, a gender-specific form of this trope. Contrast to ManInTheMachine, in which the subject (while still physically constrained by a container of some sort) is typically conscious, mobile, and/or able to express autonomy. See OurHomunculiAreDifferent for a common application of this trope.

** ''VideoGame/ChronoCross'' has a scene in which [[spoiler:Serge switches bodies with Lynx. This leads to a sequence where Serge-as-Lynx has to clone himself and take over that body. We see that body grow in a jar until, at Serge's exact age, the jar shatters.]] [[{{Fanservice}} This scene was popular with the female fans]].

** Played straight in The Glow from the original ''VideoGame/Fallout1''. The lower levels of the bombed-out facility held about 100 human-sized or bigger jars, with logs dating the process of the [[SuperSoldier Forced]] [[GoneHorriblyRight Evolutionary]] [[TheVirus Virus]]. Most of the jars were broken, even in the parts of the facility that escaped the bombing...

* ''VideoGame/CyberStorm'': Vats are used to grow, maintain and [[HumanResources recycle]] [[SuperSoldier Bioderms]] while they're still alive. It's like an immoral, compact hospital.

* ''VideoGame/TheClueFinders5thGradeAdventuresTheSecretOfTheLivingVolcano'' has both humans and animals being kept in a type of these [[spoiler:by [[ToServeMan aliens who want to]] [[BrainFood eat their brains]]]].

* In ''VideoGame/{{Warframe}}'', the current specimens of [[EvilutionaryBiologist Tyl]] [[WickedCultured Regor]]'s aptly-titled "Tubemen" project can be seen all around the [[UnderwaterBase Grineer Sealab]] tileset. A variation of the Sabotage mission type involves destroying some of these to slow down his progress on completing them, as a major weakness of the [[CloneArmy Grineer Empire]] is the CloneDegradation that affects them all, which the Tubemen are intended to solve.

** ''All'' Irkens are [[DesignerBabies born this way.]] [[UnusuallyUninterestingSight Giant tubes probably don't seem so horrific to them...]]

* In the Season 2 finale of ''WesternAnimation/{{Kaeloo}}'', [[spoiler:[[NotSoHarmlessVillain Olaf]] [[HarmlessFreezing freezes Kaeloo and Mr. Cat alive]] and puts them in People Jars]].

** ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': In the [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E25TheNeutralZone episode "The Neutral Zone"]], Data found a cryogenic pod containing three frozen American humans from the early 21st century.
** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': In th episode "The 37" the ship found pods containing people kidnapped from Earth in 1937. One was [[spoiler:UsefulNotes/AmeliaEarhart]].

*** Episode "[[Recap/StarTrekS3E12TheEmpath The Empath]]": Kirk, Spock, and [=McCoy=] find the bodies of two missing researchers encased in jars. Ominously, they then discover three empty jars labelled with their names.

* {{Subverted|Trope}} in ''Manga/YuGiOhR''. The lab in Kaiba Corp's basement is meant for testing holographic projectors, so none of the monsters floating inside the glass tubes are real. There is an actual person in one of the tubes, but he put himself in there as a practical joke and can easily let himself back out.

See UncannyValley for the audience's reaction.

* ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' features Ashnod's Transmogrant, which makes your creature slightly stronger...[[UncannyValley And turns them into an artifact, a.k.a. a machine.]]

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'' had the Genome, some of whom are seen in jars. They also have UncannyValley tendencies, but (since [[{{Squick}} it's already canon that Zidane is male]]) they aren't clones since they have sex.

* [[Franchise/StarWars Boba Fett]] takes plenty of bacta tank baths in Series/TheBookOfBobaFet.

* ''Series/KyleXY'' spends the first 16 years of his life in one of these, [[spoiler: powering some clandestine organization's supercomputer. He hijacked their computer system after realizing that they were using his brain for war purposes and wiped out all their data. He was supposed to be disposed of, but a defector turned him loose instead.]] That's about where the series starts up.

** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': In th episode "The 37" the ship found pods containing people kidnapped from Earth in 1937. One was [[spoiler: UsefulNotes/AmeliaEarhart]].

* The Visitor ships in ''V'' store thousands of encased humans in suspended animation [[spoiler: so they can be shipped to the aliens' home planet as food]].

* ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'''s Clans prize members known as Trueborn who are artificially conceived, gestated and born in growth cylinders. Conversely, Clansmen conceived and born the natural way are termed Freeborn (or [[FantasticSlur Freebirths]] if a Trueborn is feeling particularly contemptuous) and are generally held in contempt by Clan society.

* ''VideoGame/{{Xenogears}}'' could arguably be based on this trope. The "[[{{Nanomachines}} Nanomachine Colony]]" [[ArtificialHuman Emeralda]] was sealed in a containment tank in Kim's lab, deep within the Zeboim Ruins, four thousand years before the game. [[spoiler: Long before that, the mother of humanity, Elly was created by Abel's [[AmplifierArtifact imagination]], [[AppliedPhlebotinum science]], [[DeusExMachina "God"]], or some combination thereof, and she awakens from a capsule, Kadomony, ejected from the Zohar during the Eldridge crash. Presumably, Cain and the Gazel are also created from the same device. Also, after being heavily injured by Ramsus, Fei and Elly end up in healing tanks in Melchior's house. Ramsus himself was created in a test tube by Krelian. Krelian's lab and the Soylent system also contain various human/humanoid parts floating about, some of which are in river-sized tubes.]]

* ''VideoGame/MapleStory'' has a scene like this -- when the player selects a Resistance character and goes through the introductory cutscenes, they at one point end up in a laboratory where children are kept in jars by the evil scientist Dr. Gelmer. The player ends up [[spoiler: rescuing one of these tests subjects, called Vita, and later has several storyline quests involving Vita's recovery and contribution to the Resistance.]]

* ''Webcomic/SuperMassiveBlackHoleAStar'' has [[FemmeFatale Selenis Zea]] operating [[http://smbhax.com/?e=0011&d=0003 a cloning facility]] that had her clones grown in transparent vats. [[spoiler: In addition, she also had one of these used to clone [[http://smbhax.com/?e=0025&d=0002 an accomplice who crossed her]].]]

* The [[spoiler: reserve clones of Dean and Hank Venture preserved in glass jars within the Venture compound]] in ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'', which was naturally PlayedForLaughs (using the BananaPeel gag on a "liberated" clone).

* In the Season 2 finale of ''WesternAnimation/{{Kaeloo}}'', [[spoiler: [[NotSoHarmlessVillain Olaf]] [[HarmlessFreezing freezes Kaeloo and Mr. Cat alive]] and puts them in People Jars]].
* In the series finale of ''WesternAnimation/Ducktales2017'', Beakley, Scrooge, Webby, Dewey, and Louie discover May and June in Pods while they were interering a F.O.W.L. secret Lab in Funzos. [[spoiler: However, it was all part of FOWL'S plan for them to find them so they captured the [=McDuck=] Family and their Friends]]
* As of the Season 3 Intro of ''{{WesternAnimation/Amphibia}}'' Shown after the credits of the Season Two Finale, [[spoiler: After being stabbed by King Andrias, Marcy is being kept in a Healing Pod for whatever evil purposes King Andrias and his Master planned to do to her.]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/BigHero6TheSeries'' The City of Monsters Arc, ArcVillain Di Amara is creating Monsters in attempt to cure a patient that's in a cryostasis Pod, [[spoiler: The Person she is trying to cure is the real Liv Amara who put herself in Stasis after infecting herself with a virus and she created her clone Di to find a cure. She is later cured and awakens just in stop Di.]]

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'':

* The "Stealing Thunder" arc of ''ComicBook/JusticeSocietyOfAmerica'' has the entire metahuman community put in jars, with a few exceptions -- mostly escapees and specific heroes that he needed for his own purposes. This is achieved by [[spoiler:taking over the mind of Johnny Thunder and recalling the Thunderbolt genie from Jakeem Thunder]].

* In ''TabletopGame/ResArcana'', the male Demonologist has three jars containing demons on and around his desk.

* Are we ''really'' to believe that there is a squicky trope that TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} hasn't turned up to eleven at some point? No: New [[SuperSoldier Space Marine]] Chapters are created by force-culturing gene-seed in cloned humans in jars, each of whom has to go through the agonising process of having the auxiliary organs implanted so they (the organs, not the clones) can go through their natural life-cycle and produce two Progenoids for each set implanted, doubling and testing each "generation" until there's 1000 "pure" gene-seed sets ready for implantation into the ''real'' soldiers. Naturally, this only works on pubescent children because it keys off their natural hormonal changes.

-->-- '''[[WebAnimation/HomestarRunner Strong Bad]]''', WebAnimation/StrongBadEmail #168: [[Recap/StrongBadEmailE168YourFuneral "your funeral"]]

This is often how [[HumanPopsicle cryonics is depicted in fiction]], but is absolutely ''nothing'' like any RealLife equivalents.

* ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex'': Aleister Crowley floats upside-down in one, having his entire body save his consciousness rely entirely on machinery. In Volume 22 of the novels, however, [[spoiler:it's revealed that he may be capable of omnipresence, appearing before Fiamma of the Right to [[CurbStompBattle defeat him]] while simultaneously still being in his {{People Jar|s}}.]]
* In ''Anime/AldnoahZero'''s second season, [[spoiler: the comatose Princess Asseylum]] is seen like this after [[spoiler: having been shot by Saazbaum at the end of the first part. She wakes up and leaves the pod towards the end, and is ''not'' exactly happy when she learns what Slaine has been doing during her coma....]]
* ''Anime/BtX'': Metal Face was in one after his big fight with Teppei.
* ''Anime/{{Blade}}'': The second episode is centered around one farm people. Existence, an underground society of vampires, filled it with young women and kept them alive in water-filled jars to harvest their blood.
* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'' anime. During the Season 15 "Gotei 13 Invading Army" arc Kagerosa Inaba is shown keeping reigai in large liquid-filled cylinders while performing experiments on them. In episode 336 both Kagerosa and Nozomi are shown inside the tubes as Kagerosa tries to fuse them together.
* ''Manga/ChronoCrusade'': In a flashback, Rosette tries to scare her brother Joshua away from joining the order by warning him that they'll conduct experiments on him, and he's "gonna end up pickled in formaldehyde!" The anime shows a scene in her imagination of Joshua floating naked in a jar while a MadScientist looks on with a creepy grin. There was also the other five Apostles that the Sinners kept in jars and the clone of Azmaria's foster father's wife.

* ''Anime/DivergenceEve'': Hundreds of them kept by LeBlanc and, worst of all, their occupants aren't dead.
* ''Anime/DragonBallZ'': Freeza's forces have a few types of these, all of which are used to greatly accelerate healing.
* ''LightNovel/{{Durarara}}''...sort of. Celty's head is kept in a little people jar.
* ''Manga/{{Elementalors}}'': Asami is put in a tank as a form of being Brainwashed.
* ''Anime/ErgoProxy'': It turns out that the humans who survived the ecological collapse [[spoiler:were modified humans left behind and grown from the cells of "proxies," creatures at the heart of each city]], meaning everyone probably started this way. The proxies themselves, or at least the one from Romdeau, were kept in people jars as well.
* ''Anime/FullmetalAlchemist'': The first anime has the chimera clone of Tucker's dead daughter Nina.

*** Later, [[spoiler: an injured Allenby Beardsley is briefly kept in a "jar" before she's {{Brainwashed}} into fighting Domon and Rain in the Rantao Island Battle Royale]]
** ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEED'' and ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEEDDestiny'': Several characters were grown in jars. They all have issues.
** In ''Anime/MobileSuitVictoryGundam'', [[spoiler: the [[PoweredByAForsakenChild Psychickers]] that were used to power up the huge MindRape device Angel Halo were put in a trance and then locked inside pods in the Halo itself.]]
** ''Anime/TurnAGundam'': Several Moonrace people are kept in jars and in suspended animation. Two of them are [[spoiler: Queen Dianna Soleil and Teteth Halleh's mother Linda (it's all but stated that Teteth's reason to fight the heroes was to wake her up)]].
** ''Anime/AfterWarGundamX'': Lucille Lilliant, Jamil's Cool Big Sis and first love, was put in a coma and placed in a capsule in suspended animation.
* ''Manga/{{Guyver}}'': Plenty of unfinished [[{{Mooks}} Zoanoids]] hanging out in jars... and one of the few instances where you actually see someone leaving one of the jars without someone having to smash said jar first.
* ''Manga/HanaukyoMaidTeam La Verite'': In Episode 11 Taro finds Mariel stored in a jar of liquid in an underground room.
* ''Franchise/KagerouProject'': After their deaths, [[spoiler:and being spat back out of the Daze, Takane and Haruka were put into large tanks beneath the school basement. Haruka (now [[EasyAmnesia Konoha]]) was woken up, but Takane's consciousness was somehow separated from her body, resulting in her transformation into [[InsideAComputerSystem Cyber Girl]] (and vicious {{Troll}}) Ene]].
* ''Anime/MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha'': The dead body of Fate Testarossa's older sister Alicia [[spoiler: or better said, the girl Fate was cloned from]] is kept in a jar. Also, in ''[[Anime/MagicalGirlLyricalNanohaStrikers StrikerS]]'', there are scores of said girls in Scaglietti's lair, which are revealed to be his illegally-created minions, and some broken PeopleJars in his abandoned labs; this has something to do with the forbidden research of the first season, as well as its presumed-dead BigBad.
* ''Manga/MermaidMelodyPichiPichiPitch'': Noel and Coco are imprisoned in underwater fish tanks. Gackto also wants to trap the girls in this.
* The ''Anime/MonsterRancher'' anime has this. We find out that a majority of Monsters were born in test tubes. Moo was engineered to be a SuperSoldier to end the Last War but was too strong to control. This ends up disturbing the characters when they eventually find [[spoiler:a Monster manufacturing plant, with Mocchi asking if ''he'' was born there]].
* ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'': Orochimaru's bases often have people in jars in them as experiments. A more recent one is [[spoiler:Suigetsu]], who is released by Sasuke to join him.
** [[spoiler:Yamato]] was also this as a child, being the only surviving/successful test subject of an experiment to infuse humans with some of the first hokage's DNA in order to give them his kekkai genkai. He was "rescued" by Danzo after the latter realized one of the test subjects still lived, and recruited into ROOT.

** Rei spent a long time floating in a jar filled with LCL. Later [[spoiler: dozens of mindless clones of Rei grown as substitute Eva pilots]] showed up.
** It's implied [[spoiler: that there is a similar tank full of Kaworu clones, as Units 05-13 use Kaworu-powered dummy plugs.]] In the manga, we see the original in a jar.
* ''{{Anime/Noein}}'' (Mou hitori no kimi e): The people from [[spoiler: the possible future]] tried to put [[spoiler: Haruka]] in a people jar.
* ''Manga/OnePiece'': In chapter 839, Sanji is horrified to discover [[spoiler:a room in the Germa Kingdom full of all kinds of soldiers in capsules]].
* ''Manga/OutlawStar'': SpaceshipGirl Melfina, climbed into a tank ''naked'' to provide special navigation.
* In ''Anime/PokemonTheFirstMovie'', all of the clones are created in containers like this. Much of Mewtwo's such life is shown.
* ''Manga/Reborn2004'' has [[spoiler: Mukuro]] chained in a jar after certain plot points.
* ''LightNovel/ScrappedPrincess'': Lord Renard planned to used followers from the Browning Church to power a WaveMotionGun to annihilate the city of St. Grendel, home to the Church of Mauser. [[spoiler:He himself is actually a Mauser inquisitor, and promptly [[LeftForDead leaves them all for dead]] when he finds out that Pacifica and her party are in the area.]]
* ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia'' OVA: The Asgard ranch had these.
* ''Anime/TenchiMuyo OAV'': Ryoko ends up put in one of these via BigBad Kagato. She releases herself when [[spoiler: Tenchi is almost killed]]. And almost at the same time, [[spoiler: Mihoshi finds Washu in a similar situation, only it's a CrystalPrison.]]
* ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann'': Former BigBad Lordgenome is revived as a "biological computer" after the TimeSkip, which means he's now living life as a ''{{WesternAnimation/Futurama}}''-style head in a jar. This was also his HeelFaceTurn, as he started relaying truth and TechnoBabble about the Anti-Spirals and the series' backstory. In the very end, he ''does'' get his body back, and goes out in [[HeroicSacrifice a blaze of glory]].

** In the manga version of the [=SEEDs=] flashback, after the crew studied Tessla so extensively that they gave her cancer and she died, they dissected her corpse and left it floating in a giant jar. Where Vash and Knives found it, some years later, prompting cute little Knives' FaceHeelTurn and determination to KillAllHumans.
** Plus all the normal plants live in big glass bulbs and produce goods and energy. They're not human, but they are people.
*** Manga Knives recovers in one. Comes out naked. Does not seem to care.
* ''Anime/WolfsRain'': Cheza was in a jar being studied by Cher Degre before she got busted out by Darcia. In this case, she's not being imprisoned -- just studied and kept alive. The second time she gets put in a jar, it follows the trope much more closely because 1) she's been forcibly taken, 2) her [[{{Determinator}} most zealous bodyguard]] Kiba has also been locked in a nearby jar and is ''having his blood drained out'', and [[spoiler: 3) Jagara and her guests are drinking WOLF BLOOD in front of her, '''which may or may not be Kiba's'''.]] Did I mention that spilled wolf's blood in general triggers Cheza's [[TheScream scream reflex?]]
* ''Manga/YuGiOhR'': Subverted. The lab in Kaiba Corp's basement is meant for testing holographic projectors, so none of the monsters floating inside the glass tubes are real. There is an actual person in one of the tubes, but he put himself in there as a practical joke and can easily let himself back out.
* ''Manga/YuYuHakusho'': After being cut in half, Hiei is put in a tank to heal.

* The all-too-brief "Stealing Thunder" arc of ''ComicBook/JusticeSocietyOfAmerica'' had the entire metahuman community put in jars, with a few exceptions--mostly escapees and specific heroes that he needed for his own purposes. This was achieved by [[spoiler:taking over the mind of Johnny Thunder and recalling the Thunderbolt genie from Jakeem Thunder]].
* In ''ComicBook/GothamCityGarage'', ComicBook/LexLuthor kidnapped the world's greatest geniuses, imprisoned them in pods and mind-controlled them into working for him.
-->'''ComicBook/{{Nightwing}}:''' The Hell '''is''' this place?\\
'''ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}:''' It's a computer. A neural network of ridealongs inside cryogenically frozen geniuses. A super-cooled processor made of human brains--and every one of them has at least three [=PhDs=] at the end of their name. We're looking at the smartest people in the world.\\
'''ComicBook/{{Catwoman}}:''' Oh, Lex. You never did like competition.

** In ''The Conqueror Worm'', the hollow mountain under Hunte Castle is full of grotesque homunculi in jars, left behind by ThoseWackyNazis and their experiments.
** In Abe Sapien's origin story, he was found by workers underneath a hospital in Washington DC, floating in a suspended animation tank with a note that had the date of Abraham Lincoln's assassination and the word icthyos sapien.
* ''ComicBook/IronMan'': When he decided to try to ruin Tony Stark's life a second time, Obadiah Stane kidnapped several of his friends and colleagues, and imprisoned them in tubes in a state of suspended animation. The room in which these people jars were in was also rigged with motion sensors that, once activated, would cause the occupants to be [[HighVoltageDeath electrocuted]] in the event Iron Man attempted a rescue. Stane didn't quite count on catching Tony in just the right position to permit him to disable the trap with his [[ChestBlaster Uni-beam]], though.
* ''ComicBook/ScottPilgrim'': Ramona's 7th evil ex, [[spoiler: Gideon]] has some sort of big spaceship thing, in which [[spoiler: he keeps his OWN 7 evil exes frozen in tubes, awaiting the day they will go out with him.]]

** Young Clark Kent from the {{Elseworlds}} ''ComicBook/SupermanSecretIdentity'' after being captured by the American Government wakes up floating in one and surrounded by dozens of similar jars containing the murdered victims of others from infants to adults that the government had captured and experimented on.
** In ''[[ComicBook/Supergirl1982 a Bronze Age issue]]'', ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} gets captured by a criminal organization and dumped into a containment unit after getting cloned.
** The people of the city of Kandor spend most of their time in a jar, but it's not quite this trope in the usual sense; the ''entire city'' is in the jar and the people inside are just going about their daily lives and trying to ignore that their universe effectively ends at the City Limits signs. They probably consider that it's better than the alternative, given that pretty much every other Kryptonian city blew up along with Krypton itself.
** In ''ComicBook/{{Crucible}}'', Supergirl discovers dozens of large, liquid-filled cylinders cluttering [[BigBad Korstus]]' lab chambers. Her friends are imprisoned in some of them, but most of tubes are incubators for ComicBook/{{Superboy}}'s clones, all of which are floating silently in some kind of yellowish fluid.
** ''ComicBook/Superboy1994'': In one Annual, Superboy, who was Cadmus's thirteenth and only successful Superman clone is recalled to the project when they recover the bodies of the previous twelve, all of whom are in glass stasis capsules, except for the sixth who's body is dangling half-out of his damaged capsule.
** In ''ComicBook/LastDaughterOfKrypton'':
*** A flashback shows several alien embryos being floating in a jar filled with orange, bubbly fluid while they are being genetically engineered into become Worldkillers.
*** Another flashback shows Kara floating in a liquid-filled transparent cylinder while Zor-El is correcting alleged genetic flaws.
** ''ComicBook/TheUnknownSupergirl'' reveals that the Bottle City of Kandor has "The Hall of Sleepers", a chamber where volunteers are placed into a state of suspended animation inside transparent cylindrical pods to be awakened one thousand years later.
** In ''ComicBook/TheKillersOfKrypton'', dozens of aliens trapped in liquid-filled transparent cylinders are found in Harry Hokum's science labs.
** In ''ComicBook/TheImmortalSuperman'', three super-heroes who tried to apprehend an energy beast were put in cryo-freezing crystal pods when the monster's attacks put them in a coma.
** ''ComicBook/ThePhantomZone'': When Kryptonian lawmen barge into Faora Hu-Ul's farm to ascertain what happened to twenty-three persons who disappearing after visiting her farm, they find her surviving victims naked and hanging upside-down inside membranous sacs filled with a strange glowing gas to preserve the bodies.
** ''ComicBook/DeathAndTheFamily'': When Gangbuster breaks into Insect Queen's hive, he finds Supergirl encased in a jewel-like pod and floating in an orange liquid.
* ''ComicBook/WerewolfByNight'': After the titular character is infected with [[spoiler:the zombie virus]], ComicBook/{{Morbius}} keeps him in one of these until he can find a cure, as seen in '' Amazing ComicBook/SpiderMan'' #622.
* People who've committed crimes in ''ComicBook/TheMotherlessOven'' are preserved in jars with tubing and strange liquid until they reach their Death Day, which could be either the next week or not for another few decades. Vera and Castro [[spoiler: break Scarper out of a jar in the second book.]]
* ''Franchise/WonderWoman'':
** ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'': During ''ComicBook/JudgmentInInfinity'' persons abducted by the Adjudicator are imprisoned in individual crystalline spheres.
** ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1987'': In her quest for immortality without the constant decay Morgan La Fey nabs [[ComicBook/{{Etrigan}} Jason Blood]], ComicBook/VandalSavage and other immortals and sticks them in stasis in tubes while catching the others she intends to grab for her plan.
* ''ComicBook/XFactor2006'': After Darwin is captured by Project Karma, he's [[UndressingTheUnconscious undressed]] and awakens to find himself naked in a huge tank full of liquid, where they keep him imprisoned, fully conscious, while they perform experiments on him. He's rescued by the rest of the team soon enough.
* ''ComicBook/TheUltimates'': The Chitauri captured the Wasp, in her wasp size, and placed her inside a test tube. Herr Kleiser kept her around as a pet.
* ''ComicBook/DeKiekeboes'': Comic book characters are put in jars in the album Kiekebanus.

** It had quite a few of the "humans are bugs" variety. One involved an alien lab tech getting scolded by his mentor for putting "two incompatible species in the Earth Terrarium", panning to a tiny human in a terrarium getting mauled by a tiny bear. Another one has one giant alien reminding the other to poke holes in the jar.
** Then there were the incidents with the Hatfields and [=McCoys=] being put in the same jar, and On The Sixth Day, when God was adding Humans to his recipe for Earth, Jerks in a spice jar.
** And the one where a boy liberates a genie and uses his first two wishes to put his parents in jars. The third wish is just the icing on the cake.

* ''Fanfic/TheChildOfLove'': In the sequel Rei spends a while floating inside a cylindrical transparent tube, wondering whether she should terminate the remaining Yui clones -and finally becoming her own person- or leave them alone in case her current body gets destroyed in battle. Later the remaining clones appear, floating in their liquid-filled tank.

* ''Fanfic/TamersForeverSeries'': In [[spoiler:the Apex, the core of the four Quadrants.]] There's [[spoiler: the first five failed Takato bodies, a spot for the sixth one: [[Anime/DigimonTamers Takato Matsuki]], the seventh one: [[OppositeSexClone Gabrielle/Takako]], and a spot for the eighth one: Takato [[Anime/DigimonAdventure Tachikawa]] ]]
* ''FanFic/RiseOfTheGaleforces'', naturally, showcases [[OurClonesAreIdentical cloned]] Supers from the Golden Era in these, particularly in the first two parts.
* Thunderstorm of ''Fanfic/CalvinAndHobbesTheSeries'' plays with this - there are several people in ''one'' jar.
* In ''ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}'' fanfic ''Fanfic/HellsisterTrilogy'', Darkseid's minions shove [[EvilTwin Satan Girl]] into one after extracting her baby.
-->'''Satan Girl:''' A woman knows when she no longer carries a child. I know not who took it from me. I was liberated from the prison you had placed me in. The one who took me from it placed me in a coma before I could see his face. I awoke in a large tube, with a red-sun lamp above me and my arms' veins pierced with nutriment tubes. My child was gone... That was all I was wanted for. I tore the needles from my arms and opened the tube's hatch. There was no one in the chamber.
* In ''Fanfic/HumanCuriosity'', [[spoiler:it turns out that the HCS was "killing" nations by shutting off their healing abilities, shooting them up with deadly poison, and freezing them into stasis in a pod. It's revealed later that the only reason they bothered preserving them instead of killing the nations outright is that they were afraid doing so would somehow hurt the people living in the nations.]]

* In chapter 20 of ''Fanfic/ChildrenOfAnElderGod'', the clones of Rei are seen swimming inside their huge liquid-filled tank (and trying to break the glass to escape).
* In ''Fanfic/TheSecondTry'', Rei's clones are shown floating in their “aquarium” right after [[EldritchAbomination Armisael’s]] defeat.
* ''Fanfic/Plan7Of9FromOuterSpace''. The MadScientistLaboratory of Dr. Zarkendorf is lined with transparent chambers each holding a gorgeous naked woman, their intimate regions covered by [[SceneryCensor strategically placed machinery]]. When [[Film/TheAdventuresOfCaptainProton Captain Proton]] orders these lovely ladies to be freed from their 'toothbrush holders', Dr. Zarkendorf considers this an excellent idea and activates the women (who have been turned into his cyborg army) to attack Proton.
* ''Fanfic/TheJobGoneWrong'' has Bio-Storage from the Weapon X facility. When young Gambit is captured, he's hooked to a respirator, put on IV and wires and dunked into a tube, in which he sleeps for two weeks before his adoptive father rescues him.
* In ''Fanfic/KaraOfRokyn'', ComicBook/LexLuthor manages to trap Franchise/{{Superman}} into a vat full with Parasite's shapeless body.
* In ''Fanfic/KnowThyself'', after the Council gives the go-ahead for Harry to attend Hogwarts and learn magic for the war effort, they manage to steal and jury rig an unused pod from the machine power plant and essentially re-plug Harry into it - bald head, wires, amniotic fluid and all - in a safe place under observation so that Harry could attend full-time at BoardingSchool.
* ''Fanfic/RocketshipVoyager''. When the Caretaker is showing Captain Janeway and her officers around his archive, one of the exhibits is a [[AlienAbduction woman abducted from Earth]] kept in a [[AndIMustScream suspended animation tank]]. He asks for [[MarsNeedsWomen another Terran female for his archive]] in exchange for giving Voyager passage back to Earth. Janeway's response is to [[MercyKill put a bullet in the tank]], which gets them thrown off the Array.

* The Franchise/{{DCAU}} movie ''WesternAnimation/SupermanDoomsday'', reveals that Luthor has been cloning his own army of Supermen. Lois and Jimmy discover rows upon rows of tubes with clones in various states of development, from zygotes to full-grown men. They're understandably freaked out, and ''more'' freaked out when the prototype clone slices through them with his heat vision.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheDeathOfSuperman'' and ''WesternAnimation/ReignOfTheSupermen'' feature Superboy's creation similar to the comics. The rest of the (failed) clones are eventually released by Luthor on the scientist in charge [[YouHaveFailedMe when he screws up one too many times.]]

* ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'': In a less squicky moment, Luke Skywalker recovers from ice monster injuries and near hypothermia in a bacta tank.
** The ExpandedUniverse and {{prequel}}s had clones in jars. On Kamino, the cloned fetuses are grown in pods filled with nutrients. Pretty creepy, but even worse is the part about the clones' training: "If clones showed any signs of abnormality, they often mysteriously disappeared in the late hours of the night. This was the case of a batch of young clones whose vision was not 100% perfect."
** Han Solo getting frozen in carbonite could be seen as a variation of the trope.
** ''Film/TheRiseOfSkywalker'': When Kylo Ren explores Snoke's hideout on Exegol, he passes several tanks holding clones of Snoke.
* TheFilmOfTheBook ''Film/StarshipTroopers'' puts the protagonist into a jar after being so heavily wounded that he listed as KIA. He healed quickly for the next battle.
* ''Film/TheFifthElement'' reconstructed the rest of Leeloo around her hand. Later, the heroes are shown recuperating in the said jar.
* The ''Film/XMenOriginsWolverine'' had this. Colonel Stryker collected mutants in glass tanks, where they stayed naked in suspended animation and covered in white powder. Stryker's own son was one of these.
* ''Film/AlienResurrection'': Various Ripley clones, in jars. Since the Ripleys in question are the ''least'' successful of a batch of [[HalfHumanHybrid alien hybrids]], this is stretching the definition of "people" quite a bit.
** The exact same scene happened in the {{manga}} ''Manga/BattleAngelAlita''.
* Used beneficially in ''Film/{{Hellboy|2004}}'', where Abe is placed in a water-filled glass tube to recuperate after being injured by Samael. Due to his fishy nature, it was probably more comfortable and useful than putting him on a hospital bed--although it's not clear how he was supposed to get out again.
* ''Film/TheMatrix'': Humans are kept in jars and used as batteries for the machines. The Resistance's job is to free them by first freeing their minds from the Matrix and then freeing them from their jars.
* ''Film/BladeTrinity'' featured a warehouse, one of many, where brain dead people were kept in storage within what at best described as a giant, airtight ziplock bag for backup food supply. This actually was already in cut content of the first movie in the series.
* The Spacing Guild navigators in ''Film/Dune1984'' were essentially mutated ex-humans in jars.
* Spoilerific movie example: ''Film/ThePrestige'' [[spoiler:ends with the revelation that the main character has been cloning himself with Tesla's machine each night, before arranging for the original to die in the water-tanks stored below the stage.]]
* In the 1976 book and 1978 movie ''Film/{{Coma}}'', Robin Cook managed to come up with something ''even creepier'' than people in ''jars'': rooms full of people in artificially-induced comas, ''suspended from the ceiling by wires'' to keep them from developing bedsores, used as raw material for organ transplants.
* In ''Film/PartsTheClonusHorror'', clones are stuffed into giant plastic bags before being shipped to America.
* Not jars precisely, but those convicted of "future murders" in ''Film/MinorityReport'' are kept in an artificially induced coma in a warehouse-like facility.
** The precogs themselves, who float/are submerged in a pool of pale liquid...
* The ''Film/{{Perfume}}'' movie shows Jean-Baptiste Grenouille dipping a woman in a vat full of molten grease in a failed effort to extract her scent.
* The pickled fetuses with the eponymous deformity in ''Film/TheDevilsBackbone''. Oddly, the doctor who keeps these curiosities is a good guy.
* There's a bizarrely funny scene in ''Film/BrideOfFrankenstein'' where Dr. Praetorius shows off his work in creating life-- little people (and a mermaid-- "an experiment with seaweed"-- in jars. In an FX shot that's damned impressive for 1935 when one of them climbs out of his jar Praetorius ''picks him up with tweezers'' and puts him back where he belongs.
* In ''Film/{{Unrest}}'', a large tank of formaldehyde is used to hold an autopsy lab's cadavers between med students' dissection exercises. This being a horror movie, some living people get dunked, too.
* Messing with Dead People Jars started the whole brain-eating incident in ''Film/TheReturnOfTheLivingDead'', when two employees of a medical-supply company carelessly rupture a zombie's containment tank.
* [[http://web.archive.org/web/20120724192436/http://www.movie-theatres.info/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/daybreakers.jpg A version of this]] is used to store the humans being harvested for blood in Film/{{Daybreakers}}.
* Combined with BrainInAJar in ''Film/{{The Whisperer in Darkness}}'' (2011). The bodies are stored separately in a cave which the protagonist later enters, horrified to find the headless corpse plugged into tubes and twitching as if still alive.
* ''Film/BatmanAndRobin''. Mr. Freeze's wife suffers from a fatal disease called [=MacGregor=]'s Syndrome. He keeps her in suspended animation in a liquid-filled tube while he works on a cure.
* ''Film/TheySavedHitlersBrain'' - actually, his entire live, sentient head. Clearly an influence on ''{{WesternAnimation/Futurama}}''.
* In ''Film/AustinPowersInternationalManOfMystery'', there is a cryogenic storage facility with frozen celebrities in pods. Amongst them [[http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v152/187-Maul/what%20the%20movie/navlcsnap-2010-01-04-01h51m14s43_1.png Vanilla Ice]].

* The 1986 Ozploitation thriller ''Film/TheBigHurt'' ends with the IntrepidReporter confronting the people behind a GovernmentConspiracy to develop a MindControl drug, in a laboratory with nude women trapped inside glass cylinders filled with water, and kept alive by scuba-style breathing apparatus.
* Turns up in ''Film/ACureForWellness'' as hydrotherapy and sensory deprivation tanks are both used for the eponymous 'cure'. While ExploringTheEvilLair, the protagonist hides in a dark room only to turn on the lights and find it's full of naked people floating in tanks, including the executive he'd been sent to find. He thinks they've been killed, but the executive is later produced alive and Lockhart is shown in the same tanks when he starts falling under the MadDoctor's control.

* In ''Film/IndependenceDay'', a trio of aliens who died in the Roswell, New Mexico crash are kept on display in a vault at Area 51.

* In ''The City of Gold and Lead'' (''Literature/TheTripods'' novels by Creator/JohnChristopher), the narrator wonders why no women are seen in the Tripod city. Then his Master takes him to a place were human females are kept preserved like butterflies. [[TearJerker Knowing what he's going to find]], he goes through the collection until he finds the preserved body of a woman he fell in love with in a previous novel, then says that he's seen enough.
* Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''Literature/ThePuppetMasters''. While investigating the crashed Pass Christian saucer, the heroes discover giant tanks containing living human beings in suspended animation (but not frozen).
* Anne [=McCaffrey=], in ''Literature/TheShipWho'' series has "shell people", who are placed in containers as infants and essentially become cyborgs, many becoming spaceships (one book has a shell person as a sentient city). In fairness, this is only done with infants with severe birth defects and does give a much better quality of life than said birth defects would normally allow the child to have.
** In ''Literature/TheShipWhoSearched'', a girl about the age of ten (If I remember correctly) goes through the process of her own free will. She does fine and eventually [[spoiler:buys a company and makes them build her a robotic body she can use, but only within her ship. And it sounds like they're working on giving her more range]]. Even in this case, she only signs up after being rendered quadriplegic by some alien disease.
** Some related stories have adult soldiers being converted into cyborg ships, again only after being severely injured in the line of duty. In general, the world seems to consider it better than being extensively paralyzed, and it's treated as an extensive prosthetic option.
* Aldous Huxley's ''Literature/BraveNewWorld'' had the human race conditioning each member of the species by birthing them in jars. Some jars were induced with alcohol and others were violently shaken so as to cause the embryo to experience arrested development -- so as to make the individual more suitable to the mundane task to which it had been predestined.
* In the Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse, human clones were grown in "Spaarti cylinders", which were more or less PeopleJars. It was generally accepted that it took three to five years or a year at the ''very'' most to grow a trained, battle-ready clone whose [[CloningBlues life sucked immeasurably]]; any less than than a year and the clone tended to be unstable and develop Clone Madness, though if a [[PowerNullifier ysalamiri]] was nearby the process could be shortened to under thirty days. In the Literature/HandOfThrawn duology [[BattleCouple Luke and Mara]] find a clone of Thrawn floating in a cylinder under a base. After ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'' came out, things were retconned a little -- the Republic and the early Empire used Kaminoan-style clones which needed about ten years of raising, and as time wore on they were replaced by quicker-growing Spaarti clones and, eventually, normal recruits.
** ''Literature/GalaxyOfFear: Ghost of the Jedi'' features a morgue full of bodies in cryogenic tanks. [[spoiler: Turns out they're alive in stasis. Their LifeEnergy has been siphoned away for study, but it can be put back.]]

* Sylvia Plath used this trope metaphorically in ''The Bell Jar'' to describe alienation.
* Used and subverted in Frank Herbert's Franchise/{{Dune}} universe, in which genetic clones (and other creatures) are grown in 'Axolotl tanks'. [[spoiler:The tanks are revealed to be 'people' as well.]]
* Used twice in the Creator/MatthewReilly book "The Five Greatest Warriors". [[spoiler:The first appearance is when the team's Israeli defector is handed over to Mossad. He is suspended upside down in a tank, kept alive in order to spend the rest of his life as a living trophy alongside terrorists and Nazis (at least until his friends break him out). The second use is by a Russian general who created the method, only he doesn't limit his "trophies" to just terrorists.]]
* The [[TheEmpire immortal emperor]] of the Music/{{Hawkwind}} books by Creator/MichaelMoorcock keeps himself in such a device. Even holding rare audiences from his tank.
* In the third story from the ''Literature/MemoirsOfASpaceTraveller: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy'' by Creator/StanislawLem, there's a creepy scientist, who keeps specimens obtained by cloning experiments in such jars. For the most part, they aren't humans, but [[spoiler: in one large tank there's the body of the scientist himself, whose clone the current host of the laboratory turns out to be.]]
* In ''[[Literature/{{Discworld}} Pyramids]]'', the embalmers of Djelibeybi preserve the dead by pickling their remains. At one point, the late king's spirit looks in on the process, and sees his own body lying rather sadly in a vat of fluid "like the last gherkin in the jar".
* In the Spatterjay series by Neal Asher, some of the mostly immortal villains are trapped in large jar prisons. These are normally filled with a non-breathable gas but for celebrations, they will be filled with oxygen and the villains will be given food.
* In Creator/RobertWestall's ''Literature/BreakOfDark'' short story ''Sergeant Nice'', aliens are seen to have some of these. Specifically, they have a set of what are described as ''"huge glass bottles, like in the biology lab at school"''; in which are the various organs and parts of the cats and dogs and the one little girl they've vivisected. The heads of the unfortunates are still alive, set on top of each bottle.
* In the ''{{Literature/Gor}}'' novels, this is how Earth women are transported to Gor to become Gorean slavegirls. In particular, ''Assassin of Gor'' has a scene where women in jars are delivered from a transport ship, and then removed from the jars and tied up for transport by more mundane (for Gor) means to the slave kennels.
* One memorable scene in ''Literature/TheJourneyer'' by Creator/GaryJennings has Marco taken captive and locked into a large clay jar full of sesame oil, with a collar around his neck. While he's locked in, he has a visitor who explains that the victim's neck eventually softens, [[NightmareFuel removing the head from the body whilst keeping the head intact]]. He manages to break the jar and escape, but as he runs away he steps in a large, [[{{Squick}} soft mass]].
* The {{Franchise/Whoniverse}} book ''Literature/TimeLordFairyTales'' has these in the story "The Grief Collector" -- the title character is a CollectorOfTheStrange who likes to collect others' tears of grief. He does this by kidnapping their loved ones (who seem to simply vanish) and putting them in jars in his mansion. Then he heads out to collect the tears of the bereaved and store ''those'' in jars.
* ''The Secret of the Ninth Planet'' by Donald A. Wollheim. The Plutonians keep samples of sentient species preserved in suspended animation tanks. They plan to add our hero to their collection, so he starts smashing the tanks and as each alien regains consciousness it joins the fight and soon there are no more Plutonians.
* In ''Literature/JohannesCabal'', the titular {{Necromancer}} sometimes uses these for corpse storage:
** Johannes keeps the body of his [[TheLostLenore Lost Lenore]] under the floor of his lab in a glass tank filled with a glowing magical preservative, which insulates it from the effects of time while he searches for a method of true resurrection. At the start of the series, it's been over eight years.
** Johannes steals [[spoiler:Alisha]]'s body after ''Literature/TheBrothersCabal'', but has to make do with stowing her in a barrel of magical preservative. He's in a hurry to [[spoiler:resurrect her]] as well, leaving his brother quite disturbed to watch him tip over the barrel and slosh out the naked corpse.

* On ''Series/BabylonFive'', Lyta Alexander revealed that [[spoiler:the Vorlons kidnapped humans, genetically engineered telepathic humans, and then grew them in jars.]]
** And there were the Shadow-modified telepaths stored (in "jars") on the station, which are [[ChekhovsGun later used]] to [[spoiler:disable a group of [[PresidentEvil Clark]]-loyal ships, allowing the B5 forces to score a practically bloodless victory against three dozen destroyers.]] OR... [[spoiler: bloodless [[IDidWhatIHadToDo except for the telepaths.]]]]
* In the reboot of ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'' [[spoiler: humanoid Cylons who show signs of personality aberrations are 'boxed' to quarantine them from infecting the rest of the Cylons with their aberrations/ideas.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'': Victor Fries aka Mr. Freeze kept his IllGirl wife, Nora, [[HumanPopsicle frozen]] in a jar until he can find a cure for her SoapOperaDisease. His ''Film/BatmanAndRobin'' incarnation does the same thing.

[[caption-width-right:312:NO! Not the [[SavePoint save frog!]]]]

* ''Franchise/StarWars: VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' had a [[BossBattle boss]] who captured Jedi and kept their pretty-much-dead bodies in jars as an emergency power source. Both he and the player character can draw on these human batteries in the fight.
** In both [=KotOR=] games, injured persons recuperate in tanks of healing fluid, and prisoners are kept in cells of a similar design.
* ''VideoGame/{{Xenosaga}}'' had mutants... in jars. Realians are test-tube babies in larger scale, although there is little evidence to suggest they ever go back in after their initial awakening.

--> '''Melchior''': Hey! Stop staring at the naked girl in the tank!

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' had espers... in jars.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' had Zack and Cloud stuck in tanks during their years of experimentation at the hands of MadScientist Hojo.
*** In the spin-off game VideoGame/DirgeofCerberus, Vincent gets this treatment as well when [[spoiler: he is put in a tank by Lucrecia to save his life. This one's a more benign example, but he wouldn't be in that tank in the first place if it weren't for Hojo shooting him and performing horrendous experiments on his half-dead body.]] Especially jarring in that the cutscene is shown in first-person POV from Vincent's perspective, so essentially [[AndIMustScream the player is the one inside the tank, looking out of it and unable to move.]]

* ''VideoGame/MapleStory'' has a scene like this--when the player selects a Resistance character and goes through the introductory cutscenes, they at one point end up in a laboratory where children are kept in jars by the evil scientist Dr. Gelmer. The player ends up [[spoiler: rescuing one of these tests subjects, called Vita, and later has several storyline quests involving Vita's recovery and contribution to the Resistance.]]

** Also, later on, he imprisons several members of the Shadow Thieves and uses them to perform some evil ritual meant to steal [[spoiler: the main character's Baalspawn soul]].

* In ''VisualNovel/{{Policenauts}}'' [[spoiler:all the kidnapped people are being kept in suspended animation in a secret base on the moon so their organs can be harvested whenever they are needed]].

** It ''is'' explained : [[spoiler: These are the memories of the party, which Zeal obtained via her timebending Black Omen. She even says that when you'll lose to her, she'll use them to [[RetGone erase you from the timeline]], thus preventing your comeback by some temporal paradox.]]
** ''VideoGame/ChronoCross'' has a scene where [[spoiler:Serge switches bodies with Lynx. This leads to a sequence where Serge-as-Lynx has to clone himself and take over that body. We see that body grow in a jar until, at Serge's exact age, the jar shatters.]] [[{{Fanservice}} This scene was popular with the female fans.]]

** ''VideoGame/KillerEscape 3'', tied into ''Being One's'' storyline, reveals that [[spoiler: Dr. Rycroft and Weston Carnodyne had enlisted the help of aliens to collect hundreds of creatures in jars for Rycroft to study, be it vampires, lycans, or dinosaurs, all in his research into immortality.]]
** ''Urbex'' has white metal pods that [[spoiler: were meant to hold the mutated fly creatures until some of them got smart and released even more of them.]]

** Didn't killing the boss [[LoadBearingBoss shut down the facility?]] One could assume they'd automatically release as a failsafe, in case any of their own workers got caught inside.

* In VideoGame/BeyondGoodAndEvil, [[spoiler: the victims on The Moon are kept in creepily organic capsules embedded into the wall of The Great Crypt.]]
* ''VideoGame/DeadSpace'' has some in the Ishimura's body part cloning farm.
* One mission used in both ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'' and ''VideoGame/CityOfVillains'' takes place in a lab where Crey Industries manufactures the Paragon Protectors, featuring a room filled with jars of cloned superpowered humans.
** The Arachnos Base mission set features Arachnoids (failed super soldiers [[spoiler:Rumored to be made from Lord Recluse's DNA]]) and incomplete Tarantulas (Cybernetic robot spiders exosuits made by permanently, and brutally hooking humans in -- you need to see them to get it) in jars of red fluid attached to the walls.

* In ''VideoGame/TalesOfInnocence'', a government project tries building HumongousMecha powered by [[ReIncarnation Tenseisha]], who have special powers derived from their status as the rebirth of heavenly beings. The battery, located in the back of the robot, is essentially a tube with a human suspended in green liquid. You get a party member by raiding a lab and destroying the machine she's powering; at the end of the game, [[spoiler: the research director himself gets popped into one]].
* In a mission midway through ''[[VideoGame/{{Crusader}} Crusader: No Remorse]]'', the Silencer finds a facility where a bunch of Silencers are apparently being cloned to adulthood. In the last area, there are fully-grown (or nearly) naked people in jars. He kills the scientist who was working on them--but not before the scientist taunts him, implying he might have been in such a tank. Then he's ordered to kill them. He ''shoots the jars'', and the people, ''still attached to the inside of the jar'' by wires or cables or feeding tubes, ''fall out and hang limply in space''. [[MoralEventHorizon Because he's unfeeling like that.]]

* In ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar2'', Dom and Marcus enter an [[AbandonedHospital empty "research" facility]] with the hopes of finding vital information on the Locust's whereabouts. What they find is a building full of booby traps and an [[AIIsACrapshoot AI in control of the facility that's... less than friendly to them,]] not to mention cryo chambers full of "Sires" in jars (humans who were born while their parents were being affected by the Imulsion. Needless to say, [[BodyHorror they suffered horrible birth defects,]] and they were also completely savage). [[spoiler: Obviously, they start breaking out of the cryo chambers once you get there, and you then have to fight off wave after wave of them.]] Not exactly the information they were looking for...
** Apparently, the Sires [[spoiler: are the so-called "Forefathers of the Locust," although the Locust only ''seem'' savage but are highly organized, whereas the Sires are completely savage themselves.]]

** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'': [[spoiler: The residents of Vault 112 are kept alive in stasis while their brains live on inside a LotusEaterMachine.]]

** Cryogenic tubes also feature in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'', with the residents of Vault 111 being placed inside cryo-stasis tubes shortly after the bombs fall. Sadly, [[PlayerCharacter only one resident]] survives, the others dying in frozen airless coffins [[spoiler:plus one bullet in the skull of your spouse. And, technically, there are two survivors, since the same creep that shot your spouse took your son away]].
** Played straight in The Glow from the original ''VideoGame/{{Fallout|1}}.'' The lower levels of the bombed-out facility held about 100 human-sized or bigger jars, with logs dating the process of the [[SuperSoldier Forced]] [[GoneHorriblyRight Evolutionary]] [[TheVirus Virus]]. Most of the jars were broken, even in the parts of the facility that escaped the bombing...

* One of the fighters in the Capcom HumongousMecha fighting game ''VideoGame/{{Cyberbots}}'' is a girl in a jar, who hijacked a robot to escape from the government facility where she was stored. She beats up everyone she comes across due to fear and extreme misunderstandings.
* ''VideoGame/{{XCOM}}''

* ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' has the Collectors, who abducted humans and placed them in stasis pods/jars. When you come across them during your final assault on the Collector base, you learn just what they're being used for -- [[spoiler:the people are horrifically liquefied alive by nanites (including several members of your crew if you're not fast enough to save them) and used as building material for a new kind of [[EldritchAbomination Reaper]]]].
* ''VideoGame/BreathOfFireDragonQuarter'' had headless clones of its WingedHumanoid [[LivingMacGuffin Nina]] (in a departure from the usual ''Franchise/BreathOfFire'' [[RecurringElement Nina character]], ''not'' a princess but a mutilated, [[GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke genetically-engineered]] little girl who is ''legally'' considered an experimental animal)...IN JARS. Even worse, the plan was to use the headless Ninas in PeopleJars as essentially ''living air filters'' to remove the pollution accumulated by people living 1000 years underground in a CrapsackWorld.
* In ''[[VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl Pokemon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum]]'', you find Uxie, Mesprit, and Azelf trapped in jars while [[BigBad Cyrus]] extracts the components needed to craft [[McGuffin the Red Chain]] from their bodies. Examining them tells you that they're in great pain, and the scientists nearby are [[NotWhatISignedOnFor disturbed by the process]].
* ''{{VideoGame/CyberStorm}}'': Vats are used to grow, maintain and [[HumanResources recycle]] [[SuperSoldiers Bioderms]] while they're still alive. It's like an immoral, compact hospital.
* The first generation of Starcraft had these things which you could put on custom maps. One hidden level used them to create Hybrids - the first viable example being a High Templar/Zergling.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Portal}}'', [[SilentProtagonist Chell]] starts out in one of these. She does in ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}'' as well and at the end of the co-op mode [[spoiler:Atlas and P-Body discover thousands of them]].
* ''VideoGame/TheClueFinders5thGradeAdventuresTheSecretOfTheLivingVolcano'' has both humans and animals being kept in a type of these [[spoiler:by aliens who want to eat their brains.]]
* In ''VideoGame/StarControl II'', [[CollectorOfTheStrange admiral ZEX]] keeps the last female Shofixti in [[HumanPopsicle cryogenic pods]] in his menagerie.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Starbound}}'', these are a staple of any Miniknog research facility - both filled and empty jars. Practically every race will be revulsed by the sight.

* In ''[[VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon Pokémon Sun, Moon]]'', ''[[VideoGame/PokemonUltraSunAndUltraMoon Ultra Sun]]'', and ''[[VideoGame/PokemonUltraSunAndUltraMoon Ultra Moon]]'', Lusamine has a private collection of Pokémon frozen and suspended in tanks. For all her talk about loving Pokémon, she doesn't seem too concerned whether the Pokémon she loves are actually alive.

* In ''VisualNovel/BionicHeart'', we learn that Richard, the CorruptCorporateExecutive the main character works for, has captured and preserved some of the greatest minds from the last 50 years into People Jars so that [[spoiler:he can place their brains into android Prototypes and use them for personal gain]].

* In the ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'' SteamPunk/[[InsistentTerminology Gaslamp]] [[GaslampFantasy Fantasy]] comics, Dr. Beetle, the ruler of Beetleburg, had criminals (even common thieves) sentenced to death and punished by putting them into giant glass jars. They were put up in the town square for all to see while the people inside slowly perished (presumably from heatstroke or lack of food/water and air). On the whole, the town population [[http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20021122 approved]] of his methods.
* In ''Webcomic/GuildedAge'', [[spoiler: the [[FiveManBand five main characters]] are kept in this, as the world they live in is actually a [[Film/TheMatrix Maxtrix style]] video game.]]
* [[http://www.inhuman-comic.com/comic242.php This page]] of ''Webcomic/{{Inhuman}}'' is a great illustration of PeopleJars.
* Webcomic/{{Narbonic}}: The final arc has a group of hamsters plotting to [[spoiler: capture the world's geniuses and most creative minds]] and trap them in jars to [[spoiler: power a device intended to wipe out the rest of humanity. Well, actually the rest of all sentient life on Earth.]] They haven't yet figured out how to fix that problem.
* In ''Webcomic/{{Terinu}}'' the Ferin were placed in "Power Cells" up to ten at a time to act as living fusion reactors for the Dominion. [[http://www.terinu.com/Galleryimage/details/78 they seem to have regarded it as pleasurable]] though Teri would disagree.
* Happens somewhat frequently in ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'', though these people jars are used for medical purposes (typically regrowth - i.e. from just their head) more often than not.
** Then again, when all else fails, they seem to make [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20100704.html effective restraints]] as well.

* In ''Webcomic/{{Our Little Adventure}}'', it's revealed the Souballo Empire are creating humans to be used as their soldiers. These soldiers were [[DesignerBabies grown]] in jars such as these.
* One of these serves as a prison for Michael Kappel in ''Webcomic/{{Collar 6}}''.
* Deconstructed in ''Webcomic/{{Spinnerette}}''. The title character wakes up in one run by Dr. Universe when she was suffering from PhlebotinumOverload. Dr. Universe lampshades the drawbacks when Spinnerette almost drowns.

* The movie ''WesternAnimation/HulkVs Wolverine'' features the Weapon X program cloning babies in jars. Deadpool is creeped out by them and idly mentions wanting to kill them when they're done.
** [[MythologyGag X-23 is one of those babies.]]

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' has all the heroes but Robin frozen in jars after they're captured by the VillainOfTheWeek.

** Alien stasis tanks also appear in [[VideoGame/XCOMEnemyUnknown the 2012 reboot]] and [[VendorTrash can be sold freely]][[note]]they're worth less if damaged[[/note]]; in the fangame ''VideoGame/XCOMLongWar'', you can use a number of these alongside alien surgery tables in a research project to speed up the wound recovery rate of your troops.

* ''Manga/{{Trigun}}'': In the manga version of the [=SEEDs=] flashback, after the crew studied Tessla so extensively that they gave her cancer and she died, they dissected her corpse and left it floating in a giant jar. Where Vash and Knives found it, some years later, prompting cute little Knives' FaceHeelTurn and determination to KillAllHumans.

* ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'':