Container Maze

You'll never guess what the stage's
Start-to-Crate Rating was.

Callie: So many containers... I wonder what's inside them!
Marie: Wouldn't it be rad if it was all Squid Sisters merch?!

— Splatoon

Our heroes find themselves at the docks. The baddie or monster is lurking somewhere nearby; unfortunately, there's a whole mess of shipping containers piled up everywhere, forming an environment like a maze. The containers all look similar, so searching for the target is confusing for both the heroes and the audience. There could be anything lurking around any corner, or in any of the containers...

Any environment with a large quantity of similar-looking stackable items is a great candidate for one of these, e.g. packing crates in a warehouse, or cardboard boxes in a storeroom.

For an added bonus, it can sometimes be set in a rail yard, where the maze may start shifting at any time and quite possibly crush either the pursuer or the pursued.

Not to be confused with a maze that's meant to contain something (Labyrinth of Crete). This is more a Labyrinth of Crate.

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Examples:

Advertising

• One of the BMW Films The Hire short films features a brief car chase in one of these. The hero tries first to hide in between the containers by turning off his engine and lights (presumably to demonstrate how easy it is to turn on and off the headlights), only for the bad guys to spot them and a chase to re-ensue.

Anime & Manga

• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, during his battle against Yuya Fungami's Highway Star, Josuke is escaping from it while aboard a motorcycle and ends up reaching the Morioh port, performing a sharp turn to lose it amidst some containers.
• Occurs in the Sailor Moon episode where Sailor Venus is unveiled. The Sailor Warriors and Tuxedo Mask have to navigate the stacks of massive crates and shipping containers at Tokyo Harbor to reach the location of the tied-up fake Sailor Moon (who is really Zoisite in disguise, but the heroes don't know that and think that they are rescuing an innocent civilian). After Zoisite has revealed himself, he chases an injured Tuxedo Mask through the stacks of crates inside a warehouse.

Films — Live-Action

• Future War features this with cardboard boxes. Subverted when one character just smashes through the wall of empty boxes.
• Special Female Force has the titular team's final exam, where they venture through a maze made of crates and shipping containers while shooting away at paper targets. It all goes well until they run into a trio of real criminals inexplicably hiding inside said maze.
• The A-Team: The climax occurs a dock loaded with containers, as part of an elaborate Shell Game.
• Welcome to the Punch (2013). A clue written on the hand of a murdered witness is Punch 119, the number of a shipping container in a massive container yard where the final denouement/shootout takes place.
• In the Brazilian film The Elite Squad, a container maze is used to train candidates for operations in the narrow streets of Rio's slums.
• Dave Made a Maze centers around one of these, that being what the "Dave" of the title made. Specifically, he made a cardboard box in his apartment, but inexplicably got "lost" in one. When his friends come to get him out, it turns out it had in fact become a sprawling cardboard labyrinth (complete with death traps and its own minotaur) for seemingly no reason.

Literature

• Worm: The setting for the Undersiders fight with Über and Leet is a huge abandoned shipping site filled with old shipping containers. The duo ambushes the Undersiders to take the team's loot acquired from an earlier bank heist. The setting is apropos given that they're a duo of video game-themed villains.
• In The Pendragon Adventure: The Quillan Games, Bobby is attacked by quigs and chased by Dados through one of these.
• Done intentionally in The Zombie Survival Guide. A zombie attack takes place on a crowded dock. The workers make a maze of packing containers to stop (or squash) the zombies.

Live-Action TV

• The Crystal Maze: One game in series 6 was a maze of stacked barrels, through which the contestant had to carry a small barrel on a long chain, which would only fit through the right gaps in the stacked barrels.
• Doctor Who: In "Planet of the Ood", the Doctor and Donna wind up pursued in a warehouse full of shipping containers. Donna gets caught, but then the Doctor ends up in a chase after the sadistic head of the guards decides he's always wanted to try using the large grappling crane against a person...
• Primeval episode 4.2, involving an extended face-off with a prehistoric crocodile.
• The cargo hold of Red Dwarf is portrayed as such.
• A common occurrence in Criminal Minds. Typically, they are either looking for a killer or trying to locate a victim: or both. One unsub was actually trying to blow up the docks as a political statement, so the agents had to find and distract him while the bomb squad diffused his explosives. The trope has also been invoked in other places such as a university library (with movable stacks).

Video Games

• ANNO: Mutationem: The Ship Level contains a brief segment to traverse through containers behind held outside and dispersed in the ship's interior. Some containers can be opened with The Tunguska Missile launcher to find extra items.
• Bug Fables: A few rooms in the Honey Factory are this, secret exits and hidden areas behind crates included. There are even fully functional cranes that can be operated by the Beemerang.
• Dino Crisis: The Underground crane room, which fortunately is uninhabited and just consisting of large containers that have to be rearranged. There is another crane room in the B3 Armory, though this one 'is' inhabited, and a third one can be found in the room on the way to the Heliport.
• Doom:
  • The second level of episode two, "Containment Area", has a rather famous crate maze filled with imps.
  • Map 11 of TNT: Evilution is largely one big crate maze.
  • Doom does it for performance reasons, and other games probably do too. The main area of Containment Area is one of the biggest in the game, but the floor-to-ceiling crates keep the draw distances from getting higher than the engine can handle, as well as keeping all the enemies from swarming you at once.
• Half-Life: Lots of the levels in Half-Life (and its expansions) are this trope. Warehouses full of crates, yards full of shipping containers... Half-Life 2 has at least one. Black Mesa carries on the tradition but fixes some of the more aggravating parts.
• At the end of Heavy Rain, the Origami Killer can chase Madison through one of these.
• NanoBreaker have one early on, where you must use your plasma sword's morphing abilities to drag and move containers so you can create a path for yourself to exit some docks.
• The dockyard level in the original Max Payne, which also has some overhead cranes and forklifts to contend with, making it somewhat mobile in spots.
• In Metal Gear Solid, the fight versus Raven, you have to hide between the crates that all look alike and take him down by firing at his back.
• Metal Warriors: The first two missions have Stone make his way across a space vessel's depository, and to this end he has to shoot the many containers that stand in his way to destroy them and move forward.
• Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando: On Smolg, the warehouse area is filled with crates, some of which contain Smolgian Snappers.
• Spider-Man (PS4): In one Miles' intermission, he has to traverse through the container-filled docks while avoiding being discovered by Rhino.
• Star Wars: The Phantom Menace has one during the Coruscant Escort Mission; you enter a container depot and must use the existing containers to create a bridge for Padme to cross. She even whines that she's "not jumping down a pit" despite having multiple Trade Federation assassins after her life.
• A number of ship and warehouse maps in City of Heroes. Also shows up in Independence Port.
• One shows up in the second stage of illWill (2023), after you escaped an abandoned mansion full of monsters into an empty shipyard full of containers. You'll need to navigate through the area while battling all kinds of enemies in the way.
• inFAMOUS: The Dust Men have basically constructed a fortress out of shipping containers in the Warren, with the flat sided sides preventing Cole from being able to clamber up them as he can with regular buildings, forcing him to fight his way through the maze until he can reach a ladder up on top of the crates which he then has to navigate without falling.
• In one mission of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, you have to remove explosive crates from a burning warehouse maze, with paths becoming blocked as the fire rages.
• Super Mario Galaxy 2: Two secret levels involve helping a Gearmo burn crates in order to obtain a Power Star.
• Dead Space 2 features a locking dock chock full of shipping containers. Oh, and a dozen or so raptor-like necromorphs.
• Deathless Hyperion has a crate maze in the Station Storage area, with monsters randomly appearing from bends and turns.
• DUSK-12 have one such area outside a factory, near the loading docks. And it's infested with mutants that attacks you on sight.
• James Bond:
  • GoldenEye (1997): Several levels have this feel, including the Depot consists almost exclusively of containers.
  • The second stage of Tomorrow Never Dies begins with Bond landing in a terrorist arms bazaar inside a container maze. And from within, locate the hidden missiles, mortars, and helicopter - the last one being a trick because it's actually hidden behind a wall of containers Bond must blow up.
• Jet Force Gemini: One of the levels in SS Anubis, the aptly-named Depository, consists of a large, intrincate labyrinth made of large metallic containers. The abundance of enemies requires the player's character to keep an eye on the corners to avoid being ambushed by them.
• Driftveil City's Cold Storage in Pokémon Black and White. Made extremely frustrating by all the Frictionless Ice you have to navigate to get through it. And on top of that, you have to navigate it twice. Once during the game, and again post game because one of the Seven Sages is hiding there.
• Splatoon: There's a level in which Agent 3 has to navigate through a pathway filled with containers. Lampshaded by the Mission Controls.
• Jurassic Park: The Game sees Gerry having to run around and jump across the top of one of these in order to dodge a Tyrannosaurus rex.
• In the Bonkers video game for the Sega Genesis, Mr. Big's stage takes place in a warehouse filled with crates, which are scattered out like a maze. Mr. Big has hidden a bomb set to explode in the warehouse, and in order to defuse it, Bonkers must find the pieces of Fall-Apart Rabbit in various crates and put them together so Fall-Apart can defuse the bomb. As the levels progress, Mr. Big's mouse henchmen will navigate the warehouse to try to get Bonkers, so Bonkers must take them out by pushing crates at them.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines has a small one on the Elizabeth Dane Ghost Ship. It's a Stealth-Based Mission: the challenge is to investigate a suspicious shipment without being spotted by police officers, which would threaten the Masquerade. You can easily bypass the whole thing by sneaking to the ship's bridge and looking through the CCTV instead.
• World's End Club: A Ship Level involves Reycho and Pai moving towards the front deck while avoiding containers being swept around with Pai using her barrier powers to deflect them.
• The docks in Zombie Infection is one filled with zombified dockers and workers, and you'll need to navigate your way through while fighting the undead. Occasionally some containers will pop open and dispense extra zombies.

Web Comics

• Plush and Blood has the two protagonists brought in a box before the Evil Overlord. They manage to escape into the warehouse beginning on page 26, and proceed to play hide-and-seek with thirty or so mooks among the rows and rows of crates. Fox and Grey later open one particular crate to discover Katt inside it. She's rather persnickety at first, but otherwise fine.

Western Animation

• Batman: The Animated Series has one and a half in "You Scratch My Back" where Nightwing and Catwoman deduce that Enrique's latest shipment of smuggled goods is coming in via cargo ship, and end up in one of these as they try to find the evidence.
• Transformers: Prime: In "Loose Cannons", Dreadwing sets up his third confrontation with Wheeljack in one of these by attaching bombs to the shipping yard containers.

Real Life

• One theory has the original Labyrinth in Minoan Crete started out as this. Originally a basement for storing Amphoras of wine it kept on being expanded farther and farther until it became a horribly complicated mess.

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