Basic Trope: Prison sentence going beyond an average person's lifespan.
- Straight: Judge Alice sentences Bob to 150 years.
- Exaggerated:
- Judge Alice sentences Bob to 725 life terms and one million years.
- Judge Alice sentences Bob to ten consecutive death sentences.
- Judge Alice sentences Bob to the heat death of the universe.
- After receiving multiple trials for his various crimes, Bob receives forty death sentences, eighty life sentences in addition to trillions of combined years of both jail time AND community service, pretty much the entire world's money supply in fines and a month of probation.
- Downplayed:
- Bob's sentence can be commuted.
- Judge Alice sentences a 90-year-old Bob to 40 years.
- Justified:
- Bob is a continuous danger to society.
- Previous precedent for similar crimes is a major factor in sentencing, and Bob is in prison for a series of similar crimes (e.g., 100 total years for 10 convictions) that hasn't happened before and which only a single instance really shouldn't deserve such a long sentence. When Charlie is later convicted on one count of this crime, he gets 10 years based on Bob's 100.
- Bob's already fully served at least one 150 year sentence...
- Tropetania has no death penalty and a life sentence always has the possibility of parole, so Alice sentences Bob to an absurdly long prison sentence to ensure that he is not eligible for parole until centuries have passed.
- In Tropetania, prisoners often have their sentences shortened if they display good behavior while imprisoned. Alice wants to ensure that no amount of good behavior can ever result in Bob being set free.
- Judge Alice sentences Bob to two consecutive life terms in case Bob appeals the convictions and a court overturns one of them.
- Inverted:
- Judge Alice sentences Bob to -10 years.
- Bob commits a murder in prison and has his sentence shortened by 20 years.
- Judge Alice sentences Bob to 3 seconds.
- Subverted:
- Although Bob got sentenced to 100 years, he can apply for parole in 20.
- Judge Alice sentences Bob to 100 years. Then it is revealed that Bob is actually some kind of fantasy creature and will probably live for at least 1000 years.
- Double Subverted:
- ...but no one whose sentence is over 50 years is paroled.
- Parole Board received orders to keep Bob in prison.
- While the life expectancy of Bob's species is 1000+ years, Bob himself is terminally ill and will die in prison.
- Parodied:
- Short sentences mean prison terms under 500 years.
- Mitigating circumstances means your sentence goes from 1000 to 800 years.
- Reincarnation exists in Bob's universe. When he dies of old age, his reincarnated form is thrown in jail for another lifetime.
- Judge Alice sentences Bob to Eleventy Zillion years.
- (ParodiSubvertInverted!) Judge Alice sentences Bob to a million... seconds in jail - not even two weeks.
- Bob dies two years into his 100-year sentence. His rotting corpse is kept in jail for another 98 years.
- Judge Alice sentences Bob for such a long period of time that spells that give people immortality are created, and Bob will still be in prison. Once that happens, Bob is given one of the spells, and his sentence is extended to an even longer period of time.
- Zig Zagged: Bob is sentenced to death but his sentence is overturned so Judge Alice resentences him to life in prison. Then it turns out Tropetania has a law that mandates all life sentences are eligible for parole. Judge Alice then proceeds change Bob's sentence to eight hundred years in prison.
- Averted:
- Judge Alice sentences Bob to a natural life term.
- Judge Alice sentences Bob to death.
- The country they're in doesn't allow life imprisonment and has a maximum cap on all prison sentences of 30 years.
- Instead of adding more years to his sentence when Bob is already guaranteed to die in prison, the judge sentences him to a worse prison.
- Enforced:
- "We want to show Alice as a harsh and incompetent judge, right? Let's have her sentence Bob to 250 years in prison."
- "There are places where the death penalty is frowned upon, but Bob's actions are way too severe for him to get off easy. If we can't kill off Bob, maybe we can instead have him serve a prison sentence long enough to ensure that he never gets out again."
- Lampshaded: "Wow, the prison will have to keep Bob's body in a cell so that he can keep serving his 1000 year sentence!"
- Invoked:
- The judge is ordered to sentence Bob to 100 years rather than natural life.
- The country they're in doesn't allow life imprisonment or indefinite imprisonment, but has no limit on the length of sentences; Bob's sentence is a case of Loophole Abuse.
- Exploited: Bob's an immortal being who realizes that 1. the local judges seem to enjoy handing down sentences longer than geological epochs and 2. the state penitentiary's cells are actually much nicer than his apartment...
- Defied: Judge Alice feels that sentencing Bob to 100 years is too harsh and illogical, so she sentences him to 30 years.
- Discussed: "I plead guilty. Go ahead, lock me up! Give me life. No, better yet, give me 125 years."
- Conversed: "Those prisoners won't be too happy sharing their cell with Bob's corpse."
- Implied: Skeletons are shown in prison cells.
- Deconstructed:
- When the power-hungry Judge Alice discovers that she can doom any defendant to a guaranteed lifetime in jail, she sentences people beyond the life expectancy for smaller crimes as well as crimes they didn't commit.
- Once Bob realizes he's doomed to spend the rest of his life in jail no matter what, he decides he might as well kill every potential witness to his crimes - it'll decrease the chance of being caught, and it's not like his punishment can get any worse.
- Played For Laughs: Bob challenges himself to steal so much that his thefts alone would get him a 150-year sentence.
- Played For Horror: Bob is sentenced to multiple life sentences, which the penal system executes by having him die in prison, then be zombified and continue to stay in prison until the zombie body rots and then they capture his spirit and force his ghost to continue wandering the prison (all while still having some degree of mental consciousness).
I sentence this trope to 195 years.
