Packed Hero



Ok, so the hero is trying to retrieve some object in a cereal factory, but something goes bad! Our hero falls onto the conveyor belt and is stuck! The packing machine is just ahead on the belt and if nobody does anything, it is going to hurt! Can his trusty partner save him in time? No!

Our lovable protagonist flies right into the machine! The machine shakes violently and makes strange sounds, but doesn't break from the strange input. Instead the packing machine now packs the hero into a package of Protagonist Cereal!

Usually, the package's design will change through the power of Rule of Funny to reflect the unexpected contents.

Film -- Animated

 * Happens in Chicken Run, with the protagonists temporarily getting trapped inside a pie.
 * Parodied in Monsters, Inc. when Boo loses one of the "eyestalks" of her monster costume in a trash can. Sulley sees it and thinks she's in a pile of garbage, then watches that pile of garbage get swept into a cart, dropped down a chute, and put through an exceedingly brutal compactor. The audience saw her walk away from the garbage can, Sulley faints at every step of the compactor.
 * The sequence is an extended Shout-Out to the Chuck Jones short Feed the Kitty.

Film -- Live Action

 * Happens to Cindy Lou Who in the 2000 version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
 * Cruella De Ville suffers from this in One Hundred and One Dalmatians.
 * Threepio in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, except that instead of being packaged, he's sent out with the combat droids after having his head switched with one.
 * Dramatic example in Minority Report, where the hero and anti-villain are fighting on a Conveyor Belt of Doom carrying car chassis through an automated factory. The anti-villain jumps off the belt just before the internal components are mounted in place, and he watches as the hero struggles as the seats are bolted in, the dashboard snaps into place on top of him, the frame snaps on, the doors slam shut... surely he's been crushed? Then the wheels are bolted on, hero's head pops up inside, and drives the car away.
 * In Ernest Scared Stupid, Ernest manages to get himself stuck inside his garbage truck and compacted into a trash box.
 * In the French comedy The Wing or the Thigh, the sidekick of Louis De Funes is baked into a big pie. Don't worry, he's OK.

Literature

 * An example where it's not being done to a protagonist: in Pearl the Cloud Fairy, a goblin falls into a candy wrapping machine and gets wrapped with a sheet of silver paper and a silver ribbon.

Video Games

 * Final Fantasy IX: Zidane, Garnet and Vivi fall into the black mage packing machine and get boxed up.

Western Animation

 * Several Bugs Bunny cartoons use this.
 * A variation occurs in Hillbilly Hare. Bugs tricks his two opponents into a hay baler. After going through it, they're ejected, bundled inside bales of hay. Watch it on YouTube, starting at 6:20.
 * In "The Unmentionables", gangsters Rocky and Mugsy get caught in a cereal factory and are packaged in appropiately sized and labeled boxes.
 * Wile E. Coyote, of course, ends up in a parcel that was meant for the Road Runner. Courtesy of an Acme parcel-making machine, naturally.
 * At the start of the Tom and Jerry short "Cannery Rodent", Tom is chasing the mouse through a fish packing plant and both are packed into cans of tuna, which inexplicably had a picture of each of their faces on the packaging. Near the end of the same cartoon, a shark that has been pestering Tom for the majority of the cartoon is sent through the same packaging machine and is canned in a similar fashion.
 * In The Perils of Penelope Pitstop episode "London Town Treachery", the armored Ant Hill Mobsters are similarly canned, with their faces on the labels.
 * Subverted in an episode of Johnny Test, where Johnny and his friends visit an ice cream factory, Johnny's dog is thought to have fallen into the vat and been packed into a tin. After Johnny eats his way through the entire batch, the dog walks up to him and asks Johnny what he's doing.
 * In one episode of Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines, Dick Dastardly gets caught in Klunk's pigeon-packing machine and ends up stuffed in a can labeled "sauerkraut".
 * In the Looney Tunes short "I Gopher You", featuring the Goofy Gophers, one of the gophers gets canned on a tomato packing line, and the other opens every can, until he finds him in the last can. The first gopher tells his friend that he was in the first can and he started at the wrong end.
 * And immediately afterward, the other gopher, while reprimanding him to be careful, walks off a ledge into a pickling vat, and staggers drunkenly along a Conveyor Belt O' Doom, ending up in a dehydrated meal packet. When his friend revives him with a ladle of water, he's on a platter with an apple in his mouth.
 * In the Classic Disney Short Modern Inventions, Donald Duck is wrapped in cellophane by a gift wrapping machine.
 * Parodied in The Simpsons, when Bart goes missing on a school trip at a box-making factory. Homer sees a completely ordinary cardboard box with Bart's lucky red hat on it, and immediately assumes the worst.
 * Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi The example of retrieving an object from a cereal factory and getting packed into a box happens to Ami in "Collect All 5".
 * The Wallace and Gromit short film A Close Shave had the villain intending to do this to the heroes, complete with Conveyor Belt O' Doom into a machine which produced canned dog food. In the end it is the villain who gets crushed up and delivered into the cans. Not as gruesome as it sounds, since the villain was really
 * One episode of Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers has Fat Cat using a canning machine as a Death Trap for the Rescue Rangers, with every implication that the process would result in a bunch of finely-minced Rangers in a cat food can. Not only do the Rangers escape, but they also trick Fat Cat and his goons into throwing themselves into the machine: the end result is Fat Cat and his goons improbably stuffed into tiny cans, humiliated but apparently no worse for the wear.
 * In Madeline and the Toy Factory, while Madeline and her friends are visiting the titular location, Madeline jumps on the conveyor belt and is packed into a doll box.
 * In one Darkwing Duck episode, Negaduck's Evil Plan to smuggle diamonds in boxes of Valentine's candy is ultimately foiled when Morgiana punches him into his own packing machine, and he's stuffed inside a heart-shaped box. Darkwing then picks it up and snarks, "I guess that's what you'd call a... bittersweet ending!"