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Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Difference between revisions
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In real life, most modern sanitary sewers consist of pipes too small for an adult to enter. They typically range from 10 centimeters in diameter coming from individual properties, to maybe 60 to 70 centimeters (roughly two feet) in the street. Even these largest ones can at best only be crawled through, and then only if they are currently empty. Older sewer systems frequently consist of underground canals with relatively narrow walkways on the side.
Very few creatures, humans especially, would actually be able to survive in sewers for any extended length of time. It's ''pitch black'' (sewer workers bring their own lighting), very chilly even in the summer, and there's little oxygen and a plethora of noxious gases from sewage, making the air highly unsuitable for breathing (exposure to methane and hydrogen sulfide is a frequent hazard to workers).
Sewers featured in video games and any other form of fiction, however, are usually absurdly spacious underground canals with ample room to move, often enabling characters to avoid stepping into the actual sewage (often a good thing, since in many games, [[Grimy Water|contact with sewer water is inherently harmful]]). These underground passages have more in common with the catacombs of Paris than any actual sewer system. The dim lighting, labyrinthine passages, and resident rats and alligators provide the perfectly suitable setting for heroes to chase criminals and/or monsters through. Occasionally, the place is so big people elect it as their home. It's not unusual to find whole shanty towns built in ludicrously large sewer or ex-sewer canals. And somehow there's always adequate lighting, warmth, and breathable air. Presumably, there's no bodily waste down there because [[Nobody Poops]].
It is also often connected to a multitude of locations throughout an urban area, accessed through easily removable manholes, occasionally granting access directly into otherwise secure buildings: a perfect way for suspicious types to travel without detection (and of course, no one will be later alerted by powerful odours, either).
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* In ''[[Bleach]]'', the only reason Ichigo survived so long was because he was able to move around in Seireitei's [[Stealth Pun|ungodly]] huge sewer system.
** Although they were also supply routes, which makes a bit more sense.
*** And keep in mind that the non-Shinigami members of Soul Society do not need to eat. Which, while not quite at [[Nobody Poops]] level, it's more like 5% percent poops.
* Episode 31 of ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' has a chase lead into one of these. At least the smell gets remarked upon.
** While a cat ''did'' it get stuck in there, it was [[Mega Neko|really big]], due to being a {{spoiler|crystal carrier.}}
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** In the original Sweeney Todd story, "The String of Pearls", the tunnels below Fleet Street were how Sweeney got the bodies of his victims to Mrs. Lovett for baking into pies, since her pie shop was right across the street from his barbershop. Previously, he'd had a good number of dead dudes down there, since he dispatched his victims by using a trick barber's chair to dump them into his basement, taking his razor to any who survived the fall. And unlike the musical, this eventually got the two of them caught when the Bow Street Runners investigated.
* According to the Korean monster film ''[[The Host (film)|The Host]]'', most of the sewers in Seoul are big enough for torchlight not to be seen on the roof -- or, for that matter, for a BIG FREAKING TADPOLE MONSTER to charge through them.
** [[Justified Trope]]: [[Reality Is Unrealistic|it ''is'' set in Korea,]] which gets at least half a dozen typhoons a year. (Not to mention it is raining a lot in the film.)
** Ditto Chicago's sewers, big enough to comfortably house a twenty-foot long ''[[Alligator]]''.
** Yes, pretty justified in Korea, [[wikipedia:Fan death|home]] of the [[Blatant Lies|Fan Death]].
* The excellent [[Film Noir]] ''[http://www.tvguide.com/movies/walked-night/review/125652He Walked by Night]'' was the first movie to film in Los Angeles enormous storm drains.
* The pipe systems in ''[[The Matrix]]'' series are described as sewers which are big enough for ''whole hovercrafts'' to comfortably navigate through them, and an ''entire city'' inhabited by thousands of people in its lower depths. The sewers were the only remains of the human cities destroyed in the war with the machines.
** And that's just in "The Desert Of The Real". The Matrix itself has a sewer system beneath the Mega-City that rivals [[Lord of the Rings|the Mines of Moria]] -- chambers hundreds of feet wide and ''deep'' connected by twisty catacomb-like tunnels.
* If you thought ''[[Alien (franchise)|Alien]]'' was the first movie to have creepy monsters being stalked through dark tunnels with flamethrowers, you're wrong. The classic B&W 1954 sci-fi movie ''[[Them]]'' climaxes with a hunt through the Los Angeles storm sewer system (including jeeps with mounted machine-guns) for the [[Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever|giant radioactive ants]].
** This film is parodied in a sidequest in ''[[Fallout 3]]'' called ''Those!'', where the player has to kill radioactive, fire-breathing ants in a similarly abandoned sewer system (which the game is rife with.)
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* ''[[Cthulhu (film)|Cthulhu]]''. A scene beneath the fictional town of [[Lovecraft Country|Rivermouth]] was filmed in the real-life Seattle Catacombs, where one of the producers used to work as a tour guide.
* The Jeffries Tubes in ''[[Star Trek]]'' are always [[Air Vent Passageway|just big enough to crawl through]] -- except in ''[[Star Trek V: The Final Frontier|Star Trek V the Final Frontier]]'', where they're the size of subway tunnels.
* ''[[Film/SWAT|SWAT]]'' has a ridiculously roomy sewer in the last chase scene.
* In ''[[Plunkett and Macleane]]'' the title characters use large sewer tunnels to escape the law on several occassions.
* One of the locations of the floating crap game in ''[[Guys and Dolls]]'', and remarkably clean, too.
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* The movie ''[[Creep]]'' is a horror movie that starts in the [[London Underground]], and the resident monster was living in a secret [[Abandoned Hospital]] but there is your fair share of spacious sewers including one section where he keeps humans in large submerged cages with a catwalk above them.
** A lot of it was filmed in real, albeit decommissioned, sections of the [[London Underground]], standing in for various bits of underground weirdness. Some sections of the network have been disused for the better part of a century now, and are beginning to look as run down and grotty as a viewer would expect the sewers to look.
* Averted in the film ''El Norte''. Two siblings from Guatemala want to get to the US. They're in Mexico, and the only safest, fastest route was through an old sewer pipe. Not only is it small and smelly and they have to crawl on their hands and knees most of the way, but it's full of rats. Disease-ridden rats.
* In Disney's ''[[Hocus Pocus]]'', Max, Dani and Allison have to flee the witches and zombie Billy Butcherson by following Thackery into the sewers, which are filled with spiders and rats, [[Reduced to Ratburgers|which is what Thackery eats as a cat]]! Very [[Squick|squicky]] to the trio.
* Averted in ''[[The Shawshank Redemption]],'' which has {{spoiler|Dufresne escape from prison by tunneling a hole in his cell wall and breaking into a sewer pipe that happened to be right next to it. It's big enough for him to crawl through, but not stand up in; and the film [[Vomit Indiscretion Shot|doesn't exactly portray crawling through raw sewage as healthy either]].}}
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== Literature ==
* Clare Clark's historical novel ''The Great Stink'' is all about building an improved London sewer system.
* ''Three Hands in the Fountain'' by [[Lindsey Davis]] (a historical mystery set in [[Ancient Rome]] in A.D. 73) is about the hunt for a [[Serial Killer]] who dumps the bodies of his victims into Rome's formidable aqueduct system.
* In [[Neil Gaiman]]'s ''[[Neverwhere]]'' the entire fantasy world of London Below exists in the sewers and underground railway tunnels beneath London. However, this is not too implausible; see [[Real Life]] section. (It's also implied that much of the London Below [[Another Dimension|doesn't exist in the "real world"]].)
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* Played pretty straight in the various ''[[CSI Verse|CSIs]]''.
* ''[[Dark Angel]]'' Like every. damn. episode.
* ''[[Due South]]'' episode "Manhunt", the Chicago sewers are not only large enough for three grown men and a wolf, they are large enough for three grown men and a wolf to paddle a canoe through.
* Used and averted in ''[[X-Files]]'' season 2, episode 2 "The Host." Mulder visits an absurdly spacious sewer in Newark, N.J., and later remarks about its size to a Newark sanitation engineer, who confirms that section as being part of the older system, while the newer parts are not more than 24 inches in diameter.
* Played straight with size, but averted with toxicity in an episode of ''[[Casualty]]''. It involves [[Too Dumb to Live|two guys]] who want to win a bet (the details of which I forget) which involved walking to the pub by using the sewers as a shortcut. The guys have oxygen supply, but then they start to run out... That's when the paramedics are called.
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== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Paranoia]]'' once had an section simply named "Sewerworld!" in the ''Send in the Clones'' adventure. The author observes something to the effect that sewers are remarkably consistent over time. "You could put a Roman sewer-slave in modern Tokyo's ultra-sanitary system... sure it'd be cruel. But he wouldn't wonder where he was..."
* Any sewer in ''[[Dungeons and Dragons|Dungeons & Dragons]]'' is spacious and comes complete with whole thieves guilds, secret wizard labs, and lots and lots of specially adapted monsters (like the Otyugh and the Cesspit Ooze).
** Module I9 ''Day of Al' Akbar'': The sewer under the city of Khaibar.
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* In ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'', the lowest levels of Hive Cities resemble this trope, and the lower decks of ''starships'' are about a fifty-fifty mix of Absurdly Spacious Sewer and [[Eternal Engine]].
** Justified in case of Hive Cities since it's stated many times that these mega-cities grow by new generations building on the ruins of the old ones. So those deep levels are actually remains of streets and buildings that have become enclosed on all sides, and therefore seem like tunnel systems.
*** Correction: According to ''[[Necromunda]]'', it's the next-to-last levels of the Underhive that are like that. The very lowest level, a.k.a. "The Sump", is a literal ''sea'' of various human and chemical wastes, patrolled by diamond-eyed spiders [[Giant Spider|the size of battle tanks]].
* ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade]]'' has sewers spacious enough so clans of vampires can live in them, along with libraries. So not only are they spacious, but dry.
** Given that said vampires have covertly directed human affairs for thousands of years, one might think this trope [[Justified Trope|justified]] there since one of the vampire clans prefers living in them.
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* ''[[Chrono Trigger]]'': The Sewer Access in 2300 A.D., which you must fight and navigate through in order to reach Keeper's Dome.
* ''[[City of Heroes]]'': Paragon City has a huge sewer system choked with all kinds of villains (mutated cultist gangs, [[Deadly Doctor|decidedly amoral surgeons]] and their [[Frankenstein's Monster|scientifically animated zombies]], just for starters...), and an abandoned network that's home to even more dangerous villains (extradimensional alien invaders, giant mutated monsters). Even generic missions have an instanced sewer map for this trope.
** The Rogue Isles, in ''[[City of Villains]]'', have their fair share as well.
** Averted in the Praetorian Underground from the ''Going Rogue'' expansion -- this insanely spacious tunnel system (complete with ''faction bases'' and offering an alternate way of getting from zone to zone fast) is ''not'' a sewer, but an abandoned subway network.
* Along with [[Air Vent Passageway|vents and maintenance tunnels]], a common way to safely<ref>for the most part</ref> get from point A to B in ''[[Deus Ex]]''. One sewer junction has an ''entire bioweapons laboratory'' built into it.
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* ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' and ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'' both have sewers that the characters move through and battle within, under Sector 7, Midgar and under Deling City, respectively.
** [[Final Fantasy VIII|Deling City's]] sewer is notable here, however. [[The Maze|Since you can get lost in it.]]
* ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]'s'' Garamsythe Waterway is a labyrinthine series of tunnels that are at least thirty-feet tall and much wider. Some rooms are large enough to fit basketball courts, and these naturally, are the sites of boss battles. This is, however, heavily implied to be an actual ''waterway'', designed for the purpose of bringing water into the desert city of Rabanastre.
* ''[[Radiata Stories]]'' has Jack, the player character, traverse the sewers underneath his guild in a couple of missions. The missions are notoriously [[That One Level|disliked]] due to the sewers also doubling as [[The Maze]]. Like ''[[Earthbound]]'', the game averts the whole "not actually stepping in sewage" deal, to Jack's horror.
{{quote|'''Jack''': ''[[Crowning Moment of Funny|Gross, it's in my shoes!]]''}}
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* ''[[Jet Set Radio]] Future'' features a positively ''palatial'' sewer system including vertical shafts several stories tall. (The player's choice of Rudie can, of course, skate right on up using his/her rocket-propelled inline skates.)
* ''[[Knights of the Old Republic (video game)|Knights of the Old Republic]]'' has one of these when you're searching for Zaalbar, the resident wookie. It's large enough to hide a Rancor in!
* In ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater]]'', Snake escapes Groznyj Grad the first time, after being captured, by tricking the guard into opening his cell, sneaking to a manhole in the base, and running through a sewer leading to an [[Inevitable Waterfall]] where he is confronted by Ocelot and the [[Elite Mooks|Ocelot Unit]].
* ''[[The Last Remnant]]'' has at least one example of this in the Nagapur Aqueducts, it is so spacious that Giants live down there.
* ''[[Might and Magic]] VI'' has the Free Haven Sewers, VII has the Erathian Sewers. Both need to be explored for plot advancement and/or character promotion.
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** And infested with [[Goddamned Bats]].
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess|The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess]]'' features one of these twice in the game: the same location appears as the training level for Link's wolf form, as well as later, after the third dungeon. While not a huge area, it's still absurdly spacious, and seems to double as a prison of some kind. It's also worth noting that said area is apparently inside Hyrule Castle, and clearly above ground level.
** And in ''[[A Link to The Past]]'', Zelda escapes from Hyrule castle trough the sewers.
** The Bottom of the Well in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time|Ocarina of Time]]'' also has elements of this, although it's mostly [[Big Boo's Haunt]].
* In ''[[Lego Batman]]'' the Gotham sewers aren't just big enough to walk through; they're so big that you need a flight suit or a high jump just to reach certain parts of it. However, this network is not very well secured. Penguin and Killer Croc {{spoiler|use the sewer system to break out Catwoman by coming up through the toilets in the police station.}} And yes, there are alligators.
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* The last section in ''[[Police Quest]] II''. Which is sort of odd, considering that the games' main selling point is being so scrupulously realistic.
* The end-game stage in ''[[The World Ends With You]]'' is a perfect representation of this trope, not to mention [[Truth in Television]]: that sewer really does exist in Shibuya.
* In ''[[
* ''[[Blood Rayne]] 2'' has sewers big enough to do ''acrobatics'' in.
* The future city of New Mombasa depicted in ''[[Halo 3: ODST]]'' doesn't just have your average sewage system. It is also home to an extensive maintenance system that runs ''ten floors deep'', an underground lake, dozens of [[Bottomless Pits]], and a supermarket-sized AI construct.
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* Parts of the Depths in ''[[Dark Souls]]'' are like this, filled with rats, slime monsters, and Hollows.
* There is one of these in the second ''[[The Black Mirror|Black Mirror]]'' game.
* ''[[The Trail of Anguish]]'''s sewer is so big you can build and fly a hovercraft through it.
* ''[[Yoshi's Story]]'' features two levels set inside giant sewer pipes. The first level, Jelly Pipe, is loaded up with mysterious gunk that clings to the sides. The second, Torrential Maze, is full of rushing water to sweep you away.
* When the heroes from ''[[Shining the Holy Ark]]'' get kidnapped they use a secret passage and escape into the sewers. It appear to be one massive space under a vaulted ceiling, with multiple levels, that is actually bigger than the castle above it. Maybe justified as there were more than one secret entrance to the castle and it's implied that soon of the royalty is entombed there...in the sewers.
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== Western Animation ==
* ''[[Futurama]]'' really played with this one in a few episodes. New New York's sewers are actually the city of New York, and home to a community of mutants, who mention off-hand that they have a sub-sewer system (home to a community of sub-mutants, according to sub-urban legend). It helps that New New York's sewers connect with the subterranean ruins of old New York. Reality intrudes, however, when the Planet Express crew gets lost down there and Fry says that the only way out is through... a tube that's at most only a few inches wide ("Don't worry, it gets wider after about a mile").
* ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]''. In all incarnations, their sewer lair is larger than any house you've been in ([[Big Fancy House|possibly]]) and the tunnels are wide enough to accommodate vehicles like the tank-sized Battle Shell. It is ''very'' seldom that the Turtles must come into contact with anything you've flushed. In the 1990s cartoon, their original lair was invaded and they later got ''another, even more palatial'' one.
** Kind of justified; Their second lair was actually {{spoiler|an ancient, abandoned [[Atlantis|Elyntian]] outpost}}. They later moved out of the sewers and into a warehouse.
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* In ''[[Sonic Underground]]'', the only way to get very deep into Dr. Robotnik's empire was in... the sewers.
* ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'': When the gang needs a way to sneak into the newly-occupied Omashu, Aang shows them a secret way through the sewers, which is large enough to hold nearly the entire population of the city. More realistic than most, given it's full of sticky smelly goop that Aang and Katara are able to bend away from them, but that Sokka gets covered in - and gets a little too closely acquainted with some of its denizens as a result.
* ''[[Kim Possible]]'' has done the sewer gig more than once, even twenty years into a dystopian future. In their defense, they actually had to walk through some of the sewer fluid.
* ''[[Freakazoid]]!'' used this until it became a running gag, with more than one character complaining about "poo gas".
** <s>One character</s> [[Name McAdjective|Roddy McStew]] notes they're called "crud vapors" in his native Scotland.
* Several villains in ''[[Batman: The Animated Series|Batman the Animated Series]]'' based themselves in the sewers, requiring Batman to go there in search of them, most notably the Sewer King and his legion of children, and Killer Croc and Baby Dahl.
* Likewise, ''[[Batman Beyond]]'' ventured into a downright ''cavernous'' sewer system in at least one episode.
* In ''[[The Tick (animation)]]'', Sewer Urchin lives in an enormous apartment in The City's sewers, and on some occasions provides the other heroes with goods that are otherwise difficult or impossible to acquire, claiming "You'd be surprised what people throw away, yeah, definitely."
* In ''[[The Spectacular Spider-Man]]'', Flint Marko and Alex O'Hirn flee the scene of a robbery by busting through the store's basement wall, and escaping into marvellously ''cavernous'' sewers, only to be promptly caught by Spider-Man. Later, Spider-Man traps the Rhino in a steam-tunnel created from ruptured sewer pipes. Quarters are tighter, but the [[The Brute|hulking]] Rhino can ''still'' maneuver relatively freely. Half the Sinister Six persue a fleeing Spidey through these sewers as well.
* [[Justified Trope]] for ''[[Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?]]?'', as Carmen Sandiego leaves a clue for Zack and Ivy in the Sewer of Paris.
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** Notably averted in the [[The Shawshank Redemption]] parody, where Peter barely squeezes through a half mile of dirty sewage escaping.
* ''[[Danny Phantom]]'' had one episode where the sewer system was big enough to support one ghost boy, his currently possessed love interest, and thousands and thousands of big ass vines gunning towards him. Has some incredibly clean water, too.
* Anakin and Obi-Wan wade through one of these in ''[[Star Wars: Clone Wars]]'' as part of a [[Dungeon Bypass]].
* The sewers in the ''[[Batman]]: Gotham Knight'' are just effin' enormous, one area seems to be several stories tall.
* The small town of ''[[South Park]]'' even has spacious sewers big enough for the boys (and Mr. Garrison) to walk in when searching for Mr. Hankey in "Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls." Obviously, the presence of a magical talking piece of crap means the "no poop" rule is averted.
** Even ignoring Mr. Hankey, the show is one of very few works to acknowledge the disgusting nature of sewers in general. In one gag, Cartman sneezes on Kyle, who complains that sneezing on others is gross and unsanitary. Cartman responds, "oh, sorry, you wouldn't want to get exposed to germs while you're knee-deep in human feces."
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** Osaka, Japan has a network of pathways which connect several of the subway stations. The subway stations in Tokyo could count in their own right: several are huge sprawling complexes where multiple subway lines cross.
* Seattle had a major fire in 1898, and to make sewage flow out into the sea (at high tide, it had a habit of... going the other way from outhouses) they simply rebuilt everything on top of the old foundations. That means today there is a sort of [[wikipedia:Underground Seattle|small town buried beneath downtown's streets]]. Highly unsafe in most of it though.
* In Cologne there is a huge hall with two candelabra in it. It was build for a visit from Kaiser Wilhelm II [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronleuchtersaal\]
* In the [[wikipedia:Warsaw Uprising|Warsaw Uprising]] the quoters separated by Nazi forces tried to communicate with each other using the sewer system. Of course it could be described as anything but spacious and clean. In one case a whole quoter (both soldiers and civilians) was evacuated by these means.
** Fun fact: [[wikipedia:Warsaw Uprising Museum|The Warsaw Uprising Museum]] has a real-size, accessible replica of a Warsaw sewer.
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* Texas A&M University has the "Steam Tunnels", a system of underground utility tunnels under the main campus originally built to pump steam from a central plant to the various buildings' basements to heat them during the winter months. Now it is used to run water and sewage pipes, electrical and phone lines, and even network lines. Campus lore says that there used to be a few student "lounges" set up in intersections of the tunnels where there was a bit more space, but nowadays the access grates to the tunnels are padlocked, and exploration of the area is discouraged by the university officials.
** The University of BC in Vancouver has a similar system, but they're still easily accessible if one knows how. However, nobody goes into them but repairmen and engineering students mucking around.
* Chicago has the Deep Tunnel project, which is a pretty massive-scale water handling project that includes storm flow as well as sewage. Some of the tunnels are easily wide enough to walk through, and it's even possible to get to some of those areas via manhole.
* While not a sewer, and certainly not as extensive as the other examples on this page, Quebec city's Laval University has built a tunnel system under it's campus to link every buildings. A student could theoretically pass the whole year without ever needing to go outside, as almost every kind of services and store are available in at least one of the university's building.
** Lakehead University in Thunder Bay has a similar system of tunnels (both public access and service) for the same reason; it gets ''really'' cold in the winter. Sadly, the university has outgrown the public tunnels and only the main buildings are connected, making for a chilly walk to some classes or back to the campus residences.
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