Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Difference between revisions

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* As mentioned above, the New York (and London, and Chicago) sewers are home to the Morlocks in ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]''.

** The original Morlock Tunnels in New York were not sewers or storm drains at all, but a long-abandoned Army construction project originally intended to serve as a mass fallout shelter and then abandoned partway through construction due to cancellation of funding.

** There's also a subfaction of Morlocks who tunnel through the earth nomadically, presenting the flipside to the drain dwellers' coin.

** [[Ultimate Marvel]]'s Morlocks have intentionally expanded their tunnels into an [[Elaborate Underground Base]], complete with hydroponic gardens powered by a mutant's electrical abilities.

* ''[[Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (film)|Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street]]'': Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett search for their assistant Toby in one of these, which is also featured in the title sequence. While this sewer system is large enough for them to walk upright in, it's also described as being the source of the unusually foul smells of Mrs. Lovett's bakery.

** 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.

** [[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]]''.

== 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..."

** Module I9 ''Day of Al' Akbar'': The sewer under the city of Khaibar.

** Supplement ''Adventure Pack I'', adventure "The House of Long Knives". The sewers are 20 feet wide and 15 feet high.

** This is actually rather common in Sixth World sprawls. Seattle features the Ork Underground, built on the old Seattle Catacombs, the bus tunnels, old basements, and of course, lots and lots of sewer tunnels. Justified in the new Manhattan setting, where the city built right over the remains of an earthquake and just sealed off the old subway system in favor of suspended monorails.

* In ''[[SLA Industries]]'', the planet of Mort boasts a generously spacious sewer system, one vast enough to hide hordes of serial killer gangs and other monsters.

** 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]].

* Though perhaps cramped by video game standards, ''[[Diablo]] 2'' has several underground areas that are far roomier than might be reasonably expected. Act 2 under the town and Act 3 beneath the jungle cities are two prominent sewer examples. And although not technically a sewer, the chapel basement of the original ''[[Diablo]]'' is absurdly larger than the building itself. . . even discounting the encroaching levels of Hell.

* ''[[Distorted Travesty]]'' dares to place its giant sewer... Inside a train!

* In ''[[The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind]]'', the sewers of Vivec are ridiculously spacious, often far higher than needed, with walkways on the sides and a deep waterway in the middle. Given that the water is clean, and also that the city is built in the middle of a lake, they're likely storm drains more than anything. They also house cultists, conspirators, and (with the right mods) secret dungeons!

** In the expansion for Morrowind "Tribunal" the sewer is even more spacious.

** [[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.

{{quote|'''Jack''': ''[[Crowning Moment of Funny|Gross, it's in my shoes!]]''}}

* ''[[Eye of the Beholder]]'' takes place, technically, in the sewers of Waterdeep. Though after the first levels, the sewer-ish feel is replaced by dwarven tunnels, drow mazes, thri-kreen hives and an underground palace.

* ''[[Suikoden II]]'' has a traversable sewer area under Two River City, where a recruitable (and less-than-hygienic) character lives.

* In ''[[Summoner]]'', the sewers of Lenele are ''huge''. Even great big Golems have plenty of room.

** ''[[Paper Mario (franchise)|Paper Mario]]'' and ''[[Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga]]'' feature one each below Toad Town and Beanbean Castle.

* In ''[[Tales of Symphonia]]'', Zelos takes everyone through the Meltokio sewer, which is spacious enough to allow giant rats to roam it freely, and has ''multiple levels'', ''computers'', and ''trash compactors''.

* 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 ''[[EverQuest]] 2'' the sewers of Qeynos have vaulted ceilings so high and well lit that it practically looks like you're in a ''cathedral''.

* 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.

* ''[[Fable III]]'' has sewers that are comfy and dry. In fact, they're so clean [[The Nose Knows|your dog can sniff out a wedding ring somebody dropped down there]]!

* The sewers of ''[[The Town]]'' are also infamously large, spacious and full of random monsters including rat shaped robots and [[Alien|Xenomorphs]].

* In the story "Boston Brawl" in the ''[[Whateley Universe]]'', the Boston sewers are big enough to get lost in. Phase gets stuck in the pitch dark, knee-deep in.. ugh, don't even think about it. Then she gets attacked by hundreds of The Necromancer's zombies. In the pitch dark. Ick.

* These have appeared in several ''[[Global Guardians PBEM Universe|Global Guardians]]'' stories, but they are always storm drains and flood-control tunnels, old abandoned subway lines, and other tunnels people were meant to access rather than sanitary lines. The most notable case was when Team America discovered the Twelve Tribes living in the catacombs under New York.

* Partially subverted in [http://gaius0artemis.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d4lwgxe Catacombs of New York]. The sewers there are approximately the size that the real sewers of New York are, until you get to {{spoiler|the buried underground Indian settlement}}.

* ''[[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.

** <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.

[[Truth in Television]] for almost any city of significant size, although what most people would consider "sewers" are actually storm drains that are for carrying excess rainwater away from the city to prevent the streets from flooding.

* London's sewers are in places as spacious as computer games would suggest, having been built on a massive scale in the 19th century to accommodate future population growth (though the network has grown a hundredfold since then). The Victorian-era section of the London sewer system is ''huge'', with several million tons of brickwork and tunnels up to nine feet in diameter. There are also many kilometers of unused underground tunnels built for other purposes, ranging from railways to military bunkers.

** A [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12427748 proposed upgrade] to London's sewers involves adding a section the size of the [[wikipedia:Channel tunnel#Engineering|Channel Tunnel]].

* [http://englishrussia.com/?p=389 ... and Moscow sewers]