Captive Audience

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Statler: Do we have time to go to the bathroom before the next show?

Waldorf: Of course not, you fool! We're bolted to the seats!
—Muppet*Vision 3D

Exactly What It Says on the Tin. A character (or characters) is/are forced to watch an event occur.

Examples of Captive Audience include:


Live-Action TV

  • Statler and Waldorf of The Muppets. Despite their obvious hatred for the Muppets, they're at every show. Finally explained in the page quote.
  • Joel/Mike and the bots on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
  • Used in a very sinister manner on Criminal Minds. Several UnSubs have forced one victim to watch the torture/rape/death of a fellow victim before their own demise.

Real Life

  • According to some sources who have been to North Korea—such as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof—every apartment and public space in the country is rigged with loudspeakers that can't be shut off. They are actual propaganda machines that broadcast into every occupied space in the country. North Koreans don't need alarm clocks. The speaker starts blasting "news" and music every day at 6 a.m.
    • Other dictatorships have been known to have propaganda loudspeakers in public spaces.

Video Games

  • In Portal 2, GLaDOS tells Chell that After Chell killed her, she was forced to watch the last moments of her life over and over again.

Western Animation

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Captive_Audience?oldid=1477045"