Clutching Hand Trap
A lot of times, people want to get a snack, though sometimes it is in a jar of some kind. When they try to grab for whatever is in the jar, they will get their hand stuck because of the way that they have a grip on the thing in the jar.
This is a Comedy trope in which when you grab the contents of a jar, your hand winds up getting stuck, because of the way you have a grip on it.
The difference between this and Hand in the Hole is with Clutching Hand Trap, the victim does it on their will, since they both want what's inside, and know what's inside. Example, when Bratty Half-Pint wants a cookie from the cookie jar. Hand in the Hole is when the victim is being an idiot and has no idea what's in there but is inserting their hand anyway.
This trope can come with An Aesop about greediness if the character is unable to get their hand out of the jar because they're holding too much food.
Examples of Clutching Hand Trap include:
Film
- In Strangers on a Train, Bruno, a remorseless murderer, gets his arm stuck in a drainage hole by the sidewalk. This is played for suspense, as it helps buy time for Guy to finish his scheduled tennis match ( Bruno arrives at the tennis match anyway), though it does have Alfred Hitchcock\'s trademark dark humor.
- Saw typically goes the Hand in the Hole route, but in Saw II had a more seriously played case of this with a glass case containing a syringe of antidote the characters needed for poison they'd been given. One character on the tail end of the poison's effects discovers the glass case, sticks her arm in and, due to the entry being lined with blades, can't get the arm back out causing her to bleed to death trying.
Newspaper Comics
- Happened to Garfield in this [dead link] strip, but he subverts it by breaking the cookie jar on Jon's head, instead of just simply letting go of the cookie that he wanted.
- Not a cookie jar, but Jon got both of his hands stuck in pickle jars (as did his date) in this [dead link] strip.
- Garfield gets his hand caught in an olive jar in this [dead link] early strip, which was recycled into a gag in the vey first Garfield animation, a nameless short from 1980 that was only shown in the special Happy Birthday, Garfield.
- The comic strip Overboard had a strip in which Captain Henry Crow patiently explained to one of his dimwitted crew that if he'd only let go of the cookies, he could get his hand out of the cookie jar. Night falls and the crewman still has the jar stuck on his hand.
Literature
- Where the Red Fern Grows has something similar as a way to trap raccoons. You cut a small hole in a hollow log, drive some nails around it pointing down and inward, and place something shiny at the bottom like cut-up pieces of tin can. A raccoon passing by will be attracted, reach in to grab it, and catch its fist on the nails trying to pull it out. The narrator thinks his grandfather is teasing him when he first tells him this method, because all the raccoon would have to do is let go of the tin. But the grandfather assures him that a raccoon will never willingly let go of anything shiny. (After the narrator has caught one raccoon like this and can use its skin to train his hunting dogs, his father makes him pull the nails out of all his traps, because if raccoons are that serious about their tin then they don't have a sporting chance.)
Live Action TV
- In Scrubs Turk has gotten his hand stuck in an ice dispensing machine (during Carla's labor), apparently this latter also happened to Leonard the Hook-Handed Security Guard. Another time, he got stuck in a candy machine because he wouldn't let go of the candy. When Carla asked why JD wasn't mocking him, he revealed that he also had his hand stuck, in a glass coffee pot (because he dropped a penny inside).
- One iteration of Celebrity Jeopardy featured Tom Hanks, flanderizing himself into a bumbling idiot, fall to this trap while trying to get a pickle out of a jar that came from...somewhere.
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"Alex Trebek": "Just let go of the pickle." |
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Puppet Shows
- In a Sesame Street episode from the mid-70s, Oscar has his hand stuck in a jar. Throughout the episode, the adults try many methods of prying his hand out, even by greasing it with lard. Turns out he wanted to look at his rock collection that he kept in the jar. The adults convince him to let go and his hand comes out easily; the adults then pour the rocks into his hand. Immediately after, Luis comes by with an old alarm clock in pieces as a gift to Oscar. Luis puts the pieces in the jar, which Oscar immediately grabs. He finds his hand stuck once again as the closing credits begin.
Oral Tradition
- Several old stories use this trope.
- The Boy and the Filberts (attributed to the Greek philosopher Epictetus). A boy reaches into a pitcher of figs and filberts and grabs so many that he can't get his hand out. A passing stranger advises him to release some of them. He does so and succeeds in removing his hand. Epictetus died in A.D. 135, making this Older Than Feudalism.
- Idries Shah's Tales of the Dervishes had a story (attributed to Khwaja Ali Ramitani, who died in 1306) in which a monkey was trapped by putting cherries in a jar. The monkey was so greedy that it grabbed too many cherries and couldn\'t remove its hand.
Western Animation
- This happened to Socrates in the Adventures from the Book of Virtues episode "Moderation", when he tries to take a cookie out of the jar Zach gave him.
- The idiot customer with the Pringles can in Clerks the Animated Series. Dante subtly points this out by pouring the remaining Pringles into his hand while telling the customer that "sometimes you just need to let those hard-to-reach chips go."
- Taken Up to Eleven in The Simpsons when Homer got both of his hands stuck in two different vending machines while trying to get a free can of soda and a candy. They think they have to cut his arms off in order to free him, but then they discover that he's still holding onto the can of soda & candy inside the machines.
- His hands weren't even stuck, he just wouldn't let go of the immovable can/packet.
- The Critic's Jay Sherman got his head stuck in a honey jar a la Winnie the Pooh. Someone even took a photo of it.
- On an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, Mr. Krabs gets his claw stuck in a sink drain because a dime fell into it, and he couldn't get his claw out unless he let go.
- CatDog: Cat got both of his hands stuck in a pickle jar. Since he was also about to be on a date, he had Dog substitute his arms for him in a suit.
Web Comics
- Combined with an ironic cut in Sluggy Freelance: Lord Horribus and Reakk of the Dimension Of Pain discuss their plan to capture Torg, and mention how clever and resourceful Torg is to have evaded them every time prior. Cut to Riff and Torg setting up Halloween, with Torg having his hand stuck in a jar of candy corn.
- And again.
Real Life
- AI programmers sometimes mention a program ending up in a "local optima" where it cannot reach a target state because all available choices would place it in a worse state. For instance, a program navigating a two-dimensional grid ends up behind an obstacle in the direct path to the target position and won't sidestep it, because it's programmed to move towards the target and either movement would just move it away from the target position.
- Dormouse got so big after eating too much that it got stuck in bird feeder