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Disappearing Box (view source)

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Related: [[Smoke Out]]
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▲{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] & [[Manga]] ==
* Done in ''St. Luminous Mission High School'', after several students have mysteriously vanished.
* In ''[[Pokémon Jirachi Wishmaker (Anime)|Pokémon: Jirachi Wishmaker]]'', the stage magician Butler plays this straight...except for the part where he has his Dusclops destroy the box instead of simply opening it.
* In ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh (anime)|Yu-Gi-Oh]]'', Yugi's Spell Card Mystic Box was based on this trick. With [[The Ace|Dark Magician]] in play, two cabinets would appear, encasing Dark Magician and an opposing monster. Then a dozen swords would pierce the Dark Magician's box, only for him to emerge unharmed from the other, having switch places. Of course, this is far more powerful than [http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Mystic_Box the true card], which also switches control of the two monsters.
 
== [[Film]] ==
* In ''[[Get Smart (Filmfilm)|Get Smart]]'', Siegfried kidnaps the chief in this way.
* Young [[Indiana Jones (Franchise)|Indiana Jones]] used one of these to slip past his pursuers in ''[[TheIndiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Film)|The Last Crusade]]''.
* Subverted in ''[[The Prestige]]''. One of the magicians creates a turn that appears to be a disappearing box, but is actually a simple trapdoor {{spoiler|that drowns the original magician straight after [[Opening a Can of Clones|cloning]] him to the back of the auditorium to finish the act}}.
* Played with in the segment directed by [[Woody Allen]] for ''New York Stories'': The protagonist's (overbearing) mother is invited onstage and enters the box, but doesn't reappear. But later on, she magically materializes in giant form over New York and proceeds to embarrass his son.
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* There's an interesting version in the [[Neil Gaiman]] short story "The Queen of Knives". The magician makes the child's grandmother disappear (after stabbing knives and swords through the box), but she never comes back.
* Done in ''[[Kitty Norville]]'', the box seems to take her to another world/dimension.
* Played with in ''[[The Tommyknockers]]''. Hilly Brown's disappearing trick was actually a machine that teleported people to Altair IV, a [[Forbidden Planet|forbidden planet]].
* The [[Woody Allen]] story "The Kugelmass Episode" has the eponymous character use such a device to be put in the book ''[[Madame Bovary]]'' so he can have an affair with her. [[Hilarity Ensues]].
 
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* In ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]'' serial ''The Talons of Weng-Chiang'', stage magician Li H'sen Chang uses this in his act, and [[Make It Look Like an Accident|tries to murder the Doctor with it]]. It backfires on him badly.
* In ''[[Leverage]]'', they perform this trick in order to get the CEO up to unlock a door requiring a retinal scan. Their way of doing it: they switch his box with an empty one when it passes behind a sheet.
* ''[[Arrested Development (TV series)|Arrested Development]]'' has the "Aztec Tomb".
* This appears in the ''[[Monk (TV)|Monk]]'' series episode 108, "Mr. Monk and the Magician".
* In one episode of ''[[Power Rangers (Franchise)|Power Rangers]]'', the original black ranger Zack performed this magic act for some local children. During the act a monster attacked, so Zack had to use the box as cover to teleport out - and made it part of the show.
* Played with in an episode of ''[[Matlock]]''. The lovely assistant goes in and disappears...only to replaced by the corpse of the magician's scumbag manager.
* ''[[Kamen Rider Double]]'' had an arc centering around a magician who used a [[Transformation Trinket|Gaia Memory]] to turn invisible and pull off this trick; the main conflict came because she didn't want to give it up, and [[Complete Monster|Isaka]] wanted it to kill her in order to "mature" so he could add its power to his own.
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== Other ==
* [[Penn & Teller]] do a version of the box trick, where Teller is apparently dissembled into his head, legs, and hand. First, they do the trick normally. Then, they use completely transparent boxes to show how it's done. (And, because this is Penn and& Teller, the second run through manages to be even more awesome.)
 
== [[Theater]] ==
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* In the 90s PC game ''Detective Barbie'', Ken volunteered for the act and left through the trapdoor as usual, but unknown to the magician or the audience, was kidnapped on the other side because he was carrying money the carnival had raised for charity with him onstage.
* This is Harvey's instant kill move in ''[[No More Heroes (Video Game)|No More Heroes]]''.
 
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[Hey Arnold (Animation)|Hey Arnold!]]'' had Helga participating in a magic act, but decided to ditch Arnold after "disappearing" in his box, imagining what life will be like without her.
* A variation is used in ''[[A Bug's Life (Animation)|A Bugs Life]]'' to {{spoiler|get the queen out}}. [[Big Bad|Hopper]] catches on to it before it works as planned.
* Done in ''[[Max and Ruby (Animation)|Max and Ruby]]'' with Max as the volunteer and Ruby as the magician.
* In ''[[The Flintstones (Animation)|The Flintstones]]'', Fred and Barney try the trick out on the wives, who find the trap door and decide to play a trick of their own on the guys and make them think they have really disappeared.
* The ''[[King of the Hill (Animation)|King of the Hill]]'' episode "Sleight of Hank".
 
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Discredited Trope]]
[[Category:Disappearing Box]]
[[Category:Stage Magic]]
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