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Lost in the Maize: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:crows-cornfield.jpg|link=Vincent
{{quote|''"He began to walk in that direction, not having to bull through the corn any more. The row was taking him in the direction he wanted to go, naturally. The row ended up ahead. Ended? No, emptied out into some sort of clearing..."''|'''[[Stephen King]]''', ''[[Children of the Corn]]''}}
There's just something about a field of corn that spells creepy. Maybe it's the fact that corn stalks grow very tall and seem to go on endlessly, preventing anyone who happens to be wandering among them from seeing more than a few feet ahead at a time. Also, each stalk looks exactly the same, so good luck finding your way out. Combined with the fact that they are only found in rural areas, this means that you could be out in the middle of nowhere and no one would see you disappear, or even be around to hear you scream on the off chance that you are not alone.
If characters find themselves in a cornfield, they will almost always get lost. Frantic chases through cornfields are popular in the [[Horror]] genre, and double points if it happens to be at night.
Note that despite the trope name, scenes like this don't necessarily have to involve corn. Long grass is also popular, especially in wilderness settings, and this trope can apply to other kinds of vegetation where it's hard to see anything below neck level.
This is also the place to find [[Scary Scarecrows]]. Or [[Crop Circles]].
{{examples
== [[
* In an issue of ''[[The Maze Agency]]'' comic book, a murder is committed in a cornfield maze and the body strung up as scarecrow to hide it.
* A villain in the ''[[Hack Slash]]'' miniseries ''My First Maniac'' is a vengeful, undead farmer obsessed with keeping people off his property and away from his daughter. Guessed what he farmed.
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== [[Film]] ==
* There's a scene involving a chase through a cornfield in
* ''[[Signs]]'': the priest lives next to a very creepy cornfield; he ends up being chased through it at night.
* ''[[The X-Files]]'' movie, with the bees in cornfields...
* ''[[Jurassic Park|The Lost World: Jurassic Park]]'' uses the tall grass variant. Doesn't make much of a difference, though, 'cuz everyone knows that [[Everything's Better
{{quote|
* The crop-duster attack in ''[[North
* In ''[[Forrest Gump]]'', as a little girl, Jenny runs into the cornfield behind their house to hide from her drunken abusive father ("Dear God, make me a bird, so I can fly far, far, far away from here").
* Also, the scene in the 1967 ''[[
* The cornfield rave massacre in ''[[Freddy
* In 2010, a horror movie all about murders in a corn maze (at night!), [[Sarcasm Mode|creatively]] called ''The Maze'' was released. Though in actuality, viewers probably do see more corn than murder.
* ''[[Cry Baby Lane]]'' has this in the climax.
* ''[[The Mummy
== [[Literature]] ==
* The ''[[Goosebumps]]'' book ''The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight'' has this, naturally.
* In Dorothy Canfield Fisher's short story "Sex Education" a town preacher lurks in a cornfield waiting to jump and rape any young girl dumb enough to wander nearby. [[It Gets Worse]]: It's heavily implied by the female characters that a number of other men in their town have similarly questionable hobbies, also involving young girls and cornfields.
* In ''[[The Stand]]'', a number of characters dream about being chased through a cornfield by the Dark Man.
* Averted in ''[[
* In ''[[The Lovely Bones]]'', Susie is [[Short Cuts Make Long Delays|cutting through]] a cornfield on her way home from school when a neighbor lures her into a secret underground room, rapes her and kills her.
* The Jerome Bixby short story "[[It's a Good Life]]", where the [[Reality Warper]] Anthony Fremont literally sends people who do anything he doesn't like to the cornfield behind his family's home. Served as the basis for a memorable ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' episode.
* [[Stephen King]]'s short story ''[[Children of the Corn]]'' served as [[In Name Only|loose inspiration]] for an endless string of movies which are probably the example that a lot of people remember, and contributes a great deal to cornfields being associated with creepiness. The page quote above, from the original story, gives an example.
== [[Live
* The series finale of ''[[Carnivale]]'' has the climax take place in a cornfield, with Brother Justin chasing after Ben with a [[Sinister Scythe|scythe]], no less.
* An episode of ''The Middle'' had the teenaged son lose his little brother in a cornfield maze, and he kept running into the creepy [[Crusty Caretaker|caretaker]] who told him about how he had lost his own little brother in a cornfield all those years ago.
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* The ''[[Bones]]'' episode "Mummy in the Maze".
== [[Music]] ==
* [[Sufjan Stevens]]' ''Illinois'' album has a short track about a [[Real Life]] corn maze, titled "[[Drone of Dread|A Conjunction of Drones]] Simulating the Way in Which Sufjan Stevens Has an Existential Crisis in the Great Godfrey Maze".
== [[Video Games]] ==
* There was a field in ''[[Fallout 2]]'' where some guys would scare intruders through ghostly images [[Scooby-Doo Hoax|to keep them away]]. I ''think'' it was a corn field...
* The fourth campaign of ''[[
* Never touch the cornfields in ''[[
* In the horror [[Adventure Game]] ''[[Sanitarium (
* There is exactly one frightening scene in the video-game adaptation of ''[[Land of the Dead]]'' and it involves having to run through a cornfield as you hear zombies crashing around you unseen.
* In ''[[Batman Doom]]'', one such maze pops up near the beginning of the level with the Scarecrow boss fight. It's full of gangsters and even spotting the passages is a problem (the automap helps). Once you're past this part, the rest of the level is thankfully free of confusing view-obfuscating maize.
==
* The [[Halloween Episode|Halloween-themed]] ''[[Skin Deep]]'' story "The One-Eyed Bear" centers around a road trip to an annual haunted corn maze attraction in Verona, MO referred to, appropriately enough, as [https://web.archive.org/web/20130110190811/http://www.themaize.com/sites.php?ID=&username=moverona The MAiZE]. (See [[Real Life]], below.) In keeping with getting lost, they stumble onto the attraction while fleeing from a nightmare and a [[Our Demons Are Different|demon]], only to be menaced by a [[Friday the
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[The Simpsons]]'' once got lost in a corn maze.
* ''[[The Tick (animation)]]'' had villainous sunflowerman El Seed raise an army out of an evil cornfield maze.
* ''[[Johnny Bravo]]'', in its episode "Johnny, Real Good" (a parody of ''[[Twilight Zone|It's A Good Life]]'') has this as one of the torments that the [[Reality Warper]] boy inflicts upon Johnny: teleportation to an actual cornfield (not really that horrible, but still a minor annoyance for Johnny who has to walk back home), which becomes a [[Running Gag]]. {{spoiler|At the end of the episode, he teleports sleeping Johnny in his bed onto a lonely island--covered with maize.}}
* ''[[Fillmore!]]!'': "Two Wheels, Full Throttle, No Brakes". Of course X Middle School has its own corn maze. Why wouldn't it?
** "The corn! IT ALL LOOKS THE SAME!"
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* Actual cornfield mazes are built in real life as attractions, and often give people the chance to go through them at night. Occasionally the cornfields are 'haunted' by people dressed in costume.
* Averted in previous centuries, when corn hadn't yet been selectively bred to stand taller than a human. At least one Civil War battle's events [[History Marches On|had to be re-examined by historians]] when it was pointed out that corn grew only waist-high in the 1860s, hence couldn't have provided concealment to standing soldiers.
* [[Fark|Fark.com]] offered the following headline on September 6, 2006:
{{quote|World's largest corn maze built in Nebraska. Maze is designed to be much like Nebraska in that you enter, see nothing but corn, then leave.}}
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Just for Pun]]
[[Category:Horror Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Lost in the Maize]]
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