Might as Well Not Be in Prison At All: Difference between revisions

* In the ''[[Green Lantern]]'' comics, powerfully telepathic arch-villain Hector Hammond's body is imprisoned (he's serving multiple life sentences) and is supposedly under the effects of a psionic inhibitor... but Hammond's mind is so powerful that he can still telepathically control people hundreds or even thousands of miles away from the prison without ever leaving his cell.

* [[Crisis Crossover|Pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths]] Lex Luthor regularly ran his criminal enterprises from the inside of his prison cell. Of course, it was basically understood, if not ever explicitly admitted, that Luthor was in prison only as long as Luthor wanted to be in prison.

** [[Rogues Gallery|The Ratcatcher]] is able to control the massive amount of rats in Gotham from inside of his prison cell.

* [[Batman|Arkham Asylum]] is a maximum security mental institution for the criminally insane, holding some of the most dangerously psychotic maniacs Gotham City has to offer as well as numerous superhuman criminals solely because that is the only facility in the state with the capability of holding them. [[Cardboard Prison|It might go 3 days at a time]] before at least one of these nutjobs breaks out, kills somebody inside, or before the lot of them take over the madhouse (again), assuming they aren't given early release thanks to the staff being complete incompetents, if not every bit as insane as the patients themselves. [[The Joker]], the ''one'' inmate they ''never'' [[Complete Monster|want to get out]], has transformed escaping Arkham into a fine art and considers it his "home away from home", and has stated many times he ''lets'' himself be caught after his latest crime spree so he can be sent back there....in order to relax, recuperate, and plot his ''next'' escape and crime spree. Factor in the aforementioned Great White Shark and his cosy business in there, and Arkham is one of the few places that qualifys as both a [[Cardboard Prison]] ''and'' for this trope.

** In [[The Seventies]], when [[The Joker]] had his own bimonthly comic book, the writers had a conundrum. On one hand, the Comics Code Authority at the time required that villains never get away at the end of a story, to show that [[Justice Will Prevail]]. On the other hand, showing a new elaborate escape at the beginning of every issue would get tedious and take precious pages away from the story they wanted to tell. Their solution? Give the Joker an [[Elaborate Underground Base]] located directly beneath [[Cardboard Prison|Arkham Asylum]], called the "Ha-Hacienda". He even had a [[Secret Underground Passage]] in his cell. Apparently, nobody at the CCA tripped to the [[Fridge Logic]] of "punishing" someone by imprisoning him in a place he can walk out of at any time.

=== Marvel ===

* [[Daredevil|The Kingpin]] zigs-zags this trope. On the one hand, he is still fully capable of running a criminal enterprise from inside prison and once even tricked [[Iron Man]] into eliminating a competitor on the outside for him, able to do so because he still had enough information on the wider criminal underworld to make deals and manipulate the authorities. In a one-shot an ex-con who had been in prison for years remarks that the Kingpin is still the number 1 crime boss in the city after all that time, despite Fisk being behind bars at that point. On the ''other'' hand, he's only in prison ''after'' Daredevil managed to bring down most of his ''old'' criminal empire so what he had was just a shadow of his former glory, and while in prison he had made enough enemies that a lot of guys- even some of his own men- made repeated attempts to kill him. It's blatantly clear from his numerous failed deals and escape attempts that he didn't ''want'' to be in prison, and Daredevil as well as the Feds took twisted pleasure in making sure he ''stayed'' there every time he thought he was about to get out. Eventually, he only does because his wife convinces Matt to be his lawyer and gets all charges dropped.