Punk in the Trunk: Difference between revisions

 

Compare [[Dead Man's Chest]], [[Girl in a Box]]. See also [[Trunk Shot]].

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== Anime and Manga ==

* In the ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'' episode, "Mushroom Samba", Edward stows away in the trunk of a bounty hunter's car so she can get into town and obtain some food.

* In ''[[The Breaker]]'' ([[Manhwa]]), Sosul is first discovered in the trunk of a car. Shi Woon and Alex knew they were supposed to be transporting some "cargo", but they didn't expect it to be a girl.

 

== Comic Books ==

* Subverted twice in the ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X Men]]'' graphic novel "God Loves, Man Kills." Tracking some villains surveying the mansion, Kitty Pryde uses her phasing powers to sneak into their car's trunk. Unfortunately, the trunk has sensors that detect her presence, and they activate knockout gas. Later, they try to execute her while the trunk is still closed, only to find the trunk empty, as she only inhaled a portion of the gas and retained enough consciousness to escape.

 

 

== Film ==

* In ''Mystery Date'', the car in question has a leaky exhaust. [[Chekhov's Gun|This turns out to be relevant]].

* Marty in ''[[Back to The Future]]'' by Biff's goons.

* The [[Villain Protagonist]] Donnelly in the short film ''China Lake'' has a thing for putting his victims inside the trunks of their own cars.

* In second installment of [[Bad Boys]], Lowrey and Burnett forget they drive a suspect KKK member in their trunk. He starts to thrash about when the protagonists are being admonished by their captain for their last mess-up.

{{quote|'''Captain''': Running people over is not enough for you? Now you're into kidnapping?}}

 

== Literature ==

* In one of ''[[The Famous Five]]'' books by [[Enid Blyton]] a [[Character Of The Week]] proves he's not a [[Dirty Coward]] by hiding in the trunk of the villain's car to escape from the house where they are being held captive and get help.

 

* In season 3 of ''[[Dexter]]'', someone ambushes Dexter in the parking-garage as he's leaving work, ties him up and throws him in a trunk before driving off with him. Dexter - and the viewer - naturally assumes that it's the resident antagonist, The Skinner, taking him off to torture and murder, and Dex tensely frees himself of his constrains and readies himself to pounce the moment the trunk is opened - and so he does, squarely hitting... one of his colleagues, who'd chosen this rather melodramatic way to cart him off to a secret Bachelor-party. The rest of his colleagues are both impressed and amused by the reaction, and Dex rapidly recovers his cool.

* ''[[Touched By an Angel]]'' - The Celebrity of the Week (Jack Ritter, if memory serves correctly) gets carjacked and stuffed in the trunk; after the car gets abandoned on the side of the road, the rest of the episode is a race against time to find him before he bakes to death.

* On ''[[NYPD Blue]]'' a random car got in an accident with the car Andy & Bobby were in; they heard thumping & screaming from the trunk, which they popped to discover he had a woman in the trunk of his car.

* Team Westen of ''[[Burn Notice]]'' often transports captured enemies this way.

* In one episode of ''[[NCIS]]'', the Creep of the Week is holding a navy officer for ransom, keeping her in the trunk of a car. This leads to a race against time to find her, as said Creep didn't know she had asthma (and therefore was in danger of suffocation before his deadline would come).

* When Will works as a car salesman in an episode of ''[[The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air]]'', he has trouble selling a car to a group of Wiseguys until he shows them how well he fits in the trunk.

* [[Vampire Detective|Nick Knight]] from ''[[Forever Knight]]'' obtained a vintage car explicitly to invoke this trope if he is caught away from shelter at dawn.

* In the first season finale of ''[[Life]]'', Charlie Crews abducts the man who committed the murders for which he was wrongfully convicted and spends several hours driving around L.A. with the man in the trunk of his car. Amazingly, the abductee manages to survive with only a few cuts and scrapes when the car is T-boned so hard that it flips over and lands upside down.

* ''[[The Professionals]]''. Doyle is put in a trunk by the bad guys for later disposal, only for the car to be stolen by joyriding hoodlums. He eventually gets himself free and the car gets driven off the road for no apparent reason. No-one was harmed though as there were only a [[Special Effects Failure|couple of crash test dummies in the front seat]].

 

== Music ==

* In [[Eminem]]'s song "Stan" (except in the [[Bowdlerise|radio edit]]), Stan says that his [[Pregnant Hostage|girlfriend]] is in the trunk of his car.

* "Goodbye Earl" by [[The Dixie Chicks]] is about a woman who (with help from her friend from high school) kills her abusive ex-husband by poisoning his food. She then disposes of his body down by the lake, and puts the body in the trunk to facilitate this.

* Taken very literally in an early [[AFI]] video, with a literal punk in the trunk {{spoiler|who is taken someplace and stabbed to death.}} Yep, nice.

 

== Professional Wrestling ==

{{quote|'''[[Triple H]]''': I've got a special guest gonna come out here later - but before we come to that, I'd like to give a little personal message to Kane. Kane, this is just advice, but next time you try to accost somebody by sticking them into the trunk of a car, you should try to make sure that the trunk does not have one of those child safety latches on the roof - I mean, you can just pull it and jump OUT of the trunk before the person even drives off. Just a bit of advice.}}

 

* The [[Cheech and Chong]] routine "Pedro and the Man at the Drive-In" (on the ''Los Cochinos'' album) is about smuggling someone into the drive-in in the trunk, and then being unable to get the trunk open.

 

== Video Games ==

* Valerie Hawthorne in ''[[Phoenix Wright]] [[Ace Attorney]]: Trials and Tribulations'', was stuffed in the trunk of the car after being killed.

** In the first game, after killing Ben Goodman, {{spoiler|Damon Gant}} stuffed the body in the trunk of Edgeworth's car.

* The aptly named "Dead Skunk In The Trunk" mission in ''[[Grand Theft Auto III]]'' has you drive a car with a dead mobster in the trunk while his "family" chases you.

* In the first mission of the Russian campaign of ''[[Empire Earth]]'', Grigor starts out hiding from the authorities in the trunk of his friend's Pyotr car and planning to escape Voronezh. However, he is aware that the trunk is "the first place the guards check" and thus they look for a better vehicle to smuggle him out. If they try to use the original car, they are caught and laugh at how Grigor tried to escape hiding in a trunk "like in a bad spy movie".

 

* [http://supernormalstep.com/50/ This] trunk ninja in the webcomic ''Supernormal Step''.

 

== Western Animation ==

** The two get thrown in the trunk themselves on at least two occasions: By Todd in "Canned", and by Muddy in the film.

** In "A Great Day", the two stumble upon a man who is stuffing a dead body in his trunk, who promptly pays them to go away and not say anything about it.

 

== Real Life ==

* Parodied by those Halloween decorations that consist of a disembodied plastic hand with a hook that attaches to the inside of the trunk so it looks like someone's hand is hanging out.

* According to one story this troper heard, if you are locked in the trunk of a car, it's possible to push out the rear lights/indicators and stick your arm out to attract attention and not suffocate/cook yourself.

 

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[[Category:Narrative Devices]]

[[Category:Sublime Rhyme]]