Punk in the Trunk: Difference between revisions

* The person in the trunk is dead, and the driver may or may not have put the person in there.

 

{{examples}}

 

== Comic Books ==

* In the ''[[Birds of Prey]]'' series, Lady Shiva is presumed dead after being attacked by the assassin [[Dragon Lady|Cheshire]]. In reality Shiva was simply knocked out and kidnapped, and Catwoman ends up finding her bound and gagged in the trunk of Cheshire's car.

 

 

* [[Quentin Tarantino]] seems to like this trope, along with [[Trunk Shot]].

** In ''[[Kill Bill]]'' Volume 1, {{spoiler|after killing O-Ren, The Bride stuffs Sofie into the trunk of her car. The Bride stops on a hill above a hospital, telling Sofie that she's only letting her live so she can tell Bill what she's done. She pulls Sofie out of the trunk and rolls her down the hill.}}

** In ''[[Reservoir Dogs]]'', Mr. Blonde brings a kidnapped police officer to their hideout in the trunk of his car.

* In ''[[Goodfellas]]'', Billy Batts is put in the trunk after the trio of [[Villain Protagonist|VillainProtagonists]] believe they've killed him and are taking him off to bury him somewhere.

* ''[[The Transporter]]'' has its protagonist Frank Martin coming across a woman in his trunk (played by Shu Qi) upon breaking one of his rules (don't look in the package), which sets up the main plot of fighting a human trafficking scheme that we ultimately learn is being headed by {{spoiler|the woman's own father}}.

** In the sequel, [[Robert De Niro]]'s character gets a job as a used-car salesman and uses the number of bodies a given car's trunk could hold as a selling point.

* ''[[The Hangover]]'' - a pissed off naked Asian guy pops out of the trunk when the dudes search it.

* 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.

 

== Literature ==

* In the Sookie Stackhouse book ''Club Dead'', Sookie throws a weakened Bill in the trunk of a borrowed car to keep him out of the sun.

* In ''[[The Laundry Series|The Fuller Memorandum]]'', Bob gets abducted by cultists and stuffed into the trunk of a car, prompting him to give a slightly incoherent rant about how all how cars should be required to have transparent trunks.

* 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.

 

 

== Live Action TV ==

* 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.

* 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).

* In ''[[Eureka]]'', Fargo tries to fob his AI car Tabitha off on Larry, who refuses to accept her. Tabitha is self-aware and insulted enough to pursue both of them, lock them in her trunk, and drive around for a while until they're convinced she's going to kill them. She eventually lets Fargo go so he can save the town, though.

* 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]].

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

** In ''[[Ace Attorney Investigations Miles Edgeworth|Investigations 2]]'', a pair of kidnappers stash their live victim in a large box thrown into the trunk of a taxi.

* 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".