Quicksand Sucks: Difference between revisions

[[File:Quicksand 9977.png|link=Magic: The Gathering|frame]]

 

 

Quicksand is a common and deadly element of jungle and desert terrain, and its most dangerous feature is its ability to suck people and animals down and drown them in a malevolent blend of sand and water. Although most victims blunder blindly into quicksand, it sometimes seems that the merest touch of an extremity is enough to pull the unwary into its muddy and all-consuming depths like iron filings to a magnet.

Originally a movie serial and B-film device, this trope has been carried over to television by way of programs that mimicked or paid homage to those films, or to pulp fiction in general. Then it also moved to [[Video Games]]. This trope is pretty much a [[Discredited Trope]] nowadays, although the [[Shifting Sand Land]] of video games is [[Grandfather Clause|still allowed]] to [[Undead Horse Trope|play it straight]], as a gameplay challenge if nothing else.

 

 

{{examples}}

* Mikan and a friend of hers encounter this in episode 3 of ''Gakuen Alice''.

* A scene of this happens in episode 5 of ''[[Deltora Quest]]''.

* A scene of this happens in episode 8 of a forgotten anime known as ''[[Fortune Quest L]]''.

 

 

 

 

* One entry into a Miniatures forum about what to do when you have nothing but standard bearers in your army is to plant the standards in a sandtrap; the enemy will waste a lot of time to "avoid the quicksand".

 

* Fondly parodied in the book and movie ''[[The Princess Bride (film)|The Princess Bride]]'', which featured a super-quicksand called "lightning sand," which is dangerous because its grains are so small that you fall straight through it.

** At least as dangerous (in the novel, at any rate) is the way the stuff gets into your lungs.

* The live-action film version of ''[[The Jungle Book (film)|The Jungle Book]]'' starring Jason Scott Lee had this happen to a villain. He even explicitly states "It's sucking me down!" while struggling.

* In ''[[The Mummy Trilogy|The Mummy]]'', a biplane sinks into a pit of quicksand... in the middle of a desert. The protagonists stand atop a dune and solemnly watch it sink. The sequence takes so long that it's hard to tell if it's [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshading]] its own absurdity or just deathly oblivious to it.

** The same thing happened in [[Mad Max]]: Beyond Thunderdome, at least the desert-quicksand part.

* ''[[Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull]]'' provides a [[Hand Wave]] for the inaccurate depiction by having Indy explain that what he and Marion are sinking into is not actually quicksand, but some sort of collapsing dry sand pit.

* ''[[Tank Girl]]''. A non-liquid version: the dust/sand covering the Rippers' subgates.

** Hypothermia in Arabia, no less. Desert nights are very, very, very cold.

* In [[Pure Luck]], Martin Short's extremely unlucky character manages to walk into a quicksand pit in the California desert.

* A pit appears early in ''[[Blazing Saddles]]''; other than the fact that it shows up in the middle of an arid desert, it's actually a pretty accurate representation.

* Averted in ''[[Once Upon a Forest]]''. The quail firmly belive this trope, leaving one poor bastard who gets stuck in the mud to die. Luckily for him, the party comes through and the [[Smart Guy]] has them build a lever device to pry him out.

 

== Literature ==

* Nick Cave's novel ''And The Ass Saw The Angel'' uses this as a framing device. The narrator recounts his story while sinking into a bog. The unlikelihood of this contingency is easy to swallow compared to some of the other stuff we're [[Magic Realism|asked to believe]], or [[Through the Eyes of Madness|asked not to believe]].

* In the [[Known Space]] stories of [[Larry Niven]] some areas of Mars have sand that is so fine that it essentially is a liquid and people can sink in it.

* Many older science fiction stories portrayed the Moon as having areas very fine dust that functioned like quicksand, ''A Fall of Moondust'' by [[Arthur C. Clarke]] being a good example.

== Live-Action TV ==

* ''[[Tales of the Gold Monkey]]''

** And disproved earlier by ''[[Bill Nye the Science Guy]]''.

* Even [[Power Rangers]] has used this, a couple times over the years. "Ninja Quest" in season three, and "Fire Heart" in Mystic Force.

* Subverted in an episode of ''[[Magnum, P.I.]]'': Rick stumbles in what he believes is quicksand and yells for help; when TC and Magnum arrive, Magnum tells Rick he's in a swamp - "There is no quicksand in Hawaii."

* The [[Big Bad]] in ''[[The Wild Wild West]]'''s "The Night of the Bottomless Pit," who absolutely hates muck, [[Death by Irony|meets his maker that way]].

 

== Music ==

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** Supplement I13 ''Adventure Pack I'', adventure "The Weird Woods of Baron Orchid". Several patches occur near a lake.

** Adventure Q1 ''Queen of the Demonweb Pits''. One of the rooms in Lolth's spider ship has a quicksand floor to trap unwary party members.

** There's also a middle type that sucks Mario in quickly but not instantly. It's the most common type.

** Of course, quicksand first appeared in the Mario series in ''Mario 2'', probably one of the elements borrowed from its source material ''Doki Doki Panic''. At least one hidden area involved going through quicksand.

** Subverted in ''Mario Teaches Typing 2.'' During a cutscene, Mario and Luigi fall through a hole in a bridge and are saved by a pool of quicksand below.

* ''Super [[Metroid]]'''s many quicksand pools present no danger at all, because Samus wears a sealed space suit and can't drown. If you don't feel like jumping out, you can sink all the way in and walk around on the bottom. In a few places this allows access to new areas.

** ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time|Ocarina of Time]]'''s Haunted Wasteland has a river of no-escape quicksand that you cross by either using the Longshot or the Hover Boots. Once across, you are still in danger of sinking if you stray off the path.

** ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks|Spirit Tracks]]'' has quicksand pits in the Sand Temple and parts of the Tower of Spirits.

** You fight a Moldorm in a pit of quicksand in ''[[Links Awakening]]''. You only get sucked downward (to a cave you must traverse to get back to the surface) if you get put in the center of the pit; the rest of the quicksand simply pulls you toward that center.

** In ''[[Skyward Sword]]'', Link can keep from getting sucked into the quicksand of Lanayru Desert if he [[Videogame Dashing|sprints across it]]. Also, the Timeshift Stones can change it back into the solid, grass-covered ground it once was [[Before the Dark Times]].

* Subverted in ''[[Banjo-Kazooie|Banjo-Tooie]]''. While there is quicksand in Mayahem Temple and Terrydactyland, it doesn't pull you down, the Dragundas living in it do, then spit you back onto solid ground. The wading boots are used to cross the quicksand. The Dragundas are also in Grunty Industries' toxic waste and polluted water.

* Appears in ''[[Toejam and Earl]]'' which makes the protagonists start sinking and move slower. The sand also resembles a desert, complete with [[All Deserts Have Cacti|cacti]].

* Used rather realistically (given the medium) in ''[[Sonic 3 and Knuckles]]''. In Sandopolis Zone (and the 2-player mode Desert Palace level), quicksand would slowly pull the character under but it could be escaped by jumping properly. Marble Garden Zone also featured surfaces that acted the same way, but looked like black water.

* In ''[[Mega Man X Command Mission]]'', one character falls into a quicksand trap, which pulls him and his two friends down into it. Which wouldn't make sense in the first place, but made even worse by the fact that all three are ''super-strong reploids'' that could have easily pulled themselves out (especially since one was still on firm ground). They even treat it like it's deadly, despite the fact they don't even need to breathe and would, at worst, just be stuck.

* In ''[[Mega Man (video game)|Mega Man]] 10'', Commando Man's level has Mega Man rushing through quicksand pits. Although he can move and shoot normally in them, even completely buried, he needs to jump to exit it, and if he's dragged to the bottom of the screen, he dies as if he had fallen in a bottomless pit.

* [[Ratchet and Clank]] has the planet Aridia, a desert planet with massive LAKES of quicksand. You can hop out, but only three times before you sink, for whatever reason.

* It doesn't pose a direct hazard to your player characters, but [[Final Fantasy VII|Corel Prison]] is described as "a natural prison in the middle of the desert... surrounded entirely by quicksand."

* Averted in ''[[The Curse of Monkey Island]]''. Guybrush gets trapped in a pool of quicksand, but only up to his waist, and he sinks so slowly that the player has ample time to figure out how to use a balloon, a rock, and a nearby thorn bush to get him out before anything unpleasant happens to him.

* ''[[Adventures of Dino Riki]]'' has quicksand whirlpools popping up from the ground.

 

== Web Originals ==

* Shows up in ''[[Survival of the Fittest]]'', where it's used to kill both {{spoiler|Melina Frost}} and {{spoiler|Beth Vandelinder}}, one getting stuck in the sand long enough to be stabbed, the other being pulled in head first and drowned.

 

 

* Duke falls into a pit of quicksand while escaping from Cobra in an episode of ''[[G.I. Joe]]'' and goes in over his head in a matter of seconds.

* Happens in the form of dry desert quicksand ''[[The Transformers (animation)|The Transformers]]'' episode "Countdown to Extinction".

** The ending of the episode implied it was [[All Just a Dream]], with the whole camping trip being imaginary, but, possibly, [[Your Mind Makes It Real]]. Not that that makes it any less perplexing, as imagination, despite its life-giving powers in the setting, was never shown to have power to that degree before or since.

* ''[[Max Steel]]'' both plays this straight and partially subverts it. In season two, Max and Berto walk in to quicksand and start sinking, having to use a vine to pull themselves out. In season three, Berto and Kat walk in to quicksand; however, Berto says that the human body is lighter and they manage to swim out of it.

* Crossing the line between [[Did Not Do the Research]] and [[Rule of Cool]], the [[Recycled: the Series]] of ''[[The Little Mermaid]]'' had ''underwater'' quicksand.

* Catwoman leaves [[Batman]] and Robin in a quicksand [[Death Trap]] in the Filmation series episode "The Nine Lives of Batman".

* Heloise throws a bunch of [[Pandaing to the Audience|pandas]] into a quicksand pit on an episode of ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes]]''. They only approve of the mudbath.

* A ''[[Robot Chicken]]'' sketch has a giraffe step into quicksand and, because its tall body takes so long to go down, goes through the five stages of grief as it sinks. {{spoiler|The giraffe's life is saved when its feet hit bottom!}}

 

== Real Life ==

*** That's why gravel traps are so common at racing circuits. No matter if a car that goes screaming off the tarmac is doing it forwards, backwards or sideways, loose sand and gravel stop it up since the vehicle digs into the gravel, pulling itself in and creating resistance. However, since this also tends to ruin the underbody and wheels of a car, another option that's become popular in recent years is to create a large tarmac runoff area so a driver can recover from a loss of control or error in judgment and quickly rejoin the race. On cars with slicks, especially light ones such as [[Formula One]] cars, they're so grippy that gravel traps actually cause ''more'' slippage in comparison.

* An interesting article on the rise and fall of this trope (it's now [[Discredited Trope|discredited]]) can be found [http://www.slate.com/id/2264312/ here].

* Non-Newtonian fluids behave in a similar way; they are so viscous that if a great deal of force is applied to them in a brief time, they behave like solids, but if the same force is applied slower it will allow it to pass through. It can be very difficult to get something out from being trapped in a pool of a non-Newtonian fluid.

* Soil liquefaction, a rare phenomenon associated with earthquakes, can cause water-saturated sandy ground to temporarily turn so slippery and unstable that it becomes too weak to support buildings' foundations.

[[Category:Action Adventure Tropes]]

[[Category:Discredited Trope]]

[[Category:Tropes Examined by the Mythbusters]]