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Trapped in Containment: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
So the [[Big Bad]] and his minions have stormed the secret laboratory and captured the [[MacGuffin]]. But we really need to show the audience what is at stake here without having the villain pass through the [[Moral Event Horizon]]. So one of the [[Mooks]] will be fumbling around with a vial of the stuff, it will fall to the floor, shatter, and everybody except said Mook will escape in time. [[Lockdown|The door will seal]], and the Mook is left to his horrible fate as the rest of his compatriots look on sympathetically. He has been Trapped In Containment.
It needn't be a chemical weapon -- it could be as simple as someone [[Drowning Pit|trapped behind a door as it fills up with water]] -- although it usually is.
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== [[Comics]] ==
* The origin story for [[Watchmen|Doctor Manhattan]] involves this.
== [[Film]] ==
* The [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQWuTgIycPU opening scene] from ''[[The Rock]]'' involves a Mook being trapped as some VX nerve gas does some funky stuff to him that [[Did Not Do the Research|definitely doesn't happen in real life]]. (at least, not with VX. Mustard gas, on the other hand...)
* [[James Bond]] accidentally (or not) causes this to happen to a couple of scientists working for the Big Bad in ''[[Moonraker]]''. Whether or not he cares is a different issue.
* In ''[[XXX]]'', the Vin Diesel movie, the [[Big Bad]] seals the scientists who created the stuff in the room, then watches on as it kills them all.
* This trope is the reason Spock makes a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] in the second ''[[Star Trek]]'' movie.
* In ''[[Species]]'', they're tooling around with the alien DNA about halfway through the movie. [[Hilarity Ensues]].
* The dissection scene from ''[[Independence Day]]'' almost counts: The onlookers arrive after the damage is already done, and the threat from the contained entity is psychic, not biological.
* This also plays into many submarine movies, with a compartment flooding, and characters having to make one of two choices: Do we close the watertight doors, saving the ship but killing the men in that compartment? or do we stay and try to stop the flooding, knowing that they're going to close the watertight doors and if we don't succeed we'll drown or do we get out without trying to stop the water?
** Examples: when the rig is flooding in ''[[The Abyss]]''.
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* ''[[The Andromeda Strain]]'' example below also occurs in the 1971 movie version.
* ''[[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]''. When the Nautilus is sinking, Nemo orders that the engine room be sealed off so the water doesn't flood the rest of the ship, condemning the crew trapped in it to death by drowning.
* In the remake of ''[[The Day the Earth Stood Still]]'', a government agent does this to a scientist who is contaminated while investigating a caged alien artifact. Naturally he is less pleased when the contamination starts eating through the windows and his room is the next to be sealed and sacrificed.
== [[Literature]] ==
* Much of [[Michael Crichton]]'s ''[[The Andromeda Strain]]'' is centered on this type of set-up. Near the end, one of the scientists is stuck within the contaminated area due to a failure of the lab's airtight seal.
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* Season three of ''[[24]]'' has this happen on a larger scale involving some gas and a hotel full of people. The writers knew that actual procedure was to remove people from the building, but limited budget and a desire for increased drama meant they left them in there.
* This is played for comedy in the very first scene of ''[[The Middleman]]''.
* This is done a couple of times in ''[[Stargate SG-1]]''.
* In ''[[Look Around You]]'', the danger of the Helvetica Scenario is illustrated by a scene of a <s>masked</s> [[The Blank|literally faceless]] scientist pounding futilely on a glass window while another stands outside taking notes.
* The Lone Gunmen got ''themselves'' deliberately [[Trapped in Containment]] when they made their [[Heroic Sacrifice]] at the end of ''[[The X-Files]]''.
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** Not only did he have to seal them inside to prevent the fire from spreading. He also had to [[Thrown Out the Airlock|dump the air from that part of the ship]] into space to extinguish the fires.
* In an episode of ''[[MacGyver]]'', a scientist creates a chemical for maturing plants. When her dog knocks over the vial, she is trapped with it and ages to death.
* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode [[Doctor Who/Recap/S10
* ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]''. In the "Year of Hell" two-parter the EMH is forced to shut the hatch on two crewmen because the corridor is about to vent open to space.
* In the season 2 episode of ''[[The Mentalist]]'' called "Code Red", a bioweapons researcher finds out that one of the vials with a super-virus has spilled. She immediately locks down the containment room with her inside and calls CBI to get them started on looking for her murderer, knowing she only has hours to live.
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* In ''Rainbow Six: Vegas 2'', you're going in to rescue hostages from a building, then the terrorists lock all the doors and put gas into the ventilation system. You are too late, and stand outside the door hearing screams and dying as a bit of the gas floats out through the cracks in the door. Luckily, you have gas masks on.
* In ''[[Fallout]] 3'', a radiation containment room containing the master controls at Project Purity provides an opportunity for all kinds of hijinx. First, {{spoiler|your pop dies in there}} after he deliberately floods the room with radiation, trying to {{spoiler|get the Enclave unit lead by Colonel Autumn to leave}}. After that, you return to the room and have to choose whether to {{spoiler|[[Heroic Sacrifice|Heroically Sacrifice]] yourself}} to reset the purifier to a safe level, or let Star Paladin Cross do it instead. You can [[Take a Third Option]] and have {{spoiler|neither of you do it, resulting in a very big bang}}.
** The Broken Steel DLC lets you {{spoiler|send in a radiation-immune party member, if you have one with you.}}
* A delightfully cruel level in ''[[Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy|Psi Ops the Mindgate Conspiracy]]''. In it there were three gas chambers that seal once you enter the room. Bullets do no damage, and only by using telekinesis can you break the glass and not die of poisoning. The fun part came in with the fact that you would either get stuck with a scientist inside, in which case you could smash him against the glass to break it, or there would be a taunting faceless goon outside you could use to crack it. And if you're fast enough, you can trigger the doors and skip out while remaining outside, leaving the poor science mooks inside to slowly die.
* The rather weak game ''[[Spy Fiction]]'' justified this: The villain trapped the scientist in there to get rid of him while demonstrating what the virus, Lahder, could do.
* Subverted in several of the ''[[Resident Evil]]'' games, where ''you're'' the one locked in with the vicious monster. Occasionally it's because the [[Big Bad]] is doing it on purpose, and sometimes it's an automatic lockdown procedure that goes off when something big wakes up in the room. In either case, the doors generally open back up once you kill whatever it is.
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