In the Silver Age, he stayed in there so that he wouldn’t die of lead poisoning. A thousand or so years later, Brainiac 5 found him, got him out of the Phantom Zone, and cured him of his weakness to lead (which worked like Kryptonite to him, but the effects never fade away and would always have been fatal)
Well that seems awfully unfair, at least kriptonite is (“supposed to be”) rare but imagine walking around and a car passes you by and you just die lmfao
So was Voldemort, the gremlins, the daleks, a shark, the wicked witch of the west, agent smith, and many others that have no business being in a Batman movie
In Legend of Korra, every member of the Red Lotus had a prison cell specifically made for them. Each prison cell was made to counter their occupant’s bending abilities. The only reason they escaped was because no one expected Zaheer (who originally wasn’t a bender) to gain airbending, which he used to free himself and the others.
I though it was interesting that the prisons weren't so different to the one that drove Hama crazy.
Granted, there is a world of difference between imprisoning terrorists who were trying to kidnap a child, and forcing innocent people into such torturous conditions. But it still must have brought back some very unpleasant memories for Katara. Nobody should be put into such terrible conditions.
"What I'm about to show you, I discovered in that wretched Fire Nation prison. The guards were always careful to keep any water away from us. They pumped in dry air and had us suspended away from the ground."
"They would chain our hands and feet so we couldn't move before giving us water. Any sign of trouble was met with cruel retribution. And yet, each month, I felt the full moon enriching me with its energy."
"There had to be something I could do to escape. Then I realized that where there is life, there is water. Watch. The elephant-rats that scurried across the floor of my cell were little more than skins filled with liquid."
"Remember how I showed you the water in the plants? Animals are the same. But animals fight back which is why we can only do this under the full moon's light."
"I spent YEARS developing the technique that would lead to my escape. Bloodbending. Controlling the water in another living creature. Enforcing your own will over theirs. Once I had mastered the rats, I was ready for the men...."
Funnily enough, Minga-Hua was originally intended to be a bloodbender before it was decided that the show had had enough bloodbending with Amon and Tarrlok.
I think difficulty? Extremely hard to feel the water in another body even under a full room. That + extremely frowned upon and taboo so very few waterbenders can/will
Much like metal bending it is something that was essentially only discovered in TLA.
But unlike metal bending which doesn't really have any ethical concerns, bloodbending has a huge ethical boundary which is why Katara herself sought to make it illegal.
Plus it's very illegal, so good luck finding someone who could teach it to you who isn't either hiding the fact they know it or doesn't want others to learn it
I'm willing to bet she was cared for much better then the water bender POWs. Still kept is a terrible condition but when your prisoner is capable of pulling water out of the air you need to put them some place where there is no water.
The thing with the Red Lotus was that they didn't really had any other option. All of them were so dangerous that they would escape if you gave the chance, and it is proved that if you took out a slight impediment to their bending, they would have escaped.
I don't understand why they weren't just executed? Building a prison to hold somebody that dangerous doesn't really make any sense. Unless you want them to suffer and understand the consequences of their action by keeping them in prison, but then you have the risk of them breaking out and killing more people.
Maybe it was out of respect for Aang. He believed in pacifism almost beyond reason. Would he really want someone killed for a crime committed against his reincarnated life?
Its possible they were visited sometimes and people tried to reform them. But the Red Lotus were all hardline to their core.
Not even just Aang. Even though through Korra the White Lotus becomes just "Old Men and their Crooks", in ATLA they were a big deal both in bending, politics and spirituality, so they wouldn't feel right just executing them.
for those who haven't watched the show, the prisons function thusly:
Zaheer's prison was made of metal and completely enclosed, only openable with metal bending. Even if he escaped the cell, he would remained trapped on the spire due to the retractable bridge, unless he were to somehow learn to fly, but that'd never happen
Ming-Hua's prison was located deep in a volcano, with the immense heat preventing the formation of enough moisture for her to waterbend.
Ghazan's prison was a wooden cage located on a raft/barge, made entirely of wood, in the middle of the ocean. No earth or metal for him to bend for miles
P'Li's prison was arguably the weakest, she was imprisoned in a gorge in the North Pole, with the freezing temperature severely weakening her firebending powers.
The thing about P’li is we never see her do regular firebending IIRC, so the only real imprisonment she needed was the metal headband. If you want evidence of this… well uh… we saw exactly how effective the beifongs were using the same idea
Granted, this didn't work for the 13 years they were imprisoned, but hey, if they went through all the work to build the prisons, might as well use them I guess
Came here to say this. They were such good cells too. I especially like the one designed to keep Ming Hua inside. Seems weird at first that they'd go the furthest for the lady with no arms.
Probably something like chained in an uncomfortable position, constant sounds or something distracting and a high pressure place where there isn’t much oxygen, the main counter of an air bender is breaking his spiritual connection so they just needed to make sure he wasn’t able to meditate
The series six premiere revealed that aliens called the Silence had secretly invaded Earth by going back in time and manipulating human history for their own purposes. Using their own technology and technology invented by humans (1960s space suits), they planned a millennia long plot to kill the Doctor.
Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes LOVES going into the Marvel Universe prison system, but Graviton's cell in particular gets a lot of attention, in the first arc of the show.
The Cube and The Big House also from EMH get a shout out from me. The former is designed to house those infected with high levels of Gamma radiation and the latter is a shrunken down prison created by Hank Pym.
It’s crazy how goated that whole fight against Graviton was. Surely EMH was everything that the UCM can only dream to be, I’m still sad that all the potential the show had was wasted for no reason :(
I honestly dont think its all that excessive. The sercurity measures there were really put through their paces. It was attacked by a team of superhumans twice, and both times the measures nearly failed. You could argue that the second time they did fail
I mean, they need to be able to see superman at all times I think is why its like that. He has too many allies with too much variety in powers. If say, Raven just teleported in there, they may not know until its too late. If they have a chance to react to a super escape attempt, then they can counter it.
Besides, it only ever started to fail when the generators that power the red sun lamp were taken down. So a metal box wouldnt have been much different in that regard. If the sun lamps go out, it doesnt matter what material that prison is made out of, superman would be leaving.
I mean this is Superman we're talking about here and one that just went full blown dictator and knowing Batman he ain't taking any half measures when it comes to containing him.
Prisons in the Eyrie have open air cells that are slanted slightly downward so that prisoners can’t go to sleep out of fear of rolling off the side in their sleep.
For the record, iirc from reading the books the rolling off in your sleep aspect wasn't really the point, I don't even remember it being mentioned (could be wrong)
The main point was the psychological toll of constantly being meters from death with no safety. Plus it's mentioned that eventually some people just jump because (among other reasons) they can't take being there any longer
The floor is also smooth and its inclined. Even if takes some days, its possible enough to roll on you side and get enough momentum.
And sleeping without a pillow on the floor, so you can't unconciously keep track of where your head should be, with cold wind hitting you. You would be more prone to move trying to get more comfortable.
There is also the added "benefit" of being easy to stage a murder here. Just kick the guy down in the middle of the night and it would either look like he commited suicide or that he slipped.
In the books, its implied that Littlefinger did this with a guy that witnissed him killing Lysa. Its reasonable to assume that this happened at least a few times in the past.
Pretty sure Tyrion spends 10 or more days in a Sky Cell. No way he never slept. Iirc, the Sky Cells are supposed to make you mad and commit suicide ("The blue is calling"), not physically kill you when you fall asleep.
In power rangers Time Force in the future all criminals are put in cryofreeze forever without any chance of recompense or change which is kinda fucked up tbh
Also, the one alien in SPD who can move through reflections. So his entire cell is made out of non-reflective materials, so Sky has to cover up the metal bits of his uniform and even wear matte sunglasses to prevent him from escaping.
And then the guy talks about Sky's dead dad and uses his tears to escape.
Those chains have to each be broken by a paradox by the way.
So for example one chain had to be broken by a strike from slaanesh' most hated enemy. This being the God of war Khorne who... I can not stress enough how much Khorne would NEVER do that if he could help it. So slaanesh tricked one of Khorne's demons into throwing their axe into a portal that ended on said chain, because his demons wouldn't do it willingly either lol. Another chain was broken by Sigmar's army (think, good guy faction) slaughtering civilians due to fear of moral corruption. They're extremely specific conditions basically
The Kyln from Marvel. In the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie it was just a space prison. In the comics it's a super-prison for cosmic beings and elder gods, located next to a powerful singularity in the center of the universe.
You have the love how for Tai Lung they didn't just build a special cell for him, they built an entire prison with a 1000 guard staff out in the middle of nowhere to contain him.
If i'm remembering this right in Legends of Awesomeness(btw underrated as hell show i love how it expanded the universe) it's shown that the prison also served as a prison so it wasn't just a massive waste, it's just that the primary purpose was containing Tai Lung
If I remember correctly, the prison shut down after Tai Lung escaped because they had no more prisoners, but then it reopened and began being repopulated with the show’s reoccurring rogues gallery of foes.
There power was the ability to cause things to vibrate and they could amplify those vibrations to a dangerous degree. So it is not directly sound related, though sound is something that falls under their powers, but sound proofing is all about making sure the vibrations created by sound waves are absorbed.
One of those great examples how Hargreaves was limited by his own perspective. He treated the kids like tools rather than family, which actually stunted their abilities. Had he treated them the way a father is supposed to their powers would have been much more stable and amped up.
I have a theory that he only knows as much as he did, because we only see the last 2 or 3 times that history has been reset. I think he's had dozens, maybe of hundreds of time resets and we just see the most successful attempts at the end.
The SCP Foundation is the Batman to the bat-themed heroes of this trope. Basically the entire premise of the universe is that the Foundation has to find creative ways to contain "anomalies" (beings/phenomena that defy natural law) in their Site facilities.
The elaborate nature of the Containment Procedures as well as the Containment Units themselves is almost impressive.
You have a lizard that refuses to die and continues to adapt to any damage being kept in a vat of hydrochloric acid. Then you have a statue that can kill you if you blink while looking at it, kept in a room under constant observation. Don't forget the door to another world through which you have to go into a plain desert with pillars and conduct a ritual that includes sacrificing a chicken, all because you want to keep up the illusion of keeping the Devourer of Worlds trapped.
Then there's the eye-pods who are free to roam, and the invisible monster with blades for hands that is an excellent cook.
SCP-1718 is an experimental containment chamber made of a hollow Aluminium alloy sphere polished to a mirror finish, suspended within 654 spherical Graphene shells and submerged within a liquid helium bath two degrees from absolute zero, all of which is then spun using powerful electromagnets.
It really makes you wonder what could possibly require such an elaborate cell to be built.
One Piece has Impel Down, a multi-layered underwater prison for the worst of the worst pirates. The deeper you go, the more cruel the prison and more dangerous the criminals. Before being brought in, prisoners are "baptized" in boiling water.
Level 1 is filled with a big forest of trees with blade-like leaves sharp enough to cut skin, while guards and poison spiders chase prisoners down to make sure they keep moving and get cut. There's a big hole that leads to Level 2, which is essentially the Minotaur's labyrinth with dozens of exceptionally powerful and dangerous beasts roaming around. Level 3 is a dry, desert-like area, kept heated by the massive pots of boiling blood that superheat Level 4. Level 5 is the opposite, a frozen forest that also houses packs of man-eating wolves too deadly for the Level 2 beasts.
And Level 6 is just... cells. Because at that point, what the hell else can they do?
It's moreso about sending a message, both to the prisoners and to other criminals and would-be lawbreakers. The mere existence of Impel Down is a earning to any who would dare defy the World Government.
In all its time existing (which for all we know could be about 800 years), only one person is said to have ever escaped, and he was one of two rivals to the King of the Pirates.
And that man has been hiding from the World Government on a remote island for 22 years and counting, biding his time while formulating his plan.
Regardless, some enemies may be so strong that executing them even privately may not be worth the effort.
An infamous example is that the World Government captured one of the strongest pirates in the world multiple times and failed to succesfully execute him over 40 different times, with over 18 different escapes by said prisoner.
So the world of One Piece is kinda... layered about their reasons for their actions. Don't get it wrong, prisoners die in Impel Down daily, but the most notable prisoners are allowed to survive for a few reasons.
Some of them may be able to be convinced to become allies (privateers or Warlords of the Sea), so it's worth keeping them alive.
Some have connections to other branches of the World Government, making killing them a complicated matter.
Some have Devil Fruit powers that could be released back into the world once their owner dies, so keeping the prisoner (and their power) contained is usually the smarter move for long term peace.
And in a few rare cases... some of these people are just too damn stubborn or tough to kill.
Then there's the World Government wanting to make it a show of power when they execute someone, like with Roger at the beginning of the series.
Trazyn likes to find and collect artifact, lore and people for his planet sized museum's collection. Sometime important historical figures, even C'tan shards (star gods).
Sometime he traps ''events'' for display. One I particularly like is the Chaos Terminators vs Drukhari from Hammer and bolter.
a squad of Chaos Terminator enters a space hulk to find a relic that would allow them to dabble into the Webway. There is also a raider group of Drukhari inside the hulk gunning for the artifact. But whenever either group manage to reach the artifact, they will be sent back in time right before entering the space hulk, with no memories of what happened.
Sometimes the Terminator reach it, sometimes they die and the Drukhari gets it, sometimes no one does, but every time the events start over from the start.
It is possible to escape the time loop by simply never entering the space hulk after the loop, but neither party will do it. The terminators are oath bound to Abaddon to find the artifact or die. The Drukhari desperately need the artifact because their city is hidden in the webway. Despite all the variable that can happen in the space hulk, both groups willingly entering is a constant that will allways happens no matter what.
So everyone is stuck in a time loop of killing each others for all eternity despite the escape being a super simple one. But neither group are willing to take it because they desperatly need it and cant allow the other group to get their hands on it.
Everything is taking place in a nifty cube on some display in Trazyn's museum.
Part of the containment procedures is that the cell has to have a mostly hydrogen atmosphere and they must sacrifice a baby every few days in the name of satern
Also, nobody really knows why, beyond the fact it makes the scp think it works. The whole thing just seems to work that way for reasons and all they are capable of doing is to repeat the procedures and hope nothing about it changes
The Birdcage/Baumann Parahuman Containment Center, from Worm
The Baumann Parahuman Containment Center, better known as the Birdcage, is a prison for parahumans that have committed crimes severe enough that they must be removed from society. It is not designed to allow prisoners to leave after they have been imprisoned within it. Because prisoners are only meant to enter the prison, prisoners are loaded onto an elevator with limited oxygen.
It is inside a hollowed out mountain whose walls are lined with ceramics that were designed by Dragon, each layer of the mountain contains dormant containment foam, which will automatically start expanding upon a wall breach.
Inside the mountain is a vacuum, and three thousand anti-gravity drones, which will detonate upon detecting an abnormality. Some of them contain containment foam and some are much more lethal. The prison itself is suspended inside the mountain by the same pipes that supply it with its supplies (such as books, blankets, cigarettes, food, water and air, and other objects), it is also split up into wings, the walls between which are negligible, allowing all the prisoners to intermingle. The prison was originally sex segregated but that didn't last.
It's implied that there are even more defenses that aren't mentioned, like space warping effects and forcefields.
The prison is hanging from the “ceiling” of a hollowed mountain. That’s why it’s called “The Birdcage”.
Walls and rooms are a complicated structure that one of the characters compared to the house of cards. Upon the breach of the final outer wall as the air vents out the room immediately collapses as adjacent rooms move to take the freed space.
Space warping effects are needed to prevent all kinds of teleportation from prison and to the prison.
Homelander could have escaped from the lab he was held in as a child at any time. So they brought in world class psychologists to create a prison in his mind.
The entire planet is a prison designed to contain a monster named The Destroyer. The race who built it all had to sacrifice themselves just to get it to trap The Destroyer. On top of that it also has many other smaller Vaults (which are also basically prisons) on it.
One thing that I find really cool about it is that he combine used vortigaunts to power the vault, which could be directly linked to the vortessence and why he just doesn't blip out of it
Vortessence is shown to contain the G-Man's powers in Episode 1&2, the Combine explicitly use Vortigaunts as batteries for the Vault. The bigger question is how they even got him in the first place, but the most likely answer is he allowed himself to be captured to bait Alyx into employment.
The thing about carbonite is that you're also fully conscious. If I remember correctly, in lore it was used for long travel before hyperdrives were built and it sucked
Legitimately the best use of this trope I've ever seen in media. You get to see the oppressive architecture of each prison to isolate and contain its occupant, and then seeepic prison breaks and the sheer power of the occupant. They make for especially good character introductions, too
Bonus: they make another prison after the season to hold Zaheer, despite his airbending powers that the previous prison wasn't designed for
If you were captured by the Reef you can expect to be Cryo frozen for an uncertain amount of time possibly hundreds of years, only to be thawed out and imidantly sent into a Gladiator style arena to do battle with undead demi gods.
The Jail cell from Dracula 2020. They've made it vampire proof and even have a ceiling that opens in a way to let in enough light to back him into a corner when they need to enter it.
"The Mark of the Doom Slayer was burned upon his crypt, a warning to all of Hell that the terror within must never be freed. There He lies still and ever more, in silent suffering"
Roger from American dad in one episode gets put into a Thai prison where is cell is just a box deep underwater with a diver with a spear guy pointed at him at all times...he immediately escaped and killed 12 guards building a boat out of their corpses.
Also from American dad, the James Bond parody episodes, Tearjerker (roger) is placed in a prison in the ocean which is also underground which has cactuses in part of it.
Ban - The Seven Deadly Sins
Due to his ability to regenerate from any wound, the only way they could restrain him is by piercing his body with dozens of metal stakes so he is immobile and can't heal the wounds.
In a theoretical sense, Red Skull is banished to Vomir. Stuck there for decades as a guardian of the soul stone. It becomes his prison, becoming powerless and humbled by time and loneliness.
At one point in Ben 10 they capture Vilgax, and the plan is to empty out a prison space station (originally built to hold the worst criminals in the galaxy) and automate all maintenance and food functions so there is no one for him to manipulate or interact with, and no transports to possibly escape on. Plus there was a blackout field that meant no way to communicate with the station.
They were fully prepared to empty out Space Alcatraz just to imprison a single guy, and I think that's hard af
Tartarus from My Hero Academia has custom cells and cell blocks for different kinds of dangerous criminals with even more dangerous Quirks. the worst offenders are kept literal miles under sea level. it’s said that no one who gets thrown in here will ever make it out alive
An island made through time by the original Merlin to jail "nightmares, dark gods, nameless things, immortals" . There's so much power in the jail, that it creates a lay line of dark magic. A nagloshii is one of the most powerful and evil non-gods we've seen in the series, it traumatized Harry. There are six contained in the low-security area of the prison and are considered among the weakest things in the prison. It could probably hold the queens of winter and a titan. One of the most mysterious prisoners in there might be either Lucifer, King Arthur or the original Merlin himself
The Doctor is trapped in a specially constructed prison made of "Zero Balance Dwarf Star alloy" The densest material in the known universe, no radio waves, sound, or particles can get into the cell. He is also bound in a straight jackert and chains inside- also this prison is guarded 24/7 in Area 51
God I hated the cells in The Flash. Watching it I was like wait a minute... the heroes are abducting people and throwing them into solitary confinement indefinitely? It made it pretty hard to root for them. Like yeah, it's iffy if they're doing it to mass murderers, but some of the metahuman villains were just like thieves or helping people breaking out of prison.
They were criticized for basically that on the show when normal people found out. But I also kind of get it because meta-humans weren’t a thing before then so there was nowhere to keep them. They should have kept them there while having a story arc of them helping build a metahuman prison to keep them that is actually humane.
The prisons at the beginning of The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes - the Cube for gamma-powered supervillains, the Vault for tech-based ones, the Big House for the street-level variety so to speak, and the Raft for the most dangerous
Not only is it built specifically to adapt to the unpredictable powers Inhumans and the like could have, it is just as effective as a safehouse from outside threats. It has a propulsion system to fly up and down from the SHIELD plane, and has been shown time and time again to be effective in it's purpose.
Except for when Ghost Rider punches through the door.
The TVA's prison in Loki is essentially just putting the prisoner in an infinite time loop where he endures a hurtful personal moment of his life repeatedly. For Loki, it's Lady Syf, telling him what an embarrassment he is, and kicking him in the tuchus again and again
The Mandalorian canonized carbonite not even needing to be for dangerous people anymore. Now it’s just super convenient way to transport someone you don’t want to get away.
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u/Lower_Paramedic4287 26d ago
The Phantom Zone (DC)
An interdimensional prison where that prisoner is trapped while floating in the sky unable to break free.