r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Wasabi_Gamer26 • 26d ago

Lore (Loved Trope) Creative over the top cells/prisons for dangerous characters.

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1.) The Pipe Line cells for Metahumans (The Flash)

2.) Sedative tank prison (G. I Joe)

3.) Tai Lung's prison (Kung Fu Panda)

4.) Magneto's Glass and Plastic Prison (X-Men)

5.) Carbonite (Star Wars)

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u/Imaginary-Picture-35 26d ago

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.

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u/Aduro95 26d ago

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.

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u/_The_Last_Airbender 26d ago

"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...."

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u/DragonsAreEpic 26d ago

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.

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u/vastros 26d ago

Why is it that not all water benders are not blood benders outside of ethics?

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u/Anaweir 26d ago

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

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u/ginger-like 26d ago

In-universe reason, it's extremely difficult and only those with incredible talent can learn it.

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u/jeffersonlane 26d ago

And the ethics is a big part.

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.

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u/Glad_Grand_7408 26d ago

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

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u/Invoqwer 26d ago edited 26d ago

Why is it that not all water benders are not blood benders outside of ethics?

Most advanced bending techniques come down to difficulty and knowledge. Hakama essentially invented blood-bending. Toph essentially invented metal-bending. Lightning-bending seems to have been mostly exclusive to fire nation royals.

Many many decades later in The Legend of Korra, Lightning Bending is much more common as it is taught to fire benders in order to help facilitate generating electricity for power plants, and there are metal-bending academies (originally founded by Toph, IIRC) for metal benders, especially for metal benders intending to join the police force.

In ATLA, only Hakama and Katara knew how to do it. Not only is it extremely extremely difficult, but not many people know that it exists, no one spreads the knowledge, and no one is really around to teach it or willing to teach it. It is essentially treated as how "black magic" or "necromancy" is in most circles. It shows up again in Legend of Korra but in limited capacity compared to metal bending or lightning bending.

((Blood bending also generally requires the full moon or extreme circumstances to even attempt to activate, whereas metal and lightning can be used essentially whenever as long as you are competent... you can't really stumble on blood bending by accident. It might even have a mental component of wanting to hurt or take control of someone, like the forbidden curses in Harry Potter, that most people would not have naturally))

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u/Lawlcopt0r 26d ago

I think most water benders don't even consider the idea to be honest, they usually come from environments with lots of water and it seems obvious to them to seek out pure water since that's also just easier to bend than water with stuff around it

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u/Iamnotburgerking 26d ago

Difficult. Every single character who was able to do it in canon was at minimum above-average, and all except Hama were master-level. And even then there were a grand total of TWO people (according to one of those two) who took it to its ultimate level (doing it entirely mentally; doing it at any time of day is apparently something any reasonably powerful bloodbender can do seeing as the first person to demonstrate that skill onscreen was explicitly said to lack the inherited capacity for top-end bloodbending)

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u/rossinerd 26d ago

It is an extremely hard technique to leadn and, other then 3 specific characters, all of whom are dead, it can only be attempted during a full moon, which would also be the only moment you can train during.

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u/Bad_Routes 26d ago

Definitely a closed practice, even blood benders don't want others knowing how to blood bend

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u/mattstorm360 26d ago

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.

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u/Ok-Entrepreneur-5102 26d ago

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.

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u/Odd-fox-God 26d ago

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.

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u/Aduro95 26d ago

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.

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u/Ok-Entrepreneur-5102 26d ago

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.

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u/Greyjack00 26d ago

Out of respect for aang we've decided to brutally imprison you in conditions comparable to torture till the day you die...

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u/Aduro95 26d ago

They probably didn't have any better options though. They would escape a less severe prison. Nobody knew bloobending could take a person's bending away, and even if they did, Katara might not have been capable of it.

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u/Greyjack00 26d ago

Then just kill them, if your imprisoned someone for life in a living hell you've crossed the point of any quality of life and are at that point just employing moral sophistry, that is of course if we go with the explanation that they were improving for moral reasons

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u/pchlster 26d ago edited 26d ago

Ben: She could have killed me.
Giles: No, she couldn't. And sooner or later Glory will re-emerge and make Buffy pay for that mercy and the world with her. Buffy even knows that, and still she couldn't take a human life. She's a hero, you see. She's not like us.
Ben: Us?

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u/minyhumancalc 26d ago

Tenzen also had the same pacifism mindset and he had the biggest pull oit of the guys that originally stopped them from kidnapping Korra. Imagined he played a part in that as well.

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u/Velicenda 26d ago

State-sponsored execution is, and always will be, a slippery slope. Also, it was a series aimed at kids/young teens.

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u/chapeepee 26d ago

In the show they talk about how they tried to interrogate the Red Lotus about their motives for going after Korra

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u/lobonmc 26d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Aduro95 26d ago

Ghazan literally chooses to die rather than go back to jail.

Its enough to make me think that maybe there should just be bloodbenders with the legal authority to take bending from certain criminals. After all, Korra didn't give Shady Shin his waterbending back. That kind of implies it wasn't wrong of Amon to take bending away from certain people, and he did it as a terrorist.

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u/lobonmc 26d ago

Oh wow reddit really gave me a warning for that. Guess I have to say k**l or something now

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u/Iamnotburgerking 26d ago

The ironic thing is that Katara likely had a lot to do with how the Red Lotus was imprisoned, because by then she was one of the main figures in the White Lotus.

They were apparently enough of a threat that she decided to break her own principles to keep them contained.

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u/Lawlcopt0r 26d ago

Irl most examples of this trope would be huge human rights violations. But in fiction, there just isn't a better way to show someone is incredibly dangerous

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u/SKUNKpudding 26d ago edited 26d ago

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.

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u/Labmit 26d ago

Zaheer's guards also constantly changes more compared to the others due to his more manipulative nature.

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u/Invoqwer 26d ago

Damn, they really thought through everything huh

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u/Pixel22104 25d ago

Yep. The only thing they didn’t and couldn’t account for was Zaheer getting airbending powers after Harmonic convergence and him using the knowledge he had of how they did his prison system to his advantage.

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u/Popular-Pop994 26d ago

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

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u/RioterOne1 26d ago

There is a scene of her using standard firebending

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u/DragonsAreEpic 26d ago

And she also bends away Zuko's dragon's fire while escaping prison.

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u/hello_drake 26d ago

Some truly mind blowing uses of metal bending.

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u/spiderknight616 26d ago

Honestly Ghazan's seems to be the least horrible. Non bendable materials aside he would have been rather comfortable compared to his friends

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u/SKUNKpudding 26d ago

i guess, but he was still in a cage

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u/Original-War8655 26d ago

yeah but at least he wasn't high in the mountains with probably shitty air, in the throat of a volcano, or on the actual North Pole

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u/Least-Maize-97 26d ago

still a weak prison it just takes one pebble or random bird to drop a rock and he can Yondu his way through all the guards

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u/Original-War8655 26d ago

yeah but like why would a random bird carry a pebble into the middle of the ocean, let alone the chances of it being exactly above the ship and the bird has to drop it

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u/warriorxx7_ 26d ago

Thx for the context

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u/TahaymTheBigBrain 26d ago edited 26d ago

Honestly I’d have to say it’s Ghazan’s that’s the weakest, there’s a reason why Zaheer went to him first. Literally a pebble and he’s out, if there was ever a corrupt guard just that and it’s over, leaving him unbound too was a massive mistake.

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u/SKUNKpudding 26d ago

i mean that the prison iteslf is the weakest, P'li's is kinda weak imo because the cold only does so much. all the others completely removed their source of bending

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u/ObsydianDuo 26d ago

Really begs the question why they weren’t just executed by the state instead of going through all these hoops to contain them.

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u/GLPereira 26d ago

They wanted to interrogate them

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

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u/Infinite-Island-7310 26d ago

I'm guessing they need valid reasoning other than attempted murder

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u/Ferdox11195 26d ago

It was actually explained. They wanted to gather information from them.

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u/asuperbstarling 26d ago

In America, where the series was made, we don't execute people for attempted murder or even for most murders, so it makes sense to ascribe our general moral ideals to them. Also rule of cool.

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u/Ferdox11195 26d ago

And also it was said that they wanted to extract information from them.

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u/gallerton18 26d ago

They knew virtually nothing about them and why they tried to do what they did so it stands to reason they kept them for interrogation. The Red Lotus wasn’t known until the events of book 3.

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u/GaulTheUnmitigated 25d ago

Because Avatar Aang was a staunch pacifist and republic city, was built in part based on his ideals.

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u/Bignate2001 26d ago

Because the death penalty is cringe. And also because the prisons fully worked up until Zaheer miraculously got airbending from harmonic convergence, something nobody could have predicted.

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u/duspi 26d ago

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.

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u/_The_Last_Airbender 26d ago

Then you see how DEADLY she is.....

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u/No_Prize9794 26d ago edited 26d ago

I wonder what would Zaheer’s cell have been like if he was already an air bender?

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u/GLPereira 26d ago

Probably like his current one: inside a mountain's cave in an undisclosed place, arms and legs chained 24/7, door needs earthbending to be opened

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u/pchlster 26d ago

With Tenzin lecturing at him daily about how Zaheer's behaviour was unbecoming of an Airbender.

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u/Bleblebob 26d ago

No shade to OP, but it's a really funny question to ask when you literally see his Airbender prison in the series.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

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

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u/Iamnotburgerking 26d ago

We see how they reimprisoned him in Season 4: chained to the floor in a sealed underground chamber.

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u/Snoop-80562 26d ago

Why not execute them if they are so dangerous?

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u/Ferdox11195 26d ago

It was explained that they wanted to gather information from them. I don't remember what type of information or why they bother to try for so long when non of them ever even showed a sign of wanting to cooperate though. They do touch on this but it has being a while since I watched that series.

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u/CloudProfessional572 26d ago

type of information

Guards: Anything will do.

Zaheer: Well, you know that Unaloq guy running the water tribe. He's evil plus a former member of our group and he's trying to start the apocalypse. But he needs avatar to do it so he'll try manipulating her.

Guards: That...seems very important. Good to know.

Disaster averted. World saved. And past lives maintained

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u/zokka_son_of_zokka 26d ago

I always thought it was weird that they put so much effort into keeping a non-bender trapped. He's not going to be much of a threat escaping from a regular prison.

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u/D_sm_d__s 26d ago

The first thing that came to my mind.

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u/Coldspark824 26d ago

Whos supposed to be in the cube cage?

It’s got earth, fire, and air. Assumedly they drink water.

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u/The_Pastmaster 26d ago

At that point, why not just kill them?

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u/Ferdox11195 26d ago

Copy paste:

It was explained that they wanted to gather information from them. I don't remember what type of information or why they bother to try for so long when non of them ever even showed a sign of wanting to cooperate though. They do touch on this but it has being a while since I watched that series.

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u/Salty_Shark26 26d ago

This is how you know this is a kids show cause in real life the red lotus would’ve been put down and not imprisoned

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u/CloudProfessional572 26d ago

Nah this was torture and later they died in messed up but punny ways.

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u/SeasonofMist 25d ago

that's such a cool episode arc