Deathtrap (plot device)

A deathtrap is a literary and dramatic plot device in which a villain, who has captured the hero or another sympathetic character, attempts to use an elaborate and usually sadistic method of murdering him/her.

Famous examples of deathtraps

• Raiders of the Lost Ark: Sealing Indiana Jones and Marion in the Well of Souls
• Escape method: Seeing a possible tunnel entrance, Jones climbed a statue and toppled it towards the wall to create an entrance to a passageway that led to the outside.
• Goldfinger: James Bond is shackled spreadeagled to a table and a powerful laser is approaching to cut him in half. Unlike many deathtrap scenarios, Bond is not left alone or unguarded, nor does he use a device or outside help to escape.
• Escape method: Bond persuades Goldfinger that his replacement might know about his plans and Goldfinger cannot take the chance of another spy coming in to interfere.
• Live and Let Die: Doctor Kanaga and a minion tie James Bond and Solitare to a platform to be lowered into a shark infested pool to be eaten alive.
• Escape method: When the villians' backs are turned, Bond activates his watch's rotary saw function to cut through his restraints to free himself and attack Kanaga.
• The 1960s live action television series Batman usually had two-part episodes which have a cliffhanger involving bizarre deathtraps.
• Example: The Joker traps the Dynamic Duo without their utility belts in the bottom of an industrial smokestack and begins to gradually fill it with a deadly heavier than air gas.
• Escape method: The pair lock elbows and brace their backs against each other to walk up the smokestack to the top opening and slide down a support cable safely to the ground.
• The Perils of Penelope Pitstop always involved improbable deathtraps, usually set by the Hooded Claw.
• X-Men #17-18 - Magneto seizes the X-Men and renders all of them unconscious. He then decides to put them inside a steel gondola lifted by a hot-air balloon, so that it rises extremely high in the sky, into the upper atmosphere until they suffocate.
• Escape method: Jean Grey uses her telekinesis to stop the balloon from rising, Cyclops uses his optic blasts to pierce it so that it deflates slowly and they fall back on Earth, with Jean controlling the descent.
• Iron Man #118 - Anthony Stark is struck unconscious and thrown out of the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, several thousand feet up.
• Escape method: Regaining consciousness and his composure, Stark quickly dons his power armor and barely dons the complete suit to engage the flight function before he hits the ground.
• Fantastic Four #278-279 - The adopted son of Doctor Doom launches the Baxter Building into outer space and then explodes it with the Four and an associate inside.
• Escape method: The Invisible Woman erects a force field bubble to protect the occupants from the explosion and they play dead when a probe examines the wreckage. Once alone, the superhero team leaves orbit by Mister Fantastic using his stretching power to shape the force field into an aerodynamic form. Once achieved, he carefully created an air leak to serve as propulsion to make the bubble start re-entry. To survive the resulting heat generation, The Human Torch temporarily absorbs the heat energy to keep the temperature in the bubble at a livable level until it has descended into the lower atmosphere. Once achieved, the bubble is steered toward Latveria and to one of Doctor Doom's castles with She-Hulk serving as a battering ram to gain entry on impact.
• Dick Tracy was the first comic strip to use deathtraps extensively. The most famous was devised by Mrs. Pruneface. Her creation was that of Tracy lying chained to an apartment floor underneath a refrigerator supported by two ice cakes which had a sharpened pole aimed at the detective's heart. The heat was turned up and as the ice cakes melted, the pole would descend until it impaled Tracy.
• Escape Method: Tracy noticed that the floor was on a slight incline and hit upon the idea of repeatedly striking the floor with his pelvis, thus caused the fridge to be slowly shifted to one side until the pole missed him. Meanwhile, Pat and his police comrades eventually found Tracy and freed him.