The Phrase Timmy s Stuck in the Well Again

"It'southward a place you put people... to forget near 'em!"

A character gets rid of another character by physically or magically trapping them within some uncomfortable location and so remote it will be impossible for them to escape by themselves.

This is a mode to exercise the expiry/resurrection plot without cheapening death, since the trapped character is always brought back.

A fun give-and-take for a prison of this type is "oubliette" where a prisoner would be thrown to be literally forgotten almost (from French "oublier" = "to forget").

Related to Out of Sight, Out of Mind, Put on a Bus and Sealed Room in the Centre of Nowhere. Compare And I Must Scream and Anti-Interference Lock Up.

Non related to Timmy in a Well, although they can both involve someone in a well.

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Examples:

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    Anime & Manga

• Sailor Moon: In DiC's dub first season finale, the Doom and Gloom girls trap each of the Crewman Scouts, except for Sailor Moon, when they enter the Negaverse. Sailor Moon's magic frees them all and wipes their memories in the adjacent episode. In the original however the DD Girls (rather graphically for a show aimed a young girls) killed every Crewman Senshi except for Sailor Moon in the beginning season penultimate episode, with Moon'south dying wish in the side by side episode, made on a Power Crystal whose magic is Bandage From HP, resurrecting everyone (herself included.) Japanese kids apparently got sick watching the original, so it is not that bad it was censored.
• Excel Saga: Excel is temporarily held prisoner in a deep well when she accidentally stumbles onto a military group, where she finds the Human being in the Iron Mask at the lesser and slowly loses her sanity over the course of a few hours before finally escaping in the typically hilarious manner Excel, well, excels at.
• Ranma ½: This is how Soun Tendo and Genma Saotome get rid of Happosai the first fourth dimension: they tie him upwardly, put him in a barrel, seal the barrel, tie information technology in seals, tie information technology up again, and then throw information technology in a cavern, dynamite said cave, and sealed the archway. It kept him away for most a decade before lightning re-opened the cave.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Yugi is trapped this way in mid-flavour 4. Unlike in that it's not done specifically to trap him, but as part of a bigger programme.

    Comic Books

• Ultimate Ten-Men: Wolverine catches Cyclops equally he'due south just about to fall down a chasm (depth unknown) whilst they're in Genosha, fighting some auto monster. Wolverine decides this is the best fourth dimension to become rid of the contest for Jean Grey and chucks him downwardly. Luckily for Cyke just not really for Wolvie, Cyke survives, and after diverse hijinks (existence rescued by the badguys) eventually confronts Wolverine a few weeks after. Wolverine goes "I was a twat. Practice what you have to." What Cyke "had to" practice was ZORT him with a unmarried high-power blast, leaving him naked, scorched, and knocked the FUCK out in an Alaskan terrain. Scott leaves him in that location, saying that he's off the squad. He does think improve of it afterwards, as much to evidence that he tin can forgive as to bury the hatchet betwixt them and so that they don't stop upwardly like Xavier and Magneto.
• Superman:
  • In Many Happy Returns, Supergirl has sealed Xenon away in an empty pocket dimension he can't go out.
  • In Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Form, the Imps of the Fifth Dimension punish Mxyzptlk by banishing him to the Second Dimension forever.
  • In Last Son, General Zod traps Superman in the Phantom Zone.
  • At the cease of The Peachy Phantom Peril, Superman sends Faora Hu-Ul and all Kryptonian rogues back into the Phantom Zone.
  • In Starfire's Revenge, the titular crimelord throws -a supposedly depowered- Supergirl and her own minion down in a pit built in the deepest basement of an abandoned castle.
  • At the end of The Death of Superman (1961), Lex Luthor is sent into the Phantom Zone forever.
  • In Reign of Doomsday, Lex Luthor traps the Superman Family in a dimensional maze located inside an invisible abandoned spaceship located on the far side of the Sun. Luthor also throws into his trap a bunch of Doomsday clones then the Supers are being permanently hunted downwardly. All the same, Supergirl throws one Doomsday down an endless tunnel, and it does not return. Superman ponders it may be a way to get rid of the Doomsdays.
  • In Escape from the Phantom Zone, Supergirl, Batgirl and their friend Ben Rubel are thrown into the Zone. When Ben wonders why he cannot feel anything only cold, Supergirl explains that is office of the punishment. Criminals are not supposed to find their banishment pleasant.
  • The Phantom Zone mini-series tells how Jor-El discovered the Phantom Zone, and believing exile in a pocket dimension was more humane and cheaper of a penalisation than killing or rocketing criminals into space, he built the Phantom Zone Projector to send them into the Zone.

    Jor-El: I am most to propose a more humane, less plush, yet equally constructive method of criminal confinement...in the Phantom Zone.
    Councilor: Whatever that is, proceed, Jor-El. [...] By Rao!! She's vanishing—into pettiness!!
    Jor-El: No, gentlemen—into some other dimension. Lara is with the states in this room, at this moment. She hears every discussion nosotros speak, sees everything we do. [...] She is a wraith, unable to affect the cloth earth in any manner. Nor can it impact her. In the Phantom Zone, she feels no hunger, requires no sleep— does non historic period. She can neither touch nor be touched. She can only retrieve— as our criminals volition be forced to contemplate the folly of her crimes.

  • The Leper From Krypton: Subverted. Superman is dying from an conflicting disease which will him within hours, and Supergirl comes upwards with the idea of sending him into the Phantom Zone, where nobody can historic period or die, until a cure tin exist found. The Phantom Zoners do not want Superman to be saved , though, so they use their combined mental ability to fix a barrier which Superman cannot pierce through.
• In Star Wars Tales #5, Yaddle's Tale: The One Below, the championship character was imprisoned in a well by a tyrannical dictator later he killed her main equally a potential bargaining fleck. The wardens and villagers kept taking care of her well after the dictator forgot her and she was able to utilize the isolation to strengthen her connection to the Force. An earthquake ends up providing her an escape and she helps the villagers defeat the dictator'due south son when he comes to collect the planet as his inheritance.

    Fairy Tales

    Fan Works

• In Power Girl fanfic A Forcefulness of Four, Superman imprisoned Mala, Kizo and U-Ban in a Kryptonite globe which he left drifting about the edge of the solar system. Decades passed before Badra released them.

  In the reaches of outer space, a dark-green-glowing earth floated, undisturbed for 31 years. The three beings inside it were numb, in suspended blitheness, as they had been for almost all of their imprisonment.

• Averted in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World. To proceed Paul from causing bug, the Circle planned to teleport him to a remote island far away from any potential rescue. However, their two attempts to immobilize him and have him there failed miserably.
• In Kara of Rokyn, villain Blackflame is arrested and banished to the Phantom Zone forever afterward her final effort on Kara's life fails.

    Films — Blitheness

• Coraline. The hand of the Other Mother is smashed and thrown into a deep well when it escapes to the real globe which doubles as a Karmic End for her, after she did the same by trapping Coraline's existent parents inside a snowglobe and Coraline herself within the mirror.
• In Aladdin: The Return of Jafar, Iago decides to ditch Jafar by dropping his lamp down a well, with the obligatory bad pun "Promise all goes well". However, the lamp landed in the saucepan, and when the villain Abis Mal hoists it upwardly to launder his caput he finds the lamp, He sets Jafar loose unexpectedly when he decides to shine the lamp up to sell.
• Simply before the terminal boxing in My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks, the Rainbooms and Sunset are thrown downward a stage trap into a locked room, where their tensions that have been building throughout the flick come to a eddy, fueling the Dazzlings with enough negative emotional free energy to reach total power. Fortunately, Sunset is able to resolve their argument, and Spike, who avoided the trapdoor, fetched DJ Pon-iii to rescue them.
• In Coco, the villain has Miguel and Hector thrown down a cenote (a sinkhole filled with water). They are saved past Mama Imelda and her alebrije.

    Films — Live-Activeness

• In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Belloq leaves Indiana Jones trapped inside the Well of Souls, the underground temple where the Ark was hidden. He taunts Indy thusly: "You're near to become a permanent addition to this archaeological find. Who knows? In a thousand years, even yous may exist worth something."
• In Star Trek Two: The Wrath of Khan, Khan leaves Kirk and company trapped inside the Regula planetoid, "...marooned for all eternity, in the centre of a dead planet...buried alive."
• Superman:
  • General Zod to Superman in Superman II, by sending him to the Phantom Zone.
  • In Supergirl, the villainess Selena does the aforementioned thing to the title character.
• The Ring:
  • Samara is tossed in a well by her female parent.
  • The book has information technology that Sadako was tossed in by a guy she threatened to kill.
  • Sadako's father in the movies.
• In Labyrinth, Sarah falls into an oubliette, where she would've stayed if Hoggle hadn't rescued her.
  • Subverted in that Hoggle was supposed to be there to rescue her and pb her back to the beginning to interruption her spirit. Jareth failed to take The Power of Friendship into account though and Hoggle did a classic Heel–Face Turn.

• In Showtime Knight, Malagant, the errant knight of the Round Tabular array, stashes Guenevere in one, to lure Arthur and the other knights into a trap.
• In The Pit and the Pendulum, Nicholas ties up, gags and places his wife Elizabeth in an Iron Maiden (though information technology is one without spikes, which eventually makes her state of affairs worse) in a Torture Cellar. Later he is killed while trying to murder several other people, Elizabeth watches helplessly every bit they (not knowing she is there) exit the dungeon proclaiming that "No i will ever enter this room over again".
• John and the Pigsty: John drugs his family and drags them into a remote hole in the wood of their rural home. They try to climb out but tin can't. He eventually returns to let them out.

    Literature

• Joseph (of the Dreamcoat) gets thrown in a pit by his brothers in The Bible (volume of Genesis). OK, they pull him out and sell him equally a slave, simply that was the original plan.
  • The prophet Jeremiah gets lowered down an (well-nigh) dried-up well, with the implied intention that he starve to death there. Fortunately some friends in loftier places spoke up for him and he got pulled out.
  • Another prophet (Daniel) was thrown into a well with hungry lions. He was pulled back out when he was but fine the next morn.
• In Lyonesse: Suldrun's Garden past Jack Vance, Aillas is thrown into an oubliette by the male monarch. He discovers a number of skeletons all sitting against the walls as if in a conference, with a message scrawled on the wall, "Welcome to our brotherhood." Aillas manages to escape with his sanity more or less intact.
• In The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Nathaniel threatens to do this to Bartimaeus if Bartimaeus gets him killed... although in this case it too invokes the Genie in a Canteen trope.
• In Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Relate, the narrator is thrown down a well in a somewhat symbolic episode. Actually, the author has a bit of a thing for wells.
• In Dolores Claiborne past Stephen King, Dolores leads her drunkard husband on a wild goose chase to brand sure he falls into the well, and then she throws a stone on his caput to make sure he died.
  • King uses the trope to Nightmare Fuel consequence in the curt story "A Very Tight Place," as well. The titular "place" is, rather than a well, a Port-O-Potty.
    • Discussed in Rita Hayworth And Shawshank Redemption, in terms of older prison methods in the state of Maine. Rather than a well, Ruby-red describes a hellish fate called gaol, used to punish minor offenses such equally leaving the firm without a handkerchief on Sundays.
• The literal fate of Miss Taylor in John Harding'due south Florence and Giles, thanks to an help from our narrator, Florence.
• In Vulkan Lives, Vulkan is imprisoned in one of these. He escapes past climbing the subtle imperfections in the walls.
• Joe Pickett: In Endangered, Liv is kidnapped by the Cates clan and held prisoner in an old cellar on their property. When they determine they no longer need her, they intend to murder her by filling the cellar with sewage.

    Live-Action TV

• In Affections, his son trapped the title character in a box and so tossed the box into the ocean.
• In Heroes, Hiro Nakamura disposes of Adam Monroe/Takezo Kensei in this manner.
  • Another Heroes example, with an interesting twist: in flavour 3, Future-Peter gets Nowadays-Peter out of the way by shoving him into someone else'due south body.
• Happened to Callisto on most of her appearances on Xena: Warrior Princess, until it was time to bring her back for another episode. This was especially true once she became immortal.
• Charmed stuck Leo in a giant block of ice for virtually of the last season (referred to past many as "The Doltsicle") before bringing him back for the series finale. (After the show's upkeep got slashed they couldn't afford the actor, but didn't want to impale Leo and Piper's about series-long marriage.)
• Stargate SG-1 has a clever variation using bogus gravity. Baal has O'Neill thrown into long jail cell with no door. Artificial Gravity then kicks in and causes the back wall to become the new floor. What was a corridor is now a deep pit with absolutely smooth walls. This leads to some fun interactions with guards and visitors, as the door is now a hole in the "ceiling", and those outside the cell seemingly standing on the wall.
• A memorable storyline on All My Children in 1991 involved crazy Janet throwing her sister Natalie down a well in order to take her place.

• Discussed on The Millers. Debbie figures they can't afford to pay for Tom to live in a nursing abode, so she tells him "We're going to have to throw you down a well."
• In a segment of Da Ali M Show, Borat went to the southern U.S. to learn near country music. When he tries to sing a supposedly real Kazakh song translated to English, information technology turns out to be about throwing "ship", Jews, and finally his own family down a well.
• Jessie: The titular character was pushed downward a well by her stepsister Darla.
• 1 of the defining moments of Grant Ward'southward childhood in Agents of Southward.H.I.East.L.D. was his younger brother Thomas being stuck in the well. Grant blamed his older brother Christian for the incident, but a discussion with Thomas himself in the third flavor revealed that information technology was Grant who threw Thomas down the well.

    Music

• The master conflict and the fate of the titular character of Sound Horizon's Märchen.

    Pinballs

• This is how the Bar Ghost is defeated in America's Nigh Haunted

    Tabletop Games

• In Planescape, the Lady of Pain is well known for getting rid of those who displease her by banishing them to one of her Mazes, which are magical prisons removed from the rest of the Planes. There's always a way out, simply information technology's practically impossible to find it.

    Video Games

• In Banjo-Kazooie, Gruntilda is defeated past being thrown from her tower and being buried below a behemothic rock. Naturally, she'southward rescued in the next game past her sisters, but being cached for ii years left her as a living skeleton.
• In Crusader Kings II, you lot can throw prisoners into an oubliette if you want them to hurry upwardly and die but can't or won't execute them yourself for whatever reason.
• You accept the option to do this to someone during a quest in The Elder Scrolls Online. Afterward helping an Adventurer Archeologist through two tombs you become to what was supposed to be a Treasure Room just is now empty. Off to ane side of it is a well. When you talk with the archeologist to complete the quest you can pull a fast one on him into thinking that possibly all of the treasure is down the well. When he walks over and looks downward you can and then push button him in.
• Done in Metroid Prime number: Hunters on a Cosmic Horror Story calibration: The resident Eldritch Abomination, Gorea, is sealed away in the Seal Sphere, which is so sealed away in the Oubliette, which, in plough, is sealed abroad in a rift between dimensions known as the Infinity Void. He comes back by tricking the Hunters into freeing him.
• Fallen London has Mr. Eaten who was apparently thrown down a well among other things in the game's backstory. Although it might have been metaphorical. Unfortunately, it didn't really work and what's left of him is now out for revenge. A reckoning will non exist postponed indefinitely.
• Ghost of a Tale implies this was the fate of Captain Otto Powderkeg, after you find a rat skeleton with a pirate hat in one of the cells. Turns out, he'south but been Faking the Expressionless, and is very much alive - and indeed, isn't even imprisoned.
• In the bad ending of the Marathon scenario Gemini Station, yous are convicted of Jack Melville'south murder and sent to an oubliette where you are forced to impale yourself with a Descending Ceiling trap.
• In Silent Hill 2, when entering the Historical Society, James jumps into a well with no apparent way out, until you examine the loose bricks, which can exist broken with a lath or pipe.
• This is the driving strength in the plot in Vanish. You're thrown into a sewer filled with molemen and have to escape.
• This happens to Adol a few times in the Ys serial, and Dogi or some other graphic symbol usually has to smash the wall for him to escape.
• Romancing Saga 3 has the Expressionless Man's Well dungeon. According to the game, during the time the world was ruled by the Archfiend and the Four Sinistrals, the sick and sometime were thrown into the well located in Mazos until information technology became a mass grave.
• The plot of Furi, nearly in its entirety, consists of The Stranger attempting to escape this fate.
• This tin can be one of the fates in store for the courier in Fallout: New Vegas addon "Dead Money". Should the actor reach the vault at the bottom of the Sierra Madre, they have a choice to read a message on the reckoner nearby. Doing so will seal the room, immediately forcing an ending for the player and killing them, equally the courier ends upwardly accidentally getting permanently trapped in a death trap left for Dean Domino that the courier unknowingly activated. Additionally, this tin exist done to Father Elijah. By performing specific speech checks, he tin can end up stuck in the vault, and the ending even states that the only inevitable fate in that room is eventual death by aridity and starvation. Once Elijah dies, the Sierra Madre volition make a new hologram in his likeness that will patrol around the hotel much like the previous ones you've encountered. While information technology implies the possibility of him living forever equally a hologram, the holograms that accept been seen up to this point simply act as guard dogs and fire on any potential intruders, once again locking him in a state of never existence able to go out, the hotel itself becoming his new oubliette.
• Dice Young starts with Daphne having been thrown downwards a well and left for dead. Escaping the well is the get-go Trial for vetting those who are worthy of a place in the Community.

    Web Comics

• In Looking for Group, Richard was sent to an empty white space he dubbed "The Airplane of Suck" for several pages before existence put on trial.
• In Sluggy Freelance, in the Harry Potter parody "Torg Potter and the Wizard's Nuts", Torg puts a sleeping Ralfoy Malfoy in a trunk and has him sent to Antarctica. He's later show trying to escape by bungee jumping (???). Of course, in the next installment he'south back without whatever item caption.

    Web Original

• This very wiki has the Permanent Red Link Club.

    Western Animation

• In one episode of Southward Park Cartman locked Butters in a storm cellar (convincing him that the earth was catastrophe) so that he could take his place at Kyle's birthday dinner, causing the whole rest of the boondocks to call up he was abducted or missing.
• Norm the Genie on The Fairly OddParents has been trapped a lot like this past Timmy. First, sent to Canada in a smoof lamp, then sent to Mars in the same smoof lamp and so Jorgen subsequently took his lamp to be put on urinal cake. Genie in a Canteen, just like The Bartimaeus Trilogy example.
• In Steven Universe Lapis Lazuli is trapped in a mirror that can show annihilation that it has seen. However, Steven frees her and she flees for the gem homeworld.

    Real Life

• Real oubliettes were one of the more than horrific medieval French punishments, which they introduced to England. Perhaps the most famous victim was Richard II of England.

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThrownDownAWell

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