Girl in a Box

But I ordered a stereo system...


The heroes will occasionally discover a girl who, for whatever reason, has been placed in a box, usually in Suspended Animation (or failing that, a box with airholes). Most of the time, this is part of the introduction of a new major character. Sometimes she could simply come in a box in mint condition.

Possibly related to People Jars, although usually more benign. See also, Packed Hero, a more comedic version. If the girl is dead, it may be a case of Stuffed in The Fridge or Dead Man's Chest. See also Punk in the Trunk.

Examples of Girl in a Box include:

Anime and Manga

Comic Books

  • Ms. Marvel once featured a plot arc where The Puppet Master was collecting superheroines, mind-controlling them and then selling them. He had teams out catching the women, and they would be shipped to his South American headquarters inside wooden crates.
  • The first issue of Jack Kirby's OMAC has the title character learning to his horror that the girl he likes is actually an android, built as part of an evil conspiracy. He learns this by finding her disassembled in a box.
  • Junior in Secret Six, due to a severe aversion to being seen, runs a criminal empire from inside a wooden crate, and travels inside a burlap sack.
  • In one of the Paperinik continuities, the android Lyla Lay is found deactivated in a box in an old factory. Luckily, the janitor who found her happens to be versed in super-science, and can "revive" her.

Fan Works

  • in Walking the Line by Starving Lunatic, Shego finds Kim in a box and keeps her as a pet.


Films

  • In the Meet Cute of Just You and Me, Kid, George Burns finds a naked Brooke Shields hiding in the trunk on his car.
  • Blood Sucking Freaks: In this low-budget gorefest, one of the villain's many bad habits is stuffing young, blond women into wooden boxes to be sold to men overseas.
  • Boxing Helena: Jennifer Lynch [1] made a movie about a trauma surgeon who keeps his bitchy ex-girlfriend in a box... but only after he trimmed her to fit.
  • In Sweet Movie, Miss Canada gets stuffed in a suitcase and shipped to Paris from North America.
  • The mermaid in the glass case in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
  • Male version: in George of the Jungle, George ships himself back to Africa in a giant UPS carton.
  • Ultraviolet: Another male case, a young boy is kept in a suitcase (using space-warping technology).
  • In The Cell, Carl Stargher puts his female victims in a glass box and leaves them there to be retrieved later, after they are dead.
  • In Shuttle after the protagonist is sold into sex slavery, she's trapped in a box and loaded onto a ship so she can be sent to her new owners abroad.
  • Liz in Live Animals is found in a small box, having apparently been kept for some time as a "toy" by the antagonists.
  • Tri Couleurs Blanc: A male example is used for comic and dramatic effect simultaneously.
  • In The Transporter, this turns out to be what is being transported.
  • Bianca in Lars and the Real Girl quite literally comes in a box (although, despite the title, she's not a real girl).
  • In the film version of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Dawn Treader, Gael is discovered in a supply barrel after stowing away aboard the Dawn Treader.


Literature

  • The Girl in the Box: Jackie, the protagonist of the teen novel. In this case, the "box" in question is a cramped basement, where she's being held after being kidnapped for unknown reasons.
  • Wheel of Time: A male example; Rand is captured by Aes Sedai, forced into a trunk and tortured on his way to the White Tower. He's rescued at Dumai Well's.
  • E.Veltistov wrote a series of books about the adventures of Electronic, a Ridiculously Human Robot in shape of a boy. The first book is titled "Electronic - a boy from the box"
  • Discworld: A scene late in Pyramids evokes the Cleopatra legend below.
  • Eva Luna:A bunch of girls who were about to be sold to a prostitution ring are kept in a locked crate with limited air inside. Their ship got stuck due to bureaucracy and the girls suffocate to death.
  • Across the Universe: Amy and the other passengers from old Earth are frozen into compartments, resembling boxes. Well, Amy is until Elder unplugs her.


Live Action TV

  • Firefly, Trope Namer:
    • River Tam. The phrase "girl in a box" was used in the trailer.
    • Saffron, though it was less of an introduction and more of 'getting her on the ship without the other characters noticing'. Or possibly keeping her away from everyone long enough for them to work up a plan how to out-con her.
    • A male variant, Tracey was introduced to the show in a coffin. Too bad the episode has Book Ends.
  • Star Trek the Next Generation in the episode The Perfect Mate had Picard meet, and have to give up, a woman initially being transported as "cargo" possessed of the power to become anyone's Magical Girlfriend.
  • The Man Show had a skit where a midget woman in her early twenties was carried around in a suitcase, as a portable stripper.
  • Jeannie from I Dream of Jeannie was a Girl in a Bottle, but close enough.
  • In Pushing Daisies, Chuck is in a coffin when Ned revives her.
  • One CSI episode dealt with a body found in a desert where the death pose was in an unusual position; turns out the girl had been attempting to smuggle herself into the country in a suitcase and died in it.
    • Another episode dealt with deaths at a circus, including one man who could contort his body into many shapes who was found in an extremely small box.
  • Chuck has a male version when Bryce is found to be still alive... and in a box.
  • NCIS had a gruesome twist on this trope in one episode, where the killer was avenging the deaths of three girls in a box. A group of officers, when they learned they were being sent home, arranged to ship their Asian girlfriends back to the States in a locked crate in the storage hold. But when their orders were changed at the last minute, none of them ended up on the same ship with the girls, who starved to death. The killer was the fourth girl, the only one who survived.
  • At the end of season three of 'Allo 'Allo! Maria ships herself in a box and gets lost.
  • The series five opening of iCarly includes Sam in a suitcase.

Music


Mythology

  • From Greek Mythology, Princess Danae and her newborn son Perseus were shut into a box and thrown into the sea by Danae's dad Acrisios, who has been told that Danae's child would kill and overthrow him. With some help of Perseus's biological father, the god Zeus, they were eventually found by the fisherman Dictys in a beach and he took both of them in.
  • Happens to Sarah from the Bible, because her husband was afraid she'd be taken by the Egyptians on account of her beauty.


Video Games

  • Azel from (Azel:) Panzer Dragoon Saga.
  • Sexy Parodius: Players who successfully complete mission 3 face a mission filled with girls in boxes.
  • In Apollo Justice, Ace Attorney, the Borginian singer Lamiroir hides in a contrabass case after being very nearly killed by someone who wants her silenced.
  • Final Fantasy VII: A male example is Vincent Valentine. Granted, you're replacing "box" with "coffin", but still.
  • Pokémon Colosseum: The female character is first seen (er, heard) trapped in a bag.
  • In To Heart 2: Another Days Silfa / HMX-17c makes her appearance being shipped in a box to Takaaki's house. She also uses the box as her hiding place.
  • One of the fighters in the Capcom Humongous Mecha fighting game Cyberbots is a girl in a jar, who hijacked a robot to escape from the government facility where she was stored. She beats up everyone she comes across due to fear and extreme misunderstandings.
  • The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess: Ooccoo, the odd bird-like female, keeps getting herself stuck in crockery inside the various dungeons, and is only seen if Link finds and breaks the particular pot in which she's trapped.
  • Sera from Digital Devil Saga.
  • Gaia Online has the Sentinel, a demigoddess who accidentally cursed herself into a box to be tortured by demons for a thousand years... and was released by Gaians looking for rare items, crazier than ever. By the same token, we have her counterpart the Overseer, Boy in a Clam.
  • Octavia in Tears to Tiara is found inside a box, tied up and helpless. Arawn decides he has enough women hanging around annoying him about how they're his wife or just being ditzy elves, so he decides to seal her back in and pretend he never saw her. Sadly, Arthur catches him and you recruit her instead.
  • The bad ending for Haunting Ground has the main heroine trapped in a box at the end.
  • Suzy in Killer7. Granted, she's just a head...
  • Rief in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, a male example, is kidnapped, trapped in a crate, and abandoned near Harapa in order to force the heroes to rescue him instead of following their original mission to Morgal.
  • Fatal Frame 2 had a ghost woman in a kimono box. She hid in the box to escape the Repentence, but died there.
  • The brilliant disguise mode for Snake in Metal Gear Solid.
  • In one Warriors Orochi 3 side mission, Gracia gets trapped inside a box that is sealed shut by Zhang Jiao's magic, leading Sima Yi and Masamune Date to fight Jiao and his brothers in order to break the spell to free her.


Western Animation


Real Life

  • This is supposedly how Julius Caesar and Cleopatra met for the first time (she was hidden in a rolled-up carpet, rather than a box, though).
  • Hugo de Groot, a Dutch writer in the 17th century was imprisoned in castle Loevestein. Every month the guards would replace his bookcase. Guess how he escaped.
  • In the pre-Civil War United States, some slaves managed to escape bondage by mailing themselves northward. The most famous of these was Henry "Box" Brown (not to be confused with a different Henry Brown, inventor of the safe).
  • Many refugees have tried to smuggle themselves in ship containers with various degrees of success.
  • In 1961 a woman was smuggled from East to West Berlin in two suitcases. They were placed next to each other in the luggage rack with false sides making them one space, with her top half in one suitcase and legs in the other. She made it through.
  • A rare male example: in 1957 an abandoned bassinet box was found off a footpath in rural Pennslyvania. inside was the body of a little boy, somewhere between the ages of four and six. That boy has never been identified even today.
  • There's an Urban Legend that claims Taylor Swift hides from the paparazzi by entering and leaving her Manhattan apartment by a box carried by a delivery truck. Obviously a rumor fueled by Fanservice.
  1. David Lynch's daughter
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