Maximum Fun Chamber

"Help! To do something, culling-season rejects, or to be pegged out in the pleasure pits!"
—Thilf, Pime Doesn't Cray

An unspecified threat so awful that mere mention of it makes the strong go pale and the weak-hearted clutch their chest, used as a Running Gag in a humorous series. Usually, the Maximum Fun Chamber itself is never shown or described, with whatever it actually is being left to the imagination of the viewer; when and if it is finally shown, it is usually deflated as something innocuous -- at least, until it is seen in action.

Named for Hazel Green's isolation cell in the Web Comic CRFH (which, ironically enough, is not only shown, but is a genuinely serious threat as well); the name originally came out of a forum in-joke which the author picked up on as a Shout-Out. Rather disturbingly, there exists at the Dubai Special Branch headquarters an actual torture cell with a very similar name.

The Maximum Fun Chamber can be seen as a cross between Noodle Implements and Cool and Unusual Punishment: Take Our Word for It for torture. The opposite of this trope is To the Pain, where the threat is described at great length. If played seriously, becomes Room 101. If the name of a city (or other geographic location) is used this way, that's a Place Worse Than Death.

Not to be confused with jokes about S&M torture chambers.

Compare Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere.

Examples of Maximum Fun Chamber include:

Anime

  • Shirogane-sensei in the Anime Mahoraba takes "bad students" into a darkened back room which the viewer never sees inside, but can clearly hear the resultant screams of despair. Said students invariably emerge with Blank White Eyes and swear never to make the same mistake again.
  • Washu's Lab experiments in Tenchi Muyo! are often treated in this manner by characters within the series and in fanfiction.
  • In Penguin Musume, Sakura's sister has set up one of these for her. The lecture room.
  • Shion of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni threatens Rika with this. Rika almost immediatly suicides by ramming a kitchen knife repeatedly into her throat to escape the imminent torture. Given that she's trapped in a Groundhog Day Loop from hell, she's probably went through that exact torture enough times to realize stabbing herself in the neck is quicker and less painful.
  • The back of the van in Durarara!!. Walker and Erica make a captured enemy pick from one of the graphic novels they have with them and then torture the enemy based on the contents of the graphic novel.

Film

  • In Flash Gordon, Princess Aura is tortured with "Bore Worms". We're not shown what they do, but given the name they either bore into the victim, or are just really, really dull...
  • The Labyrinth 's Bog of Eternal Stench might qualify.
  • Cross the leader of the Coneheads, and you will be made to Narfle the Garthak!


Comics

  • Back when Deadpool had a captive old blind lady for a roommate, they liked to prank each other—except when Deadpool had enough and threatened to put her in "the Box." Subvertingly, it was actually explained in detail: it was a room full of really sharp things. Into which he put an old blind woman. Don't worry, he didn't lock the door. Also she was an old secret agent who may have dated Captain America before he was frozen. She could take it.
    • It was more than just the sharp objects (which were booby-trapped to move as well.) As Blind Al explained when she and Weasel were put into the box, the door wasn't locked. Since Deadpool was a psycho assassin, he could track down Blind Al if she attempted to escape. The one time she did try to escape, she made it clear across the country, from California to Maine. She even got herself a boyfriend. Deadpool tracked her down, killed her boyfriend gruesomely in front of her, and dragged her back. This also explains why Blind Al didn't try to walk out when Deadpool was out. Oh, and she couldn't take it. After Deadpool put her in the box, at a time when he was starting to become a good guy, Blind Al was furious with him for a long time. She sarcastically called him master and refused to talk to him.

Literature

  • The Red Room in Jane Eyre. Jane gets locked in there for misbehaving; she's so terrified she passes out.
  • The "Ginger Beer Trick" in the Discworld novel Night Watch is a torture method left intentionally vague (not to mention Vimes and the guards just trick some prisoners into thinking they're doing it).
    • The real "ginger beer trick" as used by crooked policemen in Mexico is called tehuacanazo, and it goes like this: the cop opens a bottle of carbonated spring water, traditionally Tehuacán (hence the name), sticks it in your nose, makes you inhale the gas, the gas irritates your nose's sinuses, and your nose hurts like hell. Word of God from Pratchett has confirmed that this is what Vimes had in mind.
  • Room 101 in Nineteen Eighty-Four both uses and then subverts this trope, by first having it be merely a scary but undescribed threat, and then revealing that the room's contents are changed each time it's used to fit each specific victim's psychological profile. This inspired the TV series of the same name in which participants put things and people they don't like into the room.
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has the Total Perspective Vortex. The device's function is to make one viscerally aware of one's place in the entire universe, utterly crushing the soul. It IS an effective, terrifying threat, except Zaphod steps into it... inside a virtual copy of the universe created just for him, so it merely reaffirms his personal view that he is the most important being in the entire universe.
  • The "Waiting Room" in The Mysterious Benedict Society. Students at the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened are generally terrified of being sent there, but most have no idea what it even is. It turns out to be just a room full of very stinky mud with a lot of bugs swarming around, though none of them are actually dangerous.
  • From Star Trek: String Theory, the Ninth Dimension. Apparently, the Q and other omnipotent beings dread being Spaced to the Ninth Dimension as punishment, though it's never explained why.

Live Action TV

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  • "Ward E", from the Made for TV Movie The Stranger (which was later turned into an Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode).
    • Another example from Mystery Science Theater 3000, "The Assembly Line" from Warriors of the Lost World.
    • Dr. Forrester himself threatens Frank with several punishments in Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode The Day The Earth Froze, but only a threat of "the Box" gets Frank to obey.
  • In Power Rangers Dino Thunder, Mesogog's "Punishment Chamber" is never shown. The same goes for Astronema's (Power Rangers in Space) favorite punishment—having minions taken to "play with Scrudley," a beast we never get to see but minion Elgar is terrified of.
  • That Mitchell and Webb Look used a version of this; an estate agent pesters a woman who works with torture victims for the worst torture story she's ever heard. There's a cut-off, and the agent comes out absolutely terrified, schizophrenic and appalled at the callousness of life.
  • The mind probe in the Doctor Who special The Five Doctors. Results in the infamous line "No, not the mind probe."
    • It's debatable whether his being murdered before he could actually be put into the mind probe was a good or bad thing for the intended victim in question.
    • The void, the space between universes which the Doctor says is best described as hell.
  • A reference to Room 101 of 1984, mentioned above, appears in Babylon 5, when Sheridan is being interrogated by the Clark administration.
  • Being sent to the Attic in Dollhouse is a commonly used threat, though only recently has any indication of what it actually involves has been revealed. Your brain is hooked into a simulation where you relive your worst nightmare over and over. The adrenaline makes your brain operate in overdrive so it can become part of a supercomputer.
  • A special 'hidden' record in From-The-Makers-Of-Banzai Banzai knockoff The Peoples Book Of Records remained totally unknown to the viewer until the last episode. The leadup to the record attempt showed the competitor being led to a room beside a swimming pool by a referee. Arty shots of the pool would be shown during the attempt, after which the ref would leave with a flustered competitor, and tell them the value of their record. It was a challenge to see how many times you could slap said referee's bottom in 60 seconds
  • The dreaded "Awful Waffle" from Salute Your Shorts apparently involves maple syrup and a tennis racket, but little else about it is revealed.
  • Monty Python inverts this with the Spanish Inquisitors threatening to fetch THE COMFY CHAIR followed by gasps and shudders as the Inquisitors go to fetch an actual comfy chair. In addition to having to sit in the chair, they poke the subject with pillows while she has tea. One of the inquisitors does question whether this is all there is to the process before, upon receiving confirmation that it is, eventually deciding that they make it worse by shouting at her. He does... for one of the other inquisitors, who tearfully confesses.
  • The Eastern Front for Colonel Klink on Hogan's Heroes.
    • When one considers the casualties the Germans suffered when fighting the Russians in real life (At Stalingrad alone, the total Axis dead, wounded, and captured totaled roughly 1% of Germany's entire population at the time), any student of history would understand why serving on the Eastern Front was a post that people would rather avoid.
  • Hannah Montana: Jackson's closet. Only the outside is seen, the only thing we know about it is that it's strong enough to make Oliver faint.

Tabletop Games

  • Paranoia is set in "Alpha Complex", a dystopian computer-controlled environment where all manner of unpleasant experiences are given euphemistically bright and cheery names like the "Bright Vision Re-Education Center" and "Mandatory Recreational Attitude Re-orientation".
  • From Warhammer 40,000, while interrogating someone, anyone really, the Inquisition follows a torture scheme divided into 9 steps, or levels of interrogation. Step 1 is a simple verbal interrogation, while Step 2 consists of threatening and/or describing to the victim what will happen during the next 7 steps. Apparently, it's so horrible most people give up and tell the Inquisition everything it wants at this point.
    • Doesn't usually stop them from doing them, either.
    • The Real Life Inquisition would explain to its victims what it was going to do to them as well.
    • Another common trick of the Real Life Inquisition was to lay out the tools of the trade before the victim and let the victim have a while to let their imagination go wild on all the possible ways that particular object could be used to inflict pain.
      • They would also usually demonstrate them on someone else before using them on the subject who hadn't reached that stage of the process yet. They were highly organized, conscientious technicians.
    • Their reputation (cultivated deliberately by themselves) also helped in that matter, and they were masters of psychology in that respect. Ironically, a charge of witchcraft, unlike popular belief, was more likely to get the accuser sent to jail. The Real Life Inquisition was very skeptical when it came to witchcraft.
  • The Cauls in Mage: The Ascension (Old World of Darkness) were an... ordeal... that marked the final corruption of mages into the Nephandi. What exactly the Cauls consist of is never described.
    • In addition, mages that regularly violated reality too much would sometimes become trapped in a Quiet - a hallucination able to inflict very real pain - both physical and mental - on its occupant(s) through a series of moral dilemmas and soul-testing experiences.

Video Games

  • In Half-Life 2, Overwatch Soldiers in Nova Prospekt are threatened with Permanent Off-World Reassignment if they fail their mission.
  • In Psychonauts, the Geodesic Psychoisolation Chambers qualify.
  • In Super Mario RPG, a hostage is held by a boss and threatened with torture, revealed to be tickling. The action is not seen, the enemy retreats to a building and the player only hears screams of insane tortuous laughter, escalating each time Mario refuses to hand over the MacGuffin.
  • Conkers Bad Fur Day makes mention of one of these. The Panther King mentions that he "Doesn't want to have to get the duct tape out again.", and his Mad Scientist flunkie visibly pales and becomes much more subservient.
    • Once he's alone, the mad scientist rambles angrily to himself about how he'll give his boss the duct tape once his plans come to fruition.
    • Given the character is a weasel, and therefore covered in fur, its not hard to assume what the duct tape is used for. Anyone who's ever tried to rip that stuff off body hair will attest to this.
  • In Persona 3, if the girls catch you while you're in the hot springs with them, most of them will reprimand you, but then Mitsuru just yells "PUNISHMENT!" and the screen fades to black. Afterward, everyone agrees never to speak of it again.
    • Especially notable in that Akihiko—the only one in the group who has known Mitsuru for several years, a very confident boxer, and the most self-assured character in the game-- utterly freaks out at the mere thought of being caught, because he knows what Mitsuru will do to them.
    • In the Japanese version the word used refers to a practice where boys are whipped in the junk with wet towels. It's apparently a relatively commonplace highschool prank.
    • In the manga, the punishment is revealed to be Mitsuru using her Persona's Ice Powers to freeze them up to their necks.
  • In The Secret of Monkey Island, Guybrush must prove his mettle by reaching into the cage of the fearsome beast that took Meathook's hands. It turns out to be an ordinary parrot.
    • Also "The Carnival of the Damned", at least for Guybrush.
  • Zork Zero has a Shout-Out to Monty Python with its comfy chair, with the twist that it's so comfy you die of starvation rather than get up.
  • Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri gives us the Punishment Sphere and Nerve Stapling, both of which sound evil in an Orwellian kind of way, but are never described in-game—all we know is that the former cuts scientific research in half in the base you build it in, and the latter is considered an atrocity and results in 10 years of economic sanctions. (It's apparently in the background materials, but only a small fraction of people who bought the game ever saw those.)

Webcomics

  • A threat of sending someone to Castle Heterodyne is usually responded to with stark terror in Girl Genius. When we get introduced to Castle Heterodyne, you find out why. Wouldn't you be terrified of being sent to repair a building with multiple personalities, all of which are based on the original sociopathic personality, and nearly all of them willing to deal lethally with intruders?
    • The castle itself seems to contain several, notably the "Red Playroom".
  • The rehabilitator in Bob and George.
  • The main character's cellar in Le Avventure del Grande Darth Vader. So far, it has been shown to have an intentionally misspelled sign above the entry door (TEH DANGEON), and to contain: a couch, a harness to hang troublemakers by their scrotum, two pillory-targets for persimmon-throwing against the faces of troublemakers (marked as "TEH TARGHET") and an ass-kicking machine (an engine that moves two wheels with boots on their spokes, marked as "TEH ASS-KIKING MASHEEN").

Western Animation

  • An episode of Kappa Mikey involves the "Tatami Room". The version threatened is rather different from the one the characters eventually wind up in.
  • In Veggie Tales: Esther, the Girl who Became Queen, two criminal peas are sentenced to the Island of Perpetual Tickling. We never see the Island, but its mere name brings horror to all, and the peas are driven there by some sort of a Grim Reaper with a feather. Very dark and tense music is played whilst the Grim Tickler is onscreen.
  • In Adventures in Care-a-lot: Oopsy Does It!, the mere mention of "that little talk" is enough to make the villain's minion literally fall apart.
  • In an episode of Aladdin where someone puts the city to sleep and sends them nightmares, Iago ends up yelling in his sleep "No! Not the Cage of Torment!"
  • A room with a MOOSE!
    • It was a BIG moose.
    • In Invader Zim, every school class receives three "crazy cards" per month. These cards are used to commit students to a mental institution—though never seen for very long in the "real" world, Dib's mind made it nightmarish.
  • "Not 'Happy Birthday'! NOT 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY'!!!"
    • The above line comes from a 1950 Looney Tunes cartoon, It's Hummer Time (no, not what you think) where a dog punishes a cat for disturbing his sleep in his attempts to eat a hummingbird (said bird quickly starts tricking him into disturbing the dog). The dog and cat return in Early to Bet (1951), where a Jerkass Gambling Bug keeps inciting the cat to gamble with the dog, with the loser suffering from a roulette wheel of punishments. Eventually, the cat and the bug make a high-card bet-- which the bug loses, so the cat subjects it to "The Post" - being attacked with a rolled-up copy of the newspaper The Post.
  • Aaahh Real Monsters featured an episode in which the main characters went out on Halloween despite having been forbidden to do so. Ickis, the ringleader, is offered three choices of punishment: "1. Something Bad. 2. Something Really Bad. 3. You Don't Want To Know." A rare case of three Maximum Fun Chambers, each more Fun than the last.
    • By the way, "You Don't Want To Know" looks like a very nice house your very nice granny might live in. For a group of monsters that live in/under a garbage dump, that probably would be utter hell.
  • An episode of Batman Beyond has Terry check out a teen detention facility that a lot of his (perfectly well behaved) schoolmates are being sent to. While searching, he is told by several about an "Isolation" room which teens who misbehave are locked in for a period of time. Everyone is horrified by it and all that he is told is that there is no sound or light inside and that the occupant is completely alone.
  • Going WAY back, there's an episode of The Flintstones where Fred and Barney are at the mercy of a diabolical megalomaniac who disposes of unwanted individuals in "the pit".
  • Fairly Oddparents at the has the Fun Box, courtesy of Flappy Bob's Peppy Happy Learnatorium:

"Fun Box! Oh, Fun Box!
Small and square and dark!
Funbox! Oh, Funbox!
Check out these Fun Locks!, hey!

Web Original

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