History Main / CryonicsFailure

* The story ''Bones'' by Donald Wollheim has a gruesome variant. A group of archeologists uncover a perfectly preserved man in an Egyptian tomb who was an experiment in suspended animation, with the notes saying that the treatment will perfectly preserve living matter. They managed to revive him, and [[spoiler:he immediately [[BodyHorror collapses in on himself in a heap of flesh]] since "living matter" doesn't include bones]].

!!'''As a DeathTrope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.'''

!!Examples

* The [[HumanPopsicle coldsleep]] used by interstellar travelers in ''Webcomic/{{Freefall}}'' [[http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff2000/fc01943.htm isn't 100% reliable]]. The colony the series takes place on calls the anniversary of the colony ship landing "The day of the dead".

* There is cryonics technology in ''Literature/TheShipWho'', but it's largely obsolete thanks to developments in FTL technology. When a colony of SpaceAmish is invaded, survivors board their ancient ColonyShip and flee. The ship was centuries old and had been reconfigured to serve as an orbital station, and the survivors didn't have the time or resources to properly convert it back, so it was in terrible condition. On top of that they had to vent some of their life support to slow down pursuers, which all together means that to survive to reach ''any'' destination the survivors had to take long-expired coldsleep drugs to slow down their oxygen consumption. When rescuers board the ship a few months later they find clouds of flies and countless maggots - half of the people in coldsleep had died. One of the ones who lives still has a bad reaction to the drugs, making her ImproperlyParanoid to the point of refusing the medications that would help even as psychosis makes her steadily more deranged.

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* In the far-future chapter of Osamu Tezuka's ''Manga/{{Phoenix}}'' epic, the main character who has survived a nuclear apocalypse and granted immortality by a god stumbles upon a stasis chamber that is slated to open 10,000 years hence, and waits for it to open so that he will have someone to talk to. When the chamber finally opens, he finds... dust.

* In one of the many side-stories of ''Literature/LegendOfTheGalacticHeroes'', a defecting Imperial nobleman and his family attempt to escape into Alliance territory through an escape stasis raft. Unfortunately, nearly everyone was found by Kircheis to have died mid-procedure, with only the nobleman's daughter left alive.
* During a nightmare sequence inflicted on Ataru by the vindictive dream demon Mujaki at the climax of the second ''Manga/UruseiYatsura'' film, ''Beautiful Dreamer,'' Ataru wakes up in a futuristic laboratory while a recording of his father recounts how he and Lum supposedly fell victim to an unknown sickness 500 years ago and had been put into cryogenic suspension until a cure could be discovered. However when Ataru goes over to Lum's cryo pod, he discovers that a terminal fault had occurred 100 years into her sleep and she's dead. Even though we know it's only a dream, it's possibly the single darkest moment of the entire series.

* Invoked in ''[[ComicBook/Supergirl1972 Supergirl Vol 1]]'' #7. ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} finds ComicBook/{{Zatanna}}'s frozen body and does her utmost to thaw her carefully because Zatanna can die if she is not careful.

* In the Creator/ECComics story "50 Girls 50," people on a long space voyage are kept in HumanPopsicle condition through a process nobody can survive twice.

* The first ''Film/PlanetOfTheApes1968'' movie. The astronauts awaken to find that their fourth companion and only female, Stewart (who wasn't in the book anyway), has died (Stuffed ''Out'' of the Fridge?). This one they can't blame on those "damn dirty apes".
* The ''Franchise/{{Alien}}'' series.

** In the first few minutes of ''Film/{{Alien 3}}'', an alien egg hatches, and the facehugger that comes out of it attacks the cryonic pods that Ripley and the others are hybernating in. The ship transports the pods to an escape pod, which then crashes on the planet below.

* Zigzagged in ''Film/BatmanAndRobin'', where Poison Ivy [[MurderTheHypotenuse attempted to kill Nora Fries]], Mr. Freeze's [[DelicateAndSickly terminally ill wife]], by unplugging her cryotube, but Batman managed to save her life.
* Presumably, a lot of the occupants of the cryo-prison destroyed in the final battle of the movie ''Film/DemolitionMan'' had their sentences extended permanently, with no hope of parole. It's certainly what happened to [[BigBad Simon Phoenix]], [[LiterallyShatteredLives courtesy of John Spartan's boot]].
* In ''Film/DontLookUp'', only half of the cryopods [[spoiler:make it to the destination after [[TheElitesJumpShip evacuating Earth]]]]. And [[spoiler:[[TheSociopath Isherwell]]]] happily notes that this outcome is better than he expected. [[spoiler:It seems not to matter much, since the survivors are probably about to be eaten by native beasts anyway.]]

* ''Film/{{Pandorum}}'''s plot features this plus numerous [[FateWorseThanDeath fates worse than splat]], even those who survive come out with partial amnesia and in many cases psychosis. Horrifically averted in the case of the ''Eden'' disaster, where the hibernation capsules worked perfectly and awoke their occupants with no problems whatsoever... at least, until the occupants discovered that a psychotic crewmember had [[ThrownOutTheAirlock ejected them]] [[FateWorseThanDeath all into]] [[AndIMustScream deep space]].

* In ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', the astronauts other than Poole and Bowman are intentionally killed by HAL forcing a malfunction in the coldsleep system, when [[LogicBomb trying to follow conflicting orders]].

* In the ''Literature/{{Deathlands}}'' novel "Ice and Fire", the protagonists find a cyro section in a Redoubt and try activating it. Several tubes have already failed, including one whose occupant was clearly clawing to get out of his confinement after he was revived. Some are unfrozen too fast and turn to goo. An elderly woman is in such pain that she gets a MercyKill, and a man suffering from head trauma tries to attack the protagonists, then kills himself. One man does revive properly but he has ALS; he finds himself waking in an AfterTheEnd world where there no hope of a cure and his disability makes him makes him TheLoad.
* Two-thirds of the Mayflower passengers died during the trip in ''Literature/{{Remnants}}.'' The technology was incredibly experimental; Jobs' immediate response to being told they would be going into hibernation was to point out that most of the subjects died during its most recent testing on monkeys. It explains how they died in graphic detail. Some of them were wiped out by micrometeorite punctures, some devoured from within by parasitic worms, some, the machinery just failed over the 500-year cryosleep, so they died of old age in their sleep. They refer to the micrometeor one as being "cheesed". And that's not even counting what happened to [[FetusTerrible the woman who was pregnant]], or the boy who [[AndIMustScream remained conscious]].
* Used in an especially horrific example in the ''Literature/RedDwarf'' book ''Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers'', where every stasis tube on a ship has been broken, killing their inhabitants, except one. This half broken tube causes the bottom half of a man's body to decompose over thousands of years, while his top half remains alive. Upon being revived, he screams for two minutes straight then dies of shock.
* Creator/DanAbnett's ''Literature/{{Eisenhorn}}'' novel ''Xenos'' opens with a large-scale one. The inhabitants of a planet with an orbit that causes it to freeze solid for 11 months every 29-month year enter suspended animation during that time to survive. A villain massacres large portions of the upper-class of the planet by having them revive suddenly and without any medical assistance.

* In a Young Adult novel called ''The Starlight Crystal'', the heroine's spacecraft comes across another satellite orbiting the Earth, filled with people in cold sleep. Only two of the frozen people are long dead, one of which is the heroine's boyfriend. The other is the heroine's future self, who deliberately caused both cold sleep chambers to malfunction.

* In Creator/HarryTurtledove's ''[[Literature/{{Worldwar}} Homeward Bound]]'', one of the cryonic pods malfunctioned during humanity's roughly 10-lightyear journey to the aliens' home planet. One of the medical techs describes it as "dying in slow motion", a phrase which horrifies the rest of the crew. This makes things interesting for about 5 minutes since he was the head diplomat (also because he was Henry Kissinger, even though the text doesn't outright say it). Averted for [[LizardFolk the Race]], since they have perfected the technology over tens of thousands of years (they tend to perfect existing tech instead of inventing new stuff).
* In ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxyTrilogy'', Slartibartfast complains that the cleaning staff didn't freeze so well... leaving nobody to clean up the bodies.
* Andre Norton uses "cold sleep" in ''The Stars Are Ours'' as a way for a remnant of fugitive scientists and their families to flee a dystopic Earth for what they hope will be a fresh start on another planet. Some of them don't make it.
* A non-lethal but still devastating Cryonics Failure takes place in Creator/PhilipKDick[='=]s short story "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon". An off-world colonist is woken up from cryonic slumber, but [[AndIMustScream is still immobile]]. The sentient ship tries to keep him sane by putting him back in happy memories. Trouble is, he carries so much guilt and anxiety, no memory will ''stay'' happy. By the time he gets there, his mind is still pretty much shot.

* Creator/LoisMcMasterBujold's ''Literature/VorkosiganSaga'':

* In Creator/AndreyLivadny's ''[[Literature/TheHistoryOfTheGalaxy The Third Race]]'', a female astronaut awakens from cryo-sleep on a deep space sublight ship to find the rest of the pods empty, which is strange since the ship has two crews, one of which is usually frozen while the other works until they change shifts. She soon finds that the entire crew has been replaced with droids by the ship's AI, whose negligence allowed a meteorite to hit the ship, killing all on-board but her. It can be assumed that the rest of the pods were damaged, but the bodies were cleaned up to maintain the ruse. Also, other novels in the series mention that a sizable chunk of the colony ships sent out during the initial Blind Leap after the discovery of [[SubspaceOrHyperspace hypersphere]] probably ended up like this (i.e. some malfunction has resulted in the crew and settlers never waking up and, eventually, dying when the power ran out).
* In ''Literature/AcrossTheUniverseBethRevis'', a murderer starts pulling the plug on cryonic pods aboard the spaceship ''Godspeed''. Main character Amy survives, though she wakes up many decades before she was supposed to; several other human popsicles aren't so lucky.
* In one of Creator/SPSomtow's ''Inquestor'' novels, there's mention of some human colonists who were travelling in time stasis. Unfortunately the device malfunctioned, causing some of them to become [[TakenForGranite irreversibly frozen]], so they're now used as ornaments.
* Creator/AlastairReynolds:
** ''Beyond The Aquila Rift'' has the cryonic pods of the crew fail during a two hundred year long BlindJump because they had decorated the interior of the pods with paint; the pods filtration system became clogged and jammed, killing the occupants.
** In the ''Literature/RevelationSpaceSeries'', cryonics are a very safe technology because it's been the [[SleeperStarship only way for humanity to cross space]] for 500 years, but they have issues beyond outright failure. Scorpio, a [[PigMan hyperpig]], is outside of the cryopods operating parameters and is pretty old, leading to him being informed that he stands a good chance of dying from shock next time he is thawed out of cryo. When the [[GreyGoo Melding Plague]] hit Yellowstone and [[MileLongShip lighthuggers]] departing from it, TransHuman people in cryo were generally safe so long as they remained frozen, but if they were thawed out with the Plague still nearby, [[YourHeadAsplode boom goes their]] BrainComputerInterface.
** In ''Slow Bullets'', a sleeper starship transporting war criminals suffers a catastrophic failure during a jump, causing it to drift for thousands of years before it reactivates and starts thawing out the passengers. About a third of the passenger's pods failed during the millennia.
* ''The Depths of Time'' by Roger [=MacBride=] Allen - A small number of cryonically preserved passengers die when coming out of stasis; the longer the voyage, the more likely they die when coming out.
* Greg Bear's ''Literature/HullZeroThree'' - all but one of the Destination Guidance team were dead and decomposed in their cryonics pods. It is also heavily implied that the 'biogenerators' [Teacher/Sanjay invents this term to describe the birthing systems] are not supposed to be functioning--they are supposed to create Factors on arrival to prepare the target planet, or in the event that the sleeping crew were killed, birth a new one. Even if there was still part of the original crew in the Hulls, they are dead after Destination Guidance shut off fuel transfer to the Hulls' engines, and for Hull Zero Two it was practically guaranteed when it was gutted by meteorites.
* Zig-zagged and discussed in the same scene in Creator/RichardMorgan's ''Literature/BlackMan''. The investigation of a spacecraft's crash-landing that apparently was indirectly caused by cryonic shenanigans brings the characters to discuss the current state of cryonics and the various malfunctions that could happen to people in suspension due to them. The playing straight? Someone did mess with the cryosleep pods on the ship. The aversion? They didn't do it to kill the inhabitants, just to use them as a [[ImAHumanitarian refrigerator for snacks]].
* In ''Literature/TheWorthingSaga'', the title character Jason Worthing is a space pilot in a society that uses cryonics for colonization. He is attacked as he approaches his target, and not only are some of the colonists killed, but the remainder all have their personalities, which have to be stored on hard disk prior to cryo, wiped—leaving Jason the task of singlehandedly raising 99 adult-sized kids. (Oh, and the one guy whose personality did survive? Jason's Arch-Enemy.)
* In William Barton and Michael Capobianco's ''Alpha Centauri'' one of the expedition, Sheba Zvi, died in stasis. When it turns out that Mies Cochrane is intentionally infecting the women on board with a sexually transmitted SterilityPlague and that he infected Sheba before they left the others suspect his autoviroids were responsible.
* In [[https://www.fictionpress.com/u/983729/DataPacRat S.I.]] the protagonist is revived succesfully, but the ethylene glycol used to preserve his cells destroys his kidneys and other internal organs. Fortunately a pink anthro bunny girl with a empty skull that fits his brain perfectly is found near his cryopod.
* In the Creator/LarryNiven / Creator/JerryPournelle / Creator/StephenBarnes collaboration ''Literature/TheLegacyOfHeorot'', the cryonics used to get the colony ship to the planet Avalon failed because while it had been tested, it hadn't been tested over durations as long as the voyage took. The colonists got brain damage, ranging from mild in some cases to severe in others, and a handful of the colonists couldn't be revived at all.
* In the ''Literature/JacobsLadderTrilogy'', ''Jacob's Ladder'' is a combination generation ship / sleeper ship, with both a living crew and stored human popsicles. During the journey, most of the human popsicles die and are recycled for raw materials. It was known when they launched that the cryonics technology was unreliable; the passengers were people desperate enough to risk it anyway.
* Inverted in ''Literature/TheLockedTomb'' book ''Literature/NonaTheNinth'': in flashbacks to the Emperor's human days, he was a scientist working on cryogenics technology for use [[HomeworldEvacuation evacuating Earth]] in {{sleeper starship}}s, and his test subjects were already cadavers. When the project got shut down, the power to the cryogenics pods was cut, too... but some of the unfrozen corpses remained perfectly preserved, no matter how much time passed and no matter what other conditions they were subjected to. This miracle was the first sign that he'd come into divine power.
* In ''Literature/ProjectHailMary'', the protagonist Ryland Grace wakes up with LaserGuidedAmnesia with a feeding tube in his mouth. He has no idea who he is, but the other two people in their beds are dead. Later on, he remembers (through flashbacks) that there's no magical cryogenics procedure. Instead, they were in a medically-induced coma (with advanced medical machinery ensuring that most medical emergencies are taken care of) in order to conserve on supplies and to prevent the crew from killing one another due to the extended isolation. Only about one in seventy thousand people has a genetic mutation that gives them a higher probability of surviving an extended coma fairly intact, and the crew was put together only from those individuals. Still, two out of three didn't make it.

* ''Literature/Reaper2016'': When the server for Avalon is destroyed in the bombing, every player there is dumped back into their body, resulting in eleven thousand of them dying from shock.
* The story ''Bones'' by Donald Wollheim has a gruesome variant. A group of archeologists uncover a perfectly preserved man in an Egyptian tomb who was an experiment in suspended animation, with the notes saying that the treatment will perfectly preserve living matter. They managed to revive him, and [[spoiler: he immediately [[BodyHorror collapses in on himself in a heap of flesh]] since "living matter" doesn't include bones.]]

* The ''Series/BlakesSeven'' episode "[[Recap/BlakesSevenS1E4TimeSquad Time Squad]]": of four programmed guardians in a capsule carrying them and genetic stock, three survived stasis.

** The ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS05E24EmpokNor Empok Nor]]", where one of the popsicles would have survived, had part of the station not collapsed through his pod.
** The ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E22SpaceSeed Space Seed]]". The ''Enterprise'' finds a ship with a cargo of 84 humans, 72 of whom are still alive, in suspended animation.

*** "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E25TheNeutralZone The Neutral Zone]]" had the ''Enterprise'' encounter a ship full of frozen passengers, complete with [[CatScare skeleton scare]]. (There were dozens on board... only three lived, and that was in the sense of being revivable by mid-24th century Federation medical science. It is noted they would have been regarded as dead by the medical science at the time of their freezing).
*** "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E4Relics Relics]]" had a variation, with Scotty doing one of his engineering miracles to preserve himself and the other survivor of a ship crash in long-term transporter suspension. Scotty was successfully re-materialized; [[RedShirt the other person]] wasn't.
** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'', never being one to let a good trope pass them by, had two:
*** "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS6E7DragonsTeeth Dragon's Teeth]]". An ancient race of warriors went into suspended animation to avoid destruction when every nearby race showed up and carpetbombed their planet from orbit. The protagonist alien made it, but his wife wasn't so lucky.
*** "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS2E23TheThaw The Thaw]]". Some aliens went into suspended animation deep inside their planet to avoid the radiation created by solar flare. When ''Voyager'' showed up, two of them were splatted, despite all evidence showing that the pod they were in was in perfect order. It turns out that the occupants were being held hostage by a computer program that manifested from their subconscious fear of being frozen and was now preventing them from leaving, killing any dissenters by [[YourMindMakesItReal scaring them to death]].
* The ''Series/BabylonFive'' episode "[[Recap/BabylonFiveS02E05TheLongDark The Long Dark]]". In this case the tech worked, but an alien showed up and ate one of the two.
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E60TheRipVanWinkleCaper The Rip Van Winkle Caper]]", four thieves put themselves in suspended animation with a special gas. Three of them made it; one didn't due to a falling rock breaking his apparatus.
* Parodied in the ''Series/NewsRadio'' episode ''[[InSpace Space]]'', where the entire station (save Matthew and Bill) have to go into cryonics to avoid a disaster. Then Matthew trips over the power cord...

* Davros turns {{Human Popsicle}}s he deemed worthy into Daleks in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' serial "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS22E6RevelationOfTheDaleks Revelation of the Daleks]]". The rest he turns into HumanResources.
* Parodied in a ''Series/ThatMitchellAndWebbLook'' sketch: In the future, a popular edition of ''Series/BigBrother'' or a similar RealityShow features only contestants who chose to be cryonically frozen after death and have been brought back... only because they were all dead, they're just gray-skinned reanimated corpses clumsily staggering around trying to perform simple tasks with their stiff limbs.
* ''Series/StargateSG1'' has an example where the team finds a crashed sleeper ship where one of the crew had downloaded the consciousnesses of six others who didn't make it into his brain. He put six more in Daniel before the rest of the team caught him and offered him a naquahdah reactor to wake up the survivors in exchange for transferring Daniel's extra personalities to himself.
* In the pilot of ''Series/BetterOffTed'' Phil was cryonically frozen, initially planned for a year but while moving his tube to the basement he thawed out. He survived but started randomly shrieking in the same pose he was frozen in. As he was freezing his co-workers started betting on whether his eyeballs would explode.
* In an episode of ''Series/{{Eureka}}'', they discover Fargo's long-lost grandfather in a cryopod. They defrost and revive him. He doesn't remember what happened (it's eventually revealed that a jealous friend pushed him in). However, after a while, his body starts to age rapidly, until he looks the way a man of his age ought to look (rather than the young man he was frozen as). The doctors figure out that it's a side effect of the imperfect freezing. They manage to stabilize him, but he still remains in the body of an old man. Strangely, he's fine about it. In the altered timeline, this event never happened, and he became an influential figure in Eureka, using his clout to put his grandson in charge of Global Dynamics.

* Creator/TheBBC's interstellar drama ''Radio/{{Earthsearch}}'' mainly takes place aboard a starship, with a depleted human crew of four versus two psychopathic computers. In one episode a scheming warlord tries to blackmail the computers into letting him join the crew: he hides a military robot on board that's programmed to activate if his life signs fail. He thinks this is perfect insurance against the computers killing him by sabotaging his cryosleep pod. He's wrong.

* In the ''TabletopGame/{{Traveller}}'' RPG, cold-sleep tubes, common on most ships for "Low Passage", have a certain chance of failure. Passengers in low passage often place bets on how many of them will survive the trip. The captain gets the winnings if the winner was one of the deceased. The entire concept (including the chance of death, the lottery and the name) was lifted from E.C. Tubb's Literature/DumarestOfTerra series.

* ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'': A non-HumanPopsicle variation: In the BadFuture, a group of survivors says one of their own left to try to find food in an area infested with mutant bugs and killer robots. When you find the man, he's not only dead, the food he was trying to get at has all rotted away due to the refrigeration failing. However, you do find a seed, which you bring back to the survivors.
* ''VideoGame/MegaManZero'': Almost happened to Zero, despite being a robot. Damaged nearly beyond repair by prolonged exposure to the elements after the lab he was being stored in caved in due to a century or so of neglect & only brought back to life with the power of a semi-mystical electrical fairy. In a later game in the series we see a similar facility with some others who weren't so lucky.
* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}''
** In one area in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}'' you can actually stumble upon, and unfreeze, a soldier put into hibernation shortly before the nukes fell. He thanks you, tells you his story and melts into a pile of goo. The game tells you he "suffers from post-cryonic syndrome".
** In the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' add-on "Mothership Zeta", you unfreeze a group of people from various eras because one of them has a space suit and someone needs to go outside the ship. Unfortunately, the astronaut died at some point and so you have to take his spacesuit for yourself.
** There are also two soldiers who die shortly after being defrosted, possibly due to being experimented on.
** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'' reveals that everyone in Vault 111 were put into cryonic sleep. The PlayerCharacter is the only who actually survives the sleep, as everyone else's cryo pods ended up malfunctioning and killing them; fittingly, that character's main nickname is "Sole Survivor". [[spoiler:However, you later find out that the pods did not malfunction, but were sabotaged by the Institute. They deliberately only refroze the protagonist after killing your spouse and kidnapping Shaun, leaving the remaining vault dwellers to die in their pods from asphyxiation.]]
* ''Franchise/MassEffect''
** Done deliberately: the [[{{Precursors}} Protheans]] on Ilos froze themselves until the [[EldritchAbomination Reapers]] disappeared. While waiting, as the power became insufficient to keep the entire team alive, the overseeing computer starting disabling life support, starting with the least essential personnel, and working its way up the ranks until all but the most critical scientists were dead. Even they were in danger of being splatted when it finally became safe for the computer to wake them up. Unfortunately, by that point there were too few of them to repopulate the species. They did, however, [[spoiler:travel to the Citadel and sabotage the primary means for the Reapers to return from Dark Space]].
** A similar fate befell the Prothean division on Eden Prime, as shown in ''VideoGame/MassEffect3: From Ashes''. In this case, there was only one survivor, who is eventually revived by Shepard.

* ''VideoGame/SpaceQuestVTheNextMutation'' features a two-part puzzle where you had to freeze a character in a cryonic chamber and later unfreeze her. Failure to read the instructions fully before doing so could result in under/over-freezing her in the first part and under/over-thawing her in the second. Any of these alternatives would lead to GameOver due to a StableTimeLoop (she is to become the mother of Roger's son who will go back in time to save Roger). Opening the chamber before thawing her makes the game unwinnable, as the game does not allow the chamber to be closed after that. Clicking on it results in Roger picking up the frozen Beatrice, at which point she [[LiterallyShatteredLives breaks into ice cubes]].
-->[[HaveANiceDeath "Bea is dead. In an alternate future, she would have borne your son. In the alternate past of Space Quest 4, your son saved your life. But she didn't, so he couldn't, therefore you aren't."]]

* The Vahnatai in ''VideoGame/{{Exile}}[=/=]VideoGame/{{Avernum}}'' periodically put their entire civilization to sleep with Alien {{Phlebotinum}} to conserve subterranean resources. They always expect a high attrition rate, which players get to witness themselves.
* In the first ''VideoGame/{{Kreed}}'', you're investigating an abandoned space station filled with monsters. One of the last logs you uncover is a survivor noting how everyone are about to put themselves into the cryochamber to escape, which didn't work as you found out.

* One chapter in ''VideoGame/LiveALive'', which coincidentally plays out like a collage of various famous movies such as ''2001'' and ''Aliens''.
* A possibility in ''VideoGame/AlienLegacy'' if you're too slow in building habitats for the crew, who get awoken as space becomes available. A random event warns you of an impending power failure in the cryonic system.
* In lead writer Michael Ely's novelization of ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'', Pravin Lal's wife's pod is damaged by Santiago's people. In the second novel, a Spartan artillery barrage collapses the ceiling on the already-damaged pod.
* It's mentioned in passing that the cryos tech in ''VideoGame/{{Homeworld}}'' has a non-zero failure rate, although they aren't terribly worried about it. [[DoomedHometown Beats the alternative, at least]]. Far worse off from their perspective are the ones who ''survive'' and are revived only to discover that everyone they know back on Kharak is dead. On the more extreme end of the trope, the six "cryo-trays" holding the majority of the crew are simply hanging in space when the Mothership returns from its shakedown cruise to find [[TheEmpire Taiidani]] ships attacking said trays. Only four are strictly necessary to complete the mission, meaning that if the player is slow or especially heartless, up to ''two hundred thousand'' pods can be lost. (Possibly averted in actual play; most players report being ''[[VideoGameCaringPotential strongly motivated]]'' to do everything they can, even reloading if they fail, to ensure that EverybodyLives.)
** In the manual for ''Homeworld: Cataclysm'', there is a mention of a man, who is awakened from cryo, only to learn that he is the last remaining member of his kiith. Only he and his wife were chosen to join the Mothership, and her pod was damaged when the Taiidani fired on it. Instead of DrowningHisSorrows, he goes before the Daiamid and demands to be given a ship. They give him a ''Vengeance''-class assault frigate, and he gathers a crew of individuals, who voluntarily join his kiith. They become well known in the bounty hunter circles for bringing in plenty of Taiidani war criminals.

* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChroniclesX'': Preventing this trope from happening is the main reason why retrieving the Lifehold Core is absolutely imperative for the remaining humans. Their bodies are [[HumanPopsicle frozen inside of the Core]], controlling artificial bodies called mimeosomes from a distance. If the humans don't find the Core before its emergency power generator runs out, or if the Ganglion finds the Core first, this trope will kick in full gear and the humans will die out. [[spoiler:Or so we're told.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Overwatch}}'' : As of the Rise and Shine video, we now know exactly what happened to Mei and her team of climatologists. They were doing research at Ecopoint: Antartica, keeping track of the mysterious climate changes that were happening. Overwatch was unable to re-supply or rescue them due to a massive snowstorm, so they went into cryo-sleep to wait it out. However, Overwatch disbanded while they were asleep, and what should have been a brief few months instead became ''nine years''. While Mei survived, her five co-workers did not. We never get to see what shape they're in, but the pods' display show no heartbeat or brain activity in the animated short. [[TearJerker She leaves them each a cup of hot cocoa on her way out, as tribute.]]
* Played with in ''VideoGame/TheOuterWorlds''. The sleeper ship Hope got knocked out of FTL on its way to the colony and as a result the 10 year voyage turned into 70 years. The cryonically stored people left on it are still okay, but they've been frozen so long that if they're thawed out they'll suffer from "explosive cell death" and liquify more or less instantly. MadScientist Phineas Wells has perfected a chemical formula that can safely wake them up, but unfortunately he used up his entire stock reviving [[PlayerCharacter The Unknown Variable]].
* In ''VideoGame/RimWorld'', there's a chance that the occupant of an ancient sarcophagus will thaw out dead.

* Non-lethal but still horrifying example in ''Webcomic/VerloreGeleentheid'', the passengers of a damaged sleeper ship survived and were kept in stasis, but [[AndIMustScream fully conscious and unable to move for ten thousand years.]]

* There is a CreepyPasta with this topic, entitled [[https://thejosefkstories.com/2008/11/03/thaw/ ''Thaw'']]. Sometime in the distant future, a man wakes up from his cryonic suspension onboard a spaceship, only to find himself only partially dethawed and trapped in his capsule, which seems to have failed. Then, he notices that the ship is on emergency lighting, and even that seems to be failing. THEN he notices that the other capsules in the room have also failed and either contains decayed corpses or blood splatters like someone bashed their heads open from the inside. Realizing that some sort of disaster has befallen the ship, he suddenly notices that they are still in orbit around Earth, having never left... except this Earth has a giant glacier of a new ice age covering most of the northern hemisphere, and no signs of human cities anywhere...
* The Lost Episode Creepypasta ''Fanfic/NotLongEnough'' describes an unaired episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' where Fry commits suicide by getting himself frozen again, with the process killing him and letting his body decay because of the cryonics chamber not working properly.

* Referenced in ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' with the Cryonics Lab having an XDaysSince sign, but never actually occurs. While the staff is clearly incompetent, the closest thing to a "failure" was them dumping tubes containing the wrong people in the desert, where they woke up just fine.
* ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'': One of Morty's erased memories is of him accidentally killing an entire room of cryogenically frozen humans because he hit the wrong lightswitch.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{ThunderCats|1985}}'': This is generally accepted as the reason why Lion-O aged but the two Thunder Kittens did not in the original version. His chamber malfunctioned, so he grew into adulthood while in stasis.

* The Lost Episode Creepypasta ''WebOriginal/NotLongEnough'' describes an unaired episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' where Fry commits suicide by getting himself frozen again, with the process killing him and letting his body decay because of the cryonics chamber not working properly.

** A similar fate befell the Prothean division on Eden Prime, as shown in ''Mass Effect 3: From Ashes''. In this case, there was only one survivor, who is eventually revived by Shepard.
* In ''VideoGame/BlazBlue'', Jin is said to have frozen Bang's master to death. In gameplay, his various ice powers culminate in his [[OneHitKill Astral Heat]], where a successful use results in the enemy being frozen in a giant block of ice that shatters to let their corpse fall out.

* ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}''