History Main / DeadEndRoom

** ''Marathon: EVIL'' has at least two dead-end room situations. First, in "Code 42", if you hit one of the switches for the double doors more than once, the door will permanently stop partway open, locking you out of the second half of the level. In the last level, "Life's End", if you forget to activate the elevator before going down the optional one-way lava river, you won't be able to get back to the level's exit.

* The MinusWorld in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros'' uses the same layout as World 2-2, but has no exit and keeps looping until you run out of lives.

* The Black Hole in ''VideoGame/AtlantisNoNazo''. As the "level" begins, the death sound plays immediately ([[YouAreAlreadyDead to hammer in that you're doomed and there's nothing you can do about it]]) as you fall to your death. [[CycleOfHurting This repeats until you get a Game Over]].

* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'' In the final quest of the Thieves' Guild, the only way through to your objective, is by falling into a pit, with no apparent exit. This was played straight with the dead NPC you find at the bottom - fortunately, you avert this, because ''you'' have the Skeleton Key.

* Done deliberately in ''{{VideoGame/Doom}}'' II [=MAP12=], "The Factory"; the door to the exit room is a yellow-key door outside and a red-key door inside, but ''there is no red key in the level'', so unless one is playing in deathmatch mode or cheating, once inside the only way out is through the exit.

** Although, as [[LetsPlay Northernlion]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdhktbFUyqg&feature=youtu.be&t=2m31s discovered]], ''Afterbirth'' isn't totally immune to this problem either. In Greed mode, teleporting into a secret room that's next to an unopened item room will leave the player trapped.

-->--''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou''

* From the ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'', [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1165 SCP-1165]] functions as an alternate-dimension MinusLevel to an unnamed town, but turns into an inescapable [[BottomlessPit bottomless]] [[VoidBetweenTheWorlds void]] if one travels more than about 100 km from the entrance.

*** The SNES Porting disaster has an UnintentionallyUnwinnable example at the end of the first TempleOfDoom level. You're supposed to hit the pressure plate for the exit door and run back under the gate before it closes, but due to this version's higher framerate, the gate drops too fast for you to do so. The only way past this is to use a password or SequenceBreak.

*** Level 3 has a HealingPotion in a pit that's too deep to climb out of. The only way out is to commit suicide via the adjacent LavaPit or use the Abort command.

** One gate in the cave levels of ''VideoGame/PrinceOfPersia2'' leads to an alcove with a [[HeartContainer life upgrade potion]], but it can't be opened from the inside, so if it closes behind you, you're stuck for good. No mouse to rescue you ''this'' time. Later, in the last cave level, if you move too far to the left while fighting the skeleton on the rope bridge, it will run to the right and step on a pressure plate that closes the gate on the next screen. If you subsequently trigger the bridge collapse as normal, you'll be trapped between the now uncrossable BottomlessPit and the closed gate with no way to reopen it.

** One gate in the cave levels of ''VideoGame/PrinceOfPersia2'' leads to an alcove with a [[HeartContainer life upgrade potion]], but it can't be opened from the inside, so if it closes behind you, you're stuck for good. No mouse to rescue you ''this'' time. Later, in the last cave level, if you move too far to the left while fighting the skeleton on the rope bridge, it will run to the right and trigger a pressure plate that closes the gate on the next screen. If you subsequently trigger the bridge collapse as normal, you'll be trapped between the now uncrossable BottomlessPit and the closed gate with no way to reopen it.

** One gate in the cave levels of ''VideoGame/PrinceOfPersia2'' leads to an alcove with a [[HeartContainer life upgrade potion]], but it can't be opened from the inside, so if it closes behind you, you're stuck for good. No mouse to rescue you ''this'' time.
** Also in the second game, if you try to flee from the skeleton on the rope bridge in the last cave level, it will run to the right and trigger a pressure plate that closes the gate on the next screen, permanently blocking your path to the exit.

** ''VideoGame/PrinceOfPersia1'' subverts this trope in Level 8 when the Prince finds himself trapped in a dead end by a closed gate, but the Princesss's pet mouse reopens it.
** One gate in the cave levels of ''VideoGame/PrinceOfPersia2'' leads to an alcove with a [[HeartContainer life upgrade potion]], but it can't be opened from the inside, so if it closes behind you, you're stuck for good(no mouse to rescue you ''this'' time).

** ''VideoGame/PrinceOfPersia1'''s Level 7 has a cruel trap in the form of a loose tile positioned over a switch that closes a pair of gates you have to pass through to reach the end of the level. If you drop the tile or otherwise trigger the switch, you're trapped and have to reload the level.
** One gate in the cave levels of ''VideoGame/PrinceOfPersia2'' leads to an alcove with a [[HeartContainer life upgrade potion]], but it can't be opened from the inside, so if it closes behind you, you're stuck for good.

[[AC:Film]]

[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/WreckItRalph'': The [=NesquikSand=] Pit looks like this — and is, unless one can figure out how to attract the Laffy Taffies.

* ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2'' features the Mystic Cave Zone Act 2 spike pit. Apparently, the level designer decided it wasn't enough that falling into a specific pit leads to a BottomlessPit, oh no, instead you hit a bed of spikes in a shaft too tall to climb out of. You'll die in about 10 or less seconds depending on how many rings you have...unless you have the misfortune of being Super Sonic, in which case you'll have to wait for your rings to deplete at a rate of one ring per second (hopefully you didn't have like 100 rings or something), and ''then'' finally die so you can go back to the last checkpoint.

* In ''VideoGame/DejaVu'', going east of the Peoria police station leads to Ace falling to his death in a construction pit.

Usually a subtrope of UnwinnableByDesign (although can also be UnwinnableByMistake or even UnwinnableByInsanity), a Dead End Room is used as a fiendish trap by the game's designers. Either the room simply has no exits, or if it has, [[UnnaturallyLoopingLocation they only lead back into the same room or into a closed cycle of rooms which connect only to each other, not to the main maze.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Hexen}}'' version 1 has an [[UnwinnableByMistake accidental]] one; the Axe Room in Hub 4's "The Gibbet" has a door which cannot be opened from the inside, so once inside the only way out is to kill the second Heresiarch which eventually appears, and then either run to the door (which was briefly reopened by the Heresiarch's death) so as to explore the hub with the help of the wings you just gained, or go through the portal to the next hub (which of course you will need to do in the end). Unfortunately the action script for the ending, which teleports four Green Chaos Serpents into the room and then checks their number every five seconds or so, only proceeds if there are exactly three left, so if you manage to kill two or more of them between checks, you're trapped forever. This was corrected in version 1.1, which checks if there are less than four left.

* Another UnwinnableByMistake scenario is some versions of ''VideoGame/DukeNukem3D'' (the four-episode version); if you play [=E4L9=] (Critical Mass) in co-op mode on a version where the bug hasn't been fixed, you had better make sure you do so without dying, or you will be stuck at the start of the level, facing a now-collapsed staircase which you can no longer get past.

* In ''VideoGame/SensoryOverload'', enemies can open doors that you can't, often from rooms that have no other door. If you enter a room of this type, you're up the UnwinnableByInsanity creek once the door closes.

** An [[UnwinnableByMistake unintentional]] one occurs in Vault 92 where you can glitch through the floor in the Overseer's Office and end up in an inescapable DisconnectedSideArea of the Sound Testing sector behind a jammed door. The only way out other than reloading a prior saved game is to use console commands in the PC version to open said door.

** Another UnwinnableByMistake example may occur on Mothership Zeta, where a ScriptedEvent failure leaves the player trapped on the Observation Deck.

** In "Assault on the Control Room", you can use a hijacked Banshee to glitch through a door into [[NewWorldTease one of the phase pulse generator rooms from the later "Two Betrayals" mission]], [[UnwinnableByInsanity with no way out]].

** There are certain ruined buildings that you can fall into from above, but can't get out of without JetPack-equipped PowerArmor or fast-travelling. [[UnwinnableByInsanity If you lack said jetpack, are playing in Survival Mode, which disables Fast Travel, and don't have the ability to teleport to the Institute, you're shit out of luck]].

* In ''VideoGame/YumeNikki'' and its [[FanSequel fan games]], getting caught by a "chaser" such as a Toriningen will trap you in a dead end where the only way out is waking up or using the Medamaude [[note]]Some fan games like ''VideoGame/Yume2kki'' have rooms that restrict waking up, warping back to the entrance, or both, forcing you to endure a sequence until you wake up[[/note]]. Of course, there's also the infamous Uboa sequence, where you are trapped in the room with him, and contacting him will transport you to another inescapable area.

[[caption-width-right:350:Uh...guys? Hello?]]

Usually a subtrope of UnwinnableByDesign (although can also be UnwinnableByMistake or even UnwinnableByInsanity), a Dead End Room is used as a fiendish trap by the game's designers. Either the room simply has no exits, or if it has, they only lead back into the same room or into a closed cycle of rooms which connect only to each other, not to the main maze.

* In ''VideoGame/DeusExInvisibleWar'', Liberty Island has a hidden DevelopersRoom hosting a dance party, accessed by flushing the toilet in Manderly's office, but make sure to save before entering, as you can't leave.