History Main / LockingMacGyverInTheStoreCupboard

* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Unification Part II", a group of Romulans lock Captain Picard, Lt. Commander Data, and Ambassador Spock, the supreme examples of the SmartGuy, in a room with a computer terminal.

* As you could expect from a [[MadScientist Spark]], Agatha from ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'' manages to pull this off. While she is not currently locked up, as one of the villains points out, she is many kilometers away from any potential allies, in unfamiliar territory in the middle of hash winter. There are also bud guys constantly looking for her with dogs specially trained to hunt down Sparks. Agatha still manages to build herself a fully functional escape device in form of… a swan-shaped sleigh and four flying robot pigs.

** Katara and Toph were once stuck in a wooden cage, with nothing for either of them to bend. Katara just started jogging in place and broke out using her ''sweat''.

[[quoteright:320:[[Film/IronMan http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/iron_man_mark_1_armor_3105.jpg]]]]

* In ''Film/IronMan'', Tony Stark is kidnapped and left mostly unsupervised with various parts that are supposed to build a bomb. Instead he builds the first version of his Iron Man suit and uses it to escape.
* MastersOfTheUniverse uses this trope to create a HopeSpot: Skeletor has captured He-Man and taken him back to Eternia, and has broken the Cosmic Key, stranding the rest of the heroes on Earth...then he grabs the IdiotBall and leaves the broken Key behind with the rest of the heroes, the Key's inventor, all the spare parts needed to fix the Key, and a guy who can figure out how to set the Key to teleport them all directly into Skeletor's throne room.

See also EvilOverlordList entries [[EvilOverlordList 36, 97,]] [[EvilOverlordListCellblockA 131, 140, 145 and 185]]. GenreBlindness comes into play often. Compare BruceWayneHeldHostage, ShootingSuperman. Also compare BossArenaIdiocy, when everything you need to beat the enemy is directly available in the environment.

See also EvilOverlordList entries [[EvilOverlordList 36, 97,]] [[EvilOverlordListCellblockA 131, 140, 145 and 185]]. GenreBlindness comes into play often. Compare BruceWayneHeldHostage, ShootingSuperman.

* There tends to be a lot of this in the ''VideoGame/MonkeyIsland'' video games. The prison on Phatt Island in [[MonkeyIsland2 the second game]] is a classic example.

* The Fire Nation's [[TooDumbToLive stupidity]] is TurnedUpToEleven in Creator/MNightShyamalan's ''Film/TheLastAirbender''. In [[WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender the show]], they keep Earthbenders imprisoned on a large metal platform far out to sea, where no earth is available for the Earthbenders to use against their captors until they discover that the ship runs on coal. In TheMovie, they keep the Earthbenders imprisoned ''in a quarry.'' With only a handful of guards keeping the order. Their prison is literally made out of weaponry. The implication is that they Earthbenders are too psychologically broken to fight back in the first place.

* The Fire Nation's [[TooDumbToLive stupidity]] is TurnedUpToEleven in Creator/MNightShyamalan's ''Film/TheLastAirbender''. In [[WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender the show]], they keep Earthbenders imprisoned on a large metal platform far out to sea, where no earth is available for the Earthbenders to use against their captors. In TheMovie, they keep the Earthbenders imprisoned ''in a quarry.'' With only a handful of guards keeping the order. Their prison is literally made out of weaponry. The implication is that they Earthbenders are too psychologically broken to fight back in the first place.

* Both ''Film/TheThingFromANotherWorld'' and ''Film/TheThing1982'' have this occur, except in those cases it's the villain who gets locked in by the heroes (it's locked in a greenhouse in the first version and in [[spoiler: a tool shed in the prequel]]. Here Blair has not been infected however)]].

* In LarryNiven's ''[[{{Ringworld}} Ringworld's Children]]'', Tunesmith (a super-intelligent Night Person protector) is smart enough to lock Luis Wu out of the stepping disk system in order to keep Luis from escaping, but somehow didn't think it important to lock Luis out of the autokitchen menu. So naturally Luis orders sushi from the autokitchen, a meal that is dispensed alongside a pair of hardwood chopsticks... which Luis promptly uses to hack his way into the stepping disk system and escape.

Half the time when goodies get locked in a cell, all of the equipment that they need to escape is in the cell with them. [[BedsheetLadder Bedsheets]] are a favorite for this MacGyvering technique.

** In the SilverAge, giving LexLuthor pretty much ''anything'' in prison was a bad idea. In AllStarSuperman, a homage to the Silver Age, while on Death Row he creates a robot than reads classics to him... [[spoiler: that can speak at a high enough frequecy to dig through solid rock]]. He later gets the chance to mix a cocktail for his last meal... [[spoiler: he mixes a chemical formula that gives him Kryptonian powers for 24 hours]]. At one point it got so ridiculous that the only thing that they would allow him in prison was pen and paper. He noted to himself that he ''could'' break out of prison with just a notepad and a pen, but if he did that, the next time he got locked up the guards wouldn't let him have pen and paper anymore.

* The entire first season of ''PrisonBreak'' is about how Michael Scofield breaks his brother out of prison using things from within the prison (well, and things he's prepared beforehand, with notes handily tattooed all over him in a form only he can decipher). Example: One of the first things he does is [[spoiler:turn a screw from the prison bleachers into a wrench that can unscrew the cell sink.]] It's priceless MacGyvering.

* As you could expect from a [[MadScientist Spark]], Agatha from ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'' manages to pull this off. While she is not currently locked up, as one of the villains points out, she is many kilometers away from any potential allies, in unfamiliar territory in the middle of hash winter. There are also bud guys constantly looking for her with dogs specially trained to hunt down Sparks. Agatha still manages to build herself a fully functional escape device in form of… a swan-shaped slides and four flying robot pigs.

* Parodied in the Norwegian daily comic ''Eon''. MacGyver is seemingly locked inside the bathroom, and comes up with a brilliant escape plan involving a piece of soap, a razor, wire and some other articles, to which the main character responds: "Or we could just open the door." Turns out the door wasn't locked at all.

* ''ISpy'' had this as a frequent scenario (and predated ''MacGyver'' by two decades).

* Hodgins and Brennen on ''Series/{{Bones}}'' may have outperformed even MacGyver in the first Gravedigger episode, when they were buried alive inside a car. They couldn't bust themselves out, but they did manage to prolong their own lives and communicate their location to rescuers using such items as a pocket knife, camera, car horn, depowered cell phone, lithium batteries, dirt, and an ''extremely'' expensive bottle of perfume.

* Played with in the second season episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheTick'' animated series, "Leonardo da Vinci and His Fightin' Genius Time Commandos!" Leonardo Da Vinci and other famous inventors throughout history are kidnapped by a MadScientist and locked in a cage. Leonardo escapes largely by using the mattresses and flatware to make a flying machine. When the rest discuss inventing their own escape method, Ben Franklin says bitterly, "How? Da Vinci used all the best stuff!" George Washington Carver laments, "If I could just reach those peanuts...!"

* In one episode of the old ''Birdman'' cartoon, a GadgeteerGenius supervillain was allowed to spend his prison sentence working in the prison's metalshop. He built a suit of powered armor complete with a jetpack and escaped. The episode ends with the warden sensibly deciding that putting him in a metalshop isn't a good idea and switches him to laundry duty. In a later episode starring the same villain, he adds flight capability to a dryer and escapes in it. The warden finally figures out that putting the guy near any machinery is a bad idea and sends him to work in the prison's library.

* Notably done in the book ''Literature/TheThirtyNineSteps'' by John Buchan, in which the hero blows his way out of a store cupboard using his powers of mining-engineering and a fictional explosive. ''The Thirty-Nine Steps'' was published in 1915, making this OlderThanRadio.

* This trope is actually OlderThanFeudalism. In the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur, Daedelus and Icarus escape from their Creatan prison by the use of hot wax and birds' feathers.

* ComicBook/{{Batman}} is a master of this kind of escape. One SilverAge example involves him escaping from a mill that is rigged to explode using millstones, sacks of rice and a fire hose.

*** It looks like the extreme cold is meant to freeze the screws in place. It didn't work on Zuko, who had lessons on firebending from dragons.

* The surreal reverse example in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'' where three criminals get out of prison thanks to three conveniently placed Men sized Powerpuff Girl disguises within the jail cell. "This is going to be harder then I thought".

* The Man In Room Five from ''VForVendetta'' is given access to gardening chemicals at Larkhill. He seems to be building a RoomFullOfCrazy, it turns out he's made Napalm and Mustard Gas.

** "The Doctor's Wife": House leaves possesses the TARDIS and leaves the Doctor behind on his planetoid former body. Which happens to be TARDIS graveyard.