History Main / SaunaOfDeath

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': The first attempt on the life of Homer Simpson in "The Great Louse Detective" by [[spoiler:Frank Grimes Jr., in revenge for his father whom Homer drove insane]]. He was actually already in danger by being in the sauna at all because of his obesity and heart problems. The sauna controls helpfully included the setting [[InventionalWisdom "murder"]].

* The Gold Luger deathtrap in ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilCodeVeronica''.

* ''WesternAnimation/TotallySpies'': The girls are locked in such a trap by their {{brainwashed}} mothers.

-->'''Larry:''' What is that smell? Mr. Krabs, how long have you been in there?! [pulls the door open]\\

* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'': In "[[Recap/SpongeBobSquarePantsS9E17SpongeBobLongPantsLarrysGym Larry's Gym]], after Larry opens the titular gym and announces that first visits are free, Mr. Krabs locks himself in the steam room to make sure his first visit is permanently free. At the end of the episode, when Larry closes up the gym for the night and Mr. Krabs is still locked in the steam room, he pulls open the door to find [[MediumBlending he has turned into a cooked live-action crab]].

Being trapped or killed in an actual oven falls under CookedToDeath.

* The kids attempt to deal with [[spoiler: the [[DemonicPosession Flayed]] Billy]] in this manner in Season 3 of ''Series/StrangerThings''. [[spoiler: Unfortunately, the Billy's SuperStrength allows him to break out.]]

* The kids attempt to deal with [[spoiler: the [[DemonicPosession Flayed]] Billy]] in this manner in Season 3 of ''Series/StrangerThings''. Unfortunately, the intended victim's SuperStrength allows them to break out.

* A pack of crooked doctors tried to kill [[Film/TheThreeStooges Moe and Larry]] this way in ''Monkey Businessmen'', but Curly freed them by turning it UpToEleven and blowing the door off its hinges.

* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'', this happens accidentally, in what is apparently the worst-designed sauna in the world. Fortunately, Betty and Didi [[BrickJoke are let out at the end of the episode]], though severely overheated and dehydrated.

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* Downplayed in ''Manga/MonsterMusume'' when Killa the [[BeeAfraid killer bee]] attacks Kimihito, Centorea, and Rachnera. They trick her into entering a sauna and lock her in, not to kill her, but just to get her overheated to the point where she stops trying to fight, since high temperatures are her WeaksauceWeakness. The fact that being in there long enough ''could'' kill her is brought up, but not an issue as they let her out before she loses consciousness.

* In an ''ComicBook/{{Archie|Comics}}'' comic book, Veronica was placed in an overheating steam cabinet and left to die by a supervillain. Jughead (who was in superhero mode) was charged with rescuing her, but didn't do a very good job of it. Losing quite a bit of weight and starving in the ordeal, she consumed a vile concoction the beanied one had prepared earlier for his lunch so as to fatten back up a bit -- grossing everyone, including the bad guy, totally out.

* ''Film/JamesBond'':
** In ''Film/{{Thunderball}}'', both [[Literature/{{Thunderball}} novel]] and film, James Bond locks his rival Count Lippe in a Turkish Bath, causing him serious injury and delaying the SPECTRE scheme in which Lippe was supposed to play a part. See also VillainBall to know ''why'' Bond was fighting Lippe.
** Seemingly toyed with in ''Film/{{Goldeneye}}'' -- Xenia Onatopp tries to seduce and kill Bond in a steam room. The novelization implies that the heat plays more of a role in Bond's initial inability to fight back.

* In the low-budget thriller ''The Steam Experiment'', a group of four tourists are tricked into getting trapped in a sauna by a deranged environmental activist, who intends to boil all of them alive to demonstrate the effects of "global warming on humans".
* A pack of crooked doctors tried to kill [[Film/TheThreeStooges Moe and Larry]] this way in ''Monkey Businessmen'', but Curly freed them by turning it UpToEleven and blowing the door off its hinges.
* In ''Film/TheWarOfTheRoses'', being trapped in his own sauna is what almost kills Oliver Rose. Well, one of the many things. Most of them precipitated or planned by his wife.

* In ''Film/WhatsNewPussycat'', Creator/WoodyAllen tries to do in friend/romantic rival Peter O'Toole by cranking up the heat in the steam room they're in. O'Toole thrives on the steam, and Allen nearly passes out (doesn't help that he's fully dressed, sportcoat, glasses and all).

* ''Film/UrbanLegendsBloodyMary'' features the tanning bed variant. The character is StrippedToTheBone by the heat.
* In ''Film/MasterOfTheFlyingGuillotine'', the One-Armed Boxer lures the Thai kickboxer into a cabin with a metal floor that his students heat up with a bonfire. The floor burns the feet of the barefooted Thai, allowing the One-Armed Boxer to pummel him to death with ease.
* This is the premise of the thriller ''Film/TwoHundredFortySevenFahrenheit''.
* An [[InvertedTrope inversion]] happens in a teen movie [[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0406227/reference Snowboarders]]. On New Year's Eve in a mountain hotel, an older woman locks a teenage girl inside an outdoor sauna because she thought she was hitting on [[ClingyJealousGirl "her"]] hotel owner – and turns off the heat, making it an equivalent of LockedInAFreezer.

* In ''Film/{{GirlHouse}}'', Loverboy attempts to murder Mia by jamming a crowbar under the door of the sauna, cranking the temperature up to max, and sabotaging the controls.
* The first victim in ''Film/DeathSpa'' is Laura, who is taking a sauna when the door is locked, the steam is cranked up, and chlorine gas is pumped into the sauna along with the steam.

* Used against Literature/NancyDrew in ''Two Points to Murder'', when she's investigating a college basketball team and gets trapped in the sauna room. She winds up stripping to her underwear to buy time before finally figuring out an escape.

* In Richard Matheson's novel ''Literature/HellHouse'' (in a scene that never made it to the movie ''The Legend of Hell House'') the scientist trying to prove that a haunting is all science finds himself locked in a sauna. While he's trying to get out and others are trying to batter in the door, the mud from the tarn outside starts to seep in and fill the room. It becomes a race to see if he'll escape or if he'll die from the heat or drown. [[spoiler: When the door is opened and he's pulled out there is no mud on him or in the room]]
* Raoul and the Persian get trapped in one in ''Literature/ThePhantomOfTheOpera''. To be fair, it wasn't exactly a "steam room" per se -- more like a "heat-and-optical-illusion room", but it still qualifies.
* In ''The Body In The Bath House'', one of Lindsey Davis' ''Literature/MarcusDidiusFalco'' novels, the newlywed couple Marcus and Helena move into their first marital home and strightaway wonder what the bad smell is. Then they discover the builder they hired has taken the opportuinty to dispose of a body. In the hypacaust underneath the sauna.
* In one of the ''Literature/DanShambleZombiePI'' novels, an undead patron of the Zombie Bathhouse who'd remained in the sauna way, ''way'' too long has all the flesh slip away, ending up in a puddle of tissue on the floor. Being a ''zombie'' patron, the unfortunate sauna-user still walks away, but as a bare-boned skeleton.

* Number 6 finds himself trapped in a Sauna Box Death Trap during ''Series/ThePrisoner1967'' episode "[[Recap/ThePrisonerE15TheGirlWhoWasDeath The Girl Who Was Death]]". It doesn't explode, though, he merely escapes.
* In ''Series/TheAdventuresOfBriscoCountyJr'', Brisco and Lord Bowler are tied up in a sauna, though the intended method of death is the exploding boiler rather than the heat.
* In ''Series/{{Powerhouse}}'', one of the kids is taking advantage of a weight loss program run by crooks who were using it to get the bakery he was working at empty for a robbery with the neighboring bank. Deciding he had outlived his usefulness on the night of the job, the crooks talk him into using their sauna, lock him in and turn up the heat full blast. Fortunately, he was able to manipulate a vent to signal SOS which his friends spotted and rescued him.

* Appears on ''Series/KennyVsSpenny'' in the "Who can wear a Gorilla suit the longest?" episode, though the endgame was to force the other participant to remove the costume (and lose the competition), not actually ''kill'' them.
* Bizarrely used in ''Series/{{Wonderfalls}}'', when the sister and her rival are at the gym rivalling with each other. They then head to the sauna, where the sister storms out, accidentally locking the rival in the sauna. Later, [[spoiler: it turns out that being locked in a sauna forced her to have a crazy Native American vision quest and become leader of her tribe, thus solving every single problem on that show]]. Hooray, logic! But that's how ''all'' the plots in ''Wonderfalls'' work. (That is, they all involve that sort of Rube Goldberg logic, not "every time someone gets locked in a sauna and [[spoiler:has a vision quest]].")
* This happens ''twice'' in ''Series/SpinCity''.
** In one example the only reason why most of the main cast was trapped in the sauna was because a nosy reporter was prowling outside.
** In another example, Stuart and Carter get trapped in the boiler room of city hall while trying to fix a circuit for a vending machine. Carter couldn't get the fuse box open, so Stuart grabs a conveniently located crowbar... which was being used to prop open the door. To make matters worse, at the end of the episode when Mike finally finds them, it's revealed that there was a phone in the room the whole time.
* An early episode of ''Series/MurderSheWrote'' has Jessica in this situation.

* On an episode of ''Series/TheChronicle'', the tabloid reporters were dealing with the angry ghosts fat people killed in a fat farm sauna. In the end, they had to rescue the murderer from suffering the same fate.
* This happens to Clark Kent in a Season 1 episode of ''Series/{{Smallville}}'', where the villain threw him in and barricaded the door. Of course, the sauna has kryptonite in it. He manages to break a hole in the door's window before he collapses, which saved him from dying until Pa Kent could rescue him.
* ''Series/MissFishersMurderMysteries'', "Cocaine Blues": As in the book (above), Phryne Fisher and Sascha are locked in a turkish bath to prevent them from revealing the truth of the drug enterprise being run through the building. She jams the steam machines in a bid for time, which causes an off-screen explosion once they're safely clear.
* Parodied in ''Series/SledgeHammer'' where Hammer and Doreau question a perp in a sauna (who discovers it to be a Sauna of Death for different reasons). To discover their clothes have shrunk by about four sizes.
* ''Series/HerculesTheLegendaryJourneys'': In the episode "For Those Of You Just Joining Us...", the show's production staff is locked in a sauna during a trip to a team-building camp. Kevin Sorbo, aka Hercules, saves them by knocking down the door after a quick LookBehindYou moment to keep his powers hidden.
* ''Series/PrettyLittleLiars'': In "Hot Water" this happens to Spencer when "A" sabotages the sauna she's on and lock her from the outside. She almost dies, but Aria arrives in time to save her.
* ''Series/WonderWoman1975'': In "I Do, I Do", Diana succumbs to knockout gas while in a sauna.
* ''Series/ShakespeareAndHathawayPrivateInvestigators'': In "This Envious Court", Louella's mother is lured into a sauna and locked in by the killer. Lou only arrives just in time to save her.

* In the ''Series/CharliesAngels'' episode "Angels in Springtime," the protagonists investigate a murder at a creepy spa. At one point, a villain padlocks Kris into a sauna and turns the heat way up. Kelly goes back for her forgotten watch, realizes Kris is trapped inside, and breaks in with a fire hydrant.
* ''Series/FatherBrown'': In "The Enigma of Antigonish", the killer of the week locks Father Brown, Mrs. [=McCarthy=], Sid and the woman who was his next targeted victim in the hot room--having removed the door handle from the inside--in an attempt to MakeItLookLikeAnAccident.

* ''VideoGame/{{Dishonored}}'' has a bathhouse in the [[DenOfIniquity Golden Cat]] brothel that features a few steam rooms. It's possible to kill one of Corvo's targets by waiting for them to go into the steam room, locking the door, and putting the steam on full-blast.
* In ''VideoGame/NancyDrew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek'', there is one puzzle where Nancy is locked inside a sauna.

* ''VideoGame/BioShock2'' has Subject Delta optionally open a locked sauna door in the Adonis Luxury Resort, finding both a woman's corpse and an Audio Diary. The highly dehydrated look of the body implies she was trapped in the sauna's heat until she died.

* ''VideoGame/OxygenNotIncluded:'' While not exactly a sauna, the same effect of the air growing hot enough to suffocate and even scald is perfectly possible if you're not accounting for heat generation and sources, such as running machinery and outside biomes (especially geysers). Certain enclosed rooms can quickly become deadly, and your entire base slowly so, from the top down.
* Can be subverted or played straight in ''VideoGame/GoldeneyeRogueAgent.'' You can either use EM Hack to futz with the controls and trap the guys inside the sauna, ''or'' you can try to fight them, guns blazing. If you do it with the Goldeneye, you can't grab the weapons left behind. Take this into account.

* A variation of the Sauna ''Room'' is the Sauna ''Box'', which has been used in countless cartoons as a means for wacky anthropomorphic animals to dispatch their rivals. (Usually the cartoon animal locked in the Sauna Box has their head turn red as they get hotter. In more creative examples of this trope, their head will actually turn into an overheating thermometer.) This trope usually ends with the Sauna Box exploding in a spectacular fashion, or a radically reduced victim emerging from a cloud of steam..

* ''WesternAnimation/TotallySpies'': The girls are locked in such a trap by their {{brainwashed}} mothers.
* Happens in the ''WesternAnimation/CodeLyoko'' episode "New Order". XANA locks Yumi and Ulrich in a room and raises the temperature, making it a DeathTrap. Although the real point is to show the two avoiding looking at each other when they are forced to start taking their clothes off; as if their relationship needed any more {{UST}}.

* Subverted in ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', where Fry and Bender rupture a steam pipe in Zapp Brannigan's brig. When they're released, they've kicked back and are initially reluctant to leave.
* Attempted on ''WesternAnimation/InspectorGadget'' in the health spa episode. It happened a second time in the second-series episode "Gadget's Gadgets"; here, the mad Dr. Noodleman had him in there to "loosen his gadgets." The hapless gumshoe saved himself by freezing the sauna with a can of "Refridge-a-Gadget."
* In one of ''WesternAnimation/ThePinkPanther'' show bumpers, Blue Aardvark was shrunk to ant-size by a steam cabinet. Charlie then chased ''him'' around for a while.

* ''WesternAnimation/WeBareBears'': In "Spa Day", Panda gets locked in a sauna with an eccentric old Korean man, and desperately tries to open the door when the old man starts succumbing to heat exhaustion. [[spoiler: Fortunately Panda manages to [[ExplosiveInstrumentation accidentally blow the door open]]. Even more fortunately, the old man turns out to be the sauna owner's father, and out of gratitude Mrs. Chang calls off Grizzly's debt.]]

* In ''Film/{{loverboy}}'', Loverboy attempts to murder Mia by jamming a crowbar under the door of the sauna, cranking the temperature up to max, and sabotaging the controls.

* ''Anime/LupinIIIRedJacket'' episode "[[Recap/LupinIIIS2E19 A Safe Bet]]" has a safemaker's son seeking revenge. In this case, it is one of those enclosed one-person units. Lupin, of course, manages to escape and the kid is expecting as much. The sauna is a warning shot.

* "Literature/TheFoolOfTheWorldAndTheFlyingShip": the tsar locks the fool into his bathhouse and orders the furnace cranked up to kill him. The fool, of course, borrows his friend's straw that can soak up any heat and actually has to try to stay warm in the bathhouse.

* The bizarre WidgetSeries ''Ippatsu Kikimusume'' uses this as one of the many life-and-death situations in which protagonist Kunyan finds herself. Keeping with the series' FinaglesLaw setup, the door isn't locked but she can't open it because both her arms and legs dislocated simultaneously. When she tries to open the door with her mouth, the first attempt bashes her nose against the door and the subsequent nosebleed makes the knob slippery and harder to turn. Yeah, it's that kind of series.

* Downplayed in ''Manga/DailyLifeWithMonsterGirl'' when Killa the [[BeeAfraid killer bee]] attacks Kimihito, Centorea, and Rachnera. They trick her into entering a sauna and lock her in, not to kill her, but just to get her overheated to the point where she stops trying to fight, since high temperatures are her WeaksauceWeakness. The fact that being in there long enough ''could'' kill her is brought up, but not an issue as they let her out before she loses consciousness.

* ''Videogame/OxygenNotIncluded:'' While not exactly a sauna, the same effect of the air growing hot enough to suffocate and even scald is perfectly possible if you're not accounting for heat generation and sources, such as running machinery and outside biomes (especially geysers). Certain enclosed rooms can quickly become deadly, and your entire base slowly so, from the top down.