History Main / TailorMadePrison

* Used against the heroes ''by'' the villain in ''WesternAnimation/BuzzLightyearOfStarCommand'' - GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe with phasing powers Mira Nova was put in a cell that played loud noises to keep her from concentrating, TheBigGuy Booster was stuffed into a cell with bouncy sides so he couldn't break out, and RobotBuddy XR was manacled with all of his limbs extended to their limits. Backfired hilariously, when Mira dismissed the sound as "a little annoying", Booster considered the bouncy cell to be the ''funnest thing ever'', and XR saying Zurg was doing a better job than his chiropractor.

* ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'': [[BigBad All For One's]] cell in the Tartaros prison has him restrained in a chamber full of weapons that will fire on him all at once if he so much tries to use his Quirk.

* As might be expected [[AndIMustScream based on the source material]], ''VideoGame/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream'' heavily features this trope. [[BigBad AM]] keeps its five human prisoners trapped in specially-made cells that reinforce their own personal hells (Ellen, for example, is sealed inside an elevator car that's painted yellow, reflecting [[spoiler: her being raped by a man dressed in yellow inside an elevator]]. Later, AM expands the cells into full-on virtual reality simulations of the group's worst nightmares; players are tasked with choosing the right actions to overcome AM's traps and beat the insane computer at his own game.

* In ''Film/SupermanTheMovie'', General Zod, his wife and brother are trapped in a sheet of glass that's impervious to everything except a nuclear explosion.
** That sheet of glass is a literal window into the Phantom Zone.

* In ''Film/SkyHigh2005'', villains are kept within stark white prisons with [[PowerNullifier power nullifiers]] trained on them.

** ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1987'': When the Sangree Empire captured "Julia" of Daxam they tore out her eyes and stuck her in restraints that depowered her, while keeping her on display to the slaves on Hope's End as a warning against trying to revolt.
** When the Amazons imprison Circe her cell is a garden of plants that nullify magic, and is in a prison on a small floating island semi-detached from reality making escape incredibly difficult all of those imprisoned there.

** The eponymous creature in ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime'' was trapped in the impact crater by a forcefield erected by the Chozo. In the NTSC version of the game, Space Pirates accidentally free it by digging under the forcefield and take it to be studied, although it escapes and returns to its lair. This was RetConned in the PAL and Trilogy versions where it never got out. Samus has to collect the artifacts needed to open a passage into the crater and kill it.

[[RuleOfDrama Eventually the villain will break out]], but to be fair to the prison's designer, they usually can't escape on their own.

They might [[EvilIsNotAToy get some help]] from [[BreakingOutTheBoss their henchmen]], some UnwittingPawn, or an ill-advised upstart villain exploiting the prison's FantasticFragility. The purpose of the Tailor-Made Prison in a story is usually one to give a villain street cred: they must be ''really'' bad to merit it. Also, a previous BigBad can be considered to be CommutingOnABus when in the prison. They’re being kept around with a plausible reason to be [[OrcusOnHisThrone cooling their heels]] instead of raising hell and can be sprung out when dramatically convenient. Considering that any villain who merits such attention very likely has JokerImmunity in a world of {{Cardboard Prison}}s, the builders of the place may be fully aware that this is a temporary solution but hope it will give them, at least, a few months of peace.

* Despite being an infamous CardboardPrison, Arkham Asylum is actually partially built on being a tailor made prison for the psychos of Gotham. For example, the crazed serial killer Zsasz is permanently restrained due to his AxCrazy psyche, Poison Ivy is kept in a glass prison with no space for her to control plants to break herself out, and Mr. Freeze is given a modified meat locker for his cold body. Not that any of these ever stop the more unpredictable criminals like SelfDemonstrating/TheJoker from breaking out at will more easily than the power specific villains.

* ''Literature/LegacyOfTheDragokin'': Zarracka has a custom-made cell to negate her ice powers. It has successfully held her for ten years [[spoiler: and she never escapes from it. Her jailer, Daniar, was so paranoid about her breaking free while she was gone, that she took the IcePerson with her to another country and she escaped from a weaker cell.]]

* The ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'' makes these, both for anomalies which are dangerous to humanity and for harmless anomalies which would break the {{Masquerade}} if they got loose. The prisons can range from as extreme as keeping a [[HealingFactor regenerating]] OmnicidalManiac immersed in a vat of concentrated hydrochloric acid to as minor as fencing off areas where weird stuff happen.

** Carl Draper, at times The Master Jailer, or Deathtrap, was originally the architect of a tailor-made prison for Superman's convicted criminal enemies, who could not be kept in in a standard prison. The prisoner's own powers were used to keep each other locked up. This fell apart when Draper got mad that no one -nor even Comicbook/LanaLang, who he was obsessed with- acknowledged his work, and he became a threat to Superman - ironically the only person gave him credit for his work and skill- and even Comicbook/{{Supergirl}}.

[[caption-width-right:350:"You know this plastic prison can't hold [[ComicBook/{{Magneto}} me]] forever, Charles."]]

* The criminal alien Jeanio from ''Series/TokusouSentaiDekaranger'' (and his ''Series/PowerRangersSPD'' counterpart) gets this as his punishment; as he has the ability to escape into the reflection of any mirrored surface, he was eventually captured on a planet devoid of any starlight and kept in a pitch-black cell with all mirrors removed surrounded by guards wearing matte sunglasses. Black duct tape is used to cover anything metal (such as an SPD badge) on your clothing. He escaped by forcing one of the Rangers (whose family was killed by him) to cry and escaping in his tear's reflection.

* Disney's ''Disney/{{Hercules}}'' sees Zeus imprison the Titans in an undersea vault in the prologue; the vault only becomes visible and vulnerable when the planets align, and even then, only another god could release the seal.

* Baal of the ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}}'' universe was imprisoned in a soulstone along with his two brothers. His, however, cracked and in order to contain him it was driven into the mind of the mage Tal Rasha, who would engage in an eternal Battle of Wills with the Prime Evil. On top of that, Tal Rasha was chained both literally and magically inside a very tightly sealed tomb in the middle of a killer desert. It didn't end well. On the other hand, it was apparently the only prison of the three that wasn't subverted from within by the Prime Evils- sucks to be Tal Rasha, but it ''did'' keep Baal trapped until Diablo showed up to break him out.

[[caption-width-right:350:[[JokerImmunity "You know this plastic prison can't hold me forever, Charles."]]]]

* ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'': [[QuirkyMinibossSquad Team Rocket]] has a long history of locking [[ShockAndAwe Pikachu]] in cages made of glass, plastic, rubber or other non-conductive material. Sometimes he can break out on his own, though usually he needs help from the others.

* ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'': [[BigBad All For One's]] cell in the Tartaros prison has him restrained in a chamber full of weapons that will fire on him all at once if he so much tries to use his Quirk.

* Chapter 8 of FanFic/VengeanceOfTheStar reveals that Twilight herself set one up in the abandoned Diamond Dog mines, run by Starlight Glimmer. Said prison has various collars for certain criminals, as well as five separate levels for them depending on their crimes. Not only are the prisoners stripped of their Cuties Marks, but hey are also shackled with limiter collars (which keeps non-pony criminals in line as well). The prison itself is also practically inescapable, and trying to flee is a death sentence for Black Collars (who are on the death penalty anyway), as the Dazzlings who patrol the moat are allowed to eat the black collars if they ever try to. Any other color prisoners are immediately hypnotized by their songs and sent back to the prison. Past the moat is an entire forest full of plunder vines that will capture and ensnare prisoners (or rather anyone not wearing Royal Guard Armor) the moment they get too close, draining their magic and leaving them easy to capture when the guards make their rounds. Being a pegasus (or any flying creature) makes no difference since there are spiked clouds in the the prison's airspace that are enchanted to gravitate towards prisoners, ensnaring them before shocking them into unconsciousness.

* In ''WesternAnimation/AllDogsGoToHeaven'', Anne-Marie ends up in what amounts to a gigantic bird cage suspended over an almost bottomless pit at one point.
* Disney's ''Disney/{{Hercules}}'' sees the Titans released from the undersea vault Zeus imprisoned them in.

* Creator/IsaacAsimov published books that were a collection of short stories. One involved an alien species trying to deal with an alien murderer and considered the constrictive prison to be inhumane. They created a much larger building for that alien to reside in, with food deliveries through a [[TubeTravel Pneumatic Tube system]], and no way out other than a fatal 50 foot drop. The prisoner opened its wings and flew away.

* In Peter Hamilton's ''Literature/CommonwealthSaga'' novels, very serious but non-capital crimes are punished by a one-way trip to the surface of a prison world, which is much the same as being cast back into the Stone Age, as there is no real civilisation or technology. No visitors, and a military blockade ensures no rescuers will get close enough to even see the world.

** In ''Harvest of Time'' by Alistair Reynolds, a Third Doctor and UNIT story, the Master is imprisoned in a windowless cell which is usually submerged in water at the bottom of a disused nuclear power station which is still notably radioactive. The radioactivity doesn't affect Time Lords, but it discourages visitors from hanging about long enough to be hypnotised.

** [[spoiler: Demonreach]] is revealed to be this in ''Literature/ColdDays'', with Dresden having unwittingly become the Warden in ''Literature/TurnCoat'' - he thought that it was just an ordinary, if horrifyingly powerful and creepy, GeniusLoci powered by a very strong dark Ley Line. As it turns out, it's the ultimate super-max for dark gods and immortals, with each inmate getting their own CrystalPrison, and it was built in both space ''and'' time (and, [[TheSmartGuy Bob]] - who's initially stumped by it and has to have it dumbed down significantly to get it, before dumbing it down further for Harry - implies, several dimensions beyond that), its defences are so strong that once Harry works them out, he's pretty confident (but not totally certain) that he can take ''Mab'' while on the island, with a physical embodiment of it being theoretically capable of imprisoning her. Oh, and if it's ever broken open, it'll trigger 'the Banefire', an explosion that would apparently take out approximately half of the Mid-Western United States. This is {{Justified}}: it's a prison so hard that ''six'' borderline {{Physical God}}s are in ''minimum security'', with seven apparently infinite tunnels full of dark gods and {{Eldritch Abomination}}s.

* ''Literature/LegacyOfTheDragokin'': Zarracka has a custom made cell to negate her ice powers. It has successfully held her for ten years [[spoiler: and she never escapes from it. Her jailer, Daniar, was so paranoid about her breaking free while she was gone, that she took the IcePerson with her to another country and she escaped from a weaker cell.]]

* ''Literature/TortallUniverse'': In ''Literature/TheImmortals'' and ''Literature/TheNumairChronicles'', there are rooms in the Carthaki university and the palace that completely cancel out magic abilities. Particularly unruly students are threatened with a stay in these rooms. In ''Emperor Mage'', Daine is locked in one of those rooms by Emperor Ozorne. It ensures that the Tortallan mages can't find her... but does nothing whatsoever to cancel out her wild magic, allowing her to escape.

* Dr. Robotnik builds one of these for Sonic in the ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfSonicTheHedgehog'' episode, "Sonic Breakout". Sonic lets himself get captured in order to break a comic artist out of Robotnik's prison when said artist drew a comic making fun of him, but his plan backfires when Robotnik's specialized prison wing is meticulously designed to counter every one of his abilities and activate upon seeing his blue fur. [[spoiler:He still escapes in the end by duping the system's color-trigger with a poster of himself taped to Grounder's back, which causes the security system to attack Grounder and Scratch, leaving him to get away]].

** Doomsday from ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueUnlimited'' was imprisoned in one by Project Cadmus after Justice Lord {{Superman}} lobotomised him, as he was literally impossible to kill. He escapes from it with the help of a wronged minor villain, goes right back to getting his revenge on Superman, is encased in magma from a volcanic eruption, and banished to the Phantom Zone.

** Book 1 mentions the Raft, SHIELD's new specially designed super-max for heavyweight superhumans, on a couple of occasions, comparing it to a purpose-built Azkaban (minus the Dementors) before revealing it in the sequel. It has specially designed cells for current inmates [[FlyingBrick Count Nefaria]], the Abomination, the Leader, the Absorbing Man, the Juggernaut. They also have special cells prepared for [[MagnificentBastard Lucius Malfoy]], [[EvilGenius Arnim]] [[BrainUploading Zola]], [[SuperSoldier Baron Zemo]], and - in case he pulls another FaceHeelTurn - ComicBook/Magneto. There's also one for ComicBook/TheHulk, at Bruce's own request, just in case. It also ends up temporarily holding Sabretooth and the Winter Guard. While the latter very quickly escape, it was part of a BatmanGambit by Nick Fury.