History Main / TheHedgeOfThorns

* In some variants of tale type Aarne-Thompson-Uther (ATU) 425B, "The Son of the Witch" (e.g., ''Myth/{{CupidAndPsyche}}''), after the heroine finds her husband after an arduous quest, her mother-in-law forces her on hard tasks, one of which is to pay a visit to another witch. The path to the witch is fraught with dangers, among with a path of thorny branches.

* ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime3Corruption'' has the aptly-named Thorn Jungle area of planet Bryyo.

Note: the Hedge can also be a ''catch-all'' term for lands belonging to the Fae, such as the TheLostWoods.

** While running from a serial killer, Owen trips and falls a [[IFellForHours long way down]] a cliff in "[[Recap/TotalDramaHookLineAndScreamer Hook, Line and Screamer]]". He hits various objects that are as painful as they are out-of-place during the descent, among which a thornbush.

* ''VideoGame/Rayman2TheGreatEscape'' has them in The Menhir Hills, The Sanctuary of Rock and Lava and Beneath the Sanctuary of Rock and Lava. The ones in The Menhir Hills require using a walking shell to get past, while in the latter two levels they simply act as obstacles, killing Rayman on contact.

* ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'': A tangle of giant thorny vines is one of Mechanisburg's outer defenses, and can be induced to burst from the ground and form an impassable wall around the city. After the TimeSkip, the vines have overrun most of the outer town, preventing outsiders from entering it and growing back as fast as they are cut.

* The saberleaf savannahs from ''WebOriginal/HamstersParadise'' is a variant: due to the abundance of efficient grazing herbivores on the planet, the saberleaf grass evolves razor-sharp leaves and stems that can injure herbivores trying to eat it, and in grasslands where saberleaf dominates the only animals that can survive are those equipped with tough skins and hard hooves the protect their bodies from injury.

* ''Thomas the Rhymer'': The path of righteousness is a "narrow road, so thick beset with thorns and briars", difficult compared to the [[EvilIsEasy broad and inviting road of wickedness]]. Faerie is down another, [[BlueAndOrangeMorality completely separate]] road.

** In the 5th Edition, black and green dragons cause plant life to warp into The Hedge in the vicinity of their lairs. The effect only fades after the dragon has been killed or driven off. Portions of the Feywild are also described as this, as is the entirety of the Shadowfell.
** One of the first evil-infested locales ever described for a D&D adventure, the Caves of Chaos, encompassed a rocky ravine approachable through a briar-choked forest of forbidding thorny tangles.

* A really tall, thick and well-tended hedgerow can be a formidable obstacle to a burglar or an angry mob and seriously inconvenience an advancing army. It's difficult to cut through or climb over without making a lot of noise, catapult or cannon-fire will go through it without doing any serious damage and suitably thorny plants will do an excellent impression of barbed wire. Common hedge components like hawthorn or hazel don't burn very well either, and that's assuming [[RealityEnsues you can manage to set them alight.]]

** In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsI'', Maleficent recreates her thorn hedge on a much smaller scale in a tower in Hollow Bastion, where it's possible to run up some of the thorny vines to avoid some of her dragon form's attacks. ** In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'', Maleficent fills Disney Castle's Hall of the Cornerstone with thorns as the start of her attempt to corrupt the place with darkness.

* ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep'': [[WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty Maleficent]] creates her hedge of thorns in preparation for her boss fight. Said thorn forest reappears in [[VideoGame/KingdomHearts02BirthBySleepAFragmentaryPassage the sequel]], where it's nearly all that's left of that particular world now that it's been pulled into [[EldritchLocation the Realm of Darkness]] and fallen prey to TheHeartless. Maleficent later recreates her thorn hedge on a much smaller scale in Hollow Bastion in ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsI''.

* The first arc of the ''[[Anime/SailorMoon Sailor Stars]]'' anime had Usagi having to go through one of these to reach Queen Nehellenia's castle while she's barefoot in her civilian form.
* The "Briar Rose" spell from ''Manga/MagicalRecordLyricalNanohaForce'' summons one of these. Like the one from the spell's [[Literature/SleepingBeauty namesake fairy tale]], it impedes the path of those trying to enter the place it was summoned in and could completely engulf those who let their guard down within the affected area.
* The ''Anime/GrimmsFairyTaleClassics'' versions of ''Literature/{{Rapunzel}}'', ''The Iron Stove'', ''Sleeping Beauty/Princess Briar Rose'' and other Grimm tales use this trope. In ''Rapunzel'' the Prince is blinded as he falls on it, in ''Iron Stove'' the Princess must go past hers to save her prince [[spoiler: and it turns out to be an illusion]], in ''Briar Rose'' the thorns and vines catch anyone but later split when the destined Prince arrives, etc.
* In ''Manga/TheAncientMagusBride'', the titular mage Elias Ainsworth is nicknamed "Thorn Magus" or "Child of Thorns" for a good reason. A black hedge of thorns often appears around him when he casts his spells, and while sometimes it's [[BattleAura just a cosmetic effect]], he can also send these thorny brambles to attack his foes.

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* Once the Wolfrider elves in ''ComicBook/ElfQuest'' establish a new Holt, their tree-shaper, Redlance, creates a thorn wall surrounding the area which only he can create a path through, to protect them from intrusion by unfriendly humans.
* In ''ComicBook/{{Fables}}'', whenever Briar Rose (aka Sleeping Beauty) pricks her finger on a needle, it triggers the curse and puts her and everyone in the building/her vicinity to sleep, and then a hedge of thorns will grow.

* Literature/SleepingBeauty's castle is surrounded by roses. Many princes have met miserable ends in them.
* The heroine of "Mary's Child" is cast out into the wilderness, where she is confined by thick, thorny hedges that she cannot break through. Fortunately, a king who was out hunting cut through the hedges with his sword and freed her.

* The thorn bushes growing around Stefan's castle in ''WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty'', put there by Maleficent to try and keep Prince Philip from reaching Aurora.

* Film/{{Maleficent}} magically creates one to defend the Moors. King Stefan later follows her example, except his version is made of [[ColdIron iron]].
* ''Film/TheSatanicRitesOfDracula'' found a novel way of polishing off the Count: luring him into a tangled hawthorn thicket. Hawthorn being (at least according to Van Helsing) what Christ's crown of thorns was made from, the spiky branches prove as effective as holy water would've been.
* Invoked in ''Film/PansLabyrinth'', when Ofelia tells a story about a mountain covered in thorns whose poison makes a single scratch lethal. The thorns never show up in the movie's main plot, but feed into the story's themes of fear keeping people within preset boundaries.

* A hedge also separates the faerie world from the normal world in Creator/{{Robin McKinley}}'s ''The Door in the Hedge.'' In that case, it's a fairly normal hedge.
* In ''Literature/SummerKnight'', near the end of the story a Fey conjures up a nasty, poisonous hedge to keep Harry from interfering.
* In ''Literature/OneForTheMorningGlory'', Amatus invokes this as an analogy of their situation.

* In Teresa Frohock's ''Literature/MiserereAnAutumnTale'', the Rosa acts as this. Fortunately it's one of the good guys.
* Interestingly, in the traditional poem ''Thomas the Rhymer'', it's not Faerie, but the path of righteousness that is a "narrow road, so thick beset with thorns and briars", difficult compared to the [[EvilIsEasy broad and inviting road of wickedness]]. Faerie is down another, [[BlueAndOrangeMorality completely separate]] road.
* In Creator/EDBaker's ''Literature/TheWideAwakePrincess'', Annie is nearly caught in the hedge of roses that grows up to encircle the castle while her sister sleeps.
* In the Literature/{{Shannara}} series by Creator/TerryBrooks, the Druid castle of Paranor is protected by a poisonous hedge. Some parts are actually illusions, and passable, but usually a druid guide is required to find them.

* The magical hedge surrounding the Beast's abode in ''VideoGame/KingsQuestVIHeirTodayGoneTomorrow''.

** Introduced as a level theme in ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry2DiddysKongQuest'', which has a few levels set entirely in brambles. They really do act as a test of character, because they're all [[ThatOneLevel really freakin' difficult]].

* In ''VideoGame/DontStarve'''s Hamlet expansion, brambles appear during the Lush Season which are essentially thorn barriers that require the player to chop through as they do damage.
* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' has a pair of dungeons called Razorfen Kraul and Razorfen Downs that are both built under a network of huge, thorny trunks. The occupants aren't [[TheFairFolk faeries]], though: they're [[AlwaysChaoticEvil savage]] [[PigMan boar-people]], and the thorns aren't all that difficult for a player to get through.
* ''VideoGame/WarcraftIII'' has Thorns Aura, which causes enemy melee units to hurt themselves when attacking allied units (strangely enough, the Night Elves' buildings are trees but lack this feature, while the orcs have their Spiked Barricades upgrade for this effect).
* In ''VideoGame/BrainDead13'', this hedge of thorns has formed a giant maze, and they can be deadly: In one death scene, if Lance goes the wrong way, he will accidentally run into the thorny hedge and [[StrippedToTheBone come back out as a skeleton]]; in another, if he goes through the wrong gate and is trapped, a tentacle vine will grab him while he tries to get out and pull him into the hedge.

* This happens in the second part of one of the levels in ''VideoGame/DragonsLair: Time Warp''. After the fall of Eden, numerous thorny branches start sprouting all over the place.
* ''VideoGame/TheCatInTheHat'' has a few. They are traversed within a moveable bubble.
* ''VideoGame/ZorkGrandInquisitor'' has one blocking the way to the Dungeon Master's Lair. The rank undergrowth prevents eastward movement!
* Many of the levels in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioWorldPiranhaIsland'' contain sections where Mario has to avoid thorns, but [=StarMan=] Muncher is hard because Mario has to rely on the power of the Starman powerup to get through a thorny maze in a limited amount of time.
* ''VideoGame/TalesOfHearts'': The legend central to the story is a fairy tale about a sleeping princess in a forest of thorns. However, the twist is that it is not, in fact, a literal hedge. [[spoiler:the Forest of Thorns is a codename used to identify an ancient control unit known as the Mysticete. It also happens to be the Flying Whale worshiped by the church and the place where Lithia's physical body has been preserved in stasis, since it's a remnant of a very advanced alien civilization that was destroyed 2,000 years before the game's time.]]
* In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep'', [[WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty Maleficent]] creates her hedge of thorns in preparation for her boss fight. Said thorn forest reappears in [[VideoGame/KingdomHearts02BirthBySleepAFragmentaryPassage the sequel]], where it's nearly all that's left of that particular world now that it's been pulled into [[EldritchLocation the Realm of Darkness]] and fallen prey to TheHeartless. Maleficent later recreates her thorn hedge on a much smaller scale in Hollow Bastion in ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsI''.

* Sleeping Beauty from ''VideoGame/SINoALICE'' is often seen with purple thornlike appendages around her, referencing the hedge of thorns preventing the prince from reaching her in her legend. It's also what keeps her upright during battle.

* In ''Webcomic/NoRestForTheWicked'', [[http://www.forthewicked.net/archive/03i-01.html Prince Ricardo tackles one.]]
* ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'': A large robotic version makes up one of Castle Heterodyne's defences.

* The Hedge from ''TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost'', which is the border between the "real world" and the fae world of Arcadia (not in any way to be confused with [[{{Arcadia}} the trope of the same name]]). There are actual thorns and a wide variety of other dangerous features, including living creatures, and it's generally an unhealthy place to be. Oh, and getting dragged through those thorns as a human rips your soul to pieces, which you then ([[UnreliableNarrator possibly]]) only gather together once you escape from Arcadia.

* In 5th Edition ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', black and green dragons cause plant life to warp into The Hedge in the vicinity of their lairs. The effect only fades after the dragon has been killed or driven off. Portions of the Feywild are also described as this, as is the entirety of the Shadowfell.

* ''VideoGame/Rayman2'' has them in The Menhir Hills, The Sanctuary of Rock and Lava and Beneath the Sanctuary of Rock and Lava. The ones in The Menhir Hills require using a walking shell to get past, while in the latter two levels they simply act as obstacles, killing Rayman on contact.

[[quoteright:350:[[Disney/SleepingBeauty https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sleeping_beauty_hedge.jpg]]]]

* The thorn bushes growing around Stefan's castle in ''Disney/SleepingBeauty'', put there by Maleficent to try and keep Prince Philip from reaching Aurora.

* In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep'', [[Disney/SleepingBeauty Maleficent]] creates her hedge of thorns in preparation for her boss fight. Said thorn forest reappears in [[VideoGame/KingdomHearts02BirthBySleepAFragmentaryPassage the sequel]], where it's nearly all that's left of that particular world now that it's been pulled into [[EldritchLocation the Realm of Darkness]] and fallen prey to TheHeartless. Maleficent later recreates her thorn hedge on a much smaller scale in Hollow Bastion in ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsI''.

* A really tall, thick and well-tended hedgerow can be a formidable obstacle to a burglar or an angry mob and seriously inconvenience an advancing army. It's difficult to cut through or climb over without making a lot of noise, catapult or cannon-fire will go through it without doing any serious damage and suitably thorny plants will do an excellent impression of barbed wire. Common hedge components like hawthorn or hazel don't burn very well either, and that's assuming [[RealityEnsues you can even set them alight.]]

* A really tall, thick and well-tended hedgerow can be a formidable obstacle to a burglar or an angry mob and seriously inconvenience an advancing army. It's difficult to cut through or climb over without making a lot of noise, catapult or cannon-fire will go through it without doing any serious damage and suitably thorny plants will do an excellent impression of barbed wire. Common hedge components like hawthorn or hazel don't burn very well either.
* French Bocage country, consisting of fields demarkated by hedgerows planted on top of rubble walls. A significant impediment to military operations in WWII.

* In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep'', [[Disney/SleepingBeauty Maleficent]] creates her hedge of thorns in preparation for her boss fight. Said thorn forest reappears in [[VideoGame/KingdomHearts02AFragmentaryPassage the sequel]], where it's nearly all that's left of that particular world now that it's been pulled into [[EldritchLocation the Realm of Darkness]] and fallen prey to TheHeartless. Maleficent later recreates her thorn hedge on a much smaller scale in Hollow Bastion in ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsI''.

* In ''VideoGame/DontStarve's Hamlet expansion, brambles appear during the Lush Season which are essentially thorn barriers that require the player to chop through as they do damage.

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* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' has The Eliminator, featured in the Season 8 episode "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson". It serves as a final test for the cadets of the military school, and consists in a rope euspended several feet over a thick bush of thorn-filled brambles. All cadets (Including Bart and Lisa) must go through it.

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