No OSHA Compliance / Webcomics

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• 8-Bit Theater gives us the most dangerous thing in the dungeon.
• Subverted in Antihero for Hire when Dragon and Crossroad fight on a walkway over vats of acid that turn out to be empty.
• Cursed Princess Club: When the Plaid Princes take the Pastel Princesses on a date to an amusement park haunted house, Lorena and Gwendolyn accidentally knock out one of the Monster Clown actors (and Lorena is said to have knocked out several more offscreen afterward). Blaine and Lance suggest that maybe they should exit before things get worse, only for them to see a sign that says "NO EXIT UNTIL THE END OF THE HAUNTED HOUSE". Real life haunted houses do have clearly marked exits throughout the building in case of situations like someone passing out (as well as for other emergencies like a fire).
• Darths & Droids: lampshades it, like every trope that's appeared in Star Wars. And again here, with inversion: the only places they have railings are the ones where a fall would likely not be fatal.
  • Which is probably the reason there are railings: If you survive, you can file an official complaint.
    • But then again, your grievance would probably be addressed by Vader himself which is even more dangerous to your continued existence.
• DM of the Rings on Lothlórien:
  Handrail technology, guys. Look into it.
• Drowtales: Elevators in this setting usually don't have walls or handrails, and several characters have or have come close to dying because of it.
• In El Goonish Shive, the "Paranormal Things That Are Of Little Use To Anyone Storage Facility" or PTTAOLUTASF appears to be so low priority that some of its windows don't even have glass.
• Girl Genius has the quasi-overlord of Europe using Castle Heterodyne as a prison. The Castle is run by a fragmented artificial intelligence that interprets every order creatively as to cause the most death. This Castle is Ax-Crazy, it's inventive, and worst of all, it likes to think it has a sense of humor. Very rarely do the inmates actually complete their sentences. The Castle itself actually does employ some safety measures, primarily railings, but at the same time it has poison dispensers (clearly labelled) that are designed to curb illiteracy, giant killer jack-in-the-boxes in the nursery, a killer plant sitting in an open atrium, and a giant roaring fire consuming a section of the castle's basement. Considering the place was the home base of a family line of the most insane and violent Mad Scientists in history, the Heterodynes generally deliberately designed it that way. It should be noted that a major part of why the castle was so dangerous was because the AI was fragmented: a fairly common occurrence would be that a prisoner is sent somewhere by fragment A so that the prisoner can do repairs, only to be killed by fragment B who thinks that the prisoner is unauthorized and up to something that must be stopped. The rate of repair increased dramatically after Agatha killed all the fragments and reloaded a single fragment from backup so that there was only one mind controlling the facility.
• In Gunnerkrigg Court, the first-year students' dorm rooms are stacked directly atop each other like bunks — 30 stories high. They can only be reached by ladder, and there is neither wall nor railing on the side with the drop. The unlined bridge over the Annan Waters, on the other hand, is actually justified: any railing would cast a shadow, which would allow the Glass-Eyed Men to cross. To offset the danger, it's at least twelve feet wide, so the only way to fall off is to be pushed.
  • Apparently, this is a running joke. The second year (year 8) dorms are basically a treehouse with a narrow walkway suspended quite high up. And check out this glowing endorsement of the year 9 dorms.
  Your dorm this year is a retrofitted sub-aquatic deep sea oil drilling platform prototype. Please refer to the provided instruction manual for essential information on your new habitat. Above all, please be aware that your new dorm is perfectly safe!
• The proto-webcomic Henchmen introduces the concept of the Health and Danger Department, working on the logic that the best possible fighting force is one in peak physical condition and constant mortal danger. Hence deliberately moving walkways over vats of toxic waste and whacking the poor henchmen about the head with a cricket bat while they fill in a "Risk-Awareness Test" form.
• The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! has the peanut butter factory: a walkway over a huge open vat of peanut butter. At least it has railings.
• Irregular Webcomic! spoofs lack of railings and Tolkien in this comic.
  • There's also this.
• Minions At Work repeatedly invokes and discusses this — like here (the minion had said it needed handrails).
  • Management has rejected our request for bulletproof vests, handrails on the catwalks, less-explosive patrol vehicles, or a safety cover on the "self-destruct" button.
• In Nip and Tuck, the Show Within a Show Rebel Cry features an attempt to avert an attack -- impossible because their unessential reactors were shut down by regulations.
• Penny Arcade plays with it.
• Quentyn Quinn, Space Ranger had an arc poking fun at Star Trek, where the protagonist horrified by their ideas of safety and security, about from the moment he flew into a hangar of Enterprise expy and on... and on. It took two days of patching supervised by his AI to make him wear on this board something other than a spacesuit.
  Quentyn: Sorry, Captain. Old ranger cadet rule #1: "No matter how shiny the forcefield is, keep your helmet on until the airlock is closed."
• The classic short webcomic series The Repository of Dangerous Things has a hilariously OSHA-noncompliant workspace as its chief element. See, for example, the pantry.
• Schlock Mercenary:
  • Athletes are blown to bits in the course of a normal game. Thanks to 31st century medical technology, however, that's just Amusing Injuries.
  • Petey's GalHub cities don't have very many railings, because he's a nigh-omniscient AI who can use fine gravity control to catch anyone who goes over the side.
  • Much later on, there's also the NUSPI, an old bit of Lost Technology that, while quite effective once its full potential is discovered, has the downside of heavily irradiating the entire compartment the weapon is housed in. The acronym stands for No User-Serviceable Parts Inside; they didn't test it out much for this exact reason.
    Ennesby: We fired it. Once.
    Sorley: Who built this, and are they in prison yet?
• The building containing various Secret Government Departments in Skin Horse. Lampshade Hanging:
  Tip: It's a nightmare of fungus, radiation, uncased asbestos and weird thing skittering. OSHA would have a fit if they were cleared to come down here.
  • Meanwhile, in-house security at black-ops agency Anasigma involves basically every lethal device you can imagine, and some you can't.
  Nera: [staring at giant swinging scythe] Why do people even work here?
• The Snail Factory features industrial accidents as a recurring theme. In one episode it's even revealed that the factory saves money by not having guardrails around an open vat and allowing workers to fall in, thus increasing "the protein levels".
• S.S.D.D. lampshades and justifies this with Collective of Anarchist States Fabrication Site 12. The factory is completely automated, so there usually aren't people there to begin with. More importantly, the unstable A.I running the place does not like dealing with visitors, especially advisors and has Vetinari Job Security so she includes egregious safety violations to serve as Schmuck Bait. One inspector notes how suspicious this is and is killed for it.
• Star Mares, like every other parody of Star Wars, makes a comment on the inability of Imperial planners to consider workplace safety in their designs. The ponies who work in 'The Pit' have submitted numerous requests to install simple safety rails in their wonky-gravity chamber and are repeatedly denied because it isn't in the budget and the safety measures would probably get eaten by the Pit's occupant anyway.
• Zigzags in The Whiteboard. Paintball safety is a Serious Business (as in real life), with preemptive Amusing Injuries to violators (referees use tasers, mallets, staplers and duct tape); a oneshot character routinely violating safety rules wears an eyepatch. When it comes to other activities of Doc and Roger, they honestly try to comply with rules, with mixed results. Their coffee maker requires boiler operator's license, thus Sandy and Pirta cannot use it. Their nuclear reactors had to be kept secret until they finished the paperwork, and they still cannot be used for heating. Experimenting with time resulted in The Men in Black confiscating everything dangerous-looking. And sometimes Doc and Roger get carried away by prospects of More Dakka. This includes fireworks, custom paintball guns and Doc's cooking explosives.

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