Tailor-Made Prisons in Western Animation.
- Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: In "Sonic Breakout", Sonic lets himself get captured in order to break a comic artist out of Robotnik's newly constructed prison, but he overestimated Robotnik's stupidity. Point of fact, Robotnik had built an entire specialized wing of the prison just for Sonic: an isolated tower of nuclear-forged steel with a small nuclear-forged steel cell in the center of it to keep Sonic from buzzsawing his way out. And if he does manage to escape the cell, deadly weapons in the ceiling are programmed to activate when their sensors detect anything blue, like Sonic's fur. Robotnik's only mistake is leaving the dimwitted Scratch and Grounder to keep constant guard: Sonic escapes 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, destroying the cell and leaving him free to get away.
- Atomic Puppet:
- Professor Tite-Gripp's prison in the Mega City Maximum Security Prison for the Criminally Motivated resembles any normal jail cell, with the exception of the gargantuan manacles that leave him suspended from the ceiling, intended to prevent him from using his massive bionic arms to smash his way out of jail. However, he's escaped several times, so it seems the cell isn't foolproof (though it may have more to do with the incompetence of the guards and Tite-Gripp taking advantage of mealtime — the only time they unshackle him).
- When the Power Parasite Absorbo Lad is captured by the Justice Alliance, they use a giant juicer-like machine, trapping him inside a glass case and squeezing out superpowers he's stolen in the form of a drink. It doesn't last long, as Absorbo Lad eats the device's wiring to absorb the Justice Alliance fortress' electrical power and escape through electric current.
- As people with Elemental Powers are widespread in Avatar: The Last Airbender, they have to be kept in specialized prison. Most of those shown are used by the Fire Nation:
- The Boiling Rock, which includes firebenders, uses special "cooling cells" to imprison rowdy firebenders. The cells are so cold they couldn't muster up the heat to firebend. Zuko uses his fire breathing to keep warm and remove the fastening bolts from the inside.
- Waterbenders are likewise kept suspended in metal cages far from the ground and water, as well as having hot, dry air pumped in. When they are given water, their arms and legs are fastened. Hama got out by learning to manipulate the blood in living beings.
- Earthbenders are imprisoned on an offshore metal rig. They eventually broke free by using the coal from the boiler room to earthbend. Later, Toph gets trapped in a steel cage, with her captors convinced that she can't escape because she can't bend metal. However, this just helped Toph to discover metalbending. Next time, she was locked up in a prison... made of wood. Thankfully, Katara was with her and she was able to collect enough sweat to waterbend blades that cut through the bars.
- When Omashu surrendered to the Fire Nation, King Bumi (an immensely powerful earthbender) was locked up in a steel box so he couldn't move any of his limbs to bend. This prison failed because Bumi could still move his face.
- Folks in the sequel series The Legend of Korra were able to get around it by making cells from platinum, which doesn't have any of the impurities that make metalbending possible.
- Even airbenders can't escape the Fire Nation's obsession with tailor made prisons. When Aang was captured by General Zhao, he was bound hand and foot in taut chains to avoid him airbending. Though he could still blow with his mouth, he was trapped so completely Zhao threatened they would keep him imprisoned until he died of old age to avoid the hassle of searching for the next Avatar. Good thing the Blue Spirit came along!
- In the third season of Korra, Zaheer and his gang of benders were kept in these by the White Lotus. Earthbender Ghazan was caged on a wooden platform in the middle of the ocean, waterbender Ming-Hua was suspended over a volcano, and firebender P'Li was kept deep underground in a glacier. Zaheer himself was a non-bender and was simply taken to a secluded location high on a mountain. Unfortunately for the White Lotus, he develops the ability to airbend following Harmonic Convergence. This gives him the edge he needs to escape, whereupon he sets out to free his teammates by infiltrating and throwing rocks and vases of water into their cells, giving them the tools for them to immediately break out themself.
- In Book Four, the recaptured Zaheer gets a new and improved one. This time, it's in a large cavern inside a mountain. He is manacled hand and foot and chained to the ground, limiting his movements to a well-defined circle in the center, and the only way in or out is through a double set of massive, bulkhead-like sliding doors that require several metalbenders to lift or lower. He doesn't escape from this one.
- Probably the most dangerous villain in Batman Beyond is Inque. She came closer to killing Terry than any other villain — even Blight — likely did, and he was never able to defeat her alone. She is vulnerable to severe cold, however, so when he apprehended her that way, they figured the best way to hold her was to simply keep her frozen. And it might have held her for good if the guy in charge of watching her hadn't developed a weird crush on her.
- In Ben 10: Omniverse, the Plumbers planned on placing Vilgax in one of these. To prevent Vilgax from manipulating anyone into helping him to escape, the Plumbers were going to send him to an entirely automated prison complex with him as the sole inmate.
- Used against the heroes by the villain in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command — Green-Skinned Space Babe with phasing powers Mira Nova was put in a cell that played loud noises to keep her from concentrating, The Big Guy Booster was stuffed into a cell with bouncy sides so he couldn't break out, and Robot Buddy XR was manacled with all of his limbs extended to their limits. Backfired hilariously, as Booster considered the bouncy cell to be the funnest thing ever (it's the ultimate bounce house), and XR saying Zurg was doing a better job than his chiropractor. Mira meanwhile comments that the alarms are "a little annoying", but hardly torture. Zurg counters that the true torture is seeing her teammates being tortured in front of her, unable to do anything but watch. Mira looks at her teammates having the time of their lives, looks back at him and smirks.
- Parodied in Freakazoid! when Freak ends up not only revealing his weakness to Gutierrez, but also helps build the cage to trap him. Freakazoid kicks himself for it while Gutierrez lampshades it all.
- The Inhumanoids from Inhumanoids were sealed up in their own personal prison at the beginning of the series: Tendril, chained up in an underground cell; D'Compose, petrified in a massive hunk of amber; and Metlar, trapped in another creature's magnetic field.
- In the finale of Justice League, the Thanagarians put the League into these: Superman is put under a red sun lamp to drain his powers; J'onn is encased in a forcefield to stop him shapeshifting or phasing through the walls; Flash is subjected to high gravity so he can't move and build up any speed; and Wonder Woman is tied up in the Lasso of Truth, which she can't break to escape. Wonder Woman is able to escape her cell without breaking the Lasso and release the others.
- Lord Batman creates restraints to hold the League, which League Batman finds impossible to get out of, since his counterpart thought of every trick he would use to escape. He also had some extra precautions, like a shield over Superman's eyes to stop him using his heat vision. However, he only thought of everything Batman would do, and Flash tricks him into letting him out by faking a heart attack.
- Doomsday from Justice League Unlimited was imprisoned in one by Project Cadmus after Justice Lord Superman lobotomized 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.
- Referenced in the Kim Possible episode "Stop Team Go", when Hego reacts to the appearance of an old enemy:Hego: Electronique? You broke out of the specially constructed non-conductive plastic prison?
- There were a couple episodes in the Post-Script Season where other villains broke Shego out of prison (while leaving Drakken behind to rot). Presumably her cell was made tough enough that she couldn't use her powers to break out on her own.
- In the TV series Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness episode 'Owl Be Back', there are two; an owl-shaped cage for Fenghuang, and a panda shaped one for Po when it's feared he's turning evil. It also lampshades the above example from the movie by stating Po "obliterating" Tai Lung put the guards out of work, and one in particular really holds a grudge toward Po about it.
- In ReBoot the heroes create a Firewall to seal off Megabyte's entire infected sector of Mainframe. It works against Megabyte, keeping him imprisoned at least until Enzo's Time Skip. Hexadecimal, on the other hand, easily overloads the Firewall and leaves Mainframe at Megabyte's mercy.
- In Samurai Jack, Lazarus-93 was kept in a prison drifting through outer space. There was an entire crew tasked solely with monitoring it and containing it if it ever broke loose, and onboard was a weapon designed specifically to kill Lazarus if things got out of hand. The prison-spaceship is also designed so that anyone who wanders through the hallways will wind up in random areas of the ship, presumably as a means to keep an escaped Lazarus from emerging outside. This all goes awry when the ship impacts an asteroid — while the ship is physically unharmed from the collision, it sends the ship off course and onto Earth, upon which Lazarus breaks out and kills everyone else on board, requiring Jack and his new friend Ashi to defeat it.
- Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: Professor Pericles is kept in a special isolated cell (visually based on Magneto's cell from the X-Men Film Series) in the maximum security animal asylum.
- The treasure of Crystal Cove is actually a Tailor-Made Prison for the Nibiru Entity. The device that trapped it was also its only connection to our world.
- On The Spectacular Spider-Man, Norman Osborn's company is hired to make these for all the new supervillains (which is ironic, since he was also involved in their creation). Sandman's was designed to use air pressure to keep him from escaping, while Rhino's released tranquilizer gas if he tried. Their escape was due to Electro blowing the power to the whole prison.
- In "Opening Night", we see Rhino and Mark/Molten Man in a separate area of the prison. Presumably this means that Mark's cell is also designed specially, but we do not see how. (Not that it makes much difference, since he can't control his power anyway.)
- In Spider-Man: The Animated Series, it's revealed that Captain America and the Red Skull have been stuck in what is one of these, "outside of time", since the ending days of WWII. When they get released, Skull gets back to his old shenanigans, and is such a hassle that Cap makes a Heroic Sacrifice by dragging him back into the machine that sent them into the pocket dimension all over again.
- Dr. Octopus was kept in a prison cell that were made to hold his tentacles.
- Superman: The Animated Series:
- Livewire got an electrically insulated cell. She escaped when a ditzy janitor let her borrow his tape player.
- Superman in the DCAU has several point been held up in cells that had red sun light sent in to cancel out his powers. When Hawkgirl betrayed the team in Justice League, each of the team was put in a personalized cell to counter their powers, as mentioned above.
- Fire-based super villain Volcana got this treatment. Her cell was a hermetically sealed vacuum filled with fire-retardent gases, with the only source of oxygen being a face mask hooked up to a tube, which can be cut off if she gets any ideas.
- Teen Titans (2003):
- When we are first introduced to Plasmus, his human form is submerged inside a tank full of a green liquid, completely unconscious, because as soon as he is removed from said tank and wakes up he transforms into a huge purple monster that starts destroying everything in its path.
- When the Hive Five are hunting Kid Flash, Madame Rouge specifically instructs them to not feed him or speak to him, and to hold him in a "level 4 containment field" at all times. Unfortunately, this conversation happens after they've captured him and are keeping him in a regular cage, which he phased out of several times to grab food, having completely missed that he can phase through solid matter.
- The Electric Eel on Underdog was captured in a large glass jar, which neutralized his "electric shocking power".
- In an episode of X-Men: Evolution, Professor X is called away to deal with a situation at the Tailor-Made Prison holding his brother (usually best known as the Juggernaut), whose security has been tampered with. Since the prisoner's supervillain name often gets prefixed with "the unstoppable" for very good reason, he's kept asleep in a liquid-filled tank without his helmet and still chained up just in case. Tension mounts when the safeguards need to be shut down and restarted properly, which allows him to start waking up... but while he does snap his chains without even trying hard, he's rendered unconscious again at just about the last moment before he can really start to move. (It turns out that the whole threat of Juggernaut getting loose was merely a distraction to get the Professor out of the way, allowing a shapeshifted Mystique to infiltrate the school and acquire Cerebro's files on the X-Men without getting caught.)
