Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples|suf=s}}

* ''[[Digimon Adventure]]'' managed to fit this trope. Despite, you know, a lack of any reason for sewers to exist in the digital world. But then, that's the digital world for you.

** Considering that the digital world includes such gems of architecture as an upside-down, physics-defying pyramid, an improbably large sewer is the least of their engineering problems.

* In one episode of ''[[Kimba the White Lion]]'', Kimba accidentally gets himself lost in the sewer system in Paris and then has to fight an elderly leopard that has been thought as a monster living in the sewers.

 

* As mentioned above, the New York (and London, and Chicago) sewers are home to the Morlocks in ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]''.

** The original Morlock Tunnels in New York were not sewers or storm drains at all, but a long-abandoned Army construction project originally intended to serve as a mass fallout shelter and then abandoned partway through construction due to cancellation of funding.

*** It's sequel ''[[Batman: Dark Victory]]'' has Two-Face, Joker, Scarecrow, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy...yeah, basically the sewers are large enough to be a small town.

** This is sometimes blamed on a lack of proper planning permission system.

*** In fact in ''[[Batman: Dark Victory]]'', {{spoiler|Two-Face and his gang actually stumble into the Batcave by accident, after fleeing through the sewers from their compromised base.}}

* In the "What If?" type story, ''[[The Punisher]] Kills The Marvel Universe'', the Punisher's first victims are [[Spider-Man]] and Venom, who are fighting in a sewer. Spider-Man is actually able to jump around (Meaning he flies over Venom's head by a good five feet) in the sewer.

** [[Fridge Logic|Yet the reason Punisher picks them off there is because]] [[You Fail Logic Forever|they'd have no room to manouver]]..

* In issue #23 of the original ''[[Wolverine]]'' ongoing series, Wolverine has trapped General Coy and Prince Baran in the Madripoor sewers. There is apparently enough room for all three to run around without crouching or bumping into things, and Wolverine is able to leap at his two enemies to scare them into running.

** Although the sewers in almost every section of the TMNT franchise resemble the real-life New York storm drain system more than ''any'' sewer, and it wouldn't be the first time people have gotten the two terms confused.

** Some incarnations (like movies past the first) place the Turtles' palace in an abandoned subway station, with the Van being stored in nearby abandoned warehouses. However, those locations are always connected to the sewer system, and said sewers are inevitably big enough for the Turtles (especially Michelangelo) to be able to skate and do half-pipes in the sewer pipes.

* The secret hideout of the cat gang in ''[[An American Tail]]''. Justified for being in New York City in 1885 (they were that big back then) and that from the viewpoints of cats and mice everything is bigger.

* The Gypsies in Disney's ''[[The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney film)|The Hunchback of Notre Dame]]'' all live inside a giant sewer system located underneath the streets of medieval Paris. Unfortunately, [[Complete Monster|Frollo]] actually knows where that location is...

 

== Films -- Live Action ==

* ''[[Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (film)|Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street]]'': Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett search for their assistant Toby in one of these, which is also featured in the title sequence. While this sewer system is large enough for them to walk upright in, it's also described as being the source of the unusually foul smells of Mrs. Lovett's bakery.

** In the original Sweeney Todd story, "The String of Pearls", the tunnels below Fleet Street were how Sweeney got the bodies of his victims to Mrs. Lovett for baking into pies, since her pie shop was right across the street from his barbershop. Previously, he'd had a good number of dead dudes down there, since he dispatched his victims by using a trick barber's chair to dump them into his basement, taking his razor to any who survived the fall. And unlike the musical, this eventually got the two of them caught when the Bow Street Runners investigated.

** [[Justified Trope]]: [[Reality Is Unrealistic|it ''is'' set in Korea,]] which gets at least half a dozen typhoons a year. (Not to mention it is raining a lot in the film.)

** Ditto Chicago's sewers, big enough to comfortably house a twenty-foot long ''[[Alligator]]''.

* The excellent [[Film Noir]] ''[http://www.tvguide.com/movies/walked-night/review/125652He Walked by Night]'' was the first movie to film in Los Angeles enormous storm drains.

* The pipe systems in ''[[The Matrix]]'' series are described as sewers which are big enough for ''whole hovercrafts'' to comfortably navigate through them, and an ''entire city'' inhabited by thousands of people in its lower depths. The sewers were the only remains of the human cities destroyed in the war with the machines.

* If you thought ''[[Alien (franchise)|Alien]]'' was the first movie to have creepy monsters being stalked through dark tunnels with flamethrowers, you're wrong. The classic B&W 1954 sci-fi movie ''[[Them]]'' climaxes with a hunt through the Los Angeles storm sewer system (including jeeps with mounted machine-guns) for the [[Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever|giant radioactive ants]].

** This film is parodied in a sidequest in ''[[Fallout 3]]'' called ''Those!'', where the player has to kill radioactive, fire-breathing ants in a similarly abandoned sewer system (which the game is rife with.)

* ''[[Cthulhu (film)|Cthulhu]]''. A scene beneath the fictional town of [[Lovecraft Country|Rivermouth]] was filmed in the real-life Seattle Catacombs, where one of the producers used to work as a tour guide.

* The Jeffries Tubes in ''[[Star Trek]]'' are always [[Air Vent Passageway|just big enough to crawl through]]—except in ''[[Star Trek V: The Final Frontier|Star Trek V the Final Frontier]]'', where they're the size of subway tunnels.

* In ''[[Plunkett and Macleane]]'' the title characters use large sewer tunnels to escape the law on several occassions.

* One of the locations of the floating crap game in ''[[Guys and Dolls]]'', and remarkably clean, too.

* In Disney's ''[[Hocus Pocus]]'', Max, Dani and Allison have to flee the witches and zombie Billy Butcherson by following Thackery into the sewers, which are filled with spiders and rats, [[Reduced to Ratburgers|which is what Thackery eats as a cat]]! Very [[squick]]y to the trio.

* Averted in ''[[The Shawshank Redemption]],'' which has {{spoiler|Dufresne escape from prison by tunneling a hole in his cell wall and breaking into a sewer pipe that happened to be right next to it. It's big enough for him to crawl through, but not stand up in; and the film [[Vomit Indiscretion Shot|doesn't exactly portray crawling through raw sewage as healthy either]].}}

 

== Gamebooks ==

* The ''[[Lone Wolf]]'' gamebook series contains a few Absurdly Spacious Sewers, most notably the Baga-darooz in Barrakeesh, capital of [[Arabian Nights Days|Vassagonia]]. This sewer is vast enough to house giant lizards and other nasty monsters, and criminals can be condemned to be locked within. Unlike some other fantasy examples, however, it is described as extremely filthy, smelly and insalubrious—just getting an open wound in contact with the water can give you a horrible disease.

** As in, "[[Race Against the Clock]] to get the next [[Plot Coupon]] before you have to hack off the infected arm and/or die screaming."

 

== Literature ==

* An Absurdly Spacious Rubbish Chute {{spoiler|serves as the escape path for Jenna and the Heaps}} in ''[[Septimus Heap|Magyk]]''.

* In ''The Magician'', the second book of ''[[The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel]]'' series, Machiavelli and Dee take Josh into the spacious sewers and then the catacombs in Paris to be {{spoiler|Awakened by Mars Ultor}}. This is [[Justified Trope|justified]] because Paris does have an incredibly large sewer system that connects to the catacombs. There is even a special branch of the police force that patrols the sewers.

 

== Live Action TV ==

* An episode of ''Popular Mechanics for Kids'' is devoted to this, when they go into a sewer to look for a ping-pong ball. Being a show about science and facts, they remark that you always need the proper equipment and that it can be dangerous to go into a sewer. It was actually pretty spacious in there; almost hallway like, IIRC.

* In ''[[Beauty and the Beast (TV series)|Beauty and The Beast]]'', a secret society exists deep underneath New York, in relatively fancy trappings.

* ''[[Dark Angel]]'' Like every. damn. episode.

* ''[[Due South]]'' episode "Manhunt", the Chicago sewers are not only large enough for three grown men and a wolf, they are large enough for three grown men and a wolf to paddle a canoe through.

* Used and averted in ''[[X-Files]]'' season 2, episode 2 "The Host." Mulder visits an absurdly spacious sewer in Newark, N.J., and later remarks about its size to a Newark sanitation engineer, who confirms that section as being part of the older system, while the newer parts are not more than 24 inches in diameter.

* The G-Cans System (see Real Life) pops up on occasion in [[Toku]] programs. A recent stand-out example is in ''[[Kamen Rider Decade]]'', where Decade has a high-speed battle with [[Kamen Rider Kabuto|Kamen Rider TheBee]].

* ''[[The Legend of Dick and Dom]]'' has a sewer under the [[Big Bad]]'s castle large enough for the good guys to escape through. They do come out the other side covered in, well, [[Toilet Humor|what you would expect]]. Oddly, this has the opposite of [[Nobody Poops]]; there are very few people in the castle, but [[Covered in Gunge|lots of sewage]] in the sewer.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* As touched on a couple of times above, this trope can occasionally be justified in fantasy games by making the sewer system a series of sunken streets.

* Chaosium's ''[[Thieves' World]]'' boxed set said that Sanctuary's sewers were large enough for armed troops to pass through them.

 

== Theater ==

** As Urinetown is essentially a [[Troperiffic]] pastiche of musical theater, this is hardly surprising.

* We never actually see the sewers per se in ''[[Les Misérables (theatre)|Les Misérables]]'', as they're in most productions just represented by shafts of light that Valjean walks through, but everything is covered in Literature and Real Life.

 

== Video Games ==

* In ''[[Portal (series)|Portal]]'', Chell travels through what appears to be an open-topped sewer... [[Squick|barefoot]].

* ''[[Professor Layton and the Curious Village]]''

* The video game of ''[[Robots]]'' has a mazelike sewer that is inexplicably set up like a huge pinball machine. You actually have to use a ''transport pod'' to traverse this level.

* ''[[Romancing SaGa]]'' had two: Estamir and Melvir. {{spoiler|The sewers of Estamir were catacombs that could connect North and South Estamir; had a graveyard, and a temple dedicated to a [[Stronger Sibling]] of the [[Big Bad]]. The Sewers of Melvir was a labyrinth that could allow one to enter the palace and had a temple dedicated to the [[Big Bad]] himself.}}

* ''[[Skies of Arcadia]]'' features such a sewer under the capital city of [[The Empire|Valua]] that the protagonists must go through in order to {{spoiler|[[Big Damn Heroes|rescue their friends in the middle of a public execution]]}}. Partly justified in that it used to be catacombs. However, it's never explained why a city floating above a limitless abyss would need sewers in the first place instead of, you know, [[Fridge Logic|piping all their waste straight into said abyss.]]

* ''[[No One Lives Forever]]'' not only has this, but it even contains a [[Lampshade Hanging|sign]] reading "Obligatory FPS Sewer Section".

* ''[[Ratchet and Clank Up Your Arsenal]]'' has a large sewer on Aquatos big enough for Ratchet, Clank, and Skid to break in, a multi-layered area hiding nintey-nine sewer crystals at twenty thousand bolts apart, and a [[Punny Name|humorously named]] weapons dealer of questionable credentials.

* [[Comix Zone]]'s sewers have enough room for our hero, [[Punny Name|Sketch Turner]], to suspend himself from pipes to avoid low attacks.

* [[Global Agenda]] gets in on the action with a mission in the subterranean waterways in North Sonara (Recursive Colony Update). It's the sort of spacious that some of the shorter-range turrets can't cover its width.

 

* Subverted in ''[[Antihero for Hire]]'', where Shadehawk escapes capture through the [http://www.antiheroforhire.com/d/20090427.html Underground Non-Sewer Pathway System].

* In the ''[[Narbonic]]'' Director's Commentary, Shaennon Garrity openly admits that the design of Helen's sewer-based underground lab comes entirely from the old ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' cartoon.

* ''[[The Order of the Stick]]'' mocks this trope: Azure City not only has such sewers, but there are three tunnels clearly labeled "Ocean", "Anachronistic Sewage Plant", and "Obligatory Sewer-Themed Labyrinth".

* Aversion: The Council team must navigate a proper ''storm drain'' that nominally catches rainwater from a nullah in the first story arc of [[Elf Blood]].

{{quote|'''Jose Carlos''': I had no idea sewers were so large!!

'''Vinicius''': You'd be surprised at how much they hide from us. }}

 

== Web Original ==

* ''[[Kim Possible]]'' has done the sewer gig more than once, even twenty years into a dystopian future. In their defense, they actually had to walk through some of the sewer fluid.

* ''[[Freakazoid!]]!'' used this until it became a running gag, with more than one character complaining about "poo gas".

* Likewise, ''[[Batman Beyond]]'' ventured into a downright ''cavernous'' sewer system in at least one episode.

* [[Justified Trope]] for ''[[Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?]]?'', as Carmen Sandiego leaves a clue for Zack and Ivy in the Sewer of Paris.

* In an episode of ''[[Hey Arnold!]]'', Arnold drops his grandfather's watch down a hole to the sewer (which somehow didn't break even though it fell for three seconds before hitting the ground: a 140 foot drop). He descends into the sewer to retrieve it only to find it has been taken by the "Sewer King," a man who lives in the sewer and claims sovereignty over it.

* In ''[[Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy]]'', the sewers beneath the cul-de-sac, as seen briefly in "High-Heeled Ed" and more extensively in "Boom Boom Out Goes the Ed", are pretty spacious.

* The ''[[Family Guy]]'' episode "Breaking Out is Hard to Do" ends in a sewer that is wide enough to fit two [[Star Wars|TIE fighters]].

* ''[[Danny Phantom]]'' had one episode where the sewer system was big enough to support one ghost boy, his currently possessed love interest, and thousands and thousands of big ass vines gunning towards him. Has some incredibly clean water, too.

* Anakin and Obi-Wan wade through one of these in ''[[Star Wars: Clone Wars]]'' as part of a [[Dungeon Bypass]].

* The small town of ''[[South Park]]'' even has spacious sewers big enough for the boys (and Mr. Garrison) to walk in when searching for Mr. Hankey in "Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls." Obviously, the presence of a magical talking piece of crap means the "no poop" rule is averted.

** Even ignoring Mr. Hankey, the show is one of very few works to acknowledge the disgusting nature of sewers in general. In one gag, Cartman sneezes on Kyle, who complains that sneezing on others is gross and unsanitary. Cartman responds, "oh, sorry, you wouldn't want to get exposed to germs while you're knee-deep in human feces."

* This seems to be the deal with the sewers of Mellowbrook on ''[[Kick Buttowski]]'' as Kick manages to operate them quite well, even with Kendall riding with him on his skateboard. They also appear to host crocodiles or aligators.

* ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'' have this when Candace is required to battle a sewer-dwelling aligator/crocodile to get one of her Fire Side badges.

 

== Real Life ==

* London's sewers are in places as spacious as computer games would suggest, having been built on a massive scale in the 19th century to accommodate future population growth (though the network has grown a hundredfold since then). The Victorian-era section of the London sewer system is ''huge'', with several million tons of brickwork and tunnels up to nine feet in diameter. There are also many kilometers of unused underground tunnels built for other purposes, ranging from railways to military bunkers.

** [[The War of the Worlds (novel)|The Artilleryman was right!]]

* The sewers of Vienna: Most of the sewer system has sidewalks, there are even big storage rooms down there. The film ''[[The Third Man]]'' was partly shot underground.

* The Sewers of Paris—literally famed in song and story—are a [http://europeforvisitors.com/paris/articles/paris-sewers-museum.htm major tourist attraction].

* Beneath Saint Paul, Minnesota there is a extensive network of several tunnel systems, including both [http://www.actionsquad.org/labsewer.htm active and abandoned sewers]. These sewers also interconnect with several natural and [http://www.actionsquad.org/stahl.htm abandoned man-made caves].

* In Cologne there is a huge hall with two candelabra in it. It was build for a visit from Kaiser Wilhelm II [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronleuchtersaal\]

* In the [[wikipedia:Warsaw Uprising|Warsaw Uprising]] the quoters separated by Nazi forces tried to communicate with each other using the sewer system. Of course it could be described as anything but spacious and clean. In one case a whole quoter (both soldiers and civilians) was evacuated by these means.

* The street level of Atlanta is today one story above where it was a century ago, due to a system of viaducts built to raise it out of the way of the railroad lines. When the lower level was "rediscovered" in the 1960s, it was turned into [[wikipedia:Underground Atlanta|a shopping and entertainment mall]]. (What else?)

* Not technically a sewer, but Las Vegas has a 515-mile underground flood channel system that [http://www.beneaththeneon.com/ homeless people] [http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/10/24/vegas.homeless.tunnels/index.html actually live in].

** The University of BC in Vancouver has a similar system, but they're still easily accessible if one knows how. However, nobody goes into them but repairmen and engineering students mucking around.

* Chicago has the Deep Tunnel project, which is a pretty massive-scale water handling project that includes storm flow as well as sewage. Some of the tunnels are easily wide enough to walk through, and it's even possible to get to some of those areas via manhole.

** Lakehead University in Thunder Bay has a similar system of tunnels (both public access and service) for the same reason; it gets ''really'' cold in the winter. Sadly, the university has outgrown the public tunnels and only the main buildings are connected, making for a chilly walk to some classes or back to the campus residences.

* St. Louis, MO has a fairly large underground made up of sewer systems, old railway tunnels, various tunnels for other purposes, and lots and lots of caves (that have been mostly sealed off). Very few people (if any) in the city know exactly how extensive they all are and it is very illegal to go down into them, and for good reason. The sewers, tunnels, and caves are so full of toxic gas build up that going down into them without a copious amount of protective equipment is practically suicide, and that's assuming a collapse doesn't kill you (since the older ones aren't exactly easy to maintain).