Conveyor Belt O' Doom/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Basic Trope: A character is placed on a conveyor belt or similar delivery device which slowly advances them towards some messy fate.
  • Straight: Count Badorana ties up Princess Voltara, places her a conveyor belt heading to a buzz saw.
  • Exaggerated: Count Badorana ties up Princess Voltara, places her in a mine cart, and sends her on a long track to the bottom of the mine.
  • Justified: Count Badorana doesn't want to leave evidence that he killed Princess Voltara.
  • Inverted:
    • Princess Voltara puts Count Badorana on a conveyor belt heading to a certain doom.
    • Alternatively Princess Voltara straps the bleeding and near-dead Ace onto a conveyor belt to carry him to an automated surgeon robot.
  • Subverted: Count Badorana considers this but decides to go with the classic "chain the Princess to the train tracks" instead
  • Double Subverted: But when he sees a lot of other villains tying their victims to the tracks, he goes to back to the conveyor belt of doom.
  • Parodied: Count Badorana ties Princess Voltara up, places her in a roller coaster, and Voltara returns to him unharmed and freed from her ropes.
  • Deconstructed:
    • Count Badorana finds himself needing to explain why he has a conveyor belt in his Supervillian Lair. Then somebody questions why it leads to an incinerator, and Voltara's lover puts two and two together...
    • Alternatively, Count Badorana uses a conveyor belt in an old factory to kill Princess Voltara... the next day, the workers arrive and find her body. Oops!!!
  • Reconstructed:
    • Why does Badorana need a conveyor belt? Because he's a supervillain, duh!!! And what supervillain worth his salt wouldn't have zany death traps all over his fortress?
    • Sure, the workers are freaked out about finding a dead body in their work area, but how are they supposed to figure out how or why she got there, let alone the cause of death or who killed her? They're just laborers!!!!
    • The townsfolk actually don't care about that abandoned factory mysteriously being used again because it's completely irrelevant to them.
  • Zig Zagged: Count Badorana ties Princess Voltara to the conveyor belt. The princess complains about how cliche it is, then lands in a bin full of teddy bears instead of a pit of lava. Thinking she's safe, the princess tries to stand up, but soon discovers that the bin is actually a trash compactor. Right as it appears she'll be squashed, a safety mechanism goes off and she's saved. The Count knew this was going to happen and only wanted to scare her. As the princess nervously laughs, the compactor reaches the end of a conveyor belt and dumps her into a pit of spikes.
  • Averted: Count Badorana doesn't go for such old-fashioned tricks.
  • Enforced: "Hey, let's make sure the viewers know how resourceful this Badorana guy is by having him try to kill Princess Voltara with a conveyor belt!!!"
  • Lampshaded: The Count's Mook flunky says to him, "Hey, boss, we got you the ACME Doom Belt 4000, just like you asked!"
  • Invoked: "My next trap is called 'The Conveyor Belt of Doom.' I learned about it while taking Villain 101 at my local community college!"
  • Defied: Count Badorana's assistant Lord Untrustworthy suggests killing Voltara in an old factory, but Badorana rejects the idea.
  • Discussed: "Why do so many villains use the Conveyor Belt of Doom trick?"
  • Conversed: "Great. Another two-bit villain who thinks he's so clever by strapping his victim to a conveyor belt. Why can't they try anything interesting for a change?!?"

Since you're tied up and strapped to the belt, you have no choice but to return to Conveyor Belt O' Doom! Fwa ha ha ha haaa!