Birdcaged

It appears The Hero has found himself captured. But where would the evil overlord put him? Seems a regular prison isn't around or just wouldn't do.

So the bad guy sticks The Hero in a birdcage. This is usually done both to legitimately keep him locked away and to taunt him. On some occasions, the animal may be kept in the cage with the hero. Note that it doesn't necessarily have to be a birdcage, but is the most common form of this trope.

This becomes even more common when a character is shrunk or otherwise much smaller than their captor(s).

Examples of Birdcaged include:

Comic Books

• In one Golden Age Justice Society of America story, Hawkman is shrunk and placed in a birdcage.

Fan Fiction

• In Mega Man: The Series, a shrunken Mega is placed in a hamster cage.

Film

• In The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, the shrunken princess is kept in a birdcage.
• On The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The King of the Moon puts the Baron and Sally in a birdcage, where they find the Baron's old friend Berthold.
• In Valiant, the one captured in the first few minutes of the film and Bugsy were, naturally, imprisoned in a birdcage. Justified as they are birds and all.
• Rise: Blood Hunter a recent turned vampire, Sadie Blake seduces a female prostitute for a wheel-chair bound vampire. Apparently the victim is caught through an elaborate gilded cage disguised as a shower. There is a pressure cage on the soap box, and causes the shower to lock her in and the shower-head to fall and knock out the prey. Later the girl is suspended upside down in her new cage.
• Wild Wild West, the heroes find Rita Escobar, the supposed daughter of an American scientist caged like a bird in a brothel.
• Escape Room (2017) a girl wakes up naked in a cage and finds herself in a sick version of Escape the Room.
• The Farm (2019) a couple finds themselves caged like animals in a commune that process humans as livestock.

Literature

• In the Artemis Fowl series of books, one bloodthirsty villain gets his mind trapped into the body of a hamster. He is then put into a small cage, where scientists throw toy swords into the cage and watch him try to pick them up.
• In The Hollows, Rachel Morgan gets turned into a mink, and stuck in a cage.
• When Tristran gets turned into a hamster in Stardust, this happens to him.
• Planet of the Apes, Ulysses and his lover Nova after being hunted and trapped are caged like animals.

Live Action TV

• The Doctor Who series 3 finale.
• Happens to Tony and Roger in a episode of I Dream of Jeannie.
• In Fraggle Rock, a shrunken Mokey is placed in a dollhouse.
• In Xena: Warrior Princess, Lyre, Lyre, Hearts on Fire, Gabrielle after turning down a warlord finds herself placed into a go-go-dancer cage.

Video Games

• In Scribblenauts and Super Scribblenauts, you can do this to anyone you shrink.
• In Monty Python's The Meaning of Life The Videogame, there is a group of sailors who are trapped in a birdcage.

Tabletop RPG

• Dungeons and Dragons. The Prison of Zagyg was a magic item in the form of a small birdcage. When the command word was given, the victim was shrunk to 3 inches high and stored in the cage.
• Warhammer 40K, has Isha an eldar goddess who was captured and imprisoned by Nurgle the Plague God in his garden.

Western Animation

• In the Teen Titans episode "How to Make A Titananimal Disappear", Raven is turned into a rabbit and then housed in a birdcage.
• Not only is The Tick shrunk and put in a birdcage, he is also turned into a two-headed bird that speaks French.
• In Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes one of the maximum security prisons for supervillains is like this. They are shrunk using some of Hank Pym's technology, so the prison is small enough to fit on a large table.
• Adventures of the Gummi Bears episode "A Gummi in a Gilded Cage" sees Sunni captured and stuck in a birdcage to serve as the Vulture King's 'songbird'.
• When Scar takes over Pride Rock, he traps Zazu inside an animal's ribcage.
• Stromboli puts poor Pinocchio on a cage to keep from going back home.
• In The Secret of NIMH, Mrs. Brisby is caught inside the farmhouse and put in a birdcage. She makes a daring escape after learning that NIMH is coming for the rats.
• Fievel is put in a cage in An American Tail. He is taken out after befriending his jail guard, Tiger.
• In the Chipand Dale Rescue Rangers episode "Zipper Come Home", Chip, Dale and Gadget are trapped in a bird cage by a tribe of beetles, and placed near a rising river that threatens to drown them if they don't get out in time.
• In Chaotic, A Gigantic Adventure, the giants of Gigantemtopolis capture Kiru and his OverWorlder and put them in trap where they tease them with sticks and threaten to sic their giant cats on them.
• Jackie Chan Adventures has the episode Demon World where the demons change history so that they were never banished from Earth. Viper in the original timeline a jewel thief ends up being a cage slave meant to sing for the Demon Sorcerer Hsi Wu.