Tropedia

  • Before making a single edit, Tropedia EXPECTS our site policy and manual of style to be followed. Failure to do so may result in deletion of contributions and blocks of users who refuse to learn to do so. Our policies can be reviewed here.
  • All images MUST now have proper attribution, those who neglect to assign at least the "fair use" licensing to an image may have it deleted. All new pages should use the preloadable templates feature on the edit page to add the appropriate basic page markup. Pages that don't do this will be subject to deletion, with or without explanation.
  • All new trope pages will be made with the "Trope Workshop" found on the "Troper Tools" menu and worked on until they have at least three examples. The Trope workshop specific templates can then be removed and it will be regarded as a regular trope page after being moved to the Main namespace. THIS SHOULD BE WORKING NOW, REPORT ANY ISSUES TO Janna2000, SelfCloak or RRabbit42. DON'T MAKE PAGES MANUALLY UNLESS A TEMPLATE IS BROKEN, AND REPORT IT THAT IS THE CASE. PAGES WILL BE DELETED OTHERWISE IF THEY ARE MISSING BASIC MARKUP.

READ MORE

Tropedia
Register
Advertisement
WikEd fancyquotesQuotesBug-silkHeadscratchersIcons-mini-icon extensionPlaying WithUseful NotesMagnifierAnalysisPhoto linkImage LinksHaiku-wide-iconHaikuLaconic
Cquote1

Mike: Hello, class! Today we're going to shrink down and go inside someone, probably a classmate and invade his or her privacy!

Brad: Why, that doesn't sound immoral, illegal or dangerous at all!
Cquote2


A plot that involves characters being shrunk to enter someone's body. Usually animated. Travel is often via submarine and scuba variants. Lighting is rarely a problem. Often has a time limit parameter, and at least one scene of just barely squeezing through a stomach opening as it closes. And the exit method will almost always be sneezing, which is gross.

See also Incredible Shrinking Man. If there are normal-size invaders inside a giant's body, then you have been Swallowed Whole. Curiously, giant bodies tend to be filled with large open spaces for movement and even extended travel within, even if one was swallowed.

Named for the granddaddy of them all, a movie co-starring Raquel Welch, which also spawned its own Animated Adaptation. An episode with this plot will usually use a homage to or parody of said name.

Strangely, the title of an episode with a Fantastic Voyage Plot will almost always reference Journey to the Center of the Earth instead of the Trope Namer, with the person's name or a noun that describes them in place of "the Earth."

Not to be confused with the funkarific song by Lakeside.

This trope can be considered Fetish Fuel by some, and it's called "endosomatophilia." Alot of people confuse it for vore, when in actuality, they have many differences.

Compare and contrast with Journey to the Center of the Mind, Ghost in the Machine, and Animate Body Parts. If somebody's body just happens to be the Adventure Towns this week, you're probably just flying in a Womb Level.


Examples:

Anime and Manga[]

  • In episode 10 of Keroro Gunsou, Keroro's mouth becomes infested with microscopic, cavity-causing aliens, led by a devil winged chick, and a good chunk of the rest of the cast shrinks down and enters his mouth to fight them off.
  • In DragonBall Z, during the fight versus Buu, Goku and Vegeta (fused together as "Vegetto") get absorbed by Buu, and end up traveling through the villain's body so they can rescue their allies.
  • Due to some extremely trippy Applied Phlebotinum, the final battle of the IL arc of GetBackers takes place inside the opponent's body. Thus, hitting Makubex (who was in there with them...) caused the whole landscape to warp and shake.
  • In the third part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, when Steely Dan implants his Stand, The Lovers, into Joseph's head, Polnareff and Kakyoin shrink their own Stands to the same size and enter his brain to battle it.
  • Galaxy Angel has an episode where the team needs to enter Volcott's body because of some strange thing that make him change his body into several crazy stuff. Mint got haywire and it turns even crazier, which in the end result in Volcott turning into a baby.
  • Doraemon: "Tatoe I no Naka Mizu no Naka" (or "Noby's Tough to Stomach" in the English dub), where Doraemon and Nobita go inside Shizuka's body to retrieve her mom's $5,000 opal which she accidentally swallowed while eating peanuts.
    • They did it again in a 2002 episode called "Big Pinch, Shizuka-chan" where Shizuka swallowed a piece of candy that could win her a trip to Switzerland.
  • The Joseph Lai Mockbuster psuedoanime Space Transformers is about a mecha and its young pilots entering the body of a woman... who has a small galaxy inside her body. She's also a cyborg, but that didn't stop the Teen Titans writers from making Cyborg's insides cybernetic in the episode "Crash." Different rules apply?
  • In Kyouran Kazoku Nikki, Kyouka turns the family into a microscopic virus-fighting squad and takes them inside Ouka's body.
  • In one episode of the anime Parappa the Rapper ("Did You Say You Didn't Sleep?!"), Parappa's friend PJ gets infected by a virus, which causes him to grow into a giant every time he eats. This causes Parappa and his friends to get absorbed into his body and get rid of the virus in order to turn him back to normal.
  • The Ur Example of this trope: the Astro Boy episode "Mighty Microbe Army." Fox wanted to steal a few ideas from Tezuka for Fantastic Voyage, but they never did.
    • Happens again in Go Astro Boy Go episode 10.

Comic Books[]

  • In ABC Comics' Tom Strong, Tom and his gorilla sidekick Solomon have to shrink themselves to enter the body of the malfunctioning robot butler Pneuman (which is more complex than it sounds because Pneuman had originally been a Steampunk robot in the 1890's and had been upgraded continuously right into the 21st century, so his innards contained everything from gears to vacuum tubes to atomic reactors to nanites).
  • This troper recalls one comic, probably from DC's silver age, in which The Atom (Ray Palmer) had to enter the body of a patient to fight an infection. (Given his powers, I would be somewhat surprised to learn that that's the only time that happened.) Then the microscopic creatures in there are benign, so Superman has to go in there as well.
    • There was a JLA issue where the team are shrunk by The Atom and enter someone's body. Said someone is a kid (sadly), who looks like Dolphin Boy and has an entire civilization of bacteria inside his body.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mirage featured the turtles going into April O'Neill's sister's body to fight off "alien cancer."
  • In this Disney story, Gyro shrinks Donald Duck (and a submarine) so he can go inside Uncle Scrooge and save his life.
  • Ant-Man of The Avengers got to do this when he had to get inside his teammate The Vision in order to fix a malfunction inside him. He did it again in New Avengers to retrieve a device on Luke Cage's heart, bringing Doctor Strange with him. This is notable for being one of the few rare examples of the host being a black guy.
  • The Silver Age Supergirl, when she was affected by three Red Kryptonite meteors, got shrunk to microscopic size, which she used to her advantage to help some white blood cells take care of an infectious virus that was inside Dick Malverne's adoptive father in Action Comics #283. Interesting to note is that you don't see her entering / exiting, only being told that it was thru a transfusion tube. This happened alot with early endo comics, due to the Comics Code Authority; in fact, there was a Superboy issue with a story culminating in Shrinking Violet going inside of Colossal Boy to remove a bullet, and you didn't even see inside!
    • In another issue, Supergirl, Superboy, and Steel are shrunken by The Atom and sent inside Superman to destroy a tumor made of kryptonite.
  • In The Simpsons comic, Mr. Burns has become ill from suppressing his need to burp for decades. To undo the blockage that built up in his system, Burns' scientists plan to drop a shrunken submersible into his body. Though the pod can be remote controlled, they still need a pilot in case of an emergency. Since even 'an anthropod will do' Homer is selected.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog #33, where Sonic shrinks and enters Rotor's body to seek and destroy the "French Frirus."
  • One story in the DC One Million Page Giant involves an alternate universe Robin being knocked unconscious and his friends entering his body to cure him.
  • In the Blackest Night arc of Green Lantern (2009), Leezle Pon is injected into Guy Gardner's body to fight a hostile virus from the Sinestro Corps.

Fanfic[]

  • "The Insider," a gen:LOCK fanfic where Julian, who has a new body several years after the events of the show, volunteers for a high school's lesson about the reproductive system. The class shrink down and enter Julian's reproductive system, Magic School Bus style. However, at the end of their trip, they discover nanoscopic aliens have invaded Julian's reproductive system, so Julian calls Miranda and Kazu to shrink, go in there, and help fight them off.

Film[]

Literature[]

  • In one Animorphs book, several members of the team chase some really tiny aliens inside Marco's body with the help of a convenient shrink ray. This is made more complicated by the fact that Marco can shapeshift, and everyone is nearly crushed to death when he turns into a cockroach.
    • Note that Marco's morphing was dangerous to the Helmacrons too, not just to the Animorphs. So if they had thought of it, they wouldn't have had to go to all the trouble of going inside Marco, they could have just had Marco morph repeatedly, as long as it took to get the Helmacrons to surrender and come out of his body. Naturally, though, that wouldn't have made for a dramatic story...
  • In The Thirteen and A Half Lives of Captain Bluebear the main character that gives the book its name must venture through a giant's brain in order to get to the other side of a mountain chain, as the giant has fallen asleep and its head is blocking the pass through the mountains.
  • Besides the film novelization that he wrote (which is in itself notable for being a movie tie-in that's still in print over forty years after the movie was in theaters), Isaac Asimov wrote a Spiritual Sequel novel in the 1980s called Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain.
  • The story "The Space Cow" inverts this; a normal-sized veterinarian enters a gigantic alien organism to attempt to diagnose its apparent illness. The animal is perfectly healthy, it's just lethargic because its young are ready to leave its stomach and begin independent living.
  • In A Wind in the Door, Meg Murry and several other characters shrink to microscopic size to enter Charles Wallace's mitochondria and save him from the rebellious farandolae destroying him from the inside.
  • There's a story in a Sonic the Hedgehog book called Sonic and the Tales of Deception where Team Sonic goes inside of Knuckles to destroy microscopic robots that will turn him into a robot if they don't do anything.
  • The story Moonscar found on the blog Corrupted by Sci-Fi has its main conflict about the titular space colonist becoming host to Chest Burster alien eggs, and his AI companion Lita going into his body to rid him of them.

Live Action TV[]

  • There's a Sabrina the Teenage Witch episode where a live action version is done — Sabrina enters Libby's brain.
    • Later, Sabrina went inside herself to make room in her heart for a new beau.
  • Another live-action example is an ep of Homeboys in Outer Space.
  • The series adaptation of Honey I Shrunk the Kids did this accidentally, but when the family's fully submersible (just in case) minivan wound up inside Grandpa, they did some impromptu cholesterol removal with the laser windshield de-icer.
  • In one of the more clever Lost in Space episodes, Will Robinson and Dr. Smith find a severely malfunctioning robot who has become a giant due to his problem. The two have to physically enter the robot's body to fix him. However, the major complication is that they know that the second they are successful, the robot's body would start shrinking to normal size and they would have only seconds to escape before they are crushed. Naturally, the pair escape just in time before it was too late.
  • There's an episode of The Mighty Boosh called "Journey to the Centre of the Punk", when punk Vince is infected with a Jazz Virus, and Howard and Lester are shrunk in order to destroy it. This is probably the strangest one ever, especially the antibodies singing a song with Howard while he's trying to convince them he's their friend.
  • The Middleman episode "The Clotharian Contamination Protocol" had Wendy go inside Ida's body to stop nanobots from making her explode.
  • In Wizards of Waverly Place there's an episode where Mason, Alex's ex boyfriend swallows Dean, Alex's other ex boyfriend.

Music[]

  • The song Samut and the Dragon (found in Peter Alsop and Bill Harley In the Hospital) details a young boy with cancer who uses imagery to help his body heal. Every evening he dresses up like a knight and rides a white stallion into his own body, "by the bloody steaming rivers... through the mighty sinew forest, under tendon trees and bone," until finally he finds the cancer, a dragon, and uses his "healing sword" to strike it down, leaving his body to heal in peace. Of course, the dragon's always back by the next evening, but one hopes it's getting a little weaker.
  • Lemon Demon's "My Trains" ends with the main character, whose trains were insulted, resolving to shrink down to the size of his trains, crawl in his victim's ear, enter their bloodstream, and hold an artery shut, "Mermaid Man & Barnacle Boy IV" style. It's supposed to cross the line twice, but what the hell? And the animated music video shows inside.

Radio[]

  • In Series Three of Old Harry's Game, Satan and the Professor take a journey into Scumspawn's brain, discovering it to be a wide empty space, containing only tumbleweed and lumbering demon-thoughts. The title of this episode does somewhat reference the Trope Namer- 'The Reasonably Fantastic Journey'.

Video Games[]

  • La-Mulana: The Ruins of La-Mulana are the Mother's body, and the true form of the final dungeon is a hybrid ruin/Womb Level
  • The text adventure game version of The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy included a sequence where Arthur would find himself exploring his own brain.
  • In one of the missions in Elite Beat Agents, the EBA enter a 32-year-old black track star (think an aged Victor Stone) named Bill Mitchell's body in order to encourage his immune system (anthropomorphized as a nurse named Cap White) in its battle against a fever (anthropomorphized as Mr. Virus, who tries to strip Cap White, a white girl, inside a black guy!) The song for the level, "La La," shouldn't really be associated with a 32-year-old black guy either.
    • In the original Japanese game, the Ouendan squad helps antibodies fight off what appears to be food poisoning in a musician.
  • In Irem's shooter X Multiply, the spaceship X-002 gets miniaturized and injected into a female space colonist's body to defeat an alien virus. You even get to see the X-002 coming out of the tip of a syringe at the very beginning of the game. Oh, and the last level is the womb, just in case you didn't think it's inside a woman.
  • Done in Okami, where a shrunken Amaterasu has to enter the Emperor's body, through his mouth, to stop whatever it is in his stomach that is making him exhale a noxious gas.
  • The ZX Spectrum game Blood And Guts, in which a miniaturised character must collect bits of a submarine and reconstruct it in the brain in order to escape through the eye, all the while using a laser to fight infections, random white blood cells to clear growths, and collecting red blood cells for oxygen. Later, Quicksilva re-released the game as Fantastic Voyage.
  • There is a level in Devil May Cry 3 which takes place in Leviathan's body. Leviathan isn't big enough to hold all of that space, but his in-game profile says that his body serves as a gateway to the "jealousy hell" (in a nice Shout-Out to Leviathan's traditional role as the patron demon of envy).
  • The third dungeon of The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time and the seventh dungeon of Oracle of Ages are set in the belly of the Zora God-fish Jabu Jabu.
  • In SaGa 2 The heroes must travel inside Kai in order to fight off micronized soldiers of Ashura and extract the Magi from Kai. Doing this saves her but it also means that she can't heal you afterwards since the Magi gave her the healing powers she had.
  • The last part of Space Quest 6 involves series hero Roger Wilco being sent into the body of his friend/love interest Stellar, to save her from being killed by nanites. Although Roger has a shrunken shuttlecraft for part of the voyage, much of the action takes place on foot; many of the puzzles involve figuring out how to navigate through Stellar's labyrinthian innards. Among other things, he uses digestive juices to break open a medicine capsule, carries out an improvised balloon angioplasty (using alveoli) to clear a path through a blocked glandular duct, rides a tapeworm through the small intestine to avoid being digested, and jabs her brain with a paper clip to trigger a debris-dislodging cough. And this whole part is pretty crude, mind you; then again, what man DOESN'T want to go inside a woman?
  • In level 3-4 of Yoshi's Island, Kamek shrinks Yoshi and Froggy swallows him as his lunch. The boss fight takes place inside Froggy's stomach. It utilizes the Super FX chip's 3D graphics, and it is very cool.
    • And the look on the frog's face after Yoshi "warps" down out of Froggy's stomach is priceless. Yoshi looks very disgusted though, but I'm sure we all felt that way.
  • The plot of Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story has the brothers working with Bowser after the latter ended up sucking them up inside of him.
  • Gears of War 2 has Delta Squad swallowed whole by a giant riftworm that's been sinking human cities. Marcus and the gang have to kill it from the inside out using freaking chainsaws.
  • There is a very obscure game called Bodyworks Voyager: Missions in Anatomy that was set Twenty Minutes in The Future and involved a crack team of commando-doctors trained to pilot fighter ships that were shrunk and injected into a patient's body, where your task was to shoot germs. Considering this came out years before Trauma Center, some of the bugs were just damn HARD.
  • The Full Motion Video game Microcosm was a space shoot-'em-up with this plot, set inside businessman Tiron Korsby, according to the manual.
  • Amiga game Vaxine had you fighting diseases within different organs of the body, only the playing field was an infinite chessboard and the diseases were represented by bouncing balls.
  • Midgame in Final Fantasy II you are swallowed by Leviathan and must fight your way out of him.
  • Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon for the SNES.
  • Gradius series has Life Force for the NES/Arcade
  • Breath of Fire II has you go inside a queen to fight the calorie demons inside her.
  • The Intellivision game Micro Surgeon had this as its plot.
  • Level 5 of the Toonami: Trapped in Hyperspace Shockwave game on CartoonNetwork.com had you inside TOM's brain after Swayzak infects him, the object being to give the poor protocol an antidote and to fight Swayzak.
  • The computer game Laser Surgery: The Microscopic Mission features you (the player) going inside a variety of patients with different health issues to cure them.
  • The Emergency game in the DOS game 3D Body Adventure also features the player going inside a variety of patients with different health issues, including a black man (who was sadly voiced by some white dude trying to sound black.)
  • Fantastic Voyage on the Atari 2600 is the first instance of this trope in video games, its plot mirroring that of the movie it was based on's.
  • The arcade game Bio Attack was merely an arcade version of above Atari game, but the difficulty is even worse than said game.

Web Animation[]

  • Seppuku's episode in the World of the Damned storyline of Banana-nana-Ninja! has him shrinking down and swimming through his opponent's intestines and bloodstream.
  • Cartoon Network's Web Premiere Toons featured "Journey to the Center of My Dog's Head," the first short featuring Wendell and Wuggums. In it, Wallace Pigman's (Wendell's real name) dog, Wuggums gets sick, so Wendell decides to shrink himself and stop the sickness inside his dog. Turns out the cause of it is a bunch of sumo wrestlers. We are not kidding.

Web Comics[]

Web Video[]

  • The Smosh video "Adult Magic School Bus" features Ms. Frizzle (played by Ian) taking her grown up class to see what "the inside of a 55 year old man's cheating heart" looks like, as a parody of the original show. It... it doesn't end well. She fucking kills him by expanding the bus while they're still inside! Usually, if a work has a character kill someone from the inside of their body, they don't show inside. But since this was SUPPOSED to be Played For Laughs... even then, it's still screwed up!
  • The X-Wing episode of JonTron's Starcade has Markiplier inside Arnold from the Magic School Bus, trying to help him beat strep throat. The sound effects for this scene are fucking unnerving.

Western Animation[]

  • The first example of this trope in Western Animation: the Fantastic Voyage episode adapting the movie. More exactly: in the sixth episode The Mind of the Master Guru aka the "Master of Mysterious Powers" was severely wounded (brain damage included) and left for dead during a mission; the only way to operate on him is to have the leader Jonathan Kidd, the Hospital Hottie Dr. Erika Lane, the Gadgeteer Genius Busby Birdwell and a fellow psychic do this. Predictably, the psychic is the culprit.
  • Aqua Teen Hunger Force, "Unremarkable Voyage": After Meatwad swallows an experimental computer chip, Frylock shrinks himself to go in and get it. Thanks to a few screw ups, both he and a miniaturized Carl eventually wind up inside Master Shake. They then have to beat their way out of Shake's eye, killing him in the process. No worries though. Also, this episode doesn't show inside Shake at all (the closest you'll get is when Carl and Frylock are in his eye, but it's shown from the outside.) No need to worry, though, as he's just food.
  • In the Captain Planet and the Planeteers episode "An Inside Job," the shrunken Planeteers battle microbes from polluted water inside Kwame after he accidentally drinks them. This is just one of the few rare examples of a black guy being the host.
  • In an episode of Cat Dog, Cat goes inside his and Dog's own body after Cat eats Dog's pet fish. Very, very confusing if you haven't seen it.
  • Danger Mouse has an episode where DM and Penfold use Baron Greenback's shrink ray to follow the villain inside Colonel K. to defeat the toad's terrible plot.
  • Family Guy: Stewie shrinks himself and enters Peter's body to prevent his parents from reproducing. Apparently all sperm are their potential human counterparts flying around in fighter jets. Stewie also meets a comrade in sperm form who shares the same sadistic tendencies as Stewie. He actually gets born in a later episode after Peter donates sperm.
  • Justice League Action, "Inside Job": Atom shrinks Batman and Wonder Woman so they can go inside Superman and defeat nanobots that are sucking up his energy. However, Superman's insides are as "super" as he is.
  • Kids Next Door, "Operation: SPROUT," in which Numbuh Four accidentally eats a Brussels sprout, and Numbuhs One, Two and Five shrink themselves to retrieve it.
  • Inverted in a later episode of The Ren and Stimpy Show; a boy genius inflates Stimpy's body with a bicycle pump to ridiculous proportions, so that Ren can enter his body and find out why Stimpy is acting even stupider than usual.
  • Rugrats, "The Inside Story": Tommy and co. go inside Chuckie to retrieve a watermelon seed, though in keeping with the relatively mundane setting, it's All Just a Dream.
  • Sealab 2021, "Craptastic Voyage": When Captain Shanks refuses to get treatment for a brain tumor because of his religion (a thinly-disguised parody of Christian Science), Stormy, Quinn, and Debbie Dupree shrink themselves to microscopic size and travel through Shanks' body to deal with it themselves. Subverted in that the episode's mostly Star Wars parodies, not Fantastic Voyage.
  • In an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures, Buster, Babs, and Calamity shrink to enter Plucky's head and examine his brain to watch his fantasies.
  • The plot of one The Simpsons Halloween short, where the Simpsons travel inside Mr. Burns' body. Marge references Latex Space Suit when she asks why her suit is so flatteringly cut. Homer replies, "But Marge, that's what turns a Mediocre Voyage into a Fantastic Voyage!"
  • Re Boot, "The Great Brain Robbery": Megabyte miniaturizes a mercenary named Mouse and his flunkies Hack and Slash and sends them to probe secrets from Bob's brain. Except they accidentally end up in Enzo's body instead, and Bob goes in after them. Not to mention, Enzo's a kid.
  • In one episode of the Beetlejuice cartoon, BJ got a bad case of Easy Amnesia after being hit by a falling satellite, and a psychiatrist shrinks himself, Lydia, and a duplicate of Beetlejuice so they can enter the original BJ's body, work their way to the brain, and fix the problem.
  • In the "Mundane Voyage" episode of Ralph Bakshi's Mighty Mouse the New Adventures, Mighty Mouse is miniaturized and sent into the President's body.
  • The Magic School Bus once took a tour through the human body in one of the books that spawned the TV series, and then five times in the TV series: Arnold was the "victim" in the book and the show's adaptation of it, with him accidentally ingesting the shrunken bus while eating a snack, while Ralphie and Ms. Frizzle had their turns as well, to investigate the body's immune system and muscular systems respectively. Then they wound up going inside Arnold again to figure out what had made his skin turn orange. Finally, Arnold's cousin Janet gets her turn when the class goes inside her nose to study smell. All these instances are straight-up Paranoia Fuel (minus the Ralphie one, since he knew beforehand), especially since they are kids (minus Ms. Frizzle.)
    • There was also a computer game where you- you guessed it- go inside Arnold. Poor kid. (Incidentally, Insanity Prelude blames said game for her phobia of Womb Levels. And how! You go inside a kid, there's creepy music, you mess around with his bodily functions, and there's a paint program where you paint with stomach fluids. Whoever made this game is a Nightmare Fetishist.)
  • South Park did a twisted parody of this trope, in which a gerbil named Lemminwinks had to find his way out of Mr. Slave's ass. And then it happened again with Paris Hilton... Come to think of it, did she ever make her way out?
  • Invader Zim miniaturized himself and his spaceship to go invade Dib's brain after Dib manages to get proof of Zim's alienness in the episode "Nanozim". Dib then swallowed a nanobot and had Gaz remote control it, eventually leading to Dib's robot and Zims robot fighting near Dib's brain.
  • Used in an episode of Teen Titans where Beast Boy turns into a bacterium to fight a computer virus that has taken over Cyborg. It's another example of a black guy being the host, and although Cyborg's insides are sadly cybernetic, it's a nice homage to the fifth level of Trapped in Hyperspace mentioned above.
    • Done three times in the Gag Series Teen Titans Go!: first in "Knowledge," where Raven shrinks the Titans and takes them inside Starfire to remove the knowledge she'd gotten from dark magic, second in "Body Adventure" where Cyborg is sick and Robin shrinks himself and the rest of the team to go inside him, and third in "Meatball Party," where the Titans enter Raven's mouth to get rid of a demonic creature that manifested itself after she cracked her tooth on a meatball.
  • An episode of the '90s Iron Man cartoon does this; Hawkeye's spine is injured in a fight, and Tony has a technological fix but no way to safely insert it. So naturally he goes for hand-delivery. This is further complicated when a similarly-shrunken Ultimo tags along. By the way, this is where the infamous "Did... we get him?" scene comes from.
Cquote1

 "You're giving him a heart attack!"

(Tony is trapped in a ventricle) "Yeah, and it's me it's attacking!"

Cquote2
  • The titular character of Chowder once ate a really sour fruit that made his lips pucker so tight that he created a portal that sucks himself into his own mouth. He then had to get rid of the pieces of fruit in his mouth, led by "Lord Souron", with sweets and a musical number to get back.
  • Happens in the Skatoony episode "Inside La Puck," where the main characters shrink down and end up in Charles' body.
  • There is an episode of Cow and Chicken called Journey to the Center of Cow where Chicken was accidentally swallowed by Cow. This is a rare example of when some one was not shrunk.
    • Then in I Am Weasel, Weasel and Baboon shrank themselves to go inside the Red Guy.
  • An episode of Lilo and Stitch: The Series where they must chase after an experiment of microscopic size that is inside Pleakley's body.
  • An episode of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, where Jimmy and Sheen go inside Carl's body in order to get DNA for Jimmy to make a cure to an illness. Of course, there is then the trouble of how you get out... But they soon decide that they should make Carl sneeze them out.
  • Dexter's Laboratory where he goes inside Dee Dee's body to combat a cold she's having. He then goes inside the dog thinking she caught it from him.
  • Phineas and Ferb: In the episode "Journey To The Center of Candace", when Isabella's dog Pinky eats her sash, the boys try to go inside and retrieve it, but are accidentally eaten by Candace.
  • The Batman: The Brave And The Bold episode "Journey to the Center of the Bat!", starring Aquaman, the Atom, and the cutest lymphocyte EVER.
  • A episode of Muppet Babies had Kermit, Piggy, Gonzo and Skeeter use their imaginations to shrink down to germ-size and give Scooter's bumbling immune system a hand when he catches a cold.
  • In the season finale of The Secret Saturdays, the final battle between Zak and Argost takes place inside the body of a clone of the super cryptid Kur.
  • In the finale of Transformers Return of Convoy, the Battlestars are swallowed by Star Giant and have to fight their way out from within.
    • The original series had the episode "Microbots," where Bumblebee and a few others shrunk themselves to go inside Megatron and retrieve a power-enhancing crystal.
  • Pinky and The Brain did this in order to foil an intelligibly-enhanced cat's Dance Sensation plot from being carried out properly by a band, by shrinking themselves and letting themselves get ingested by one of the band members. Of course, they end up inside someone else, but they make him a stand-in for a band member.
    • Done also in the comic book, in which they attempted to enter the President's brain, but wind up inside the First Dog.
  • In a tongue-in-cheek episode, Samurai Jack once had to enter an ailing dragon's body to cure its devastating flatulence.
  • The Fairly Odd Parents: "Tiny Timmy" - Timmy shrinks down to microscopic size to do a biology report and ends up inside Vicky.
  • Done in Mona the Vampire, in the episode "The Sam n' Ella Infiltration", to enter the body of the principal.
  • Quack Pack had an episode where a germ-loving scientist invades Donald's body, with Huey, Louie and Dewey being shrunk and sent inside their uncle in order to stop him.
  • Rex the Runt, "Holiday in Vince": The dogs voyage into Vince's brain in a shrunken submarine in an attempt to cure his Random Pavarotti Disease (he frequently blurts out short bursts of opera). Eventually they find his tuning knob and retune him to Radio 4 (so he now blurts out gardening tips and the shipping forecast instead).
  • Godzilla: The Series had Nick and Monique venture inside Godzilla Jr/Toonzilla. For obvious reasons, shrinking wasn't required.
  • Sam, Alex and Clover shrunk down to the size of microbes to fight a trio of villains inside Jerry's brain in the episode "The Yuck Factor."
  • SpongeBob and Patrick once entered Squidward's body in order to remove a clarinet reed stuck in his throat. Unfortunately, after completing the task, Patrick accidentally made them re-enlarge while still inside Squidward. While he didn't burst, he did swell up big time from having a full grown submarine inside of him.
    • There was also "The Inside Job," where Plankton went inside SpongeBob to find out the secret to Krabby Patties.
    • And in "Mermaid Man & Barnacle Boy IV," the citizens SpongeBob shrunk with Mermaid Man's Utility Belt angrily attack him from the inside, and we see inside. Squidward even saws a vein!
    • There are a few episodes in the series where Plankton is inside SpongeBob's brain, actually, including his debut episode, where he enters SpongeBob's brain to control him. In "Mermaid Man vs. SpongeBob," Plankton does it to Mermaid Man & Barnacle Boy.
  • Happens in the episode of Arthur where Buster Baxter gets asthma, although in an Imagine Spot.
  • Done in the Rocko's Modern Life episode "To Heck and Back" where Heffer chokes on chicken. After a while, Rocko decides to screw logic and gets inside Heffer to restart his heart. Meanwhile, Heffer's in Heck and Peaches says Rocko is going to starve inside him. It's not the case, as Heffer's heart is restarted and Rocko is spat out, traumatized like Yoshi above.
    • And then it happens AGAIN in the episode "Day of the Flecko," in a particularly Nightmare Fuel-riffic example: Flecko the fly's eye is sucked in by a sleeping Rocko, so Flecko decides to get in his nose and find it. However, an apology for Nightmare Fuel that you just saw is made when Rocko sneezes Flecko and the eye out. It's a rare case when a sneeze is actually adorable.
  • Yin Yang Yo! - "Voyage to the Center of the Yo."
  • The cold opening of the Young Justice episode "True Colors" focuses on Atom and Bumblebee traveling inside Jaime Reyes in an attempt to remove his scarab. They sadly don't succeed, because the scarab's antibodies overwhelm them and they don't have someone as strong as Superman in there with them. Here's the scene with (non-intrusive) added music.
    • It happens again in Season 3, where Bumblebee goes inside of her infant daughter to cure a birth defect.
  • Superfriends season 3a, "Journey Through Inner Space": Superman and Wonder Woman travel inside Aquaman's body to reverse his mutation into a shark creature. For a while, a rumor persisted that Black Vulcan was going to be used as the host instead of Aquaman but it was never cleared.
  • A few seconds in an Inch High, Private Eye episode where Inch High is swallowed by a villain; fortunately, he manages to jump to the lungs and get sneezed out.
  • The Fantastic Max episode "Journey to the Center of My Sister," where Max goes inside Zoe's body. It's as creepy as it sounds, especially considering both are kids.
  • The opening sequence of The Spectacular Spider-Man has a few seconds where the camera zooms inside Peter Parker after he's bit by the radioactive spider and shows his DNA being hacked.
  • The Courage the Cowardly Dog episode "Muriel Blows Up," where Muriel swallows a radioactive carrot and starts expanding, so Courage must enter her body to get rid of it. Unlike most examples, shrinking wasn't required, even when Courage swallows the carrot near the end and the General enters his body.
    • Before that, there was "Mission to the Sun," where a tiny space alien named Mustafa al Bacterius enters Muriel's brain to control her movements, like Plankton above, so he can sabotage the Bagge family's mission. At the end of the episode, he winds up inside Eustace.

Other[]

  • EPCOT used to have a simulator ride called "Body Wars" based on this plot, starring Tim Matheson and Elisabeth Shue. Shue played Dr. Cynthia Lair, who was on a routine mission to study how white blood cells prevent infection from a splinter inside an androgynous-looking patient. Matheson's character Braddock piloted the Bravo 229 in attempt to meet up with her and bring her out, but Lair was pulled into a capillary, leading to a wild ride through the heart, lungs, and brain, where they got enough energy to beam the ship out. The attraction was closed in 2007 along with the rest of the pavilion, mainly due to the lack of sponsor. Interesting fact: Body Wars was Epcot's first thrill ride.
Advertisement