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Cquote1

You're my prison bitch, my prison bitch

You're not like other men

I'm glad we share a prison cell when lights go out at ten

I can't escape the way I feel

Now that would be a crime

As long as I am doing you, I don't mind doing time.
Bob and Tom, "Prison Bitch"
Cquote2
File:Charles Bronson and Danny Trejo- "Poetic Justice"

The idea that rape is common in prison. It is used in a number of ways:

  • A device for scary violence and Revenge scenes in stories with Prison settings.
  • A threat for nasty law officers to menace prisoners with during interrogation scenes. ("You know what they'll do to a pretty boy like you, son?")
  • An extra punishment that "good" characters sometimes actually gloat at the thought of villains suffering!
  • A source of jokes, often featuring huge criminals wearing eyeshadow or other indicators of queerness
  • A source of fears and hangups for characters who think they may be in danger of incarceration (may be played straight or for laughs).
  • A dark, past trauma that blights the lives of ex-convicts.

No Real Life Examples, Please

Examples of Prison Rape include:


Anime & Manga[]

  • Occurs frequently in the yaoi manga Under Grand Hotel usually to poor Sen.
  • I the film and light novel Enzai the protagonist Guys is repeatedly raped in prison my various characters.
  • In Rainbow Nisha Rokubou no Shichinin, the prison doctor Sasaki is a Complete Monster that engages in this quite often, and will even scheme with the warden to kill off anyone who manages to find out.
  • In Black Lagoon, after Janet Bhai (a.k.a. Greenback Jane from the earlier Carnival of Killers arc from the manga) suggests she might make a pass on Rock if Revy didn't care for her always banging Benny's brains out, Revy's reaction is not to make a death threat as would be expected of someone hitting Revy's Berserk Button about Rock in general, but to say this, which sheds some rather unsettling light on Revy's prison experience and makes for a really creepy scene, as Revy here is basically threatening to make Jane her bitch.
    • It's eventually revealed that one of the many, MANY shitty things that happened to Revy in the past was being raped by a policeman when she was a Street Urchin.
  • Infinite Ryvius: Implied when Criff and Michelle are imprisoned after the coup in episode 16. While nothing explicit is shown, there are a few lines of suggestive dialogue and it is seen that Michelle is shackled up with her legs spread.
  • In the prison arc in Basara, it's treated partially as lack of women, but mostly as a simple business transaction about power and dominance.
  • In Alice In Jails, Victor "comforts" Firo about going to Alcatraz with the knowledge that, what with looking so young and feminine, he'll probably be quite popular there.
Cquote1

 Victor: Well, what if I told you you'd be popular inside? You're pretty enough I wager you'd be a minor celebrity there in a matter of days. Then again, I suppose the warden over there has things locked down tight enough that nothing like that would really happen, so you don't have to worry.

Firo: ... Noah, mind if I kill your boss?

Cquote2


Comic Books[]

  • Happens to Wilson Fisk the Kingpin, of all people, in Punisher Max. Five guys and 3 weeks in the prison infirmary. That said, it was back when he was just a small-time thug and it was one of the reasons behind his taking a level in bad-ass
  • This has become almost a Dead Horse Trope in Hellblazer:
    • During the story about the Devil's Confession, there is reference to a young hippie being "buggered eleven times on his first night inside," which prompted his attempted suicide.
    • During the Son of Man Story Arc, John Constantine and Chaz Chandler are pursued by a huge demon called a "fuckpig", supposedly the act of rape given form. John comments that, as the creature is sexually aggressive, massively endowed and black in color (coal-black, as it happens), this experience could represent prison-rape anxiety. Even though the story was set in London and it's usually U.S. prisons that are depicted as controlled by violent black gangs. He's pretty obviously joking, anyway, as he follows up the comment with "I said it was very Freudian, Chas. I didn't say it actually meant anything."
    • In the story arc Hard Time, John is incarcerated in an Oz-like prison in the Deep South where he is sexually menaced by a Scary Black Man named Traylor. John later magically causes a rioting mob of prisoners to see Traylor as a Hot Black Chick and gang-bang him (John's a Nineties Anti-Hero; he doesn't have to be nice).
  • The villain of The Authority's "Earth Inferno" story arc is an evil magician who has spent decades in prison, and rather banally says he has been raped by almost every guard in the prison. Once he escapes, he travels back in time and molests one of the heroes as a teenager as part of his battle strategy.
  • When Spider-Man ally Joe "Robbie" Robertson gets jailed by the machinations of Tombstone, the hulking inmate Bruiser decides that Robbie will become his "very close friend". In an immediate backpedal/AuthorsSavingThrow, it's quickly revealed/retconned that Bruiser has only platonic friendship in mind since Robbie reminds him of his brother, along with hasty denials in the letter column. But that's not what was VERY clearly implied in the original scene.
    • Spidey villain, third rank villain mind, Tombstone was being pestered by Kangaroo in prison. Tombstone set it up so that Kangaroo got stuck in a wall chasing him. With three big burly inmates show up and ... yeah.
  • The Punisher had a Christmas Special backup where the perp he's chasing has vowed not to go back to prison due to his prior experiences there. Since the Punisher has promised not to kill on Christmas (that year), he drugs the guy and turns him over to the cops, saying "Learn to sleep with one eye open". The Punisher does this while dressed as Santa Claus, just to make it even more disturbing.
    • In The Punisher MAX series, this nearly happens to O'Brien after she is sent back to prison, but she fights off her attackers repeatedly. It is eventually revealed that she actually was raped repeatedly after a botched CIA mission to Afghanistan that ended with her being captured by the Taliban.
  • Gina experiences the rare Distaff Counterpart in Gold Digger, complete with soap-dropping. She remembers not to bend over to pick it up, but kneeling in a women's prison isn't much better.
  • The "Don't drop the soap" gag was used in the mini-series Arkham Asylum: Living Hell, where recently incarcerated Corrupt Corporate Executive Warren White finds The Joker in the same shower area as him. The panicked Warren indeed drops the soap... only for The Joker to politely hand it back to him and chew him out verbally for using stock frauds to take other people's kids' college funds.
    • It's later implied he becomes Two-Face's prison bitch, although they only show him flipping his coin for him while he recovers from a hand injury. Disturbingly, becoming the bitch of a member of Batman's Rogues Gallery for protection is actually suggested to him by a member of the infirmary staff, who euphemistically refers to it as a "Super Villain Team-Up".
  • Killer Moth was apparently the laughing stock in prison for being apprehended by Batgirl, and implies this happened to him as a result
    • Or at least that's what somebody claiming to be him says. 2 pages later, Babs tells him Killer Moth is locked up in Arkham, and looks nothing like him (or even human).


Commercials[]

  • An anti-drug PSA in the early 90s featured a first-person viewpoint of the arrested drug user, ending with a prison inmate who simply blows a kiss to his new cellmate (YouTube links welcome).
    • A similar one regarding illegal guns, IIRC: "The worse part of being convicted on a firearms offense is you don't get to keep the gun with you when you meet your new cellmate."
    • There's also this print ad from the Montana Meth Project, in 2009.
    • The German equivalent of the RIAA[1] did a scare ad with two new arrivals being leered at by two older inmates, one of them commenting that his future bitch has the cuter ass. Yes, the German media industry believes that pirating music and films should be punishable by rape (Or, at least, makes extremely unfunny jokes about this kinda stuff). Let's just say the ads were not received favorably...
      • The worst part is, Gene Simmons agrees that it should be punished by rape. On the bright side, there's no such thing as a Gene Simmons fans. Even KISS fans feel he's an asshole.
  • Years ago, there was a 7-Up ad where the guy was making his pitch in a prison. He drops a can at one point and says 'I'm not picking that up.' And 'That's enough being friends' as the cameraman pulls away while a bearded prisoner puts an arm around him.


Fanfic[]


Film[]

Cquote1

 Barbara: (whistles) Nice butt. That's what they'll say.

Ken: I beg your pardon?

Barbara: Nice butt. That's what they'll say on your first day, in the men's club.

Ken: The men's club?

Barbara: Mmm. The San Quentin Country Club. With a cute little rear end like that, you'll be the belle of the ball. Your dance card'll be filled every day. You'll be so popular, making all kinds of new, close friends. Big, ugly, hairy friends! Not that you'll ever see what they look like, 'cause you'll be facing the other way.

Ken: You're very good at this. You should write children's books.

Cquote2
  • Similarly, the Where Are They Now? Epilogue in Mallrats has the Jerk Jock, who liked to "screw girls in a very uncomfortable place", have the same thing happen to him.
  • Office Space famously used this as the protagonists' primary motivation to hide their crime.
    • The place they'd rather stay out of is "federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison".
    • "Hey Peter man, watch your cornhole in there!"
  • In The Rock, Sean Connery's character jokes that fighting the rogue soldier on Alcatraz is better than his regular day "reading philosophy and avoiding gangrape in the washroom."
    • Though this is apparently less of a problem, in recent times. "I musht be looshing my shex appeal."
  • This actually happens to Norm MacDonald's character (the main character) in Dirty Work. After a short scene of him discussing what happens to guys in prison with his friend, they show him walk from off screen, buttoning his pants, and talking about how disgusting and rude his fellow inmates are.
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 Mitch: You fellas have a lot of growing up to do, I'll tell you that. Ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. Can you believe these characters? Way out of line. Way out of line. Have a good mind to go to the warden about this. You know what hurts the most is the... the lack of respect. You know? That's what hurts the most. Except for the... Except for the other thing. That hurts the most. But the lack of respect hurts the second most.

Cquote2
  • Subverted in Let's Go to Prison, where Scary Black Man Barry actually woos Nelson with toilet-made Merlot and a romantic environment in his cell. They eventually become life partners.
  • The Dragon in Road House taunts Dalton during their big fight by revealing to him that "I used to fuck guys like you in prison!" Then Dalton rips his throat out.
  • This is the most memorable plot point in the 1978 movie Midnight Express, which is about an American who tries to smuggle drugs out of Turkey and winds up in a truly brutal prison. The horrors of American "kids" being brutalized in foreign prisons in various ways became a common trope in news stories for decades after this movie came out. The trope was actually spoofed in Airplane!, where square airliner pilot Peter Graves turns out to be a homosexual pedophile, asking a young boy, "Joey, have you ever seen a grown man naked?", "Do you like movies about gladiators?" and, finally, "Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?" Ironically, American prisons have developed such a reputation for brutality over the years that foreign travelers are warned about them. And so the circle of life continues.
  • The Steven Seagal movie Fire Down Below ends with Seagal disabling the main bad guy with one shot instead of killing him because he wants the bad guy to meet the "new friend" who is going to share his cell in prison. Given Seagal's general description of the "new friend" in question, one can make a pretty good guess about what's in store for the villain once he arrives...
    • He pretty much says the same thing in Hard to Kill. But then no one ever accused Steven Seagal movies of an overabundance of originality.
  • American History X has a truly ironic and distressing part focusing on this.
  • Edward Norton's character in Twenty Fifth Hour is so worried about this that he spends the movie trying to convince his best friend to beat his face before he goes to prison. He hopes that arriving looking dangerous will save him.
  • The Butterfly Effect features a brutal prison rape scene involving Ashton Kutcher's character.
  • A little Joey Lawrence movie called Tequila Body Shots gives this as the consequence of landing in Mexican prison. Fortunately, or unfortunately if you prefer, Joey Lawrence does not end up in Mexican prison. Joey's love interest's psycho ex-boyfriend, however...
  • Happens in Scum, which takes place in a borstal. The greenhouse rape scene is really creepy.
  • In Theres Something About Mary, Ted (Ben Stiller) was falsely accused of murder (which was actually done by an escaped mental patient). Before he was released, we see a large inmate lying next to Ted in bed, which implied that he was raped.
  • Referenced in Reservoir Dogs, when Nice Guy Eddie described a white inmate, who upon being released from prison, was talking like a black man (though Tarantino being Tarantino, "black man" wasn't the term Eddie used) because "all that black semen been shooting up his butt, backed up into his brain and coming out of his mouth."
  • In a Black Comedy Rape example, one of the Fletch movies sees the title character in a prison cell with a big guy whose name, when Fletch asks, is apparently "Ben Dover".
  • In The Ten, the story for "thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife" is a Black Comedy Rape /Rape Is Love take on this.
    • "I can't look at you without fantasizing about shoving you up against a wall in the laundry room, and punching you in the mouth... And then raping you. Without your consent, of course." "That's what makes it rape, right?" "That's what makes it rape."
  • In Puff, Puff, Pass, one of the protagonist keeps being shocked that everyone else but him takes it for granted that Andy Dufresne was raped off-screen in The Shawshank Redemption. (Granted, in the original novella, he was.)
  • The Made for TV Movie The Rape of Richard Beck about the eponymous police officer who doesn't have a whole lot of sympathy for female rape victims until an escaped prisoner who overpowers him does something, and, well, you can guess what happens from the title of the movie. A bit of Black Comedy Rape occurs when a rape counselor comes to see him, who, of course, is a woman...
  • Sleepers. The entire movie is hinged on this, made even more terrible by the fact that the brutalized parties are underage boys and the perpetrators are guards. At juvenile prison.
  • Referenced in the Joe Pesci classic, My Cousin Vinny in the scene when the accused first meet their new lawyer. No rape actually occurs, but they clearly enjoy keeping the joke alive.
  • One of many reasons why Richard and Justin (particularly Justin) don't want to get caught in Murder by Numbers. Particularly disturbing when the Cruel Twist Ending does implicitly result in Justin going to jail, alone and without his more domineering best friend there for support. Fridge Logic renders this even more unpleasant, as Justin's actor is the baby-faced and somewhat short Michael Pitt.
    • The plot of Jail Bait centers in Justin's actor, Michael Pitt, getting raped in prison by his cellmate.
  • American Me has at least two scenes portraying prison rape, including an especially disturbing one where the main character keeps flashing back to his rape while having consensual intercourse with his girlfriend and turns violent.
  • The following exchange from Inside Man:
Cquote1

 Dalton Russell: A week from now I'll be sucking on pina coladas in a hot tub with six girls named Jennifer and Tina.

Det. Keith Frazier: A week from now you're going to be in a prison shower with two guys named Jack and Jose, and that thing you're sucking on? It's not a pina colada.

Cquote2
  • Murphy's Law (1986). Charles Bronson starts a fight with the female car thief he's handcuffed to by implying she'll enjoy her upcoming prison sentence. "The first time, the dykes will have to hold you down, but soon you'll get to like it."
  • The Siege. When the FBI protagonist (played by Denzel Washington) arrests the female CIA agent (Annette Benning) he half-jokingly threatens her with Rikers Island and the dykes there if she doesn't co-operate. Annette just licks her lips and goes "Mmmmmmmm."
  • The New Guy has Luther explain to Dizzy the parallels between prison and high school. "Bad food; high fences; the sex you want, you ain't getting; the sex you're getting, you don't want."
  • In the Where Are They Now ending of National Lampoon's Animal House it says that Greg Marmalade became a Nixon White House aide and was "raped in prison in 1974".
  • Referenced in the Sandra Bullock movie Twenty Eight Days: Jasper reassures his girlfriend that rehab is a preferable alternative to prison because, "You never hear about anyone getting raped by a plunger in rehab."
  • Used way too hilariously in the third The Naked Gun movie. Drebin has infiltrated a prison, and a big scary prisoner throws a bar of soap in the shower and tells him to pick it up. Drebin does... but not before he's had metal underpants appear seemingly from nowhere.
  • Drives the plot of the prison drama Fortune And Mens Eyes.
  • Frequently referenced in Half Baked; the main characters need to raise money to bail their friend out of jail, because his "butthole is in constant jeopardy".
  • Strangely absent from I Love You Phillip Morris. While it is vaguely referenced as something that happens to "blond-haired, blue-eyed queers in the yard", sexual acts seem to be largely consensual in the prison. Giving someone a blowjob in exchange for favors seems to be "your choice," and the only sex that is shown is between Steven and Phillip, who are very obviously gay and in love.
  • In the wild-west Zombie Apocalypse film Undead or Alive, prison rape is threatened by Cletus when he informs Luke and Cletus that they're going to be horse-whipped after being arrested by Sheriff Claypool.
Cquote1

 Cletus: "They'll leave you hangin' on the rail. You ain't even gonna know who it is comin' up behind you to take a dig at your dirt-mine. But don't worry, when it's my turn I'll be sure to whisper somethin' real sweet..."

Elmer (sighing): "This day is turning out terrible!"

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  • In Rock N Rolla, Handsome Bob has just confessed his romantic feelings towards One Two on the eve of a possible five years in prison.
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 Handsome Bob: It's fine, it's fine. Five years, you know, I don't know if I can handle it.

One Two: I don't know what I was thinking, Bob. I mean, there's nothing wrong with being a poof or being a gay, or whatever it is you call it, I don't know. I mean, there's gonna be plenty of your lot in there. You'll probably love it.

Cquote2
  • In the 2003 movie In Hell, minor character Billy gets subjected to this every night as soon as he arrives at the prison. It's definitely NOT played for laughs, and in fact the first time it happens it's pure Nightmare Fuel.
  • The Experiment. But come on, you could tell.
  • Implied in Strange Brew
Cquote1

 Doug: Those big cons are gonna love you, eh?

Bob: What do you mean?

Doug: You're a cute little guy. They're gonna be lovin' you from dawn until dusk, eh?

Bob: Where are you gonna be?

Doug: I'll be in the cafeteria, selling smokes.

Cquote2
  • The 1978 documentary Scared Straight! shows some youth offenders being talked to by long-term prisoners telling them how bad prison is, trying to scare them straight. One of the topics is prison rape.
  • Subtly referenced in the trailer for Puss in Boots.
Cquote1

 Humpty Alexander Dumpty: You got any idea what they do to eggs in prison? I'll tell you this. It ain't over easy.

Cquote2


  • Hoist by His Own Petard: In the ending of Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects, that happens to Duke who is a pimp who rapes and pimps out teenage girls. Police Lt. Crowe calls it "poetic justice".

Literature[]

  • The Pope of Greenwich Village; Faced with prison, the character Paulie complains "I ain't a big, tough guy. I go to jail and some big, militant n*gger's gonna grab me in the showers and stuff it up my ass." (Paulie's choice of words, not ours!)
  • The Illuminatus trilogy. The appearance of Harry Coin is greeted with "It's safe to assume that anyone you meet in prison is a homosexual" and sure enough, Harry wants to bugger his new cellmate before they've even been introduced. Of course, like much of the books, this whole scene is subverted, double-subverted, and triple-subverted not long after.
  • A standard element to make horror stories more horrific yet. In Stephen King's novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, the narrator muses over the topic of prison gangrape, admitting that it had happened to him, observing that it happens to the story's protagonist Andy Dufresne, and making it sound like it happens to nearly everyone in Shawshank prison.
  • A particularly nasty version of prison rape plays a significant part in the brilliant and repulsive short story I Am Infinite, I Contain Multitudes, by Douglas Clegg.
  • In the Dale Brown novel Storming Heaven the male terrorist villain Henri Cazaux was arrested by U.S. soldiers on a base in Belgium as a teenager and repeatedly raped by them over two days. Needless to say, this provides him with plenty of motivation to hate the United States and also decide he will never be caught alive.
  • The most horrifying instance of rape in the Outlander series (occurring in the first book, nonetheless, set in the mid-18th century) takes place in prison but is not precisely prison rape, more of a version of The Scarpia Ultimatum where both parties are male. Claire, the female love interest (from the 1940s — it's a long story) is... about as disturbed as one would expect, as the rape comes at the hands of a particularly sadistic villain. The same villain is implied to have been doing so for some time now to his other captives, at least one of whom commits suicide after.
    • Oh yeah, and said villain is distantly related to — and looks exactly like — Clare's first husband.
  • A Clockwork Orange has a few references to this — the teenage Villain Protagonist Alex makes offhand mentions to several cellmates in prison early on fighting over who gets to have him, which probably wouldn't have ended well. Later, Alex leads the fatal attack on a new sexually abusive cellmate.
  • In the earlier chapters of A Prisoner Of Birth, set in, well, prison, gang rape is referenced as the usual fate for gay prisoners... usually followed by being ripped limb from limb. One gay character we meet is only spared from this because good barbers are difficult to come by. And one of the guys the main character gets his revenge on for falsely incriminating him — a slightly Camp Gay soap opera actor — implicitly has prison rape to look forward to as part of his karmic comeuppance.
  • Used by Mercedes Lackey in one of her Burning Wheels titles, where the stepfather had spent years abusing his stepdaughter, giving her multiple personality syndrome as a defense mechanism. Once the elves caught him, he was placed in an extra-dimensional space, with something large which began using the same lines he'd used, just before the scene cut away.
  • In the first Jack Reacher novel, Reacher winds up in the worst part of a prison along with a yuppie named Hubble. This trope was subverted when Reacher nearly kills the leader of a gang in his cell, as well as several Aryans in the showers.
  • A Joseph Wambaugh short story had a cop constantly worrying that his crazy partner's "unorthodox" style of law enforcement would get them both sent to prison, where he, the sane one, was certain he'd be repeatedly raped. His anxiety about this, and his over-the-top references to how stretched-out he expected his anus to get, were played for laughs.
  • Not exactly prison, but the orderlies at the Pendleton insane asylum love to give patients showers. They always check the patient's temperature at the same time they shower the patient, and they go down to Miss Ratched beforehand to get a rectal thermometer and a bottle of Vaseline. She admonishes them to use the minimum amount of Vaseline necessary, but they take the whole bottle inside with them, and they turn up the water pressure till the noise makes it impossible to hear anything that's going on inside...
  • Happened to Sean Miller in the book (but not the movie) version of Patriot Games.
  • A rather dark joke (of the "blink and you'll miss it" variety) in the Discworld novel The Fifth Elephant, as Vimes tries to talk Lady Sybil out of making him wear a formal "duke outfit" that includes red tights to an important function: "Duke's a military title, dear. No soldier would ever wear tights to a battlefield. Not if he thought there was any chance of him being taken prisoner, anyway."
  • Played for Laughs in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, where Bridget is imprisoned in Thailand for unwittingly smuggling drugs and is groped/molested by other women in her cell. She ends up having to bribe them to leave her alone by giving them her Wonderbra, but consoles herself by thinking she is safe because at least she still has underpants.


Live-Action TV[]

  • Oz. Many instances, realistically portrayed and very disturbing.
    • Rather perversely, many of the rapes perpetrated on this show are said to be against cast and crew that show up late to work.
      • An SNL skit features Jerry Seinfeld going to Oz in a parody of both that show and his own. In a version of Seinfelds "The Contest episode, Jerry makes a bet with O'Reilly, Schillinger, and Augustus on who can go the longest without committing male rape. They all lose including Jerry!
  • In one episode of Two and A Half Men Berta (the family's housekeeper) brings Prudence, her sixteen-year-old granddaughter, to Charlie's house so she can keep an eye on her while she works. At one point, Prudence flirts with Charlie but Charlie, obviously fearing this trope, immediately backs off:
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 Charlie: I'm sorry Prudence. I mean you're very nice and pretty, but in prison, so am I.

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    • Also mentioned in the episode written by the CSI writers. An investigator implies this will happen to Charlie if he gets sent to prison. He says he will try to prevent it by taping his butt closed. The investigator tells him that never helps. Charlie then has an Imagine Spot of himself getting raped in prison.
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 Rapist: I love it when it's gift-wrapped.

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 Rick: Mike! You bastard! I can't go to prison! I'm too pretty! I'll be raped!

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    • Spared from being Black Comedy Rape because it's so clearly Rick's unjustified belief that he's good-looking that's being poked fun at.
      • You forgot this: "Oh, no! I killed a hippy. I'll go to prison, and be raped in the shower by Mr Big, who's in with the wardens."
  • Averted in Porridge, where, while sexual tensions and possible assaults are touched upon, they are not dwelt upon, and the main homosexual character, Lukewarm, is a harmless Pet Homosexual.
    • Prison Rape is much rarer in the UK penal system — that's not to say it doesn't happen, but there's a lot less of it about. At least partially because the gang culture in UK prisons is less pronounced.
  • In the third season of Arrested Development, George Bluth complains about being under house arrest with his wife (after having spent most of the first two seasons incarcerated):
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 "In prison I just had to lie there and take it. Here, I have to lie there and give it."

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    • In the same episode, George gives a speech to troubled youth about life in prison in order to scare them straight (i.e. off of drugs or gangs or whatever), but ends up describing prison rape to a group of gay youth who are expecting to be scared straight (i.e. into becoming heterosexuals). Needless to say, they are excited by the prospect of sweaty groping in the dark by buff men.
    • It's also made fun of when Lindsay visits her father in prison during a previous season and he's explaining why he wants her to stop coming:
Cquote1

 George Sr.: I'm paying thousands of dollars in Krugerrands.

Lindsay: What?

(Pause)

George Sr.: Gold Krugerrands. Your mother snuck them in here, stuffed them in energy bar wrappers to keep me from getting strangled in the shower or worse.

Lindsay: Stabbed?

George Sr.: In a way.

Cquote2
    • In one first season episode, George Michael is revealed to have watched an episode of Oz as a small child (having confused it for The Wizard of Oz), and is terrified of visiting his grandfather in prison as a result.
  • The penultimate episode in Series 2 of Life On Mars has DCI Gene Hunt, now a murder suspect, complain to Sam Tyler, his DI, "You're not the one who's going to have to knit himself a new arsehole after 25 years of aggressive male affection in prison showers!"
  • Max and Paddy's Road to Nowhere had the pair going to prison and Paddy constantly worried about getting "bummed" while saying that Max has nothing to worry about. Despite Paddy's previous... encounter during an earlier episode, nothing of the sort happens, but in their attempts to seem like tough guys to make people keep their hands off them they attack the flamboyant Pepe, "girlfriend" of Raymond the Bastard who essentially owns that wing of the prison. It is largely implied that if Max and Paddy do not agree to Raymond's terms, rape shall be their punishment. Luckily the pair are bailed out before it comes to that.
  • In an episode of Without a Trace, Jack Malone essentially threatens a crippled boy with being sent to prison and resultant Prison Rape unless he tells him where he's put the missing person of the week.
  • In Red Dwarf, the cast is sent to prison, largely because of the backstabbing of Rimmer. In the first non-flashback set in the prison, Lister dumps a vial of the "sexual magnetism virus" on Rimmer, and the episode ends as all the inmates start groping him.
    • At the start of the Back In the Red saga, Rimmer shows his Genre Savvy credentials on his re-introduction.
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 Lister: (ref. to his sentence) Two years without sex...

Rimmer: You hope.

Cquote2
  • Veronica Mars is truly all over the place with rape; one of the running gags in the first season, when one of the Arcs is Veronica trying to find out who raped her, is mocking someone who's heading to adult prison with a pronouncement of "Community soap."
  • A famous scene from Firefly involves a corrupt Alliance cop intimidating one of Mal's friends into betraying him using graphic threats of prison rape.
  • This happens to Chato in the NBC miniseries Kingpin. Unusually, he's actually raped by the guards.
  • An episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit entitled "Fallacy" deals with a pre-operative transgender fighting not to be sent to prison because she fears the men there will rape her. She's sent to jail and ends up in critical care by the end of the episode, having been brutally gang raped by the other inmates — and destined to keep suffering through this for the rest of her sentence. Oddly, at no point does anyone but her seem to realize that she presents a ridiculously large target for this.
    • In the generally so-bad-it's-good "Wildlife" episode, Stabler and Fin intimidate a rapper named "Gots Money" by rolling a pair of dice, implying that if he goes to prison his cellmate will do the same and then rape him a number of times corresponding to the dice roll.
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 Stabler: Looky here! I "gots" an eleven!

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    • A different episode of Law & Order involved a kid who received prison for some incredibly minor crime, but was so traumatized by the repeated gang rapes that he came out a killer. Like the description above, when McCoy goes to interview the Aryan Brotherhood lifers that abused him, they refer to the victim as "she."
    • A recent episode sees the return of a date rapist who upon being caught, Elliot and Olivia bragged about how he was going to end up a prison bitch that gets passed around. Although they were mostly trying to scare him, the prisoners really do end up using him just like Olivia and Elliot say they would, resulting in him believing they deliberately set him up. Understandably, he's pissed.
    • An earlier episode of SVU, "Taken", had a man raped and killed in prison after he was falsely accused of raping a 17 year old girl by a family of con artists. To make matters worse Cragen had made a joke about it earlier in the episode saying that "if there is any karma, Ramsay won't be doing much sitting down in Riker's." Hearing the guy plead to John Munch earlier in the episode was heartbreaking, and at the end, he seemed to be the only one in the cast to consider the possibility the guy was innocent until the con artist contested that he was just a patsy.
    • While not actually a prison, a minor was raped while in a mental health facility when his defense convinced the court that his rape of his teacher was caused by some sort of faulty brain set up. The kid's rapist then excused himself of the crime by claiming to have the exact same thing. Unlike most cases, however, something was actually done about it, though it was most likely due to the fact that the kid was still legally a minor.
    • There was one episode of SVU where they had a teen suspect. Currently in the precinct's holding cell was a man arrested for molesting boys who was only too happy to play along with Stabler when he threatened the boy with leaving the two of them alone together, even though they would have been in full view of other officers.
  • General Hospital once had young Micheal Corinthos reveal he was raped when he was in prison temporarily. The show treated it very seriously in a similar manner to the way it previously handled the traumatic rape of female characters like Liz Webber. The storyline was lauded by several critics as powerful particularly since Micheal was a legacy character the shows fans had watched grow up.
  • Supernatural only alluded to it in "Folsom Prison Blues" — Dean gets a taunt when they arrive, he makes a joke and acts like it was directed at Sam.
  • Shown in the British series The Governor. Like Oz, it is realistically portrayed and very disturbing.
  • In Prison Break this is what happens to Tweener. Captain Bellick threatens to rape him if he doesn't snitch on Michael. Tweener's snitching proves fruitless, so Bellick puts him in a cell with the sex criminal Avocado who immediately rapes him.
    • Also, the teenage boy who T-Bag received as a 'gift' from his Aryan brothers. T-Bag raped the boy repeatedly until he committed suicide.
    • It's implied that Bellick is raped in his first day in a Panamanian prison. Karma is a bitch.
  • Nip Tuck managed to take the jackpot without even showing anything. All it took was two words — "anal retread." That's the type of operation a former inmate blackmails a surgeon into performing on him for free. The patient claims what happened to him wasn't gay — it was about surrendering. During the operation, the surgeon doesn't forget to turn on "How Deep Is Your Love" and mention how loose his patient's anus is.
  • The X-Files: Fox Mulder uses this as an interrogation technique in "Terma": “You want to know about anarchy? You don’t tell me where that other bomb is and I’ll make sure you spend your prison time on your bigoted hands and knees putting a big smile on some convict’s face.”
    • A rare female example in (the highly flippant and self-parodic) episode "Bad Blood": Mulder tries to convince Scully she might be a co-defendant, and to stick with his story that the man he stabbed in the chest was a vampire.
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 "Prison, Scully. Your cellmate's nickname is gonna be Large Marge. She's gonna read a lotta Gertrude Stein..."

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    • In another self-parodic episode, "Jose Chung's From Outer Space," Mulder explicitly threatens a seemingly-uncooperative rape suspect with rape in prison.
    • Probably unsurprisingly, there’s at least one comment about this made in reference to Langly of the Lone Gunmen. Byers, Frohike and Langly, before they truly became the Gunmen, have been put in jail in connection with a break-in and shootout at a warehouse. Frohike, needling Langly, says: “You know, with that long blonde hair, you’ll be the first one in here that gets traded for cigarettes. I’m gonna be laughing my ass off.”
  • Mentioned in the Canadian comedy show Just for Laughs, in a sketch about Canadian-American relations:
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  "We're bigger, and we're on top. If we were in prison, they'd be our bitch!"

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  Emerson: This might be a sweeping generalization but I don't think an attractive man who bakes pies for a living should spend any amount of time in prison.

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  • In an episode of Friends, Phoebe quells an argument between Rachel and Monica by grabbing their ears and forcing them both to their knees. She then comments that if they were in prison, Monica and Rachel would be her bitches.
  • Mentioned several times in The Wire. At one point a young character freaks out, because he's heard that there's a gang war going on at Juvie and "guys are getting raped!"
    • When Omar is framed for a murder and briefly incarcerated in season four, he comes under immediate attack from most of the other inmates on the basis of having robbed many of them before, being homosexual, and having a five-figure bounty on his head. When one of them tries to stab him, he manages to disarm him and, before returning the favor, kisses his ear and tells him, "It's a shame we didn't have more time together; we could have made us a couple of babies." Apart from serving to terrify the man, this is possibly a call-back to season one, where Stinkum reports that when Bird jailed with Omar, he had a "whole stable of boys" at his beck and call.
  • A rare female example in Weeds, when an imprisoned Celia complains that her cellmate wants her to be her "special friend."
  • Battlestar Galactica Reimagined. The crew of Pegasus gang-rape their Cylon prisoner Gina in an attempt to break her resistance to interrogation. The same thing nearly happens (does happen, in the extended version) to Athena until Helo and Tyrol intervene.
  • In one episode of Frasier, Niles declares that his bone structure is too fine for him to go to prison.
    • In another, upon finding out that the boy who bullied him as a child ("He used to call me "Shorts In The Shower" boy!") is in prison, Niles smugly sips his coffee and queries, "Well, who's wearing shorts in the shower now?"
  • Although not explicitly rape, Bad Girls has a scene of decrotching where a new girl has drugs forcibly removed from aforementioned place by other inmates.
  • Averting this trope is subtly implied to be why Horatio (CSI: Miami) stopped off at a barbershop on his way to turn in a teenage prisoner, so the youth (who's his illegitimate son) can have his long hair shaved back to an un-girlish crewcut.
  • British sketch comedy series Swingers featured the 'gay men enjoy prison' version, played for laughs: one ongoing storyline features a British man locked up in a foreign country who has obviously been enjoying whatever's been going on with his attractive young Latin cellmate. In fact, he's having so much fun he confesses to the crime he's been falsely accused of and to several other crimes...which comes back to bite him in the ass, as he learns soon after that his cellmate's violent older brother is being transferred to the same prison and is planning to do unpleasant things to the man who's been 'corrupting' his brother.
  • On an episode of Reno 911 Deputy Junior tells a very detailed and graphic story to a horrified group of kids visiting the jail about a Mormon kid being brutally gang raped in one of the cells.
  • The IT Crowd:
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 Moss: I can't go to jail, Roy! They'll rape the flip out of me!

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  • In an episode of Smallville, Lois laughingly speculates that a young quarterback is making up his story of not remembering committing a crime because he wants to avoid "playing 'tight end'" for the local penitentiary.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "I Only Have Eyes For You". Buffy is pissed about a jock who murdered his girlfriend, and rather than forgiving him like she is told will lift the curse cites he deserves "sixty years of breaking rocks and making special friends with Roscoe the weightlifter."
    • Buffy likes this one. In "Earshot" she was about to suggest this as Jonathan's fate if he were to commit mass murder, and in "Who Are You" she (well Faith) says there'll be some Big Bertha to give her attention in prison. "Chaos Bleeds" has Faith say she had to ward off prison rape when she chose to pay her debt to society.
    • Katrina's last words (apart from "get off me!") in 'Dead Things' are "I'm gonna make sure you get locked up for this, then we'll see how you like getting raped!".
  • Threatened on Las Vegas to the point of it being a Running Gag.
  • Wiseguy. A woman asks Vinnie how he survived 18 months in a federal pen — Vinnie claims he "married the toughest guy there and he fought off all the others". Hilariously subverted when corrupt media mogul Winston Newquay is locked in a cell, and a Scary Black Man twice his size crawls out from under the bunk and starts to take off his shirt...only to start auditioning himself to Newquay with an air-guitar rendition of "Soul Man".
  • A recurring skit on Saturday Night Live "Scared Straight" Keenan Thompson (often joined by the Host of the Week) talks to some teens about the dangers of going to prison, most of which involves prison rape.
  • In the NBC made-for-tv movie Born Innocent, Linda Blair plays a fourteen-year-old runaway who, while in a girl's detention center, is gang-raped in the shower with a plunger handle. On screen. In 1974.


Music[]

  • On the "tasteless joke" front, the last track on The Offspring's Splinter album is "When You're In Prison," a guide to avoiding prison rape in the form of a '40s-style ballad. Complete with cheerful chorus of female voices at the end.
  • Similarly, the song "Date Rape" by Sublime tells a story of a man who rapes a girl he meets in a bar, goes to jail, and is in turn raped himself, in a sort of poetic justice.
    • The Singer says in the end that he can't really find it in himself to fell sorry for him after what he did.
      • For Bonus points the Music Video has Ron Jeremy as the prison rapist.
  • The Bob and Tom Show song "Prison Bitch", quoted on the top of the page, which is rendered hideously funny by its spot-on mimicry of a doo-wop love ballad — if you've heard another such song, ever, in your life, you can perfectly predict the melody — contrasted with the horrid content of the lyrics: "You're not like all the others, too bad they had to die!"
      • Tom also has an annoying habit (among many) of working a prison sodomy crack into nearly every crime news story.
  • My Chemical Romance have a song called "You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison." It's pretty self-explanatory.
    • Don't buy the version with the screaming at the end. It's... understandably creepy.
      • The screaming isn't that bad, but that laugh... it's disturbing.
      • The version from the Life On the Murder Scene EP has Gerard starting the song off by explaining it as being the story of a "beautiful boy who done went to jail". Just in case there was any hint of doubt.
    • Apparently the title is a reference to the aforementioned 25th Hour.
  • Bowling for Soup's video of "The Bitch Song" involves the band being sent to prison, with all that that and the song title implies (the song itself, however, is about the singer's girlfriend).
  • In the song "I Won't be Home for Christmas," the narrator is sent to prison and molested if not outright raped.
  • Megadeth's 1992 song "Captive Honour" tells the story of an arrogant protagonist who is sent to prison and...well...finds out for himself that he's not as tough as he thought he was.
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 "Inside the big house his nightmare unfolds

Before he got there, his manpussy was sold

Black blanket welcome, this tough guy's now a bitch

Praying for death, it can't be worse than this."

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  • Nirvana's "Rape Me." The singer in this case is playing a victim of everyday non-prison rape, but the "I'm not the only one" line is directed at her attacker; he'll get his when he gets to jail. Or maybe Hell.
  • Rich Hall's character, Otis Lee Crenshaw (a country and western singing former convict), begins one of his songs with the intro "Y'know, prison rape has always gotten kinda a bad name." (the song is called "He almost looks like you.")
  • On the Frank Zappa album Joe's Garage, the protagonist Joe is "plooked" in prison during the song "Keep it Greasey." "Dong Work for Yuda," the preceding song, sings of Joe's rapist's generous gifts in the genitals department, just so the audience knows how awful Joe's going to have it.
  • The Tool song "Prison Sex" is a subversion. You'd think the subject is about this, given the title, but Word of God is it's about child abuse (more specifically how being abused as a child makes the viewpoint character take it out on someone else in turn) and the "prison" is metaphorical.
  • Used as a throwaway joke in one of the Gorillaz interviews, as they discuss Murdoc's jail time in Mexico.
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 Murdoc: "Ugh, prison food. I don't think I'll eat another burrito the rest of my life."

2D: "Yeah, but you had your share of Mexican sausage, eh Muds?"

Murdoc: "Oh shaddup you little fu-"

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 Number 47 said to Number 3/You're the cutest jailbird I ever did see/I sure would be delighted with your company/Come on and do the jailhouse rock with me.

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  • Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "The Message" contains a rather serious take on the subject, referring to a man who goes to prison, then becomes an "undercover fag" with his manhood being taken. Finally, the man commits suicide.
  • The Bloodhound Gang's "I Hope You Die" describes how the subject of the song will hopefully go to prison for (accidental) vehicular homicide, and be put in the same cell as someone called Bowling Ball Bag Bob:
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 What happens next is all a blur / But you remember that "fist" can be a verb.

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New Media[]

  • In the web-published novel series Shadow of the Templar Mike makes this comment regarding Farraday being released from jail:
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 Mike: For one thing, I bet his asshole's hanging a little looser.

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    • Also referenced to by Simon when he tries to persuade Jeremy to hand back the Morning Star to him:
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 Simon: Probably you'll be fending off all the large sweaty men who want you to call them 'daddy.' Put it down! Now!

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  • A simple story about getting a functioning lightsaber in the mail somehow leads to promises of brutal vengeance: "I'm gonna make sure you guys get locked up in a *raping* jail!"
  • Featured in the disclaimer on certain kinds of NSFW original fiction on the 'net: Anyone acting out such scenarios in "real life" can look forward to many unproductive years getting it up the butt by a fellow convict in their local prison.


Newspaper Comics[]

  • Played with in Bloom County, where Opus the penguin is sent to jail for a misinterpreted compliment, with one or more massive hungry prisoners regarding him with adoration...
  • Almost happens to Dale Arden in Flash Gordon. While she and Zarkov are in Mingo City incognito, they get caught up in a mass arrest by Ming's secret police, who are searching for Flash. While they are in prison, Hong the slimy prison overlord takes a fancy to Dale and arranges for her to be taken to his office for some private "questioning". Luckily for Dale, Flash, who has engineered a daring prison break with the help of a rebel movement, comes to her rescue just in time and takes out the slimy Hong with his fists.

Standup Comedy[]

  • Chris Rock has a bit in Bigger and Blacker describing an HBO special about prison life. The interviewer is talking to a drug dealer who makes would-be purchasers "toss his salad." The interviewer asks why: "When a man's sucking your dick, he can pretend it's something else. If he's eatin' ass, he knows it's ass." This is not prison rape, obviously, but Rock makes a few follow-up jokes that do reference that.
  • Yakov Smirnov: 'We have homosexual in Russia, but none of them gay. Punishment for homosexual in Soviet Russia is ten year locked up in prison with other men ... but there is five year waiting list'
  • Richard Pryor in his stand up comedy movie "Live on the Sunset Strip" talks about filming the movie Stir Crazy with Gene Wilder in a real Arizona state penitentiary. Surrounded by real hardened convicts Wilder asked Richard "What do you they'd do to us if we were here, Rich?" Pryor responded: "Fuck us." Wilder protested: "I'm not homosexual!" Richard: Homosexual ain't got nothin' to do with it! They don't fuck you cuz you like it! Theys fuck you to see that look on yo' face!"
  • Jeff Dunham:
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 Peanut: You'd get your ass sent to jail! And trust me, you would not do good in jail.

Jeff: Why not?

Peanut (deep voice): C'mere, puppet boy. Make yer daddy talk.

Cquote2


Tabletop Games[]

  • A recent editorial in the Los Angeles Times criticizing the use of Black Comedy Rape (particularly Prison Rape) mentioned a board game called "Don't Drop the Soap!" in which the players are prisoners, and one who bends over to pick up dropped soap is at risk of getting raped.


Theatre[]


Video Games[]

  • The visual novel Enzai: Falsely Accused focuses on a young boy who winds up in a 19th-century French prison on a false charge of murder and has to deal with a horrific amount of this as he fights to prove his innocence and get out in one piece.
  • Almost occurs in Skies of Arcadia during Vyse's second entry (i.e imprisonment) in the Grand Fortress; Aika is harassed and about to be raped by the admiral Vigoro; thankfully Vyse and Gilder show up in time. The implications of rape were removed in the English localization of the game.
  • Grand Theft Auto IV protagonist Niko Bellic mentions during a conversation that while he did spend time in Eastern European prisons, the whole prison bitch thing is a specifically American feature of incarcerated life. Which... probably isn't entirely accurate, at least not in Russia. In fact, it might very well be universal, as it's pretty much Older Than anything you care to name.
    • Well, Russian cops (neither German, nor British...really anyone but Americans) don't generally mention to suspects casually that they will be, de facto, sold as sex slaves.
  • Grand Theft Auto San Andreas also references this trope in regards to C.J.'s brother Sweet, who gets thrown in prison following Smoke and Ryder's betrayal:
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 Carl Johnson: [Toreno is calling C.J. on his cell phone] Toreno?

Mike Toreno: Carl, learn to fly.

Carl Johnson: I'm on it, man, I swear!

Mike Toreno: "I'm on it, man, I swear!" Same old broken record, Carl. But that's fine... because your brother's getting a new cellmate tonight. Horse Cock Harry. And I'm sending a present, little wedding present — a big tube of lube.

Carl Johnson: Shit, dude, okay! Okay! I swear, man, I'm gonna be the best pilot!

Mike Toreno: I'd love to hear you, Carl. I can't hear you. All I can hear is your brother's love cries as eight kilometers of cock find its way up his ass. "Aaooowww!" That's your brother, okay? No big problem.

Carl Johnson: Wait! Please, man!

Mike Toreno: That was my last motivational speech, understand? Am I being too spiritual for you, Carl?

Carl Johnson: OK, man, I get the message.

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    • Tenpenny suggests that Sweet could end up on a Ballas' cellblock "getting in touch with his feminine side" if C.J. doesn't follow orders.
    • The game also has another example with O.G. Loc, a petty criminal whose first order of business after getting out of prison is finding the guy who raped him and killing him, with Carl's assistance.
    • Early when Sweet calls Carl, Sweet talks about other inmates attempting to "jump him."
  • The would-have-been Gizmondo Killer App Colors, a Wide Open Sandbox GTA-clone, presented prison rape as an option after the player gets arrested: To get out, the player can pay anywhere between $20,000 and $7,000, or just let the fat, bearded inmate sodomize him so that you'll be sent to the infirmary where he can escape.
  • There are rumors that a GTA-style Judge Mathis game is in production where the player will get to experience the joy of prison rape. See this page.
  • It's never explicitly mentioned in The Suffering, although there was a minor lampshading when an inmate tells Torque "You don't know what you're missing!" There was also another NPC who reveals that he's gay after you find the corpse of an inmate he was looking for, and there's a bloody bar of soap in the bathroom.
  • In Mass Effect 2, if you wander into the Citadel bar Men's restroom, female ex-convict Jack will talk about a time she was jumped in the prison restroom and gang-raped. She hunted them down and killed them all afterwards.
    • Earlier one of the inmates at the prison you bust Jack out of talks about the other prisoners "they'll take everything, your smokes, your clothes, your... pride. I haven't showered in months."
  • In Oddworld Stranger's Wrath, Looten Duke does not want to share a jail cell with Blisterz Booty again, because he has "dignity"
  • Referred to in Fallout: New Vegas — if you visit the NCR Correctional Facility with Straight Gay companion Arcade Gannon, the (former) inmates mention they used to trade men like him.
  • After you rescue Oleg in Saints Row the Third, Pierce comments that the last time a giant naked man offered to help him, it didn't end well.
    • Earlier on when Shaundi asks "Are you trying to get us all jail time?" To which Josh Birk freaks out citing "I don't wanna be somebody's bitch!"
    • A more subtle one in Saints Row 2, where one of the whiteboards for in the prison guard's staff room says "Don't drop the soap."
  • In Alice: Madness Returns, Alice threatens Bumby with this: "In prison, some half-wit bruiser will make you his sweetheart!"
  • Pretty much the point of visual novel Toriko Hime (Prison Princess), where the main (female) characters are arrested for completely made up crimes and sentenced to serving as sex slaves for the male prisoners.


Web Comics[]

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 Rick: Oh dear! I have dropped the soap, and shall have to bend far, far, over to pick it back up again!

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 Leo: Ooooh...'Roll a Katamari'. Heh, that's pretty clever.

The Prince: So can I go home now?

Leo: No, no, no. It's soap on a rope for you.

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  • In The Order of the Stick, Thog states he's "too pretty for jail." Also the gem, "nale tell thog, don't drop soap."
  • In Least I Could Do it was a running gag here,here, and here
  • Played for laughs in this User Friendly strip.
  • Ménage à 3: When Gary is afraid that Yuki will turn him in for accidentally molesting her, he says to Dillon: "Just remember me fondly as I get butt-raped daily in jail."

Web Original[]

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 Nappa: I'm Nappa. And this is Vegeta. He was a prison--

Vegeta: Shut the hell up, Nappa!

Nappa: ...BITCH.

Vegeta: Goddamn it, Nappa!

Cquote2


Western Animation[]

  • The Critic. Jay Sherman gets propositioned by an inmate... but the inmate just treats Jay lovingly with gifts.
  • The Boondocks: Prison rape is something that haunts the imagination of at least one character, Tom Dubois. In a Flash Back Montage, Tom's entire uptight, upright, good citizen prosecuting attorney personality is shown to stem from a deep-seated phobia about being sent to prison and raped. His wife notes that "This whole 'anal rape thing' is really causing both of us to miss out on a lot in life."
  • Subverted in The Pilot of Family Guy, when Peter is sent to jail for fraud, he says on his first day: "All those stories about dropping the soap are true!" He then goes on to say: "Y'know, it slips and slides everywhere, you just can't grab onto it!"
    • Subverted again in "One If By Clam, Two If By Sea", after being framed for arson of the British Pub, many of the inmates are commenting that they intend to rape Peter. Peter however is taking all of the comments as compliments, appearing to be completely unaware of their intent, until he says, "they are going to be bummed to know I'm not gay but everyone is so nice here".
    • Played for laughs in "Airport O7", where Peter mentions that he's so happy Quagmire got his job as a pilot back that he doesn't even mind that he got raped in federal prison, where he was sent for hijacking a plane.
    • Subverted in "Fast Times At Buddy Cianci Jr. High", when Lois worries about Chris being sent to prison because she's seen Oz and knows what goes on in prison showers. Cut to a scene of prisoners happily singing a parody of "The Wonderful Land of Oz" while soaping each others' backs in a completely chaste manner.
    • After Meg gets back from prison she has apparently learnt all about prison rape and she calmly steps into the shower with her naked father, and rapes him with a loofah to assert her dominance.
    • They did a gag about the "real" ending of Dirty Dancing where Baby's parents sent Johnny to jail.
    • It's also played straight in two parodies of The Shawshank Redemption:
    • Another gag had Mr. Magoo note he can't go to prison because they'll rape him and he won't see it coming.
  • One odd variation is the occasional suggestion that a homosexual character would enjoy prison for this reason. For example, on one episode of The Simpsons, there is a comment about Smithers "taking quickly" to a Turkish prison, and at the end of the remake of The In-Laws, one of the heroes comments that the flamboyant villain is going to "love" prison.
    • Another borderline example occurs when Marge goes to jail and Homer visits her on conjugal visit day. Homer is being very gentle and considerate, ready to do whatever will help Marge cope with being in jail. Her only response is to jump on him, knocking the trailer they're in onto its side. Then again, this may be a subversion, since Homer was probably happy to oblige...
    • Also hinted at in a throwaway joke in "The Bob Next Door", when Sideshow Bob tells Bart about how he stole his cellmate's identity (it wasn't pretty) to break out of prison: The cellmate asked Bob why he kept measuring his face with a caliper, to which Bob replied "Just passing the time." The cellmate then remarked "I guess it beats what the last guy did."
      • When Krusty was working an awards show and Bob won the award, he sneered at Krusty (from a live feed from the prison), "This is one more than you'll ever win!" Krusty shot back, "Just don't drop that thing in the shower, Bob!"
    • In their retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo, Homer is sent to prison and has Burns as his cellmate. Burns gives him an escape route and a map to his treasure. When Homer asks why Burns is helping him, he explains he wants to know he had at least one friend in his life and he also wants to make up for the fact that while Homer slept, Burns violated him repeatedly.
  • One episode of Clone High had Gandhi being accidentally incarcerated. He was very nervous about prison rape, especially because the other inmates kept ominously referring to the shower. When they finally cornered him for his 'initiation', it was completely innocent, of the 'three cheers' variety. They then listened, sympathetically, as he discussed his grief over the death of Ponce de Leon. It was hilarious.
    • When this is revealed, one inmate says "Damn, boy! What'd you think we were going to do? Make LOVE to you?" And then they all laugh, except for one guy who just keeps creepily staring at Gandhi...
  • A disturbingly creepy running gag in The Powerpuff Girls is that villain Mojo Jojo is raped when he goes to prison by fellow inmates. The first example was the ending of "Cootie Gras", where in a large inmate glares meaningfully at Mojo as Mojo displays a worried look, while the narrator significantly says "Love is in the air! Can't you just feel it?" A similar scene happens in "Monkey See Doggy Two", only as Mojo is turned into a dog and sent to the pound, with another dog. Most recently, the 10th anniversary/final episode special "Powerpuff Girls Rule!" had one last shout-out to this running gag, as a fellow prisoner embraces Mojo much to Mojo's dismay. Wow.
  • This was frequently implied to happen to the title character's father on the Canadian cartoon Kevin Spencer during his frequent trips to the slammer.
  • Despite its setting and Cast Full of Gay, Superjail doesn't invoke this as often as you'd think it would. In fact, two gay inmates are among the few recurring prisoners — and their sex is nothing if not consensual. However this is an off screen mention by one of them asking, "how do you not watch a shower rape?"
  • Not technically Prison Rape, but there is a scene in the episode of Rocko's Modern Life where Rocko's red car is impounded...
  • This is heavily implied to happen to Fox at the end of "The Terrible Trio" in Batman the Animated Series.
  • Implied to have happened to Doctor Rockso in Metalocalypse: a guard finds him shaking and huddling in his cellmate's sleeping arms.
  • Parodied in The Venture Brothers. The Monarch wakes up in prison to find that he was about to be raped by King Gorilla (an actual gay gorilla). However, King admits he couldn't go through with it; Monarch reminds him too much of a girl. To make the scene even more bizarre, Monarch then realizes that he's not even in his own cell. Apparently King Gorilla has enough pull with the guards to bring his "dates" over to his place.
  • In the 90's Looney Tunes short Carrotblanca at the end Yosemite Sam is thrown in jail and a dopey looking prisoner suddenly gains a pair of eyelashes and smiles at him in a lustful way and Sam yells for help.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants. When Spongebob tries to get Gary to take a bath he says that the soap is dubloons and tells him not to drop them
  • An episode of Code Monkeys where the cast (including the girls) gets sent to prison. Source of the page image up there. Though no-one actually gets raped, despite taking bets on who will be violated first.
  • Frequent topic] [1] on Robot Chicken".
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender: Defied. A female guard catches Zuko (disguised as a male guard) loitering in the female prisoners' block, seemingly standing watch for a buddy. The female guard silently glances at Suki's cell before demanding Zuko let her check to see what was going on inside. Of particular note is that, in further defiance of expectations, the rape averse prison is run by the bad guys.
    • Of course, if you jump to unfortunate conclusions from Azula's "favorite prisoner" line (also referring to Suki), well.....Not even the most well-intentioned guards would question their princess.


  1. who also falsely claim that pirating is a felony, when it is only a misdemeanor