We’ve all been thrilled by movies and TV shows where the characters have to avoid triggering ingenious booby traps. While some of them seem too far-fetched to be true, we can find some evidence that real-life traps have inspired on-screen creations.
The Flooded Vault in Money Heist
The idea of being inside a heavily protected bank vault is a recurring theme in the entertainment industry, from movies like 2008’s The Bank Job to casino games at sites like Paddy Power. The options for trying online roulette at Paddy’s include Gold Vault Roulette, where a live dealer is located inside a studio designed like a vault. Gold bars are added to randomly chosen numbers to provide multipliers but the rest of the gameplay is based on standard roulette rules.
Bank vaults also feature heavily in the Spanish Netflix show Money Heist, where the gang enter the most secure vaults to carry out daring raids. The third season introduced a bank vault that gets flooded with water, leading some viewers to believe that the series was now getting too far-fetched. Yet, it’s been revealed by Screen Rant that this booby trap is based on a Bank of Spain security system that’s even more complicated and fills the vault with water from Madrid’s most famous fountain.
The Mysterious Chinese Tomb with Rivers of Mercury
You’ve probably heard of the Terracotta Army that was uncovered in China in the 1970s. This vast army of over 8,000 pottery figures was created to protect the First Qin Emperor in the afterlife. However, you might not know that the Emperor’s main tomb is still sealed. One reason for not opening this tomb and discovering its treasures is that we don’t currently have the technology to avoid them being damaged instantly by exposure to air. The Terracotta soldiers were originally painted, but the paint peeled off quickly once they were brought outside.
Another fascinating theory for the tomb not yet being opened is that rivers of flowing mercury were created inside the tomb. The legend brings to mind the type of booby trap that movie adventurers like Indiana Jones and Benjamin Franklin Gates need to avoid since mercury is highly toxic. This analysis by Chemistry World suggests it’s unlikely that the tomb contains a lot of mercury, but the legend of a booby-trapped chamber containing fabulous treasures is hard to resist.
Are Egyptian Tombs Booby-Trapped?
The idea of exploring Egyptian tombs and uncovering amazing artefacts has been part of the entertainment industry for a long time. 1984’s Raiders of the Lost Ark introduced the idea of solving puzzles and overcoming obstacles to millions of movie fans but were any of the traps realistic?
Opinion is divided over whether this type of mechanism was ever used in Ancient Egypt. Reports occasionally surface of mysterious chambers or objects in the pyramids or other archaeological sites. However, with no concrete evidence of this, for the moment anything we see in movies is nothing more than an educated guess.
Some booby traps shown in the entertainment industry are based on real-life examples, while others have been created out of the blue. As researchers discover more about the traps used by different cultures in the past, we can hope to see them incorporated into popular culture.