Revision 277021574 of "Government warehouse (fiction)" on enwiki

{{Refimprove|date=May 2008}}
[[Image:Government Warehouse.jpg|thumb|250px|right|The Government Warehouse at the end of the movie ''[[Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark|Raiders of the Lost Ark]]''.]]

The '''Government Warehouse''' is a plot device used in [[Film|movie]]s, [[Television program|television series]], and [[novel]]s, a scenario used in [[role-playing game]]s, and a belief of some [[conspiracy theory|conspiracy theorists]]. The concept is that there is a secret government warehouse where various items are stored of whose existence the [[government]] wants the general populace to remain ignorant.

== Plot device in fiction ==

In [[fiction]], the Government Warehouse is a plot device used for conveniently disposing of story elements that have fulfilled their purpose in a story, but that would cause consistency or [[Continuity (fiction)|continuity]] problems for subsequent (or previous) stories in the same fictional setting were they to remain. In many cases, the story items disposed of are of such a nature that they would make it difficult to set up the necessary tensions and conflicts for other stories in the same fictional setting, as they would make such tensions and conflicts simple to resolve.

A secondary purpose of the Government Warehouse plot device is to satirize the ineptitude of governments, the premise being that if a government found itself in possession of an extraordinary object or person, it would simply catalogue it and lose it in a vast filing system. For example, in the film ''[[Forever Young (film)|Forever Young]]'', Mel Gibson played an experimental [[suspended animation]] subject, who was frozen in a capsule, which was forgotten about and stored in a Government Warehouse until two children stumbled upon it while playing.

Perhaps the best-known instances of the Government Warehouse plot device are found in the [[Indiana Jones franchise|''Indiana Jones'' movies]] and the television series ''[[The X-Files]]''. At the end of ''[[Raiders of the Lost Ark]]'', the [[Ark of the Covenant]] is hidden away in a warehouse, explaining its disappearance. (The shot of the warehouse is an allusion to the final scene of ''[[Citizen Kane]]'', where there is a similar shot of a private warehouse.) The warehouse (shown located in [[Area 51|Hangar 51]]) reappears in ''[[Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull]]'', where [[Indiana Jones]] and [[KGB]] agents go to recover the remains of the [[Roswell UFO Incident|Roswell alien]], eventually revealed to be an interdimensional being with a crystalline skeleton. 

In the television show [[Stargate SG-1]] [[Area 51]] serves as a government warehouse for storage of alien artifacts.

Sometimes items are recovered from Government Warehouses in order to construct derived fictional settings. In the first episode of the late-80s ''[[War of the Worlds (TV series)|War of the Worlds]]'' television series a triad of war machines is collected from a Government Warehouse (Hangar 15) where they had been stored since an invasion in 1953, thus linking the television series to the 1953 film ''[[The War of the Worlds (1953 film)|The War of the Worlds]]''.

The 2002 [[South Park]] episode [[Free Hat]] took a stand against [[Steven Spielberg]] and [[George Lucas]] re-releasing old movies in order to make them more [[Family-friendliness|family-friendly]] and [[Political correctness|politically correct]]. The episode ended with Stan sending such a re-release of [[Raiders of the Lost Ark]] to the warehouse (which is named "[[Financial assistance following the September 11 attacks#American Red Cross|Red Cross 9/11 Relief Funds]]").

The [[Family Guy]] episodes [[Peter's Got Woods]] (2005) and [[Back to the Woods]] (2008) both parodied [[Raiders of the Lost Ark]] - Peter used the top men phrase while shipping James Woods away in the warehouse at the end of both episodes.

In the 2006 film ''[[Click (film)|Click]]'', the warehouse serves a similar purpose; however, it is not owned by a government but by [[Bed Bath & Beyond]].

In the end of "[[Conflict Resolution (The Office)]]" (2006), a similar scene is created using a box full of complaints made by [[Dwight Schrute]], and other characters. The television series ''The X-Files'' is replete with characters and objects with unusual properties and powers that would complicate the fictional setting, or make it too simple for characters to achieve the goals that they quest for, and the Government Warehouse plot device is heavily used to explain the absence of the characters and objects, and to make the goals difficult to achieve. The plot device is in fact a central element of the series. A typical example is found in the [[Pilot (The X-Files)|pilot episode]].

An upcoming television series on [[SCI FI]], ''[[Warehouse 13]]'', features the adventures of two [[United States Secret Service]] agents assigned to oversee such a government warehouse facility.

===A Related Device===
In the [[Tom Clancy]] novel ''[[Without Remorse]],'' the protagonist, ex-[[Navy SEAL]] John Kelly, lives on an island he leases from the [[General Services Administration]], which has such ordinary suburban comforts as wiring, plumbing, and heating; and also a few less-ordinary features: two-foot-thick concrete walls, a dock, a Navy-standard machine shop, and a Navy-standard [[recompression chamber]]. Kelly was issued the lease through the intervention of a grateful [[admiral]] whose son Kelly had rescued from [[North Vietnam]]. The GSA's files of disused properties serve the same purpose as a physical warehouse but can accommodate larger objects.

==Real-world government warehouses ==
The government warehouses of fiction and [[conspiracy theories]] have a number of analogues in the real world, although some are not run by official national governments. Historically, the template is the [[Library of Alexandria|Great Library of Alexandria]], which held an extensive collection of written works but was repeatedly destroyed during the first millennium AD. The [[Vatican Secret Archives]]<ref>[http://asv.vatican.va/home_en.htm Vatican<!-- bot-generated title -->] at asv.vatican.va</ref> are alleged to hold the secrets of the [[Knights Templar]]. Many prominent museums have extensive archives which often lay undisturbed for decades, such as the [[Cairo Museum]] in Egypt, which was found in 2002 to have 80,000 items - more than half the museum's collection - stored away in its vaults.<ref>[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/12/1213_021213_cairomuseum.html Cairo Museum Unveils &quot;Lost&quot; Egyptian Treasures<!-- bot-generated title -->] at news.nationalgeographic.com</ref>

In the United States, the [[National Archives and Records Administration]] and the [[Library of Congress]] both have numerous government warehouses to store historic items and documents.

== RPG scenarios ==
The concept of a Government Warehouse has been used as a fun scenario for role-playing games:

* The [[MMORPG]] ''[[City of Heroes]]'' parodies this plot device by having the MAGI Vault be where dangerous magical artifacts are stored safely under the care of Azuria. However, these items tend to get stolen from the vault very quickly, often right after the player gives the item to Azuria for safekeeping.
* {{cite web|accessdate=September 11|accessyear=2007|
url=http://www.io.com/~jlockett/RPG/HEGGA/Stuff/warehouse.html|
title=Government Warehouse list version 1.2.1|
work=}} &mdash; an attempt to construct an RPG scenario of a Government Warehouse containing every famous item ever mentioned in fiction or a conspiracy theory as being lost or suppressed
* {{cite web|accessdate=September 11|accessyear=2007|
url=http://www.deathworld.org/spy.html|
title=Government Warehouse list version 1.3.2|
work=}} &mdash; Notice that in this later version the introduction has been removed and replaced by seals denoting United States government agencies and a purported [[security classification]] notice, giving a greater impression of realism.
* {{cite web|accessdate=September 11|accessyear=2007|
url=http://www.bahneman.com/liem/x-files/warehouse.html|
title=Wherehouse|
work=}} &mdash; an even more detailed attempt to do the same thing, that even includes a classification system for the objects, and includes objects that logically could not possibly be contained in such a warehouse.  
* {{cite web|accessdate=October 26|accessyear=2007|url=http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/warehouse23|title=GURPS Warehouse 23}} &mdash; an entire book based on the strange and mysterious things that might be in such a warehouse, run by Secret Masters. [[Steve Jackson Games]] also calls its online store "Warehouse 23".

== References ==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Conspiracy theories]]
[[Category:Fictional secret bases]]
[[Category:Plot devices]]
[[Category:Warehouses]]

[[it:Magazzini del governo]]