Ryan McAvoy said:

Here is a good one...

A cliche that has become very boring and overused of late is the "Mastermind villain allows themselves to be trapped inside a glass cell that they planned to escape from all along" cliche. The three most recent examples that I can think of are...

The Avengers 2012
Skyfall 2012
Star Trek Into Darkness 2013

...and they were copying the ridiculous success of 2008's 'The Dark Knight'. But surely Christopher Nolan couldn't be the first? 2003's 'X2' had the glass prison and the plan to escape but that's not the same as allowing yourself to be captured as part of your evil game of chess. Those pesky Greeks used an equine variant of this idea some 3 millenia ago but it was still not the same cliche that was used by Heath Ledger's Joker.

Any earlier examples than 2008? (There must be)

I'm guessing just by what you typed that variations on the theme are okay or are you specifically speaking about glass (no metal bars) cells only?