In the event that this not something that can only happen to me:
People to whom I was giving a lift to & back from an event got into car, & I urged them to put packs in the hatch, which I had partly emptied out before the trip for that purpose.
I rearranged one pack, which I felt could otherwise squash some of my remaining stuff. So its entirely my fault.
I put my pack in, then remembered I would have to pay tolls, clicked open the hatch; on this 2002 Acura, as on myriads of other cars, there is no keyed entry to hatch/trunk, & it refused to open. I figured the actuator, which is what I Iater found out is what this electronic crap that activates the hatch latch is called, had picked that moment to break, even though the appropriate clicking sounds were heard & it worked just fine on the doors (which fortunately do still have entry-by-key as well).
When we got back to Boston, & I folded down the rear seats so my passengers could get their stuff, I found it was in-a-way even worse; one person's pack, the one I had moved, had the cloth tab at the end of a pack-tightening strap caught in the latch. No amount of tugging/maneuvering would free it. They wanted to get going, so rather than empty stuff into a bag I could give them, they cut off the end of the strap.
I later looked up internet stuff by people who also couldn't get their hatch open, all because a loose screw or other debris had fallen inside the actuator/latch assembly, which is inside its own plastic case. For these people, banging on the Acura symbol freed the debris so they could at least open the hatch, making it easier to get at the encased actuator/latch & remove the debris. Didn't work for me, as that strap was under, not inside the case.
If I was in a better state of mind, I'd have crawled inside the hatch & unscrewed every thing I could get at in hopes I could free the strap piece. I've had bad luck in this kind of endeavor before (where once with a front grill on a diff car where I was trying to get at a light to change it I missed one tiny screw & wound up cracking the grill).
I hoped my car-repair people would know some miraculous trick, but no, they had to crawl into the hatch, the contents of which I had put in my basement for their comfort, & remove all those tiny screws so they could remove all the trim on the inside of the hatch & hopefully get that strap out.
Which luckily they did. And actuator still works, so I didn't have to shell out for a new one.
But you'd think a car which had something stuck exactly where the latch closes just would fail to close, wouldn't you.
Cars with trunks now have a pull device so people locked in the trunk can pull it & get out. I bet the Mafia removes those devices before they lock their victims in, though. And kids who've crawled into trunks generally are too young to read the instructions on that device, but hopefully they do like to pull on hanging strings/levers. My 2002 hatchback doesn't have one, & as that strap was stuck in the latch, it wouldn't have worked anyway.