Film / Escape from L.A.

President: If you go to Los Angeles, and come back with that black box and put it in my hand, you'll be given a full pardon for every moral crime you've committed in the United States.
Snake Plissken: Sounds familiar.

Escape from L.A. is the 1996 sequel to John Carpenter's Escape from New York.

In 2013, America has become even more dystopian than it was in the earlier film: A theocratic fundamentalist Christian President (Cliff Robertson) has taken over control of the country, and Los Angeles has become a penal colony/no man's land/landfill/roach motel after breaking off of the US thanks to The Big One. As the film begins, an airplane escape pod has crash-landed in Los Angeles; this pod carried the President's daughter, Utopia (A. J. Langer), who has since sided with revolutionary Cuervo Jones and taken the United States' super weapon — a device that controls "The Sword of Damocles" satellite system, which would let the President disable any country in the world with an electromagnetic pulse — with her. He drafts Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) into entering Los Angeles, retrieving the device, and executing his daughter for treason. His reward for a successful mission will be a full pardon...as well as an antidote to a virus injected into him to ensure his compliance, of course.

Left with no options, Snake enters the heavily fortified city of Los Angeles; like New York before it, the city has become a prison with no guards and precious little order. As Plissken makes his way through ruins of what was once a vibrant and lively city, he both gains and loses allies and fights off loads of bad guys.

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Escape from L.A. contains the following tropes:

#-M

• 20 Minutes into the Future: Carried over from the first film; the film being released in 1996 and being set in 2013.
• '90s Anti-Hero: Snake exemplifies this. He was even this nine years before the nineties began, making him an Ur-Example. There's an unusual reason for this. Escape from L.A. was in development for ten years with a script commissioned in 1985. But then the project was shelved until the Northridge earthquake and L.A. riots revived interest, and filming began in 1995. But the fact that a delayed-sequel about an '80s anti-hero was in theaters just after Independence Day was why it was a box office failure.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Used by Snake as an escape route following one of the many shoot-outs in the film.
• Actionized Sequel: The film has more action and bigger setpieces than Escape from New York.
• After the End: With the United States already speeding down Crapsack World Lane in 1998, an earthquake measuring 9.6 on the Richter Scale devastates Los Angeles in 2000 and happens to fulfill the prophecy of an Activist Fundamentalist presidential candidate who is awarded a lifetime term of office.
• The Alcatraz: Los Angeles, which has been separated from the mainland US by a massive earthquake, is now a prison for those deemed "unfit" to live in the new theocratic America. A Great Wall is built along the shoreline and the United States Police Force is encamped along it to prevent anyone from escaping back to the US.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Played with and subverted. The President's daughter runs off with revolutionary Cuervo Jones because she thinks he's doing the right thing by opposing her father's theocracy. However, once she actually witnesses him committing some very unfair, violent, and murderous deeds, she decides she wants no more to do with him and sides with Snake.
• All Myths Are True: Hershe calls attention to the latest conspiracy theories that she has heard over the past few years, including one (when Snake brings up how he's been infected by Plutoxin-7) that it's "rumor control... government propaganda." At the end of the film, Hershe is proven correct, as Snake discovers that the virus is a manmade version of the flu.
• All There in the Manual: The Boom! Studios comic series fills in a number of details left unaddressed by the film, including the explanation of what happened in Cleveland (Snake steals the U.S. Bill of Rights from a Federal Reserve), how he ended up in New Vegas and the general state of the world going into this film.
• Arc Words: "The more things change, the more they stay the same."
• Artistic License – Biology: About a third of the way into the film this is Played for Laughs when Snake encounters a cult of plastic surgery-addicted murderers led by the "Surgeon General of Beverly Hills"
  Snake: What are they?
  Taslima: Surgical failures. They live here. Too many implants and face-lifts over the years... Their muscles turned to Jell-O. The only way they survive is to have fresh body parts transplanted over and over again.
• Artistic License – Geology: The movie's introduction explains that L.A. was hit by a 9.6 earthquake. While not impossible, it is incredibly unlikely that a magnitude greater than 9 could be reached along that particular fault. It is heavily implied however that the President had a hand in it given just how conveniently timed his prophetic speech was.
• Artistic License – Law: There is (thankfully) no way in hell that the President's tyrannical rules would be considered constitutional, particularly the outlawing of all religions other than Christianity. Also, the President doesn't make laws in the first place (that's what Congress does), although it's implied he was given some kind of special powers after the earthquake (as a sort of Hand Wave).
• Artistic License – Nuclear Physics: Snake pilots a nuclear minisub to infiltrate the island, easily overloading the reactor by accelerating without causing a meltdown. The hologram projection device in his load-out also falls into this, as despite being the size of a hockey puck and equipped with a "mini-nuke battery", the battery only provides use for "about 8 minutes"
• Artistic License – Physics: Perhaps too many to list, but here are a few:
  • The big threatening MacGuffin in the movie is the "Sword of Damocles", a network of space EMPs that will send the world back to the stone-age. EMP works by causing any metal it passes through to generate an electrical charge, however the strength of that charge depends on the size and length of the metal the EMP hits. Systems connected to miles of copper wire would take extremely powerful voltage spikes, but smaller electronics such as cell phones, watches, and smaller computers are actually immune to an EMP because they don't contain large enough wires to attenuate enough of the pulse. In essence, only large, unshielded devices (like modern cars and some aircraft) would be sufficiently damaged by an EMP to be completely unusable. In other words, an EMP is not a reliable method of disabling electronics on a wide scale.
  • Snake and Pipeline surf a tsunami. Given that even a normal wave can approach 100 mph and they were on land when the wave approached, it would simply envelop them rather than allow them to catch a ride.
  • By real-world standards, the hang gliders used to ambush the movie's Che Guevara clone stay aloft far too long, evidently floating on Rule of Cool.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Surfing on a Tsunami through the dilapidated ruins of L.A. chasing a Cadillac speeding on a high road...and catching it.
• Badass Biker: Snake when he rides a motorcycle.
• Badass Longcoat: Snake wears one until it's stolen by a random thug. He makes a point to retrieve it upon later finding the thug's dead body.
  Snake: I'll take my coat back now, asshole.
• Bag of Spilling:
  • Snake can't seem to hold onto any gun for very long: He loses the Coreburner rifle while trying to off Cuervo early on, quickly loses the shotgun he replaces that with soon after, hands over a pistol he takes from the Surgeon General to Taslima, has his signature revolvers taken from him when captured, loses a rifle he swipes when Map To The Stars Eddie shoots him in the leg, is forced to hand over Eddie's gun to Hershe's men, and finally loses the submachine gun he uses in the final battle with Cuervo.
  • There is a subversion to this trope as well; Snake loses his Badass Longcoat, which happens to have the holocam in one of the pockets, only to swipe the coat back from the Mook who stole it.
• Bait-and-Switch: The film follows much of the same plot beats from the original, but with a few twists. For instance, when Snake is captured and forced into the local gladiator games, we see a muscular guy brutalizing some schmucks like in the first film... and a deadly game of basketball, which is what the story goes with.
• Battle Bolas: During Snake's attack on Cuervo Jones's parade, Cuervo manages to take him down with an expertly thrown bolas that knocks Snake off the top of a moving truck.
• Behind the Black: Snake is told to rendezvous with the one soldier from the first rescue team who is supposedly alive. A Wham Shot reveals that the guy's corpse is being used for target practice, but since it's in the center of a massive room, Snake should have already long seen it.
• Big Bad Ensemble: The American President is a religious fascist who turned his country into a police state and is willing to destroy entire countries if necessary to maintain his supremacy. Meanwhile, Cuervo Jones runs the largest gang in Los Angeles and has united Latin America under the Shining Path to invade the United States and get that power for himself.
• Big Blackout: Snake does this by activating the Sword of Damocles with the world code engaged. This is treated as a good thing, as it supposedly allows humanity to restart.
• Bio-Augmentation: Played for Laughs when Snake encounters a cult of plastic surgery-addicted murderers led by the "Surgeon General of L.A."
• Bittersweet Ending: An interesting variant. The ending is incredibly bitter yet presented as a triumph nonetheless. Snake shuts down the whole world's electricity, instead of turning control of the world over to the President or Cuervo/the Shining Path, all but surely causing the deaths of billions and turning the world into one big third-world country. In doing this, however, he has given humanity a second chance to rebuild itself from the Crapsack World it had become by leveling the playing field and destabilizing the power of corrupt leaders like the President or Cuervo.
• Book Ends: Snake's presence in the film is bracketed by a pair of appearances he makes on television — in the opening, a news crew films him as he is taken from a transport vehicle and marched into the detention center, and in the ending, the President's camera crew film him as he activates the world code on the Sword of Damocles.
• Boring Yet Practical: Snake is given an array of weapons and gadgets going into LA... Among which is a simple box of matches. He uses them twice — once to destroy a car, and the other to light up a cigarette at the end of the film.
  Malloy: Stick matches. Plain, old-fashioned stick matches. Never know when you might need them.
• Boxed Crook: As in the previous film, Snake is drafted by the President into entering Los Angeles to retrieve a MacGuffin.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: At the very end of the film, Snake finds a pack of American Spirit cigarettes in the forest, with one cigarette left. As he lights up the cigarette, he pauses and stares straight at the camera, blowing smoke as the screen goes black with Snake claiming "Welcome to the human race".
• Byronic Hero: Snake's a pretty cold son of a bitch when it comes to killing his enemies. But he is deeply if subtly enraged by injustice; When Taslima dies, he's visibly shocked and upset at the death of about the only person who hasn't either turned on him or outright manipulated him for their own ends. When the President sends his daughter Utopia to the electric chair, he's deeply disgusted. And when he shuts down the world with the Sword of Damocles, he may say, "The name is Plissken", but he means, "This is for the forgotten."
• California Collapse: A portion of the California coast has become separated from the mainland by a quake that flooded San Fernando Valley.
• Call-Back
  Taslima: What are you doing here in L.A?
  Snake: Dying.
  Taslima: But first you have to find something, right?
• Cast of Expies: Most of the major characters in this are fulfilling a role similar to that in Escape from New York.
  • Cuervo Jones -> The Duke
  • Map To The Stars Eddie -> Cabbie
  • Carjack Malone/Hershe Las Palmas -> Brain
  • Malloy -> Bob Hauk
  • In fact, the only major character who isn't an Expy is Snake.
• Chekhov's Gun: The film is full of them.
  • When Snake first arrives at the processing center, a guard scratches his hand as she walks by. It's revealed only a few minutes later what it was.
  • When Malloy gives Snake his tools for the mission, he hands him a holo-camera that can project his image up to a kilometre away, and tells him to save it for when he needs it the most. Snake stuffs it in his coat, which he subsequently loses to one of Cuervo's thugs after he's captured. He recovers the coat just before he escapes the island, and decides to use the holo-cam as part of his Stolen Macguffin Reveal to fool Malloy and the President during the climax of the film.
  • Similarly, Malloy and Brazen show off a dart that can be administered to the enemy like a blowgun. As Snake goes through his Lock-and-Load Montage, he looks at the device and places it in the shoulder fold of his shirt. Later, when he and Taslima are captured by the Surgeon General, he is able to retrieve it and use it on him before the latter cuts his eye out.
  • Just before they utilize the hang-gliders to travel to Happy Kingdom, Eddie uses Hershe's nail polish to replicate the marking that denotes the real Sword of Damocles arming device, intending to use it to fool Cuervo. He subsequently loses it to Snake, who recovers it during the final battle and takes it along on the chopper. The fake arming device is later used in the Stolen Mc Guffin Reveal when he tricks Malloy and the President, via planting the fake device in Utopia's pocket.
  • When Eddie goes for his final meeting with Cuervo, he glides into the Happy Kingdom plaza on one of Hershe's gliders, crashing it into a storefront as he lands. When Eddie is forced to bail out of the government chopper Snake is flying (when Cuervo fires a missile at it), he is ironically saved by the same glider, which acts as a landing pad.
  • Subverted with the matches. Malloy calls attention to them ("never know when you're going to need them"), but their only function is to light up a cigarette at the end of the film.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: "Maps to the Stars" Eddie switches sides constantly.
• Co-Dragons: Both Cdr. Malloy and Lt. Brazen fill this role for the President.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Cuervo interrogates Snake (who is still feeling the effects of the Plutoxin virus) by forcing him to run handcuffed to a treadmill, nearly fainting all the while.
• Combat Pragmatist: "Nobody draws until this hits the ground." *BLAM! BLAM!* "...Draw."
• Contrived Coincidence: The arming device for the Sword of Damocles uses the exact same model as Eddie's narrated Hollywood tour guides. At one point, Eddie even paints one of his own devices to make it look functionally-identical to the former, and attempts to pilfer the real device from Cuervo when his attention is diverted. Snake later uses this fake device to trick Malloy and the President, as part of the Stolen Macguffin Reveal.
• Crapsack World: Los Angeles, reduced to an lawless dog-eat-dog hellhole, is described by one of its residents as "the only free zone left in the world" and something of a dark paradise by Snake himself when compared to the police state of America and the rest of the world in general.
• Cut the Juice: What the Sword of Damocles does.
• Deadly Game: Basketball becomes a life-or-death Impossible Task in this movie. According to Cuervo, no one before Snake has ever walked off the court alive.
• Deadpan Snarker: It's probably safe to say Snake's even more of a snarker in this one.
• Demanding Their Head: After Map to the Stars Eddie emerges from a sewer, following a cave-in, and claims to have killed Snake Plissken, a skeptical Cuervo Jones demands that Eddie bring him Plissken's head as proof.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: A surprising and realistically brief example.
• Dirty Communists: The Shining Path has taken over Latin America, and are now poised to invade the US.
• Dirty Coward: The President starts freaking out the second things go off-plan, and has to be snapped back to reality by his Dragons.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Hershe doesn't like Snake calling her by the name she used as a man when they first met, "Carjack".
• Doomed Predecessor: Snake is ordered to rendezvous with the only known survivor of the previous strike team once he makes it to L.A. island. He eventually finds the soldier's corpse in a Den of Iniquity being used for target practice by a gang of Neo-Nazis.
• Even Evil Has Standards: It seems the President, despite his religious bigotry and fascist nature, doesn't seem to like Nazis, as there is a large contingent on Los Angeles Island
• Evil States of America: Even moreso than in its predecessor, as it's now a far-right Christian theocracy that uses the Sword of Damocles to enforce its hegemony over the world.
• Evil Versus Evil: Really, the Shining Path and the US Government are absolutely no different in terms of how evil they are — both the President, a fascist fundamentalist, and Cuervo Jones, a vicious power-hungry terrorist, want the "Sword of Damocles" to use against the other's empire. And Snake, naturally, is trapped between 'em, and ultimately decides to just destroy them both.
• Exact Time to Failure: Subverted. Snake's watch reaches zero seconds after he demands the cure for the Plutoxin 7 virus. Luckily, it turns out that Plutoxin 7 is just a fast, hard-hitting case of the flu.
• Expanded States of America: Bangkok, Thailand (where Snake has been at some point between 1997 and 2013) is mentioned as being United States territory.
• Expecting Someone Taller: A running joke with characters meeting Snake in the film.
• Eyepatch of Power: His picture is even displayed on the page of this trope.
• Eye Scream: Snake very narrowly averts this. Since it happened to him once already, it would've been a real bummer.
• Fate Worse than Death: Deportation to LA is considered this, to the point that on-site executions are offered for those who would prefer death.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Just after escaping from the failed parade chase, Snake passes a sign for the city of Beverly Hills that has an additional message underneath — "Quiet, Surgical Zone". Less than a minute later, he's caught (along with Taslima) by the Surgeon General of Los Angeles' lackeys.
• Forced Prize Fight: In a variation, Snake has to win a steel-cage basketball game in order to escape. If he misses a shot or lets the shot clock run out, he gets shot to pieces.

• The Fundamentalist: The President, a mixture of Ronald Reagan and the duo of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, has turned America into a theocracy. For an added joke, he's played by a guy named Robertson.
• Gambit Roulette:
  • The ending of the film relies entirely on this. Snake's hijacked helicopter takes a hit from Cuervo Jones's hail-mary rocket, but since it was only grazed by it, it allows him to temporarily maintain flight instead of being blown out of the sky; he then uses the crash as a diversion. He plants a decoy mini-disk player on Utopia knowing she would be caught, it would be found, and would be thought the real Sword of Damocles. Plus, while Snake's use of the holo-cam is rather ingenious, the ruse would have been blown if anyone had decided to touch his projection prior to The Reveal, something that comes very close to happening in casual conversation.
  • The government's blackmailing plan. Infecting Snake with the flu put a needless handicap on his ability to function in combat. In the movie he shrugs these symptoms of the flu off, but in real life they could easily have gotten him killed or incapacitated. Alternatively, he could also have just run out the clock and discovered the bluff, leaving him with no incentive whatsoever to return the device.
• A God Am I: During the climax, when the President sentences his daughter to be executed, he corrupts one of the Bible's most recognized verses, putting himself in The Almighty's place. Of course, given that he's President For Life of a theocratic dictatorship, it'd probably be surprising if he didn't develop a God complex.
  President: For he so loved his country, he gave his only seditious child.
  Original Verse: For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten son (...) [John 3:16]
• The Gunslinger: Snake has become a Type D in the intervening years.
• Hell: The opening narration refers to L.A. as an "island of the damned."
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Snake's old worn out leather coat makes a return, until he trades up for a Badass Longcoat. In fact, during the opening incarceration shot, Snake's entire wardrobe makes a return since Russell informed Carpenter that he still had his original outfit from Escape from New York hanging in his closet.
• Hellish L.A.: Depicts Los Angeles the same way the last movie depicted New York, as a near-future extrapolation of all the city's worst tendencies in 1996 blown up to dystopian levels.
• Heroic Neutral: Snake would rather not be helping but being infected by a virus forces his hand.
• Historical Badass Upgrade: The real-life Shining Path has virtually no influence outside Peru while the Shining Path depicted in this film has conquered Latin America and preparing for an invasion of the US.
• Hollywood Healing: Averted. Snake is shot in the leg by Eddie partway through the movie and spends the rest of the film with a noticeable limp.
• Hologram:
  • For his government-mandated mission to the future hellhole of Los Angeles island, Snake is given a device that projects a holographic image of himself to fool enemies. Notably, he uses it in the climax to fool the dictatorial U.S. President.
  • During the mission briefing, Snake's captors use these to project themselves into his cell, knowing better than to go in there with a dangerous killer.
• Hostage MacGuffin: Snake Plissken is sent to rescue the president's daughter who voluntarily stole the codes to an EMP satellite to give to her terrorist paramour. Snake is sent to kill her, but can't bring himself to do it after she has a Heel–Face Turn, and brings her with him.
• Ho Yay: An interesting variation; Snake is not only completely unfazed to find his former ally Carjack Malone is now a glamorous trans woman named Hershe Las Palmas, his first move is to reach into her skirt and grab the small-caliber pistol concealed in her thigh holster (after VERY suggestively running his hand up her stockinged leg).
• Human Resources: The plastic surgery freaks, who must regularly kidnap prisoners and harvest them for body parts in order to keep themselves alive.
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face:
  • Both Cuervo's goons at the Happy Kingdom and the USPF surrounding Snake at the end of the film fire guns in a complete circle around their target. It's a wonder no one is killed in the crossfire.
  • Invoked by Snake during the motorbike chase. With a shooter to his left and right, he speeds up out of the way so they shoot each other's tires.
• I Just Want to Be Free: Arguably Snake's entire motivation. He just wants to get away and be left alone to his own devices.
• I Have No Son!: The president made it clear that he disowned his daughter. In fact, he was annoyed that his daughter was alive, and prompted to execute her.
• Illegal Religion: The new extreme right-wing President who takes over the United States outlaws all religions other than Christianity as well as atheism. It is punishable by death through deportation to the hellish, crime-ridden Los Angeles Penitentiary Island. Taslima, one of the inhabitants, tells Snake that she was an American Muslim before she was shipped off to L.A.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Snake and a few other instances in the movie.
• Insistent Terminology: In both Escape from New York and L.A., the U.S. government is on a Last-Name Basis with protagonist Snake Plissken, to which he consistently replies, "Call me Snake". However, during the respective climaxes of both movies, when one of the government's men finally does call him Snake, he reverses his previous attitude with the reply, "The name's Plissken".
• In the Back: Subverted. A neo-Nazi skinhead attempts to throw a knife into Snake's back as he's walking away. Snake turns around and riddles him with bullets from his BFG before continuing on his path.
• Invaded States of America: A united, Shining Path-led Latin America is on the verge of invading the US, combined with most of the Third World. Uganda is the only non-Latin country specifically mentioned.
• Ironic Echo: "Catches on quick doesn't s/he?"
• Ironic Last Words: "Once you figure out this place, it's really not so bad." Spoken by Taslima, just before she dies in a drive-by shooting. She'd been in L.A. long enough to know about all the gangs and their turf, but she let her guard down around Snake and paid for it.
• It's All About Me: Snake cannot be persuaded to give a shit about anything but his own interests. Considering there is no particularly good side for him to be on, one can hardly blame him. This applies to the President, too.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Snake was more or less this since Escape from New York. However in this movie is a bit less anti-heroic as you would expect - it is shown when he spares The President's daughter's life when he had the order to kill her on sight. Although that may be equally due to Snake's utter contempt for the men who ordered him to do it.
• Kids Are Cruel: The drive-by done by the Korean Dragon gang that kills Taslima seems to consist of a number of kids between ten and fifteen. Probably justified given the hellhole they were born in.
• Kill Sat: The Sword of Damocles is a satellite system that will cause blackouts via EMP.
• Lighter and Softer: L.A. has little of the grittiness of New York, and Snake is more of an Action Hero. Then again, L.A. does subvert it with a much bleaker ending where, instead of just trolling the president, Snake essentially shuts down the earth's electricity supply, plunging the world into darkness. Something that Snake doesn't really seem too choked up about because he's even more pissed at the government than he was the first time.

• The Lost Lenore: It's mentioned that Utopia's sister committed suicide, prompting Utopia herself to withdraw from public life and into a virtual reality simulator.
• Mad Doctor: The Surgeon General of Beverly Hills, a plastic surgery freak who regularly has people kidnapped, then dissects them so he can recycle their body parts for him and his brethren.
• MacGuffin: The controller, which activates the "Sword of Damocles" defense system, an EMP cannon designed to destroy enemy nation's weaponry.
• Meaningful Name:
  • The Sword of Damocles. It's an expression, based on an ancient anecdote, used to express an impending doom that can befall a person or, in the original tale, a tyrant, at any moment. Snake drops the sword on everyone in the end.
  • Carjack is transgender and uses the name Hershe without a "y" on the end ("her" + "she").
• Mexico Called; They Want Texas Back: The Shining Path has taken over all of Latin America and is about to launch an invasion of the United States. They want a bit more than Texas...
• Mr. Fanservice: Snake's short, but memorable Shirtless Scene when he changes his clothes.
• Ms. Fanservice: Utopia is first seen in LA in just a bra and panties and a short jacket. For the rest of the film, she's in leather hot pants and a cleavage-baring top.

N-Z

• A Nazi by Any Other Name: The US President, a politician who takes advantage of a depressed, war-torn country to attain absolute power, and then proceeds to eliminate any and all "undesirables" from his new regime. He even uses the term, "Final Solution", near the end. Oddly enough, there is a large contingent of actual white supremacists on the island.
• Net Gun: The plastic surgery cult uses a net gun to trap Snake Plissken.
• Never Bring a Knife to a Fist Fight: The final battle between Snake and Cuervo has Cuervo use a knife against Snake.
• No Fourth Wall:
  • In-Universe. After the President making a live broadcast using a podium, background, and US flag making it look like he's speaking from the White House in Lynchburg, while he's actually in the middle of the woods, finds out that Snake switched the disc on the Sword of Damocles control pad with a fake, he orders Snake's execution on live television. When it's pointed out to him that they're broadcasting live, he just says "Good! Let them watch!", the United States Police Officer working the camera turns it around from the fake background towards Snake!
  • This is also invoked in the final shot, where Snake lights the one remaining "American Spirit" cigarette and looks directly at the camera before it fades out, before delivering the final line of the film.
• Noodle Incident: Whatever happened in Cleveland.
• "No Talking or Phones" Warning: One trailer for the film has a demented version of this, starting pretty normally. "No talking, no smoking". Then it goes into "no red meat", followed by "no freedom of religion" and "all marriages must be approved by the Department of Health". Failure to obey these rules results in loss of citizenship, and deportation to L.A.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: Snake absolutely despises the authorities who literally have to coerce him into working for them with a tailor-made "kill you in 10 hours" virus in his body or he'd just bail on them in a heartbeat.
• Number of the Beast: "666" is the world code for the controller for the Sword of Damocles.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Snake, upon realizing that the cut on his hand he received in the hall infected him with the Plutoxin-7 virus.
  • And to a even bigger extent when the government officers realize that Snake confronted them via holocam, meaning that he could be anywhere within a half-mile radius, has the real remote for the Sword of Damocles, knows the world code, and was in full-blown '90s Anti-Hero mode before they sent him into LA at gunpoint. They get a long minute to realize that their world's about to end and there's not a damn thing they can do to stop it.
• Old Friend, New Gender: Hershe Las Palmas is a trans woman and an old associate of Snake's originally named "Carjack" Malone.
• Only Sane Man: Snake appears like this, especially at the end.
• Oppressive States of America: While Escape from New York was set in a crime-ridden Fallen States of America setting, this movie turns America into a full-on Police State.
• Penal Colony: After being separated from the mainland US by a massive earthquake, Los Angeles is now a prison for those deemed "unfit" to live in the new theocratic America. A Great Wall is built along the shoreline and the United States Police Force is encamped along it to prevent anyone from escaping back to the US.
• Plastic Bitch: The Beverly Hills plastic surgery freaks, who have had so many implants and face-lifts that they need to harvest and implant fresh body parts into themselves in order to keep themselves alive.
• Plot-Irrelevant Villain: Snake is sent into L.A. to find the President's daughter (who has the key to a Doomsday Device) as World War III looms in the background. Along the way, he's captured by the Surgeon General of Beverly Hills, who wants to harvest him and his female ally for their organs. Despite the threat the Surgeon General faces to Snake and Taslima, he has nothing to do with the main conflict between the President Evil and the Shining Path terrorists. He's content to rule his own little corner of LA Island so he can conduct his experiments and the protagonists just happened to wander into his territory.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Snake persists in calling the transgender Hershe her old (male) name of "Carjack" despite Hershe's insistence otherwise.
• Post-Adventure Adventure: Numerous passing references are made to an unseen adventure Snake Plissken had in Cleveland that took place sometime before the events of this film but after the movie's predecessor, Escape from New York. It is in this adventure he met Hershe Las Palmas (albeit before she transitioned).
• President Evil: The theocratic-President-for-life, among other things, sentences his daughter to death.
• The Purge: In the opening narration, it's stated that the President's first act is Directive 17: Americans who are found "unfit" to live in the new, "moral" America are stripped of their citizenship and deported to L.A. Don't want to go? There's always the electric chair.
• The Quincy Punk: Virtually every character encountered on L.A. Island.
• Race Against the Clock: Similar to the first film of the series, Snake has a limited amount of time to complete his mission, due to the Plutoxin 7 virus he's been infected with. He is given a wrist-timer, conveniently large for the audience, indicating how much time he has left before total failure.
• Regional Redecoration: The entire situation began on August 23, 2000, when a massive earthquake hit Los Angeles. The San Fernando valley flooded, turning everything between Malibu and Anaheim into an island. The future President Evil uses this as part of his campaign platform, saying L.A. has been punished by God.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: The Sword of Damocles.
• Rule of Symbolism: After witnessing the depths to which the President has plunged American society (with most actions being outlawed, as per the President's goal of having a Christian theocracy), and after cutting the juice on the world's electricity via the Sword of Damocles, Snake discovers a pack of "American Spirit" cigarettes with one left, and lights it while musing on the state of the world.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Taslima's character starts out by looking like Snake's potential love interest and moral guidance. She gets shot in the back quite suddenly for no particular reason — other than showing just how bleak the future is.
• Same Story, Different Names: Escape from L.A. is basically an act-for-act rehash of Escape from New York, even down to some very unlikely coincidences for Snake, such as his meeting a sympathetic female character that happens to die shortly after they meet, being forced to compete in a Deadly Game for his freedom, or the person that helps him escape the prison being someone he worked with before, and also someone that double-crossed him and is going by another identity, complete with Insistent Terminology regarding their new name. It even has the same ending, wherein Snake uses the MacGuffin to double-cross the Big Bad after his Exact Time to Failure is rendered moot.
• Sinister Minister: The US President is part this and part President Evil.
• Schmuck Bait:
  • After entering Beverly Hills, Snake is confronted by a hooded figure who just stands there staring at him. Snake stares back for a few seconds before realizing the first figure was just allowing his partner to sneak on on Snake's side (the blind side even) and aim the net gun.
  • Some of Cuervo's goons abide by Snake's suggestion that they use "Bangkok rules" in their gunfight: nobody draws until a can thrown in the air hits the ground. Snake throws the can, then guns all the mooks down while they look up at the can.
• Shout-Out:
  • During his underwater journey to the L.A. mainland, Snake's submersible passes a shark that tries to eat him — right in front of the Universal Studios theme park, referencing the franchise of the same name and the associated thrill park ride.
  • One of the broken taxi cabs in L.A. has the exact same title logo on its driver's side door as the TV show of the same name.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: Once again, Snake (at least when he isn't wearing his Badass Longcoat).
• Spotting the Thread: Hershe rattles off a list of government conspiracies when Snake meets her, including a claim that the government was able to develop short-term, manmade cases of the flu. It turns out that this is what Plutoxin-7 actually is. Snake figures this out as well, playing it up after he gets back from L.A. and meets Malloy again.
• State Sec: The United States Police Force, who despite their name is well armed and equipped.
• Strapped to an Operating Table: The plastic surgery freaks really want Snake's body...
• Straw Character: Played on both ends, as Snake finds himself in the middle of a presidential Knight Templar in control of a national, overly-militarized police force and a Well-Intentioned Extremist uniting terrorists against him; both are presented as equally terrible options, and Anti-Hero Snake refuses to side with either of them.
• Suddenly Significant City: After a President Evil rises to power in post-World War III and post-California Collapse America, he moves the capital to his hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
  • Malloy is a thinly-veiled Expy of Bob Hauk from the original film, right down to their surly demeanor and similar mannerisms. Interestingly, Hauk was planned to return in the earliest scripts written for the film, but due to script changes (and Lee Van Cleef passing away in 1989), his name was swapped to "Malloy" — but much of the same dialogue remained across all of the scripts.
  • The "Happy Kingdom", a thinly-veiled knockoff of Disneyland. This was even invoked by the production team, who built the set to be an approximation of "Main Street, U.S.A." from the same park. It even has a similar version of Sleeping Beauty's Castle and the Matterhorn!
• Take a Third Option: Faced with the world being just moments from a clash between fascistic fundamentalists and equally violent terrorists, Snake smugly uses the Sword of Damocles EMP satellite network to shut down the entire planet, returning the entire mess to a clean slate.
• Taking You with Me: Cuervo is about to shoot the chopper that Snake, Hershe, Eddie, and Utopia are escaping in with a rocket. He gets shot by Eddie but still manages to get the rocket off before dying.
• The Theocracy: The President Evil turns the United States into a virtual theocracy. He makes Christianity mandatory across the country and religious heterodoxy punishable by death, all while enforcing a set of new moral laws for the "new America".
• Those Wacky Nazis: When Snake is looking for the original soldier sent into Los Angeles to retrieve the Sword of Damocles, he runs into a bunch of Neo-Nazis using the guy's corpse for target practice. When they try to kill Snake over an insult, he shoots one of them with his machine gun, looking nearly bored.
• Title Drop: During the opening narration.
  The United States Police Force, like an army, is encamped along the shoreline, making any escape from L.A. impossible.
• Too Awesome to Use: Snake's revolvers. In the two scenes where he demands them back (being sent into L.A. and escaping from the Surgeon General of Beverly Hills), he is carrying other guns (the Coreburner issued to him by the government and the Colt 1911 he takes from the Surgeon General), which he resorts to using first. Even after losing the Coreburner, he divests a mook of his shotgun and uses that. He only gets to use his revolvers once, showing off his Improbable Aiming Skills, and loses them when captured.
• Too Dumb to Live: The bald knife thrower attempts to throw a knife at Snake when he walks away from him. Yeah, good luck with that.
  • The Mooks in the "Bangkok rules" scene - awesome though it is - go along with Snakes game instead of doing the sensible thing and riddling him with bullets before he even finishes making his offer.
• Took a Level in Badass: Snake since Escape from New York. In that film, he was an ex-Green Beret with pretty decent combat skills. In this one, he's able to achieve Man With No Name style quickdrawing, shoot rifles and shotguns one handed from a motorcycle with no significant effects from recoil, take a round to the leg from a Desert Eagle and still walk with only a limp. This while being infected with the Plutoxin 7 virus (granted, it turns out to be the flu, but still).
• Used Future: But only in LA.
• Virus and Cure Names: Subverted with the Plutoxin 7 virus. Its cure is nothing since it's just a common flu virus. Snake is tricked into believing otherwise.
• We Will Have Euthanasia in the Future: For those deportees who don't like their chances in LA, the deportation center offers the chance to "repent your sins" and be electrocuted on the spot.
• What Beautiful Eyes!: The Surgeon General of Beverly Hills is simply mesmerized by Snake's eye...
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: "Map to the Stars" Eddie's reaction upon seeing Snake following him on the tsunami.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: During Cuervo and Eddie's final encounter, the latter once again tries to trick his boss by stealing the arming device back. Cuervo recognizes the ploy, takes the device back and tells Eddie "you've crossed (me) for the last time" and points a gun at him before The Cavalry arrives.

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"Welcome to the human race."