Basic Trope: The Big Bad has The Hero bound, gagged, incapacitated or otherwise completely at his mercy. Instead of just killing him instantly, the villain talks about his Evil Plan or gloats and taunts the hero, and then leaves him to die in an overly complicated Death Trap that doesn't work.
- Straight: Emperor Evulz has just captured the heroes Alice and Bob for intruding in his evil lair. Instead of shooting them, he suspends them over a Shark Pool, explains his evil plan to turn the world's gold reserves into cheese, and leaves them alone in the room as an automatic lowering mechanism slowly lowers the pair down to the sharks below. They escape.
- Exaggerated: After escaping the Shark Pool by instantly degrading all the sharks' teeth with an experimental calcium disintegrator and using the pool ladder, Alice and Bob run out of the room just to fall right back into Evulz's clutches. The pair have just escaped his Death Trap, Emperor Evulz has a loaded gun in his hand and two dozens of armed guards at his beck and call, and his Number Two is asking "Why don't we just shoot them?". Evulz has the pair marched right back into the room and suspended over the pit full of now toothless sharks, alongside with Number Two for gainsaying him, and reiterates the plot to them down to the finest detail and throws in an Evil Laugh for good measure. He then leaves his Evil Lair along with all his other guards, leaving Alice and Bob (and a repentant Number Two) alone in his base of operations with free access to all his maps, plans and his Patented Turn-Cheese-Back-Into-Gold-Ray only a new escape away.
- Downplayed:
- Evulz tries to kill Alice and Bob with a method that is relatively practical, but still less efficient than straight-up shooting them.
- Evulz lets them in a complicated trap, but at least does not tell them his evil plan.
- Justified:
- Alice and Bob are Immune to Bullets, stabbing, and other forms of instant death. Only a slow and inefficient Death Trap, like dying of drowning and seafood allergies in his Shark Pool, will do the trick. Evulz has neither the time to stick around and watch them die (that Evil Plan won't finish itself) or the budget to post guards or cameras in the room.
- Or it is established earlier in the plot that Evulz just loves being evil too much for his own good. While he could just shoot the heroes, it would take all the fun out of it. And he doesn't tell them his evil plan, he brags about it. It's not about winning, it's about the fun. For him it is just a game.
- Or killing them will damage Evulz's reputation and he wants to be a Karma Houdini
- Evulz thinks using death traps is more fun & entertaining than just shooting them.
- The trap is supposed to be intimidating but not (instantly) lethal. It's all part of Evulz' (admittedly twisted) methods of obtaining (and providing false) information.
- Evulz was actually Forced into Evil by his boss, and while he isn't really enthusiastic about killing Alice and Bob he knows he can't just make a Heel–Face Turn then and there. So, he half-asses his method of killing them so that they can escape.
- Evulz’s plan requires Alice and Bob to still be alive. However, he can’t let them know that, so he uses a trap he knows they’ll escape from.
- Evulz is an idiot. The dumb trap is just more proof of it.
- The details of the trap's design that allow someone to escape are supposed to be a Fail-Safe. We find out what happens when someone is unable to find them in time when Evulz tosses a goon who was mocking him for such a stupid contraption into it and the guy, in a panic, forgets that he could have reached the off switch with his belt. And later, when Bob tried to give Evulz a taste of his own medicine, the villain pulls off an escape.
- Evulz is engaging in an extreme form of Loophole Abuse when he is bound by Ape Shall Never Kill Ape. If he stuck around to watch he would be compelled to rescue them.
- Evulz literally feeds upon fear and despair - just shooting them would give him far less than letting them die slowly and painfully knowing their deaths will be futile.
- Inverted:
- Alice and Bob finally catch up to Evulz after leaving his plan and organization in shambles. They run him through with nary a word.
- Alternately, Evulz is defeated by Alice and Bob, but instead of executing him on the spot, the heroes put him through a long series of trials and jail sentences, which gives Evulz plenty of opportunity to plan an escape.
- No-Nonsense Nemesis: When Alice and Bob are captured by Evulz, he just kills them without gloating and without revealing his plans.
- Subverted:
- Evulz marches the pair to the Shark Pool and suspends them over it, leaves the room... And comes back with a handheld DV camera, a comfy couch, popcorn, a big grin on his face, and a cadre of armed guards with machine guns "just in case".
- Evulz marches the pair to the Shark Pool and suspends them over it, leaves the room...and while he's away they are lowered in and eaten alive. It works, and they die horribly.
- "Ah, screw it, my poorly designed death trap's probably not gonna work, anyways." "So we can go free?" "Of course not. Lock them in the airtight storage shed!"
- Evulz had meant the plan as a diversion - Charlie and Daniel had to be forced into a Friend-or-Idol Decision to distract them from his real plan.
- Double Subverted:
- He then mounts the camera on a tripod, fixes it on the point of impact, and leaves with the couch, popcorn and the guards. Alice and Bob are left alone to die slowly, painfully and inefficiently.
- Even if Evulz is sitting right there to keep watch, he spends too much time watching YouTube on his cell phone to notice that Alice and Bob are succeeding in their efforts to escape the trap.
- "Ah, screw it, my poorly designed death trap's probably not gonna work, anyways." "So we can go free?" "Of course not. Stick them in the backup trap!"
- Parodied: Evulz is Contractually Genre Blind and part of The Union of Evil Emperors, local 666. Killing heroes instantly without the virtually certain chance to escape is against the rules, and on top of it both extremely rude and non-villainish. And he'd lose his Union dental plan.
- Zig-Zagged: Having finally captured Alice and Bob, Evulz has them sent to the Shark Pool. Halfway there, he changes his mind and decides to bring them back to his throne room to be shot in front of him. Evulz changes opinion back and forth over whether he wants a slow, painful death or a quick, practical one, leaving Alice, Bob and guards to walk back and forth through the corridor between the throne room and Shark Pool as Evlulz constantly changes his mind. After the eight time they're ordered to turn around, Alice and Bob get enough, kick the guards in their shins, and escape while still handcuffed.
- Averted: Evulz is not in the habit of using gloating or death traps. Whenever he captures heroes, he either kills them on the spot or has them sent to his sensibly-constructed and constantly monitored dungeons for processing, interrogation and death by firing squad.
- Enforced: The writers want to show the villain is powerful enough to capture the hero. But they obviously can't have a story if the hero gets killed either.
- Lampshaded:
- "Why do you bring out the Death Trap? They're just lying right there, unconscious! Just drop the Bond villain act, will you? Why don't you just shoot them?"
- "I could just shoot you, but then how would the writer get you out of this hole they put you in?"
- Invoked: "And now that I have you captured, in accordance with the great villain traditions, it is time for me to place you in my slow-working and inefficient death trap to be killed offscreen, while I laugh evilly and rant to you about all my evil plans! Bwa ha ha ha ha!... Damn, I dropped my 'How to be a Bond Villain' check-list. Could you tell me if I missed anything?"
- Exploited: Alice and Bob know that Evulz isn't going to simply shoot them, and deliberately get captured to get the information about his Evil Plan from his gloating.
- Defied: "And now that I have you captured, in accordance with the great villain traditions, I suppose I should place you in my slow-working and inefficient death trap to be killed offscreen, while I laugh evilly and rant to you about all my evil plans... But on the other hand, you people always escape from those. I think I'll just shoot you here and now."
- Discussed: "...Wait, he's just going to leave us in here to die?" "Yeah, it's pretty standard procedure for people like him."
- Conversed: "Have you noticed that villains just never seem to be able to kill the heroes when they have the upper hand? It's always death traps, or being left for dead, or evil gloating and taunting with them."
- Deconstructed:
- Emperor Evulz fails to kill Alice and Bob upon their first encounter due to wanting to be dramatical. Over the years, the pair escape from his fiendish devices time and time again, becoming stronger and smarter each time and driving Evulz over the brink as his decaying mind becomes too fixated on his failures and on their initial encounter to recognize that the Death Traps never work. In the end, when Alice and Bob finally break down the door to his inner sanctum, they discover a gibbering mental wreck driven mad by his own failures and decide to just Mercy Kill him for his own good.
- A mook questions Emperor Evulz on this point... and is promptly executed. Stupid or no, questioning your psychotic boss will not lead to anything good even though it is this very tendency to ignore good advice that results in Bond Villain Stupidity perpetuating itself.
- The trap would be stupid in a Martini-flavored Spy Fiction tale with heroes that are uber-cool master escape artists. But they are not in a Martini-flavored tale and they are not uber-cool escape artists. The result is what happens when someone "real" is stuck in such a trap... and let's just say that what happens once the trap finally works or what horrible thing they have to do to escape are both results that John "Jigsaw" Kramer would be proud of.
- Reconstructed:
- ...The corpse instantly vanishes, revealing itself to be a hologram. But what's this? Shock and horror, the 'inner sanctum' is not a sanctum at all, but a disguised tunnel with a slowly-moving Conveyor Belt o' Doom that ends in a giant Lava Pit! From a previously-hidden loudspeaker that leads to his secret control room, Emperor Evulz taunts our dynamic duo with how foolish they were to fall for such an obviously transparent ruse. After saying a final mocking goodbye, Evulz turns the doom-belt on maximum speed and leaves the surely-doomed heroes to their inevitable fate while he gets some real work done elsewhere.
- Evulz, rather than shooting his insolent minion, has him put through a death trap. The mook inevitably escapes to plot revenge... Ironically proving his own point, and making Evulz reconsider his own stance.
- The insolent minion points out the flaws in the plan, but Evulz brushes them off because he considers personally ensuring the death of his enemies a waste of time that he could use to fulfill his true goals instead. Evulz in the meantime makes a lot of progress, if not succeeding outright, since dead heroes or not, the Death Trap bought him enough time anyway.
- If the heroes think Evulz is an idiot indulging his Ernst Stavro Blofeld (and that is Donald Pleasence Blofeld, not Christoph Waltz Blofeld) fantasies, they will treat him like an idiot and indulge their James Bond fantasies while hopefully trying to capture him alive. Compared to Diabolus, who was a No-Nonsense Nemesis and got a no-nonsense response, with a barrage of Harpoons and Tomahawks and SEAL Team Six digging up the corpse from the rubble and putting a bullet in its head before dumping the body bag somewhere in the Pacific. So the "stupidity" part instead becomes Obfuscating Stupidity, led by a tenet of survival.
And now, being mesmerized by the secret hypnotic subtext I left in the page's writing and helplessly in my clutches as you are, I shall leave you here on this page to die slowly and painfully from radiation poisoning from your monitor, with only this handily crafted link to bring you back to Bond Villain Stupidity! Bwa ha ha ha ha ha... Wait, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
