Basic Trope: Someone is tied up with rope and/or gagged, to prevent them from being able to move and/or call for help.
- Straight: Alice is tied up and gagged by Bob. Alice can't move.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob winds tons and tons of rope around Alice's hands, torso, feet, knees, etc., every which way, ties many knots, then gags her with a lot of cloth and multiple scarves.
- Alice is tied up in far more rope than you need to hold a human still, and even has chains holding her to the floor. She "mmmphs" her displeasure loudly and with a tone of annoyance.
- For good measure, Bob brings metallic locks (with keys to unlock) and chains to put that on top of the ropes tying Alice, and also a metal muzzle on top of her gag.
- Alternatively, instead of chains is wrapped in mummy fashion and/or somehow in silk.
- Downplayed: Alice's hands are tied behind her back while Bob holds his hand over her mouth.
- Justified:
- Alice witnessed Bob doing something criminal, so to prevent her from being able to tell anyone, he ties and gags her in his shed.
- Bob needs Alice as a hostage.
- Bob doesn't want to hurt Alice, but needs her out of the picture for a while.
- Alice has an evil alternate personality and asks Bob to tie her up so they won't hurt him.
- Alice is a spellcaster, but needs to be able to use gestures and/or speak to use spells.
- Alice and Bob are into BDSM.
- Inverted: Bob is about to tie up Alice, but she overpowers him and knocks him out, then ties him up instead.
- Subverted: Bob pulls out rope and is about to tie Alice, but decides it would be a waste of time and just locks her in a room instead.
- Double Subverted: Then he decides he doesn't want her trying to find a way to escape the locked room, so he binds and gags her within the locked room.
- Parodied:
- "Hmm, a woman in my house trying to prove what I did. I think I'll... tie her and gag her! Why not?" Bob then goes on to pull out 5 coils of rope and a bunch of scarves.
- Bob pulls out actual BDSM gear that he just happened to have on him and secures Alice with that. No comment is made.
- Bob frisks Alice, finds BDSM gear on her, and secures her with it. Since he's never seen BDSM gear before in his life, let alone used it, he has no idea what he's doing, so Alice has to walk him through it. She still lets him bind her.
- Bob rambles on and on about how difficult this is for him as he restrains Alice, constantly apologizing, and messing things up as he fumbled around. Alice is forced to give him directions on how to properly restrain her or have this go on for hours. Through her gag. And Bob understands her. She's very happy once he's finally done, but Bob comes back when he's not busy and continues to have conversations with a gagged Alice, fully understanding her mmphs and realizing that she's trying to curse at him when she angrily grunts.
- Bob is trying to understand why his captive is moaning with pleasure and loudly and enthusiastically asking for more rope.
- Alice uses her boobs to gag Bob literally. She doesn't care how ineffective it is and how she had to put glues on her boobs to make sure it sticks to his mouth to prevent speech.
- Zig Zagged:
- Bob starts to tie her up tight, but she complains about her wrists hurting, so he loosens it a bit, but then she slips out and tries to shank him in return. Bob tries other progressively absurd tie-up-apparati that are effective yet comfortable, and Alice proceeds to worm her way out of each one. Eventually, he just ties her up as tightly as he should have in the first place and tells her to deal with it. And remembers the gag this time.
- Alice is restrained long enough for Bob to complete his master plan, at which point he comes back and unties her. ...And then fits her with an armbinder and ball gag (from a box in the back of her own closet), taking her to his evil lair because she's seen his face. He later unties her. Then ties her up again. Because he likes messing with her mind.
- Averted: The story finds other methods of suspense, such as having Bob threaten or stalk Alice instead of capturing her and tying her up.
- Enforced:
- The producer or director is "into that sort of thing", and wants to have Alice tied up as part of the plot.
- "Lets show how cruel Bob is, have him tie up poor Alice".
- The writer isn't allowed to depict Bob using violence against Alice, so instead they have him tie her up.
- Lampshaded: Alice asks Bob, "let me guess, you're gonna tie me up to keep me from telling on you, aren't you?"
- Invoked: Alice is into bondage, and tries to get herself into situations where she will be tied up.
- Exploited:
- Alice, expecting to be tied up, hides a knife in her back pocket where her soon-to-be-bound hands will be able to reach it.
- Alice has taken lessons in Escapeology, precisely so she's prepared if this sort of thing happens.
- Defied:
- Alice, seeing that Bob is about to tie her up, tries to fight him, probably using that exact same knife.
- Bob decides he can't keep Alice confined, so he simply kills her.
- Bob doesn't have suitable materials to bind Alice, so he knocks her out and locks her in a room instead.
- Discussed: "Bob wasn't about to let Alice go and tell on him, so naturally he tied her up until he had a chance to get away."
- Conversed: "What do you expect? The woman snoops around the bad guy's hideout, and he ties and gags her. Happens all the time."
- Deconstructed:
- Alice dies horribly because Bob tied the ropes too tight and cut off major circulation, or she has a medical condition, or he just forgot about her for a couple of weeks...
- Alice is still able to escape or call for help because full-body ropes are not foolproof restraints, and a cloth gag doesn't completely silence someone in real life.
- Reconstructed:
- Wanting to keep Alice from foiling his plans, but not wanting to be found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, Bob has an accomplice keep an eye on Alice to make sure the ropes aren't cutting off her circulation, make sure she doesn't hurt herself through struggling, make sure she doesn't choke to death on the gag, and make sure she doesn't manage to undo her binding and escape.
- Bob knows to tie secure knots that no one will be able to squirm out of quickly or without escape tricks and stuffs a second cloth into Alice's mouth to further muffle her voice.
- Played For Laughs:
- Bob says: "What, you're expecting me to tie you up? That's, that's kind of kinky. I'm not into kind of thing. I mean, it's all right if you are, but...yeah. I have an Evil Plan to get back to." He just locks her in a room instead.
- When Alice is freed, the first thing she did was to complain that her gag stinks before anything else, if she could have been in danger, it's not about what Bob's Evil Plan would do to her, but how she's going to die due to the smell of the gag.
- Played For Drama: Alice is tied so tightly that the rope cuts into her wrists, causing severe ropeburn and some bleeding. She cries while she's held hostage. When she's later freed, her face is soaked with tears, and the circulation to her hands had been cut off so long that she's in serious pain.
Back to Bound And Gagg-NNNNGGGHHHDD!!!
