Basic Trope: A Damsel/Dude can bail themselves out without having to be rescued by someone, or at least they make significant progress in that regard.
- Straight: Alice fights her way out of the Lord Bloodstone's Supervillain Lair and escapes to safety before Bob can rescue her.
- Exaggerated:
- Instead of just escaping from Lord Bloodstone's lair, Alice Curb-stomps him and all his Mooks before Bob can rescue her.
- Alice, a master thief, breaks the entire holding cell out of Lord Bloodstone's lair.
- Downplayed:
- Alice escaped, but that was because the guards were distracted by Bob and the crew's attack in their attempt to rescue Alice.
- Alice tries to bail herself out and makes a lot of progress until Bob appears to rescue her.
- When Bob comes to rescue Alice, she fights alongside him.
- Justified:
- Alice anticipated her own capture and hid tools on her person to help her escape.
- Alice's capture was part of the plan all along.
- Alice needed to pretend to be helpless long enough to gather intel from within.
- Alice is powerful enough that Lord Bloodstone needed to spare no expense with her prison. The moment her Power Limiter experiences a slight technical difficulty, she blows the prison apart.
- Inverted: Alice is a Fake Ultimate Hero. Looks like an Action Girl, fails to save the day when the chips are down.
- Subverted: Alice almost makes her escape from Lord Bloodstone's lair... and then she gets ambushed and re-captured.
- Double Subverted: Lord Bloodstone didn't think to put her in stronger restraints. She breaks herself out again.
- Parodied:
- Alice casually walks out of her prison and no one notices her.
- Alice effortlessly breaks free from any shackles placed on her or confined space she is placed inside. This causes problems during a BDSM session.
- Alice instantly, inexplicably vanishes from her cell the second after she tells one of the guards to look behind them.
- Zigzagged: Lord Bloodstone imprisons Alice. She breaks out. The entire episode becomes a tug of war between Alice and Lord Bloodstone where he keeps capturing her and she keeps breaking out. Who will win?
- Averted: Alice is never captured.
- Enforced: The writer is worried about making Alice a Faux Action Girl, so they write a scene for Alice where she escapes from Lord Bloodstone's lair on her own.
- Lampshaded: "You seriously thought grabbing my upper arm would work?"
- Invoked: Alice tries to get one of Lord Bloodstone's mooks to defect by giving her the means of escape.
- Exploited: Lilith bets a hefty sum of money that Lord Bloodstone can't capture the seemingly harmless Alice. Alice breaks out and Lord Bloodstone dejectedly pays up.
- Defied: Knowing that Alice would eventually escape should she be captured, Lord Bloodstone just shoots her when he has the chance.
- Discussed: "Huh, you saved yourself, Alice." "It wasn't that hard to be honest. Also, you're late."
- Conversed: "So the captive just breaks herself out of prison like that? Are the prisons in these movies made out of cardboard or what?" "Well, the writers gotta do that or else the audience is gonna complain about how she would just be a Damsel in Distress."
- Implied: ???
- Deconstructed: The amount of effort it took for Alice to break out of her high-security cell leaves her fatigued. Lord Bloodstone trounces her when he confronts her.
- Reconstructed: Marcy and Clara broke out of their own cells and back up Alice in the fight.
- Played For Laughs: Similar to Damsel in Distress' Played For Laughs entry, breaking herself out of a supervillain's lair is just another Tuesday for Alice.
- Played For Drama: Alice is an incredibly powerful being feared among heroes and villains alike. When she starts breaking free from her prison and retaliating against Lord Bloodstone's forces (with a Mook Horror Show for good measure,) he realizes he's done for.
Now that you've slipped out of your restraints, head back to Damsel out of Distress.
