Basic Trope: A character dangles someone from a high place to interrogate them.
- Straight: Alice seeks to get information from a stubborn Bob by dangling him from the top of a skyscraper and threatening to let go of him if Bob doesn't comply. He ends up talking out of sheer terror.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice dangles Bob from a jet plane that is flying several miles above the ground.
- Alice threatens to drop Bob from outer space if he doesn't tell her what she wants to hear.
- Downplayed:
- Alice threatens to knock Bob down a flight of stairs if he doesn't comply.
- Alice uses some sort of illusion to trick Bob into thinking that he is about to fall to his death. Really, Alice wouldn't go that far, and the fall is nothing more than a few feet.
- Alice discovers Bob dangling from a cliff, who begs her to save him and offers information. Alice asks him a few questions, and once he answers she pulls him up and takes him to her base for further interrogation.
- Justified:
- Alice's method of interrogating suspects is based on an existing technique, which the law enforcement/government agency her character is associated with practices in Real Life.
- Bob is deathly afraid of heights and would rather talk than even get near a cliff.
- Inverted:
- Alice ties Bob to helium balloons and threatens to release him into the atmosphere if he doesn't talk.
- Alice is standing on Bob and refuses to let him get up until he talks.
- Subverted: Bob would rather die than tell Alice anything, anyway, so he refuses to give Alice the information she wants after being threatened with death in this manner.
- Double Subverted: Alice then drops Bob, catching him just before he hits the ground with a grappling hook and bringing him back up to ask him again. He is now willing to talk.
- Parodied: The "great height" Alice dangles Bob from is less than half the height of the average human being. A terrified Bob reveals everything he knows.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice hangs Bob over a great height ... and just leaves him there to dangle. It turns out that starvation, coupled with Bob's limbs slowly dislocating, is a better torment than any fall could be. After he spills, Alice drops him, but at this point it's a Mercy Kill.
- Averted: Alice's interrogation methods involve neither fear of heights nor death threats.
- Enforced: High altitudes are the only location to which the story hasn't yet gone and the writer wanted to go to as many milieus as possible.
- Lampshaded: "Let go of m—Wait, hold on, let me rephrase that!"
- Invoked: Alice is well aware ahead of time that Bob is very afraid of heights.
- Exploited:
- Bob uses Alice's tenuous position to drag her over the edge with him.
- Bob goads Alice into dropping him ... right on top of his getaway vehicle.
- Defied:
- Bob points out that he's aware the fall would kill him, yet he's willing to die for the cause. Therefore, Alice has nothing with which to threaten him.
- If Bob doesn't have a Martyrdom Culture, he points out how much Alice's plan sucks. If he knows that Alice will not drop him, then she's lost all control of the situation, and perhaps even her own credibility. If he knows that Alice will drop him, then she will not be able to pry any answers out of him dead or alive, since if she does indeed drop him, then she won't have anyone to get answers from at all.
- Discussed: "What are you gonna do, drag me to the cliff and hang me over it by my ankles? ... Um, please don't."
- Conversed:Carol: They shouldn't hold them upside-down like that.Dave: Yeah, it pretty much counts as psychological tortur—
- Implied: From a distance, Emma sees Alice holding Bob out a high window and sees that they're exchanging words, but she can't discern the words themselves.
- Deconstructed: Any information or confession Bob gives Alice is considered unreliable. Anything Bob says may just be anything Alice would want to hear and not necessarily the truth.
- Reconstructed: Alice can check Bob's revelations against what Rick has told her.
- Played for Laughs: Alice and Bob use the lofty situation as an excuse for a Hurricane of Puns.
- Played for Drama: Bob refuses to fold, and Alice is then left with a Sadistic Choice of her own making. Does she drop him and make herself a murderer, or does she fold and let him go, knowing her reputation as a Terror Hero is about to be destroyed?
Back to High-Altitude Interrogation.
