Playing With / Locked in the Dungeon

Basic Trope: Characters are imprisoned in a dungeon or dungeon-like area, for part of the story.

• Straight: Fighter Bob and Witch Alice are sentenced to months of imprisonment in the royal dungeon, for a crime they didn't commit. Their possessions are seized, they are forced to wear nothing but sackcloth rags, and they are chained to a dungeon wall by their arms, as they plot their daring escape.
• Exaggerated:
  • The whole story takes place entirely within the dungeon, and the heroes don't escape until the very end.
  • Bob and Alice are stripped completely naked for their imprisonment. The other male prisoners openly ogle Alice's naked body, and the dungeon guards aren't bashful about staring, groping, gross licking, or sucking on her breasts.
  • Over the course of their imprisonment, they are subjected to various torture devices and procedures. Bob has to endure constant floggings and dreadful, crushing machines. The torturers decide that Alice is too pretty for such harsh treatment, so instead, they suspend her naked from the ceiling via ropes in humiliating positions while small weights hang from her chest, courtesy some complimentary new piercings from the dungeon staff.
  • To make matters worse, rather than put the dungeon in a dank basement, the dungeon is effectively a colossal open-air cage in full view of the public, so villagers passing by can watch prisoners being tortured to intensify the humiliation.
  • All of the above, all at once. Alice, in a Shoulders-Up Nudity shot, tells Bob that they really need to work on an escape plan. Bob asks what's the rush, since it's not so bad once you get used to it. Alice ahems at Bob irritably, as the camera pans down to reveal a pair of dungeon guards sucking on Alice's breasts in tandem, while she squirms suspended atop a wooden horse device, and gawking villagers jeer from outside. Alice gestures at her various tortures with her head, and Bob replies that okay, she might have a point.
• Downplayed: The dungeon is more of a town lockup, with no physical restraints within the prison area itself, and fairly decent living conditions with good-natured staff. Bob and Alice are only placed there for a day before they're released anyway, eliminating the need for an escape plan.
• Justified: Fighter Bob and Witch Alice really did commit that crime, after all.
• Inverted: Fighter Bob and Witch Alice need to break into a dungeon.
• Subverted:
  • The king has eliminated the royal dungeon, viewing the practice as dated and barbaric.
  • Fighter Bob and Witch Alice have intense bondage fetishes, and turn out to be Too Kinky to Torture.
  • Fighter Bob and Witch Alice have magic rings that allow them to become incorporeal, so they can't really be locked up anywhere.
• Double Subverted:
  • Instead, the king merely rebrands it as his "outdoor penance garden." The principle is the same, but there are vines instead of chains.
  • The dungeon guards deprive them of torture, which in turn is as painful to them as actual torture is to less kinky people.
  • Fighter Bob and Witch Alice get their rings taken away, before they get the chance to use the magic.
• Parodied: After receiving their sentence, Fighter Bob and Witch Alice are mocked by the dungeon warden, who ominously tells them not to worry, and they'll be "very well-taken care of" under his watchful eye. Jump cut to them actually receiving genuinely wonderful treatment akin to a spa, with mani-pedis, massages, and meals prepared by a chef.
• Zig-Zagged: Fighter Bob and Witch Alice repeatedly escape, and then end up back in the dungeon by the end of every episode as a Running Gag. Each time they are re-captured, the dungeon torturers reveal some new terrible device for Bob like the Super Stretcher or the Table of Terror, or some new contraption to humiliate Alice like the Spank-O-Matic or the Mommy Milkers. There's always a Scream Discretion Shot as the torturers pull a lever to activate the new devices, and Bob and Alice scream while the torturers comment dryly on the efficacy of the machines.
  Torturer A: Mommy Milkers, huh. For pumps, you'd think they'd have more suction.
  Torturer B: This one comes with a dial, with the lowest setting as the default. You gotta turn it up, see. (cranks dial, sound of machine intensifies, Alice shrieks off-camera)
  Torturer A: These should really all come with manuals.
• Averted: Fighter Bob and Witch Alice are threatened with dungeon time, but prove their innocence and thus escape their sentence of imprisonment.
• Enforced: "We need Fanservice, but don't want Alice to look like a slut. Let's have her thrown in a sexy dungeon!"
• Lampshaded: "Thrown in a dungeon? Psh, how original. Anyway, we better figure a way out of here."
• Invoked: Fighter Bob and Witch Alice need to break someone out of the dungeon to gain their assistance, so they orchestrate getting thrown in the dungeon to start the plan.
• Exploited:
  • Fighter Bob befriends the other prisoners inside, and develops a network of contacts and favors for when he escapes.
  • Witch Alice practices a sinister form of magic that draws power from emotions of despair and suffering, so her magic powers are enhanced by being in the dungeon.
• Defied: Fighter Bob and Witch Alice are sentenced to be thrown in the dungeon, but they successfully fight off the dungeon transport guards and escape.
• Discussed: "We're locked in the dungeon, with no one coming to save us. Time to come up with a plan."
• Conversed: "So Bob and Alice are trapped in a dungeon, now." "I see they supplied Alice with an extra revealing dungeon wardrobe."
• Implied: A different character mentions how they've heard that the royal dungeon is a horrible place. Fighter Bob and Witch Alice shudder, and mention they have some firsthand experience.
• Deconstructed: Fighter Bob and Witch Alice grow weak and malnourished during their time in the dungeon.
• Reconstructed: The torturers make a point of feeding them more, since their undernourishment is interfering with their ability to experience pain.
• Played for Laughs:
  • A guard explains to Fighter Bob and Witch Alice that their torturer for the day will be a torturer-in-training, so they should offer feedback where they can. Bob gives him some pointers on the different machines as Bob himself is subjected to them, and he shows the trainee how starting with a small intensity, then getting stronger over time really maximizes the suffering. As the trainee seizes Alice's nipples with forceps and twists, Alice points out that he needs to twist with confidence, or else the effect is lost. After he twists a second time, Alice lets out a shriek, but then congratulates him on a better job. Following the session, the trainee thanks Bob and Alice profusely. Bob and Alice feel like with a little practice, he could really go places.
  • After putting on and looking at the incredibly skimpy sackcloth bikini she's been given, Alice snarks at the guards, why not just chain her up in the nude if the outfit is so revealing. The guards look at each other puzzled, then admit that the idea never occurred to them, but that's an excellent point. Jump cut to Alice chained naked to the wall, while a crowd of dungeon guards stares appreciatively and wolf-whistles. Alice remarks that she doesn't know why she had to say that.
  • The dungeon staff is put through surprisingly rigorous performance reviews. They're graded on attendance and customer dissatisfaction. They're evaluated for their ability to creatively problem-solve. Managers will interview dungeon inmates, to ask them what they think of a given torturer's techniques. Granted, Fighter Bob's responses are mostly just yelling while he's strapped to some machine, and Witch Alice's reply is only moaning, as they interview her just as her nipple weights are fastened and allowed to hang slack. But the managers don't mind, as their only aim is quality assurance.
• Played for Drama:
  • One of the torturers befriends Fighter Bob and Witch Alice, and is willing to risk it all to help them escape, but still feels loyal to the torturers' guild.
  • Fighter Bob and Witch Alice discover an ancient relic of unimaginable power, buried within the dungeon. Bringing the relic with them makes escaping exponentially more difficult, but they'll need its power against Emperor Evulz.

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The king finds you guilty! Back to Locked in the Dungeon, with you.

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