Passive Rescue/Playing With

Basic Trope: Someone sets up someone else's escape without rescuing them entirely.
 * Straight: Alice, a guard, slips her friend Bob the key to his cell and a map of the prison he's trapped in.
 * Exaggerated: Alice quietly sets it up so Claire the guard will find out that Bob (who she's guarding) is Claire's best friend's long lost brother on the same day that everyone else is off sick.
 * Downplayed: Alice takes down the guards (who were in her way as well) and unlocks Bob's cell so he can leave but asks him to stay out of her way.
 * Justified: Alice needs her job to make ends meet (not to mention she'll be executed if she lets him go) and can't break Bob out even though he's her best friend (and she's his Unlucky Childhood Friend), so she helps him as much as she can without getting caught.
 * Inverted: Alice meets Bob as he's escaping and tries to prevent it with lethal force (no matter how she feels, she still has to do her job...well that and she's become Brainwashed and Crazy).
 * Subverted: It turns out that Alice was Brainwashed and the "help" she gave Bob was to make sure he was out of his cell so that the Big Bad could have him killed.
 * Double Subverted: Alice realised she was being brainwashed, so she took steps via a Memory Gambit to ensure that her brainwashed self would still allow Bob to escape the ambush.
 * Parodied: Alice is seen passing through hundreds of obvious ways to allow Bob to escape, but insists on slipping him a lockpick and letting him do it on his own.
 * Deconstructed: Bob's recaptured and subjected to Cold Blooded Torture for his escape attempt (while Alice could have let him out and he'd have been able to get away without any problems).
 * Reconstructed: After finally being rescued Bob thanks Alice for trying and points out that she'd probably have been tortured and brainwashed into a loyal guard (whereas Bob couldn't be brainwashed because the villain needed to interrogate him), so she made the right call by not putting herself in harms way when Bob had nothing to lose from failing to escape.
 * Zig Zagged: Alice is a spy for La Résistance who's role is to free prisoners on her watch. She can't make up her mind whether or not to just let them go or make it easier for them to break out.
 * Averted: No one helps Bob escape, he has to do it on his own.
 * Enforced: The executives want a daring escape scene, but it's already been well established that Alice is in place to let him out. They use this trope instead (explaining that she can't blow her cover).
 * Lampshaded: "A lockpick? Why can't you just let me out?"
 * Defied: Alice decides that day would be the perfect time to resign and defect. She drugs her collegues, releases Bob, shows him to the armoury and helps him fight his way out as her "four weeks notice".
 * Discussed: "Can't you let me out Alice? For old time's sake?" "I can't risk my job Bob...but here's a special meal for you."
 * Conversed: "Why doesn't she just unlock the door for him?" "He has to escape on his own so Alice won't have her cover blown."
 * Exploited: Bob attends prison guard school just so he can make some friends who'll invoke this trope for him in the future.
 * Played for Laughs: Alice slips Bob a rubber chicken, 250g blue cheese and a bird whistle. He's got no idea what to do with them.
 * Played for Drama: Alice is conflicted over whether to release Bob and risk a Fate Worse Than Death while Bob's agonising over whether or not to trust her.

Psst, I can't just give you a link back to Passive Rescue, but there's one hidden in the sentence "Played for Drama" above...if you know where to look. You can also click on the "back" button if you came here from it.