Villain Exit Stage Left

""We could stop 'em, but I'm sure today's events put a complete end to his megalomaniac tendencies forever.""

- Diabetus, Let's Watch Mega Man

Once their plot is foiled the villain (less often, a hero) will always get away in the most undignified and cowardly fashion imaginable. If they didn't, who would the hero fight next episode? This is probably why the heroes either don't even bother chasing them, or else send Red Shirts after them with predictable results, or even help them get away. Other times, they're just being sporting.

No blockades, no manhunts, not even pursued by a bear. After all, it's at the end of the episode.

Regardless of the means, the escaped Smug Snake will gloat about how it "all went according to plan", maybe set off the Self-Destruct Mechanism in the Collapsing Lair, and return "triumphantly" next episode. Less often, you'll see them lick their figurative and literal wounds at having not only been beat, but forced to show the better part of valour and try to come up with a new Plot Of The Week that will work, throwing in a "Next Time, Tropeworthy!" for good measure.

Most villains who exit stage left also favor the "Friend or Idol?" Decision and Sadistic Choice as backups, setting off small bombs or traps on loved ones to force the hero to choose between their capture or their friends' lives.

See also Screw This, I'm Outta Here for when the Mooks try this. Compare So Long, Suckers!. Contrast with Last Villain Stand where the villain decides to stick around and fight to the end.

Anime and Manga

 * Naraku of Inuyasha had an irritating habit of doing this. Every episode Naraku was directly involved in ended with him either running away after getting his ass handed to him or him doing something that made it impossible for him to be directly attacked. And every single incarnation he created would inevitably run like hell when things got sticky. Honestly, how many times can the Big Bad get savaged and still claim to be all powerful?
 * No one in Pokémon ever bother to chase Team Rocket after they "blast off again". This was addressed in one episode, an Officer Jenny blasted them off, disappointed that they got away but remarking that there were more powerful members of Team Rocket around that the police force should occupy their time with catching.
 * As of Black and White, instead of "blasting off", they simply escape, usually by jetpack, when they lose.
 * In Sailor Moon, after the Monster of the Week is deployed, the member of the Quirky Miniboss Squad who did it virtually always teleports, drives or runs away while the main characters are distracted by the monster. In some cases, they actually watch the battle without participating, and then escape after the monster is defeated. Of course, nobody bothers to stop or chase them; except once when the Outers try attacking Kaolinite. She summons up incredible power to beat them all...and then runs away anyways.
 * In Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, this trope is subverted in "Get Berg Katze" where the episode begins where the stories typically end, with the destruction of the Galactor mecha of the week and Katze escaping his escape craft. Afterward, Professor Nambu orders the team to seriously pursue Katze this time for once and the villain is shocked (Shocked!) to see that the team do so. But he must have thought about it at some point, since he escaped his escape craft via smaller escape craft. Then things got really weird.
 * In Naruto, Itachi Uchiha is a master of the Art of Run. Supposedly, so that might explain it.
 * Kabuto and Orochimaru seem to be impossibly good at escaping when at a disadvantage, especially when compared to the majority of other villains. A fair amount of the time, their opponents are also badly injured or out of chakra, though.
 * Pixy Misa in the Pretty Sammy series always leaves just before her Monster of the Week gets vaporized. One particularly weird exit was when she left on a huge cruise ship that randomly appeared in Pretty Space.
 * Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch: Every time after the heroines perform their song, which end with a "Love Shower Pitch!" (and followed with "How about an encore?"), the villains (most of them) they just beat always teleport away afterwards.
 * A rare villain-villain example: in One Piece at the end of the Marineford arc was supposed to be killed as his performance simply wasn't impressive enough. However,  reports that he used his abilities in a way he hadn't been seen to before in order to escape.
 * In Bleach, Gin walks away from his fight with Hitsugaya after Rangiku persuades him to stand down. Hitsugaya initially wants to continue, but Gin tells him he should tend to the unconscious Momo first.
 * In the My-HiME manga, Nao leaves her fight with Mai and Yuuichi after Yuuichi knocks Nao's key away, preventing her from using her Child. Mai and Yuuichi demand an apology for remarks Nao made about the other.

Comic Books
"Bob (halfway up the ladder): Wait a minute! Good Lord, I don't have any henchmen! Wiggum: Looks like our new "hands-off" approach to fighting crime is working."
 * Subverted in Cable/Deadpool #49, after Deadpool and Ka-Zar thwart one of Brainchild's latest plans to take over the Savage Land he and his minions try to escape on pterodactyls. Ka-Zar laments that Brainchild has escaped even though he's really not that far away and he could go after him on foot as it's hard to loose a flying lizard with people on it. Deadpool, Genre Savvy as he is, simply shoots the pterodactyl Brainchild is riding sending it tumbling down into the waiting jaws of some very hungry T-rexes. Deadpool then tells Ka-Zar that he should really try using guns.
 * In the Marvel Universe, The Red Skull justifies this trope by preparing his escape routes with care with obstacles that justifiably discourage the heroes from pursuing him.
 * For instance, his first Silver Age appearance has him escaping through a hidden wall panel door. Bucky is all for smashing through it to begin the chase, but Captain America (comics) realizes that panel is a disguised steel door and by the time they get it open to the escape tunnel, the Skull would be long gone. As Cap says in the story "Whoever this Red Skull is, he's no amateur!"
 * In a modern version, Cap pursues the Skull in one of his buildings and loses him just long enough to find a veritable maze of multiple possible escape routes the Skull prepared for this situation and decides trying to guess correctly which one he took would be unlikely and a waste of time to try.
 * Subverted at the climax of Captain America (comics): Reborn. Here, the Red Skull's consciousness is forced back into his robot body after being forced out of Rogers' by Rogers himself. Unplugging himself, the Red Skull tries to make a break for it hoping the big fight around would cover his tracks. Sharon Carter stops that in a brilliantly counter-intuitive way by using Dr. Hank Pym's size changing technology to make him a giant before he got away. Yes, that means that there now is a giant Red Skull trying to stomp the superheroes, but it also means that there is no way he can sneak away now and fighting with Colossus Climb tactics is old hat for Captain America and his friends, not to mention Sharon gets the Vision to access the Skull's ship's weapons systems to hit a now really big target.
 * Invoked but not carried out by Harley Quinn in volume 2 of "Hush". As she flees Batman she quotes Snagglepuss, 'Heavens to Murgatroid, exit, stage left.' But is caught before she can fully escape.
 * Invoked in Sonic the Hedgehog issue #8. After beating Robotnik's super hero themed robots, Sonic is about to beat him up but slips on some motor oil. Robotnik then escapes riding Crabmeat, after which, Sonic pulls out the Comics Code handbook and comments that the villain always gets away in the end.
 * In Daredevil #17, the Masked Marauder slips away from view long enough to beat up a security guard and steal his uniform, escaping capture to menace New York another day.
 * Parodied in The Simpsons Comic: Bart and Lisa have just survived a run-in with Sideshow Bob, Kang and Kodos. Bob sees a helicopter with a rope-ladder hanging from it and assumes his henchmen have prepared his escape. He gives the standard "We shall meet again" speech and flees - only to realise something:

Fan Works

 * Orochimaru and Madara often do this in Naruto Veangance Revelaitons. In one case, this leads to Madara.
 * This trope is frequently subverted in The Legend of Spyro a New Dawn. Commander Hades attempts this after his defeat, only to be Empress Tyrania's Dragon attempts this after
 * Used successfully by Gaul in The Legend of Spyro: New Frontier, assisted with a Sadistic Choice.
 * Kaworu in Shinji and Warhammer40K does this three times, each time soundly thrashed despite the horrific casualties of the heroes and each time completely unwilling to accept that he was defeated. That he got into the habit of this might be the reason the author decided to.

Film

 * In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Jade Fox is almost killed by Li Mu Bai, but escapes the legendary warrior - who is capable of Roof Hopping to the point of flight - by jumping over a wall. And he just lets her get away.
 * Justified, Li Mu Bai wanted to steal her apprentice, if he'd pursued he probably would have had to kill them both; hell, even killing Jade Fox would kill any chances of getting the apprentice.
 * Subverted in Smokin Aces. The last living member of the redneck neo-Nazi assassins is accosted by the last living member of a group of bounty hunters that had run afoul of them earlier. At first, the Nazi walks away... and then the audience hears, "Fuck this" and the Nazi is brought down by repeated shots in the back.
 * Austin Powers does this a couple of times, with Dr. Evil flying off into space. To be fair they do seem to track him but only pay attention when he re-enters orbit.
 * The rewritten version of Gandalf vs. Witch-King in Lord of the Rings has major shades of this. In The Movie, the Witch-King actually has Gandalf at his mercy, then quickly exits when The Cavalry arrives.
 * In Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,
 * Note that Prime's
 * The inspiration for Dr Evil, the James Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, does this in You Only Live Twice. He tries this again in On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Diamonds Are Forever, but neither ends quite as well for him.
 * Count Dooku in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones does this after the clone army attacks, fleeing to his personal space craft, and though Anakin and Obi-Wan (and then Yoda) pursue him they aren't that effective, leaving him alive for the next film.
 * Revenge of the Sith implies that General Grievous does this a lot (which Star Wars: The Clone Wars repeatedly demonstrates), fleeing twice the instant things aren't going his way.

Literature

 * In the earlier books in A Series of Unfortunate Events, Count Olaf would always get away, while Mr. Poe comically and ineffectively attempted to get the police to chase him.
 * This was even lampooned in an issue of MAD Magazine, in which Count Olaf goes into a showing of Return of the King and Mr. Poe says it's too much trouble to go after him.
 * Used in the Ender's Game-universe novel Shadow of the Giant to create a moral dilemma: in order to save a hostage, Bean promises the villain he'll let him escape, and then has to decide whether to keep that promise, knowing that doing so will probably result in many deaths.
 * Parodied in Discworld novel The Last Hero. Cohen's band of heroes would always let Dark Lord Harry Dread escape, and he would always hire stupid minions and make easily-escaped dungeons. They all refer to it as The Code; either you live by the code, or you don't. If you're a villain this means being a Card-Carrying Villain, and if you're a hero you benefit from Plot Armour. If you don't live by The Code, then that means that those ineffectual villains can stop playing around, or that the heroes don't have to let the villain escape. It's not just tradition, it's a way of life. Which means either you live by the code or, you know. Not.
 * The Old Count from Carpe Jugulum benefits from a variant of this: he always makes sure that his castle is full of easily-improvised anti-vampire weapons, and the villagers who defeat him never actually scatter the ashes so he'll stay dead-dead.
 * Justified in Warrior Cats, where the Warrior Code makes it so that the winning cats have to let the defeated cats escape, to prevent unnecessary bloodshed.
 * Also played straight at the end of A Dangerous Path, where Tigerstar just runs away without putting up a fight.
 * In Star Trek: The Battle of Betazed, the Vorta overseer Luaran beams out in a climatic scene using a Dominion long-range transporter. She leaves her Cardassian colleagues behind to be captured, though.
 * French Sci Fi novel Malevil forces this trope to zig-zag a bit when Malevil comes under siege. With  dead, his subordinate, , leads their men in an orderly retreat back to La Roque, Malevil's defenders watch them depart from the castle ramparts. Subverted when they mount their horses and ride along a hidden trail to cut off the survivors and set up an ambush. Double subverted when it's realized that   is alone, riding on a bicycle ahead of the soldiers, and Emmanuel must risk letting the leader go to avoid alerting the bulk of the army to the trap. Finally subverted again they remember Colin's bow allows for a silent kill and their enemies walk blindly into the ambush a few minutes later.
 * At the end of Curse of the Wolfgirl Big Bad Distikka manages to vanish unseen during the confrontation between our heroes and her Dragon.
 * In Moon Over Soho the "Faceless One" decides that having a chimney stack thrown at him is more than enough, and takes advantage of the distraction afforded by a crashing helicopter to disappear in the confusion. He'll probably be back.

Live-Action TV
""Exit Stage Crowley.""
 * At the end of the Doctor Who serial "Terror of the Autons", UNIT do chase after the Master, but give up when they find his abandoned vehicle. The Doctor is completely unconcerned about the likelihood of the villain returning. "As a matter of fact, Jo, I'm rather looking forward to it." The Master would then perform this trope in almost every one of his appearances (except for those in which he "dies").
 * It is actually quite rare for "non-Master" Who villains to escape; one exception is Count Grendel in "The Androids of Tara". After the Doctor and his allies storm Grendel's castle, the Count shouts "next time, I shall not be so lenient!" before jumping off a parapet into his moat and swimming away.
 * Lady Cassandra O'Brien in "The End of the World" attempts exit in a leftward direction via teleportation, only for The Doctor to teleport her back moments later - While she's bragging to her henchmen.
 * And as far as the Daleks of the Cult of Skaro go: "EMERGENCY TEMPORAL SHIFT!"
 * Subverted in an episode of Firefly, when a one-shot villain mistakenly thinks he's going to get this treatment. Instead, he gets to know one of Serenity's engines in a very personal and intimate manner.
 * Niska pulls one of these at the end of "War Stories", somehow managing to slip past an enraged Mal and the remainder of Serenity's crew while his henchman are busy dying.
 * YoSaffBridge tries to pull this twice, only for her to be swiftly found by Serenity's crew - twice - who let her go unharmed - twice.
 * Unharmed, maybe. But they call the cops on her the second time, so she doesn't actually escape.
 * Subverted in the V regular TV series, which begins right at the moment V: The Final Battle ended where Diana made her escape. Donovan immediately realizes that she's getting away, chases her and catches her right away.
 * Every episode of LazyTown. They don't even put Robbie Rotten in a Cardboard Prison. Or even have any police force (no wonder they need a superhero!) Granted, in a town with four adults and five kids as the total population, it doesn't seem like they could spare the manpower to guard him...
 * Quite a few Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes feature the heroes standing around and letting Spike get away. This didn't seem so bad after his Badass Decay but back when he was a legitimate threat it could really get on your nerves. Perhaps the most Egregious is in the episode "Halloween", where Buffy is standing right next to him as he starts to run away in defeat and clearly could have easily killed him.
 * "Crush" was possibly the most Egregious; Spike declared his love for Buffy, was rebuffed, attempted to have Drusilla kill her, failed, and Buffy's response is to close the front door in his face. Not, say, kill somebody who'd just proved himself willing and able to kill people again. The shark, she is jumped.
 * The instances of Harmony getting away are rather irrational, considering that they always beat her so easily. She does still drink people's blood!
 * They can't take her seriously. When Buffy learned she had assembled a gang, she laughed. Earlier, Xander even confronted said gang by standing on the door of Buffy's home and telling them off due their inability to enter uninvited, and when Dawn accidentally invited her in Xander was able to kick her out. Xander, a normal human who had no cross at the moment, KICKED OUT THE VAMPIRIC HARMONY. How could they take her seriously?
 * Quite often, the characters in The A-Team are content at shooting at their enemies' feet until they run away, only forcing the surrender of the main boss. The opposite is also noted with the army.
 * Invoked in Supernatural:


 * In Community after Mr. Rad accidentally confesses onstage to killing the previous glee club he gets away by shouting "Look! Kings of Leon!" and running off...stage left. No one tries to chase him, although to be fair, none of them are exactly law enforcement.
 * In Danger 5, Hitler escapes from Danger 5's A-Team Firing via Super Window Jump (the same window every time) Once an Episode.

Tabletop Games

 * Employed as a game mechanic in the role-playing game Mutants and Masterminds where players are rewarded for the villain escaping by fiat with "hero points" that allow them to increase their chances of success in later encounters.
 * In Dungeons & Dragons, it's traditional for the Big Bad wizard to have at least one teleportation spell prepared for when he drops under a certain number of hit points or his plan is spoiled. In 3rd Edition, it's usually Dimension Door, but that only gives a head start of a few hundred feet to whatever serves as an escape pod. However, a magic item, the Corrupted Unicorn Horn, takes this a step further and returns the possessor to wherever the horn was obtained. Ever since this item was published, more and more villains have been getting away easier...
 * Other core spells that provide similar functions include Plane Shift, Word of Recall, and, at really low levels, Invisibility (which even comes in potion form for non-spellcasting cowards).
 * Appears in Warhammer 40,000 with the Necrons. If their army is reduced to 25%, they teleport away. Problem with that in gameplay is, it means the Necron player loses automatically even if they might be winning.

Video Games
"Sonic: If there's one thing he's good at, it's that! And after defeating the Ghost Condor in Sky Babylon: Sonic: Argh! He ran off again! Blaze: Those guys just will not sit still!"
 * Nicely subverted in The King of Fighters XI. Magaki opens a portal to escape, the entire time talking about how The Battle Didn't Count. The player's characters, meanwhile, openly mock him for abandoning the fight.
 * A notable attempt at aversion is seen in Final Fantasy VI, where Sabin (and maybe Shadow) confront Kefka in the Imperial Base outside of Doma. Kefka repeatedly employs a Villain Exit Stage Left after being hit, but Sabin does try to chase him down. The only reason Kefka gets away is because of conveniently placed enemies.
 * Kefka employs this trope an awful lot in the early parts of the game, while he's still being portrayed as a minor comic-relief villain. Pretty much everything goes to hell when Kefka stops running.
 * A couple times he also jokes as he runs. They yell at him to wait and he responds "Wait he says. What do I look like a waiter?"
 * In Final Fantasy VII, Rude's defeat animation consists of him looking at his watch and walking away, with the heroes making no effort to pursue. But then again, said animation is too badass to interrupt.
 * Seifer in Final Fantasy VIII does this every time you fight him. One gets the impression that Squall really just doesn't want to kill him.
 * However, unlike Reno, you do knock him out once.
 * In Return to Castle Wolfenstein and its sequel, Wolfenstein (2009 video game), the Nazi Mad Scientist Wilhelm "Deathshead" Strasse always gets away. So far it's happened four times: first with an U-Boat from Kugelstadt, then with a rocketplane from occupied Norway, then from the top of his personal castle after a Giant Space Flea From Nowhere destroyed his extradimensional battery, and lastly from a parallel dimension, through an ancient portal that led to an exploding Zepellin. The producers don't seem to want to kill him off since, as far as Those Wacky Nazis go, he's actually a rather competent villain. He even gets promoted to General between the two games.
 * This happens several times in Odin Sphere. Most notably when Cornelius allows the obviously insane and world-destruction-seeking Big Bad King Valentine to stumble away after besting him, TWICE.
 * In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Falco lets Bowser get away after destroying his Dark Cannon.
 * Mega Man's Dr. Wily. His case is especially bad, considering one time he literally escaped through an ordinary Goddamned door.
 * In Mega Man 7, Mega Man was about to give Wily a face full of plasma until Bass rescued Wily.
 * Shadow Man in Rock Man 4 Minus Infinity does this every time you beat him until Cossack Castle Stage 1.
 * In Mega Man Powered Up, Dr. Wily escapes if you beat him on Easy. Beating the game on harder difficulties causes Wily to go to his usual routine of begging Mega Man to leave him alone, claiming to have learned his lesson.
 * Subverted in the comic during the first game adaption. It looks like Wily is about to get away, but Mega Man proves too quick.
 * Present in most Sonic the Hedgehog titles, especially when Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik is the main (and only) boss. Every time you defeat him, he'd come back again in a bigger and sometimes-more-dangerous mecha to menace Sonic again and again.
 * As is Captain Whisker (robot pirate from Sonic Rush Series Adventure for those not in-the-know). As the cut scenes are just character art and text on a background, they didn't have to explain how this was possible, and so the phrase "he got away again!" and variants thereof were used too many times for me to bother counting. This is also repeatedly Lampshaded:


 * Archer vs Caster in Fate Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works. To be fair, Shirou calls him on it, and Archer has at least three reasons for not killing her when he could, though one is obviously sarcastic reasoning.
 * Pokémon villains, upon defeat, will always get away from the hero, who at the end of the game might even have a fire breathing dragon. We don't know how they do it, because the game conveniently turns the lights out.
 * At the end of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky, Big Bad attempts to escape through a portal, but Palkia shows up just in time and destroys said portal with  still inside it!
 * Lord Yuna of Breath of Fire IV constantly does this. Whenever someone confronts him over his monstrous deeds, he quickly teleports away like a coward. Unfortunately,
 * Gorgutz 'Ead 'Unter in Dawn of War does this in both Dark Crusade and Soulstorm, and implied to have done this after Winter Assault (given he managed to escape Lorn V). Both Tau commanders also do this after their Ethereal is killed.
 * Lampshaded in World Destruction. Immediately after killing someone, members of the World Salvation Front catch your party. Agan exclaims "Exit, Stage Left!" and your party proceeds to run off through the same door your opponents have just used to enter while they watch you leave.
 * The Ghouls in Fallout Tactics will sometimes say "Exit, stage left" when fleeing from a battle.
 * Tales of Symphonia makes an art of this. You fight and several antagonists several times, but they always get away. Sometimes as easily as just getting up and walking away, and none of the heroes feel like chasing after them. That is, until the end when they all either die or join you.
 * God Hand: After the first Boss Battle with Shannon, she escapes by using a dark portal to conjure up... a bus. Gene is noticeably surprised by this, but then, it's  a weird game.
 * In Alpha Protocol, attempts this at the end of the  mission and  attempts this at the end of . Depending on your choices and how you've interacted with them up to that point, they may or may not get away.
 * Bowser Jr. at the end of every world in New Super Mario Bros. Wii will jump onto the airship as Mario runs up to him, stays a good four or five feet away, and just stands there watching as he flies off with the princess.
 * Except for two worlds, where the airship actually left without him. This results in him running after it and Mario finally chasing him to it. An airship level ensues. You fight him at the end,
 * In the final world there isn't any chase scene, you just run up to the airship, infiltrate it, and engage him in his
 * Also used repeatedly in the Paper Mario series; at one point, to escape, minor baddie Mimi simply floats up and apparently passes through a wall, perhaps by flipping to 3-D.
 * In BioShock (series) 2, It is revealed that the Big Sister was planned to be this. Just being one Big Sister that would always flee after being defeated. However the creators believed that most players would get annoyed at the idea of the Big Sister always fleeing, so they made multiple Big Sisters.
 * In In Famous 2, Bertrand does this after.
 * Happens with in Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, who . It's somewhat justified however, as.

Web Animation

 * In one of the four endings (the canon one) of the last episode (#100) of the Web video Red vs. Blue,

Web Comics

 * The Order of the Stick plays this straight, subverts, and lampshades it on several occasions.
 * Lampshaded and brutally subverted in this earlier comic. A minor villain attempts to exit stage left, only to be ganked by the resident Heroic Comedic Sociopath, who is then chided by his Genre Savvy teammates for killing off a recurring villain.
 * Played straight here, at the end of the Dungeon of Dorukan arc. The heroes, after defeating Xykon thanks to a Deus Ex Machina, completely ignore his henchman, Redcloak, allowing the latter to escape with the lich's Soul Jar.
 * Lampshaded again in this strip, when Nale uses a conveniently timed distraction to make an exit, only to return moments later with the evil cavalry.
 * Played tragically straight here, where Miko's ill-timed intervention allows the nearly defeated villains to make a last second escape.
 * In Minions At Work, the villain not only did this, leaving his Mooks to face the enemy, the severance check bounces.
 * In Girl Genius, when Tarvek beats the crap out of Zola, and is about kill her, when Gil suddenly stops him, which allows her to fly away. It matters little that she was unconscious by that time, and the reason she could escape is that her flying coat was already activated, and it was Tarvek's weight that were pulling her down.

Western Animation
"Actress!Azula: (pointing offscreen) What's that? I think it's your honor. Actor!Zuko: Where? (everyone turns around. Actress!Azula opens a door and walks offstage.) Actress!Katara: She got away! But how??"
 * In Phineas and Ferb, Dr. Doofenschmertz gets away every time, though usually not unscathed.
 * Perhaps the most frequent use of this trope was in the cartoon segments of the Super Mario Bros Super Show. After Bowser's latest plot is foiled, he would often have an exit (usually a "warp zone potion") that would allow him to duck out just before the heroes can fully defeat him. Except for one episode, this was done every time without fail (though to tell the truth, the reason for this was simply because the good guys never thought of simply running after him).
 * Spoofed by The Simpsons episode about spinoffs, where Chief Wiggum and Principal Skinner fight criminals. Said criminal jumps into the water, and Skinner comments on how he's very slowly getting away (he's a Fat Bastard type who can barely swim), and they could probably catch him. Wiggum replies that he's certain they'll face him again, each and every week.
 * Every single time, Carmen Sandiego from Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? would take to the sky via jetpack. You'd think with the almost alien technology at Acme Crime Labs' disposal, they'd think up some countermeasures.
 * Superfriends does this ALL THE TIME. Just about every episode ends with the Legion of Doom defeated and with no way out, but the Super Friends pretty much let them get away. At one point, the Legion of Doom can only resort to TURNING INVISIBLE. And the Super Friends just. Stand. There.
 * Dr. Drakken of Kim Possible often gets away at the end of the episode (in a hovercar or other escape vehicle he and Shego conveniently had waiting). Sometimes he does go to jail, but he never seems to stay there long. It was also subverted once when he tried to get away with a jetpack, but forgot he was inside and collided into the ceiling.
 * Although at the beginning of the fourth season, while Kim would be fighting some other villain, an episode would sometimes end with Drakken, showing how he was coping in prison with his ridiculously annoying cellmate/FanBoy Frugal Lucre. Further twisting the knife, at least twice someone broke out Shego, leaving Drakken behind to rot.
 * Skeletor in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe frequently teleports away to safety whenever his schemes fail, or sometimes onto a conveniently placed vehicle.
 * Spoofed in the South Park episode, "Super Best Friends", where the villain escapes via a Cobra Commander-like escape pod. The heroes just stand around and curse watching him get away.
 * Done by Batman to the Legion of Doom at the end of Justice League Unlimited. For helping save the world from Darkseid's invasion, he gave them "A five minute head start." As the last episode of the series, it was more than enough time.
 * Repeatedly (and suspiciously) used in the TV series G.I. Joe. After defeating the doomsday device of the week, G.I. Joe will often round up lower echelon Cobra troopers to presumably face prison, but the upper echelon villains such as Cobra Commander, Destro and Zartan will always escape. Sometimes, this is due to most of them being slippery masters of disguise, but on a couple of occasions the Joes will literally watch them run or drive away, which is particularly odd when you consider that the Joes usually still have plenty of working vehicles at the end of a mission. Job security, maybe?
 * And it's not like Cobra Commander usually makes much attempt to conceal his intention to run away, what with his habit of loudly shouting "COOOOOOBRA! RETREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAT!" in full earshot of the Joes.
 * Well, they don't want to put themselves out of a job, after all!
 * In the X-Men episode "Phalanx Covenant", Mr. Sinister beats a hasty exit at the end of all the shenanigans. The worst part is he's less than a block away, and just running down an alleyway, and all is said is a nonchalant "Sinister's getting away!" He's right there. Catch him!
 * One of the most notable examples from Western Animation is Inspector Gadget's arch-nemesis Dr Claw, who'd flee in his Flying Car of evil with his parting Catch Phrase "I'll get you next time, Gadget... next time!"
 * In the second season, recurring MAD agents would appear for three episodes, escaping without being arrested in each episode. No one really seemed to care that the MAD agents were still loose and could strike again at anytime. Penny in particular suffered character decay, as she didn't seem to be bothered in the slightest about the escape of agents who had been trying to kill her uncle, and who would return to do so again.
 * Asajj Ventress and General Grievous in Star Wars: The Clone Wars are absolute masters of this, and never miss an opportunity to perform it. In the very first episode, when Yoda quite neatly disassembles all Ventress' attacks with his superior Force abilities, she resorts to causing an overhead mountain to explode, so while Yoda catches the boulders with his telekinesis she runs away faster than the Road Runner to a nearby escape pod.
 * Shredder did this every week on the 80's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987 cartoon. No matter where he happened to be at the time, as soon as his plan went sour a great big drill-car thing would burrow up from the ground, he'd hop in and head back underground to the Technodrome, and at no point did it occur to the turtles to simply go down the hole after him. Mind you, the holes did have a tendency to fill up with lava and cool into rock pretty quickly seeing as the Big Bad's HQ was at the center of the Earth. In fact, the turtles once attempted to pursue Shred-Head's escape through the driller in one episode... and were quickly rewarded by literally getting the Hot Foot within moments.
 * Lampshaded in one episode where a guest character shouts "Shredder is getting away!" and Raphael wearily responds "Yeah, you get used to that."
 * Averted by Shredder in The 2K3 series, but played straight by Agent Bishop.
 * The Avatar: The Last Airbender episode The Chase had a three-way fight between Aang, Zuko, and Azula that was joined by the rest of the main cast, minus Mai and Ty Lee. Everyone corners Azula, until she shoots Iroh, the rest of them attack her, she causes an explosion, and presumably runs off somewhere. In the Who Would Want to Watch Us? episode, we have:

"Birdman: Look, Avenger! Our culprit's trying to escape! Well, he won't get far without propellers!"
 * Strangely enough, it was the one-shot Birdman villains who escaped capture on a semi-regular basis, sometimes by endangering others, sometimes... just by leaving the scene really fast and letting Birdman hover there declaring to Avenger that they would meet again. In the end, only one escapee villain (Vulturo) was actually defeated and arrested in a second encounter.
 * This made it all the more satisfying in "The Incredible Magnatroid" when Birdman decides there's enough time left in the episode to actually prevent Metallo from escaping in a helicopter with the following immortal line:

"Joker: Oh, good, the beam's headed here: Now I'll have to start all over again. Thanks for wrecking everything, kid. See you around..."
 * Happened often in Transformers: Beast Wars. In many given episodes, the Maximals would manage to often push the Predacon forces back, but would rarely follow through with a full scale attack against them, often because they themselves had sustained heavy damage as well and as such would allow Megatron and his forces to flee back to their base. This is somewhat justified insofar that Maximals are supposed to be peaceful as a rule, and Optimus as a rule wants to protect his crew and return to Cybertron rather than engage in all out warfare.
 * Happens in every series in Transformers. Typically the reason for the Decepticons getting away in the old series was that they could fly and the Autobots couldn't, even though they could in the pilot episode. A spin on it was done in Transformers Armada, where the Decepticons got away by teleporting; the episodes that revolved around getting a Minicon always had them teleporting away, regardless of whether they got it or not. This led some to some moments where they would leave even if they had the overall advantage. Although this wasn't the only Transformers series that did it, it did it the most frequently.
 * In an episode of Jimmy Neutron, Villain of the Week The Junkman has been tied to a chair on his own ship. He tricks Jimmy into freeing him, then heads over to an escape pod, and escapes, while everyone just stands there.
 * In The Magician, while Ace Cooper would always be able to capture the minor, one shoot villains in each episode, the major baddies such as Black Jack, Sonny Boy and Faceless would always escape. In Black Jack's case, it's not that he ran away, but is that his lawyer Clockwise would always be able to twist the facts around so Black Jack wouldn't be arrested.
 * Slade does this in the first season finale of Teen Titans, after his mask gets knocked off and he's decided he's had enough. He does, however, trigger his lair's self-destruct so that the Titans won't be able to follow him. The season four finale has a variation, as Slade is actually not really a villain at that point and gets flung away by Trigon from the final battle, not to be seen again. Later on, though, Robin expresses his belief that Slade survived and returned to his villainous ways.
 * At the end of The Movie of Batman Beyond, Joker is apparently so used to this trope through the years tangling with Batman that when Terry destroys his Kill Sat control and sends the ensuing Death From Above heading right towards the Joker's hideout, his only response is:


 * In one particular episode of Bravestar, the hero literally threw the villain away. He threw him about a mile, into a swamp. What makes it particularly egregious was that this was an anvilicious episode about vigilantism. Right after throwing the villain away, Bravestar turns to the strawman vigilante (who has been hunting Villain all episode) and says something like "See, justice prevails!". The really, really sad part is, the vigilante agrees, and promises to mend his wicked ways.