Bound and Gagged

""What’s the matter, Gaggles? Can’t talk cause you’re gagged, Gaggles?""

- A Gra soldier to Gordin, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon

When a Snooping Little Kid, Damsel in Distress, or Faux Action Girl (or the occasional unlucky guy) is captured by the villain, they're usually restrained in some fashion, and to keep them from crying out for The Hero, they're usually silenced as well. In the olden days, this was usually accompanied by some form of fantastical Death Trap to add to the suspense.

Nowadays, the victim's cell phone will invariably ring and the villain will pick it up and answer, "Sorry, she can't come to the phone right now ... she's all tied up at the moment." (Villains never get tired of this Pun. Never.)

To the captives themselves, they're likely to say "I Have You Now, My Pretty" or "You Got Spunk" or some variation/combination of the two.

Sometimes this is done for humor instead. For example, a character who is considered annoying might be tied up by the group simply to get that person out of the way. Of course, if that character is really cute, the intended humor might be lost a bit on some audiences. Other times, someone might be tied up humorously as the result of some mishap. For example, the US Dennis The Menace cartoon once had a scene where a seal is running amok, and at one point grabs toilet paper in its mouth and runs around the kids, wrapping them up in toilet paper. They even get gagged by apples that get knocked off a table and fly into their open mouths.

When this trope is played for dead serious drama, you can expect, in many cases, very dark lighting and only glimpses of the bonds. It generally tends to be more light-hearted adventures that actually show a lot of rope. In those cases, part of the fun is often seeing the hero escape, or try to escape, the bonds, so there's a lot of emphasis on actually showing the bonds, the struggling, and the escape or rescue. When it's played for drama, the emphasis is on how terrible the captive feels, so there's more focus on facial expressions and less on the bonds.

Related tropes include:


 * All Webbed Up—when spiders (or related beings) do the binding.
 * Bag of Kidnapping—when the captive is tied in a sack.
 * Banging for Help—when a bound captive tries to make noise to get attention.
 * Bench Breaker—Instead of cutting their bindings with a Conveniently Placed Sharp Thing, they break the bench or chair they are tied to.
 * Chained to a Bed—often played for comedy... but it can just as easily be played for drama.
 * Chained to a Railway—the classic "tied to the tracks" cliché.
 * Chained to a Rock—and left to die, either by a monster or by exposure.
 * Combat Tentacles—when the tentacles pierce or hurt their victim.
 * Conveniently Placed Sharp Thing—how many captives get free on their own.
 * Conveyor Belt O' Doom—when a bound captive is placed on a conveyor belt leading to death.
 * Death Trap—what many bound captives get placed in for melodrama.
 * Damsel in Distress—a female character who gets tied up a lot.
 * Dude in Distress—a male character who gets tied up a lot.
 * Gulliver Tie Down—when the tie-ers are much smaller than the tie-ee.
 * Inconvenient Itch—A common result of being tied up in comedic works.
 * Kind Restraints—when they are tied up by their allies for a good reason.
 * Mummy Wrap—Individuals are restrained by completely or partially mummifying them.
 * Putting a Hand Over His Mouth—may be used for kidnapping purposes, some of the time.
 * Tentacle Rope—when a living thing restrains someone with its tentacles.
 * Tribal Carry—when someone is tied to a pole at the hands and feet and carried away.
 * Unwilling Suspension—when someone is bound and left dangling.
 * With My Hands Tied—a popular Badass Boast.

Advertising

 * This Sunsilk commercial right here. Tied to a chair with quite a lot of rope, and having her hair "tortured". Did I mention she was tied to a chair with a lot of rope?

Anime and Manga

 * Code Geass has this increasingly through out the series. Nunally twice, Vileta once, Cornelia once and others. Kallen and Lelouch are, when captured, forced to wear straight jackets; CC has one as her ''daily clothing'. Also carried out the soldiers involved in the Chinese uprising. Why were they carrying ballgags with them again?
 * In Yu Yu Hakusho, Kuwabara is tied and gagged in the Chapter Black arc in order for Sensui to use his Jigen-tou to slice through the dimensions- first with Toguro-ani's body working through Gourmet, then with a conventional rope and gag.
 * Akane from Ranma ½ found herself in this predicament when Cologne tied her up and hid her in a storeroom, to keep her from interfering with Shampoo's plots. Surprisingly, even when Akane is more than capable of breaking free on her own, she refused to do so because Ranma was being a great big Jerkass. This is a persistently common trope in the series. Another incident involved Pantyhose Taro holding her as a hostage, and keeping her gagged and bound with (you guessed it) pantyhose.
 * Samurai Champloo's resident Damsel in Distress Fuu Kasumi seems to end up Bound and Gagged every other episode. It's a good thing at the start of the show she managed to get two capable Ronin in her debt to act as bodyguards (See Bodyguard Crush).
 * This happens a lot on Demashita! Powerpuff Girls Z to the titular girls.
 * No gagging involved, but in Ichigo Mashimaro, Miu called Nobue to tell her that Matsuri was her prisoner and was being tied up with a long rope. She demanded 5000 yen (a little less than US$50) or she would remove Matsuri's panties. Nobue went over to find...
 * Played for Drama in the second manwa of The Breaker, New Waves. When it's revealed that the doctor who helped Shiwoon overcome several members of the S.U.C was only trying to get close to him, Shiwoon is then shown Strapped to An Operating Table. It turned out that the doctor was after him for the Phlebotinum he was given in the previous manwa. He's given two options: join the S.U.C, or have his blood turned into a powerful Phlebotinum that will help the S.U.C qonquer Seoul. Since the doctor is, he naturally refuses. So, the doctor promptly shoves a gag in his mouth and gets ready to turn him into a living blood bank.
 * Tenma is captured, tied to a chair, and beaten by a dwarf Neo-Nazi crime lord in Monster. The scene is doubly valuable as a great demonstration of Heroic Spirit and Fetish Fuel.
 * Yua Kotegawa's first manga series Ottori Sousa was all about this trope for the first half of the series, before Growing the Beard into full-blown thriller detective manga. The main heroine, Joshikousei Damsel in Distress Mizuho Kubo was the designated character for this, except a few cases where Idiot Hero Detective Tatsuya Akiba is caught by the Psycho of the Week.
 * Hanaukyo Maid Tai La Verite episode 6. In the Baseball Episode the maid acting as an umpire is kidnapped (and shown tied up and gagged) and replaced with a Technology Department android robot.
 * Ookami-san: Okami gets tied up by some school bullies in episode 2.
 * Happens to a few characters in Love Hina, thanks in part to Kanako being adept at this sort of thing.
 * Happens to often in Mnemosyne, Episode 1, Rin is strapped down and tortured by Sayara. Episode 3, Rin is bound to the handrails of sinking ship. Episode 6, Rin is chained to a table and ball-gagged in front of a chained Angel by Laura. Then there is Apos' torture victim in various episodes.
 * Happens quite a few times in the Pokémon anime, this. In the episode "Just Add Water", Misty is tied up with Dorian with tape across her mouth.
 * At one point in the RS arc of Pokémon Special, Flannery gets kidnapped by Team Aqua. She ends up with her hands tied to her back and with tape across her mouth.
 * Naruto gets tied up and gagged in one of the movies. As does Sasuke way back in Part 1, by Naruto, although he easily escapes.
 * This happens to Orihime twice in Bleach, although the first is only implied- Ulquiorra tells Orihime (who is upset because she believes one of her friends is dead) to eat. She refuses, so Ulquiorra tells her if she doesn't eat then he will strap her down and force it down her throat. We never see Orihime eat after that, so it's hard to tell if he followed up on this. Second time was with Grimmjow after he stole her out of her room to go heal Ichigo so Grimmjow could fight him properly.
 * Inukami! of the played for laughs variety. Keita wants to use a magic pot to gain a harem but his Clingy Jealous Girl interrupts him so he tapes her. She breaks free so he uses chains, she breaks free again, he uses more chains etc.
 * FLCL. In episode 1 a hospital nurse ends up this way after she's Mugged for Disguise by Haruko to get her uniform.

Comic Books

 * Wonder Woman, and no wonder (pun not intended, at least not consciously): Her creator may have into bondage himself, but he definitely wrote it into the job description. The original Wonder Woman has all those abilities... unless she was tied up (specifically by a man), at which point she became de-powered. So you can expect incredible amounts of bondage throughout the first couple decades of her comic. It's such a common occurrence - to the point of once suggesting that the villains threaten to untie her - that the Superdickery website has an entire gallery devoted to it.
 * D-List Superheroine Empowered ends up like this so often that villains, innocent bystanders, and her own teammates regard her as a laughingstock and she occasionally points out the shortcomings of gag design to the mellower Mooks. (Very heavy on the Fetish Fuel, this series. In fact, it's part of its origin.)
 * Part of the Every Episode Ending in Asterix comics is Cacophonix being Bound and Gagged to prevent him singing at the big feast.
 * The superheroines Black Canary, Zatanna, and Siryn all have histories of being bound and gagged, due to the fact they all posses vocal-based superpowers.
 * Superman's Lois Lane. Sure, it's been toned down since The Eighties, but Pre Crisis, it happened all the time. As an example, check out the old Fleischer cartoons.
 * Captain Marvel is a well-known male example; Billy's always bound and gagged because he has to speak his magic word to become Captain Marvel. Naturally, this also happened to his sister, Mary Marvel, for the same reason. Also, their occasional teammate Kid Eternity, who has to speak his magic word to summon a historical or mythological hero.
 * The Adventures of Tintin - Tintin has been tied up on several occasions and, in one case, gagged, but has never been tied up and gagged at the same time.
 * Actually, this inevitably happens to somebody or other in just about every adventure (Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus, Nestor, and a slew of bad guys).
 * The first volume of Spider Woman also features quite a bunch of tie up scenes of Jessica Drew, and at least there's one scene where she's also gagged.
 * Nyoka the Jungle Girl is filled with this. All over the place. Nyoka gets tied up by bad guys all the time, many different ways.
 * Happens to many Distressed Damsels in Sin City when they're captured by a Big Bad. Dwight's girlfriend Gail and Wallace's girlfriend Esther are two prime examples.
 * Justified for many of the Marvel Universe magic users (Doctor Strange, Scarlet Witch, Wiccan, etc.), who need the free use of their hands and voices to cast spells.

Fan Fiction

 * In Aeon Natum Engel, the Nazzadi loyalist is disabled in the way that resembles the way how Section 9 restrain criminals, while giving a Shout-Out to I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.
 * Dr. Brainstorm ends up like this in Calvin and Hobbes: The Series.
 * Calvin's parents also get tied up, though they were asleep the whole time.
 * Happens to the Kankers and then later to Jason, Marcus, and Charlie Brown in the Calvin at Camp episode "A Stalker's Life."

Film - Animated

 * Hilariously done in Ratatouille, with one unusual twist—it's the "good guys" doing the binding and gagging (on a Health Inspector and an interfering former Head Chef)!

Film - Live-Action
""I'd like to see you escape now you've got tape on your mouth Miss Lee!"
 * In A Clockwork Orange, Alex and his droogs improvise ball gags out of rubber super balls and cellophane tape when they break into Frank Alexander's house. Works real horrorshow, too.
 * Ball-gags are used in Pulp Fiction in the scene where Butch and Marsellus are captured by Zed and Maynard.
 * The first half of the film The Transporter (staring Jason Statham) featured Shu Qi's character exclusively in this state.
 * The Exploitation Film The Candy Snatchers is all about the kidnapping of a Catholic schoolgirl. There's a lot of emphasis on what the victim is going through, and she is shown tied up and gagged onscreen a lot. She is never freed, at all, in any point during the movie.
 * Not surprisingly, this happens to both of the female leads in Bound.
 * Taken to a level of hilarity in the movie Big Trouble in Little China.
 * Cameron Diaz has a number of tie-ups to her credit, including:
 * In Head Above Water she gets tied to a chair with a ton of rope and gagged, tied up and gagged and carried over a shoulder, and later even tied up with her feet in cement. A comedy with tie-ups galore on one of the cutest women out there, Cameron Diaz.
 * In A Life Less Ordinary, she is tied to a chair as part of a somewhat faked kidnapping, then later seen tied up and gagged at a table while trying to play a card game, before she is blindfolded.
 * In The Mask she is tied to a post.
 * She's tied and gagged and locked in a cage in Being John Malkovich.
 * In the Charlie's Angels movie, Drew Barrymore's character is tied to a chair by some creep and gagged with a wide strip of duct tape with red lips drawn on it.
 * A not-so-common, non-villainous example occurs in the exorcism scene from The Exorcism of Emily Rose. The title character allows herself to be tied to her bed posts at one point to keep the demon possessing her from hurting herself or anybody else in the room. It doesn't work.
 * Lampshaded in Whats Up Tiger Lily? - villain Shepard Wong has the hero and his two girl assistants bound up. Several henchman walk out of the room as Wong mutters "Everyone shows up when we have girls to tie up!"
 * Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Nazis tie Marion Ravenwood to a pole in a tent and gag her. When Indy finds her, he starts untying her, but then realizes that if he does so the Nazis will start looking for them. This would prevent him from finding the Ark, so he ties her back up and puts her gag back on while she makes loud protests.
 * In the first Pirates of the Caribbean Will gets bound and gagged by the pirates who want to use his blood to break their curse. In the second film he's tied up in a Tribal Carry by the island natives when he's trying to find Jack. In the third film he is tied up and Waterboarded by Sao Feng's crew after he tries to break into their temple and steal to charts to World's End. We're starting to sense a pattern here...
 * Parodied in Tongan Ninja, with the constantly kidnapped Miss Lee:


 * In Who's Harry Crumb?, Elliott winds up tied to a chair, gagged with duct tape, and then suspended in midair so that all he can do is get the chair to swinging. The lipstick mark left on the duct tape right over his mouth adds a bit more humor to the situation.
 * In The Avengers, Loki is chained and wears a metal muzzle, most likely to prevent him from using his silver tongue to try and talk his way out, as

Literature

 * This trope is Older Than Feudalism. Odysseus willingly allows himself to be tied to his own mast when his ship sails past the sirens in The Odyssey. The other sailors use his reactions as a gauge for when it's safe to unclog their ears.
 * In Janny Wurts' book The Ships of Merior, Dakar is gagged using the cloth-in-his-mouth method. However, he somehow ingests the sponge they used and escapes.
 * Interesting usage in the obscure children's book Samantha Stone and the Mermaid's Quest. Samantha gradually learns the ability to teleport over the course of the story. After mistakenly teleporting right in front of an enemy, she is tied to a chair. She teleports out, and the guard is surprised to see a few scattered ropes lying on the chair. Later, they get the drop on her again and don't take any chances. Samantha is knocked unconscious, and bound - and gagged. When she wakes up, she can't cast the teleportation spell.
 * Nancy Drew. Oh lord, Nancy Drew. Not as often as legend suggests, though. Earlier books (the series began publishing in 1930) featured the character bound and gagged in maybe one out of every four or five stories, usually incidental to being left somewhere like a sinking boat, water tank or airtight closet, but these scenes were revised into less dangerous situations or outright deleted from later print editions. Scenes where Nancy was forcibly restrained by male antagonists were considered to have a sexual undertone and they were altered or omitted alongside anything else considered dubious by the changing social and moral standards of the times, particularly the depiction of non-white characters and even - lamentably - Nancy's initially headstrong and outspoken proto-feminist persona, which abandoned her early love of cars and excitement for more fashion and boy-oriented concerns as the series progressed.
 * The Hardy Boys went through a lot of this as well, at least in the blue hardcover books.
 * Happens often enough in the Harry Potter series. Harry gets tied up by Quirrel in book one, is bound to a gravestone and gagged in The Goblet of Fire, and the Inquisitorial Squad gags and restrains several of his friends in The Order of the Phoenix. Finally the trio and Dean Thomas are tied up when they are taken to Malfoy Manor in the The Deathly Hallows.
 * Snape does this to Lupin at the confrontation scene in Prisoner of Azkaban.
 * It should noted that all of these scenes are either changed/removed in the film adaptations, though they actually added a gagging scene in the first film, where Ron is briefly gagged by the Devil's Snare.
 * Judging by the trailers, Harry's tied up and manhandled by Voldemort in The Deathly Hallows Part II.
 * Interesting usage in the kids' book Jennifer the Jerk Is Missing. 8 year old Jennifer is tied and gagged, but she's so bratty, she laughs under her gag when her would-be rescuers (a 13 year old and another 8 year old) mess up and end up trapping themselves in a closet. Later, the would-be rescuers are themselves tied up and left that way overnight. The book's mood ranges from silly to suspenseful.
 * In George Mann's The Osiris Ritual, Veronica Hobbes is bound and gagged by the villain.
 * Let's Go Play at the Adams is made of this. 20-year-old Barbara wakes up, on page 7, to find herself tied to a bed and gagged, by the kids she was supposed to babysit, and their teenage neighbors. Barbara is literally tied up all throughout the entire 300+ page book, in a huge variety of positions, as her captors have no intent whatsoever of letting her go. Tied to a chair, tied to a bed, tied to a bench, tied to a pole, tied in many different ways, ungagged so she can eat, then regagged... it's all over the place. It's even implied that one of the teens tied up one of the kids—in her own words: "so tight that he tied my big toes together". It's also a genuinely gripping story, believe it or not, according to most reviews.
 * In Burning Water, by Mercedes Lackey, one minor character realizes he's been targeted by a mind control spell and demands his brother (a cop, so he actually has handcuffs available) and his sister-in-law cuff him to the bed. It holds him long enough for two other characters to break the spell.
 * Happens many times, in diverse ways, in The Candy Shop War. An adult who wishes to help the kids out ties up their teacher and takes her place as a substitute. One of the bullies is later forced into a straitjacket and gagged, by that same adult (the bully had become the lackey of the Big Bad, without realizing how evil she was). Later, some of the kids are wrapped up with magically controlled grass, then the girl is straitjacketed and gagged and taken as a hostage. Many good guys and bad guys, both kids and adults, are tied up or otherwise restrained.
 * Annabeth Chase is bound and gagged at least twice over the course of Percy Jackson and The Olympians. In the first book, The Lightning Thief, Percy has a dream in which he and are wearing straitjackets. One of the times Annabeth is bound is when she and Percy are sailing past the island of the Sirens, a direct Shout-Out to the Odyssey example above..
 * This happens to when he's kidnapped in the first Kingdom Keepers book.
 * Happens a few times in the Pyrates series. First, Paul, a boy who lives underground, is tied to a chair and threatened by the Big Bad's henchmen. Later, Shannon, and then George when he comes to rescue her, are both bound and gagged, although very loosely in George's case (socks do not good bindings make). Then in the fourth book, George's dad's girlfriend is kidnapped to try to force a bargain with George's dad, and George and his friends have to rescue her.
 * Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles: Stapleton ties his wife to a beam and wraps her up in a large cloth to the extent that neither Holmes, Watson nor Lestrade initially could identify the gagged figure as human when they burst in.
 * The opening of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley has the 11 year old heroine bound and gagged in a closet, struggling to free herself from her tormentors.
 * The Wheel of Time. It happens in a number of books to various characters through magical or physical meanings. Most popularly used by magic users in the form of bindings of air.
 * Happens Once A Book to Hot Scientist Dr. Fielding in the An Awfully Beastly Business books.
 * In Gene Stratton Porter's Freckles, the villains set a trap for Freckles and then tie him to a tree and gag him.

Live Action TV

 * Occasionally happens in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Dawn, Buffy, Spike and others are get tied a few times throughout the series.
 * In Uchuu Keiji Sharivan, the villains captured four young girls. Those girls were blindfolded, tied each other, and placed in the cliff. The villains threaten to kill them if Sharivan interfere their plan.
 * This will frequently happen to characters like Damsel Scrappy. Kim Bauer, daughter of Jack Bauer in 24, was captured, bound, and gagged by the bad guys no less than three times over the course of the series (including by one Faux Mole). And once more in the video game, to boot.
 * An example of fantastical fare from Germany, Tom Turbo, a series about a talking bicycle and the random kids who help it solve mysteries, has someone tied up in more than half the episodes. That someone could be anyone from an adult who needs rescuing to one of the main child characters. Or both at the same time.
 * She Spies uses ropes and gags for its frequently-captured main characters. The show's mood is so light-hearted as to be downright corny.
 * In the Supernatural episode "Hunted", you would be forgiven for thinking that Dean like this was the main attraction, considering as most of the pictures released/trailers shown have him tied up. Guess they know who their audience is.
 * And when Castiel had duct-tape over his mouth in "Changing Channels", livejournal icons of the scene popped up almost instantly.
 * Supernatural also has it's fair share of girl tied up, either needing to be rescued by the heroes, or having been tied up by the heroes because they are monsters or possessed by demons.
 * The Lost season 2 finale saw Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Hurley bound and gagged by the Others, though the gags were largely unnecessary.
 * Though Firefly didn't feature a whole lot of gagging, it did feature a lot of binding, particularly toward the show's resident Damsels In Distress, River and Kaylee. As a point of irony, by the time of the Big Damn Movie, River's newfound lethality allowed her to slip out of most of the binding she would have faced earlier in the series.
 * Doctor Who: This happens to one of the Doctor's companions seemingly every other episode.
 * Romana gets tied up about five times in "The Androids of Tara," which must surely be some sort of record.
 * Rose gets bound in three of the first four episodes of series two of the new series. She is bound by Cassandra in "New Earth," then Chained to a Rock in "Tooth And Claw" to be eaten by the werewolf, then is bound to a torture rack in "The Girl In The Fireplace."
 * Adric and Turlough also got tied up, so at least the writers weren't being sexist.
 * Happens to the Doctor himself in "The Caves of Androzani," Part 3.
 * And in "The End of Time," Part 2: "Worst Rescue Ever!"
 * The Third Doctor is bound and gagged in Day Of The Daleks, as is Jo Grant.
 * The Avengers - Emma Peel. Routinely. The only times she ever seems remotely put out by this is when it looks like a related Death Trap might go off while she's still, ah, indisposed.
 * Burn Notice features an interesting variation, in which Fiona willingly gets this treatment, and stuffed in a trunk, to convince the villain of the week that Michael is a dangerous criminal. Several minor characters have been similarly tied up as bait in one of Michael's Xanatos Gambits as well. And then there's Mike pretending to be a crack addict, letting Sam tie him up and pretend to torture him.
 * Dexter's playmates are mostly bound and gagged when he's having his... fun with them.
 * NCIS At one point or another, Jenny, Ziva, Paula Cassidy, EJ and Palmer all end up this way, not always with the gagging. It should be noted that while those are mostly female names on the list, the show does not have a Fetish Fuel or Distresssed Damsel bent. It seems to be mostly coincidence.
 * An episode of Castle sees the main character being bound and gagged by his daughter to see how he can escape for a book idea. Said daughter takes the chance to empty his wallet to go shopping.
 * Gosei Sentai Dairanger. Early in the episode, Zhangliao captures Daigo, Kazu and Lin and ties them on three poles and gives each of them a gag.
 * Subverted in a CSI episode where there was an apparent robbery of priceless antiques with the guard bound with a long length of duct tape. However Gill Grissom's first clue that the robbery was as a fake was when he discovered that by the position of the tied up guard and nearby fixtures, the evidence strongly suggested that the guard tied himself up.
 * Happens to Artie of all people in the Season 1 finale of Warehouse 13. The gag is a NUKE that.
 * In Papiny Dochki, Maria is caught by guards, tied, and gagged.
 * 1960's Batman episode ""Catwoman's Dressed to Kill". Catwoman orders an already bound Batgirl to be gagged to stop her backtalk.
 * This happened to The Monkees a number of times.
 * VR Troopers Kaitlin, the Action Girl, was captured, bound, and gagged as bait to lure her friends into a Death Trap.
 * In Justified, Quarles likes to bind and torture male hustlers. In "The Man Behind the Curtain," Sammy Tonin mentions the rentboy back in Detroit whom Quarles left in a coma, an incident that played a role in Quarles' exile to Kentucky. Several episodes show Brady gagged, nearly naked, and bound to a bed in Quarles house before Quarles presumably kills him. At the end of "Guy Walks into a Bar," Donovan is shown bound and gagged in a bathroom as a naked Quarles approaches.

Music

 * Creature Feature has an aptly named song, "Bound and Gagged", that details the kidnapping of The President's Daughter.
 * Green Day's song about BDSM, titled "Blood, Sex, And Booze" opens with the line: waiting in a room/all dressed up and bound and gagged/to a chair...
 * The music video for "Say You Like Me" by We The Kings is cartoonish and video game-themed, about the band members rescuing a (real) woman who is kidnapped by a cartoon character and cartoonishly tied and gagged, while the band members go through game-like obstacles to rescue her.
 * A completely serious and terrifying instance of this trope appears in the music video for Song Ji Eun's "Going Crazy", though it's actually more a case of Bound and Blindfolded than Bound and Gagged. As the trope is used for drama, most of the shots of the captive are of his trembling lips and helpless squirming. In fact, a lot of the tragedy in this video can be attributed to the use of this trope, although it helps that the man who is bound is handsome.

Newspaper Comics

 * Diana Palmer from The Phantom - it seemed in the early years nearly every story had Diana kidnapped and tied and gagged by an assortment of villains.

Theatre

 * In One Touch of Venus, a screaming Gloria is tied to a barber chair by Savory and Taxi during their failed ransacking of the barbershop.
 * In The Most Happy Fella, a prank is pulled on Herman by tying his arms with light bulbs and putting a basket over his head, causing him to stumble around blindly. Since he's not gagged, he can talk to Cleo, but he stubbornly refuses to complain about his situation.

Video Games
"Imps: A bright red crayon just for you! Lots and lots and lots for you!"
 * A rather unique example happens in the game Portal, where GlaDOS might have been modeled after a bound and gagged woman hanging upside down (as demonstrated in this fan art), making her even creepier.
 * Unusual for the Myst series, with its distinct lack of violence, in Myst IV, a preteen girl, Yeesha, is kidnapped and later seen, first in flashbacks and later in person, tied and strapped to a chair, with rope reinforcing the straps. In a flashback, she struggles mightily and appears to be crying. She's also played by a live action actress, due to the game's use of FMV crossed with prerendered backgrounds.
 * Grabbed By the Ghoulies has so many tied up people scattered around the mansion in so many ways that it probably counts as Fetish Fuel. Tied in almost any method you can think of. Example 1 Example 2 The game itself, however, was a massive flop.
 * Happens at least once per game in the Monkey Island series...except for the first game. This is ironic because the first game actually centered around a kidnapping and subsequent rescue attempt.
 * iPod Touch game Wild Wild Train features cutscenes telling a story of a damsel in distress. The cutscenes are done using actual photographs of actual actors playing the damsel, villain and hero, all of whom are silent film stereotypes. And the damsel is tied up and gagged and blindfolded, quite well. It's enough to make you wonder... A collage of 9 of the cutscenes
 * Occurs near the end of Runaway: A Twist of Fate. Gina (one of the playable characters) ends up bound and gagged by the Big Bad; pretty standard, nothing really remarkable. However, something unusual happens when she escapes. Rather than taking off the gag completely, she takes it out of her mouth and wears it as a stylish neckerchief for the rest of the game. Fits in pretty nicely with the game's sense of humor.
 * In Ace Attorney Investigations, after, Miles Edgeworth wakes up locked in a small room and tied to a pole. While he's freed five minutes later by Kay, this scene spawned a lot of happy fangirls. This was after he was handcuffed when he's suspected of murder earlier that day. Poor guy.
 * In the sequel, when is kidnapped, he's bound hand and foot, gagged, and locked in a dark room at the back of a garage—and this after being crammed into a box and thrown into the trunk of a car. It looks a little goofy (embarrassing if nothing else), but is treated as genuinely traumatic.
 * In Red Dead Redemption, you can lasso and then tie up anyone! You get an achievement for killing a tied up woman on the train tracks, old-fashioned villain style, as seen here.
 * In Rule of Rose, this happens to Jennifer in an early part of the game as well as in the opening Cutscene. The scene repeats itself much later in the game, except that this time Jennifer is also gagged with a fistful of red crayons.

"Max Payne: He had a baseball bat and I was tied to a chair. Pissing him off was the smart thing to do."
 * Early in Wandering Hamster, Bob gets tied up to summon Jormungandling and kill him. They fail and Bob ends up in his belly.
 * In Yo-Jin-Bo, Mon-Mon asks you to tie Yo's hands so he doesn't thrash around . The result is very much Does This Remind You of Anything?.
 * Has happened to Max Payne at least once in his career.


 * In Batman: Arkham City, you find Harley Quinn this way. Batman can ungag her to obtain some information and regag her after he's done.
 * Though not with the gag, Relius Clover during his Astral invoked this when used against some characters. Of course, this being him, it invoked a far worse image. The only person he ever gags was Valkenhayn and it was justified because restraining a werewolf without a gag is disastrous.

Web Comics

 * In one arc of Casey and Andy, Andy and his girlfriend are captured and tied up by the Mime Assassin. Casey's girlfriend is Satan, but she's Too Kinky to Torture, and is enjoying being tied up too much to bother to rescue Andy.
 * Happens to Bleu 3 times in Cuanta Vida, the first time alongside Scout.
 * Used more than once in The Cyantian Chronicles.
 * Memoria Matty, here
 * Has happened more than once in Collar 6. Then again, the comic is about bondage, so this isn't a surprise.
 * Shiniez, being about BDSM, tends to feature this a lot.
 * Appears frequently in Demon Candy Parallel. It's also about bondage.

Web Original

 * Done, interestingly, with a lot of rope and a large cloth gag for visual effect, on a young girl about 7, in a movie made by a summer camp, The Mystery of the Missing Jewels. It's obvious she isn't really tied or gagged especially tightly, and it's just for show, but that sure is an almost cartoonish amount of rope. Occurs at 14:47 in (link will skip you there).
 * Also done in an unusual way to a girl who looks about 10, in the independent film Caitlyn. She's tied to a pole (in part 2) with what appear to be metal strips pulled tightly. She's forced to make a Sadistic Choice between her freedom, or her parents' lives. Part 1 Part 2
 * Knot Me. The premise of this short film? "What do you do when you wake up to find yourself tied to a chair?" Find out here. Yes, a short film literally about a young woman being tied up.
 * Happens to every one of the 5 middle-school aged heroes (of both sexes) in the independent kid-made film Bradley's Summer, which can be found on YouTube. Not only that, Bradley himself gets tied up while invisible. Yup, an invisible boy tied up with ropes that look like they're hanging in mid-air.
 * Happens to the two female leads in the independent film Green Eyed Monsters. They pretty much spend 80% of the movie tied up. Strong language warning on this one. It's certainly not made by kids.


 * Think of your favourite animated female character. Whoever it is, anyone from Mikuru Asahina to Erin Esurance, someone out there is drawing pictures of her tied up, and likely posting them on Deviant ART.
 * About two-thirds into this review by The Gaming Pixie. With ghostly demonic hands involved, no less.
 * That Guy With The Glasses seems to like this trope and use it in an equal-opportunity fashion:
 * Linkara has been tied up twice, once by Sage and the other time by Mechakara. The former had a gag involved.
 * The Nostalgia Critic was held hostage by the Game Heroes and was tied up with a bag over his head. The bag's pulled off at the start, but he's still squirming and getting manhandled throughout the promo.
 * Paw Dugan was tied to a chair and had his legs shaved by Pushing Up Roses.
 * The Nostalgia Chick had her hands tied with a red bowtie when Dark Nella took over her show and the Makeover Fairy was tied up in the bath while her make-up was scraped off.
 * The Ghost Of Christmas Future tied Obscurus Lupa to a chair with tape and tinsel in order to try and get the Critic to a Christmas Carol parody.
 * Elisa was taped up on a couch courtesy of Team B in Suburban Knights.
 * The Chick stunned Spoony in the face, tied him up with extension cord and gagged him with a sock at the start of their Dune IRiff. She's also kidnapped and tied up Todd in the Shadows at least five times.

Western Animation

 * Penny, the young niece of the title character of Inspector Gadget, would frequently be captured by the M.A.D Agent of the Week and be bound and gagged, often requiring her to either free herself, or be rescued by Brain.
 * All the time on The Perils of Penelope Pitstop. Every single episode. More than once.
 * Funny thing is she has only been gagged once. 90% of the Hooded Claw's schemes probably would have worked if he hadn't overlooked that, but then we wouldn't have a show, would we?
 * April O'Neil in the 1987s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who always ended up being bound and gagged by the bad guys several times, especially during the earlier seasons, to the point that the turtles can even recognize her mumbles.
 * Totally Spies, where it happens in almost every episode. Given the cheesy, simplistic plots, it's one of the reasons many people watch the show.
 * In the classic George of the Jungle, this has happened to Ursula in the episodes "Desperate Showers", "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seed" and "A Man for all Hunting Seasons".
 * Kim Possible would often find herself tied up by the villain. She almost always used this time to get the villain to reveal their plot, then escape and kick their ass.
 * Happens all the time in Peter Pan and The Pirates.
 * Not as often as you might think for a character nicknamed "Danger-Prone Daphne," but regularly enough to deserve an honorable mention.
 * Happens in most episodes of Batman the Animated Series to one character or another. Most notably, Catwoman finds herself on a Conveyor Belt O' Doom being carried toward a cat food grinder in the episode "Almost Got 'Im", but this is far from the only example.
 * Kayley in Quest for Camelot, near the end.
 * Pretty much every major character other than Batman, Nightwing, and Ra's Al Ghul is tied up at one point or another in Batman: Under the Red Hood.
 * Happens quite a bit in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Of course, since pretty much every single character in this show kicks ass, more often then not its Badass in Distress.
 * Goldie Gold and Action Jack had both titular characters being Bound and Gagged. One instance had a henchwoman grabbing both Goldie's arms from behind, and Goldie spends the next half-minute pinned right in front of her captor.
 * Up to Eleven with Tails from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.
 * Also Sonic, to a lesser extent.
 * The New Adventures of Superman
 * "The Ape Army Of The Amazon". Lois Lane gets tied to a pillar in a temple and gagged by the Villain so he can rob the temple's treasures.
 * "The Mysterious Mr. Mist". Lois Lane is tied up and gagged by the title character before he lowers her into a well.
 * "Luminians on the Loose". Jimmy Olsen gets this treatment from Lex Luthor.
 * Candle Jack has been known for doing this to whoever says his name. Which happens a lot, so he's always gonna need more rope becau
 * Happens to Red in the direct-to-DVD movie Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes.
 * Mickey and Minnie are tied up and gagged in the old cartoon "Shanghied."