Sleight of Tongue



The hero has his back up against the wall. He's tied to the chair blindfolded, the firing squad is taking aim, the shark tank is sliding into position, the laser cannon/deathtrap is warming up, and his last cigarette is already half ash, you know the drill. By all accounts, his pooch is clearly about to be screwed.

And the Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter or The Baroness or the Femme Fatale moves in for that last lingering sadistic Kiss of Death to resolve that pesky UST...

Cue the Downer Ending, right? Not so much; as it works out, during the kiss she slipped into his mouth the key to his shackles, or a lock pick or the appropriate piece of Phlebotinum, ensuring that our intrepid hero lives on to fight another day.

Anime and Manga

 * Reversed with Kaji slipping the microfiche to Misato.
 * Or not. It's not actually shown and the dialogue indicates he used an orifice other than her mouth...
 * Eat Man: Rain slipping Bolt the last piece of her gynormous BFS in the pick.
 * In the manga Red River, Rusafa is framed for assaulting a nobleman's daughter and is placed out in the desert, his arms and legs all stretched out and tied with leather and is to be left there for five days. If he manages to escape or is alive when the five days are up, he can go free because 'the gods allowed him to live'. Yuri goes to him (accompanied by guards), kisses him and passes him a sharp sliver of obsidian, which he somehow manages to spit out towards his hand, pick up and cut himself free with.
 * Towards the end of Zero Zero Nine One, Mylene is captured by the Eastern Bloc. She manipulates the guard into kissing her. While their lips are locked, she tongues a Cyanide Pill into his mouth. After he falls over dead, she picks the locks to her restraints and escapes.

Fan Works

 * In A Cure for Love Misa attempts to do this with a Forceful Kiss, trying to restore  with a scrap of the Death Note she has hidden under her tongue, but it doesn't work and Light pushes her away.

Film
"Mike Nelson: Man, there must be an easier way to get your vitamins."
 * The Great Train Robbery, 1979
 * Parodied in Austin Powers in Goldmember, where Frau Farbissina passes a key to Dr. Evil this way, as an excuse to slip in an excruciatingly long, wet, sloppy makeout scene between the two of them.
 * In Our Man Flint, Gila commits to her Heel Face Turn by using this method to slip Flint his cigarette lighter.
 * In Aeon Flux, Aeon receives a pill containing a message this way.


 * In The a Team
 * In The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, the titular character gives his girlfriend/secretary a sudden kiss at a dinner party to quickly get rid of a nasty-tasting hors d'oeuvre. Since, you know, spitting it out on the ground would be rude...

Literature

 * In Roger Zelazny's The Changing Land, the resurrected priestess Semirama does this (with considerable... emphasis) to slip a key to Dilvish (who happens to be the spitting image of his ancestor, who was her lover) when he's chained in the dungeon of the Castle Timeless.
 * Played more or less straight in the climax of S. M. Stirling's Under the Yoke:

Live-Action TV

 * Played with in Angel, when Doyle hands off his psychic whammy to Cordelia before he does the Heroic Sacrifice thing.
 * Also done later when.
 * In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Our Man Bashir" a Genre Savvy Julian Bashir gets out of a pair of handcuffs in this manner via a holographic Bond Girl (who happens to be storing the genetic pattern of Jadzia Dax due to some Techno Babble plot occurrences, and so looks just like her.)
 * Complete with the actual former spy who is also tied up with him remarking that they never taught that particular trick ("kiss the girl, get the key") when he was in the service.
 * Somewhat inverted in Jekyll. Claire (apparently) swallows the key to Hyde's chains to prevent him from escaping. Hyde, ever horny and homicidal, gives her a long, slow one. Result.
 * Happens in an episode of Monk when the homicidal magician's stage assistant takes pity on the titular character. Being Monk, though, the very thought of swapping a plot device orally freaks him out enough to alert his captor.
 * In Harper's Island, Abbey  when she kisses him goodbye.

Music

 * Kate Bush depicted Houdini's trick in her song "Houdini" and on the cover of her album [[media:kate bush the dreaming 1982.jpg|The Dreaming]]. Take a good look in her mouth and listen to / read the lyrics some time.

Western Animation

 * This is apparently foreplay for Talia and Bruce Wayne. In Daughter of the Demon, she gives him a dose of scorpion villain antidote. In another episode, she gives him a lock pick.
 * The scorpion venom antidote kiss comes straight from the Batman comic on which the episode was based.
 * Trevor Goodchild does this to Æon Flux, except he actually stores the microfilm into her false tooth and closes the lid. With his tongue. No wonder she's into him.
 * Happens in the movie as well. Two Monican agents walk up to each other with completely blank expressions, kiss passionately, slipping a message capsule from tongue to tongue, and then walk off again as if nothing had happened.

Video Games

 * At the end of Hitman: Blood Money

Real Life

 * Turns out this is the trick behind a good deal of stage magic. In particular, Houdini's wife Bess is said to have aided him in this fashion on several occasions.
 * This is a favourite means of passing drugs to someone during a prison visit. Probably any prison show has depicted this at one time or another.