Escape Artist

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
It took more time to strap him to that thing than it'll take for him to get out.

Behold, the Escape Artist! Death-defying man of adventure! No bonds can hold him! No trap can kill him! With a smile and a wink, he slips out of the tightest straitjacket, breaks out of the most hermetic cage, rises unharmed from the deepest ocean!

The Escape Artist (or Escapologist) is exactly that: a character whose ability to escape dangerous situations is practically superhuman. However, do note that it's not actually superhuman: a true escape artist relies merely on skill, guile and misdirection to make his escapes. After all, breaking free with Super Strength, escaping death with Super Speed or surviving with Nigh Invulnerability, well, that would be cheating, and this character is ALL about doing things the right way.

Escapology, the art and science of escape (and not to be confused with Escapism, mind you), has long been associated with stage acts since the early days of the 20th century, with Harry Houdini being the man to elevate it into a bonafide art form. In Real Life, Stage Magicians perform acts of escapology relying on both illusionism and actual skills such as contortionism, lock-picking and even plain brute-strength. As a long-time tradition of stage acts, escape stunts are suitably dramatic and suspenseful, utilizing the apparent (or sometimes even actual) danger to keep the audience on the edge of their seats, and giving them rapturous release when he manages to escape.

As a character type in fiction, escapologists will always escape on pure skill. Though they may use tools to free themselves, those tools still require intense training to use, as well as a high amount of cunning to conceal in case of being trapped. They are also always incredibly nimble and of cat-like dexterity. This lends itself to excelling in other talents, like gambling (especially at high stakes), gadgeteering, misdirection, etc. Also, the ability to escape also usually goes hand-in-hand with the ability to infiltrate, and so escapologists can usually be found as the mastermind or a high profile member of a group performing The Caper. Also, expect an escapologist to know kung-fu, for when guile and skill alone won't get him out of trouble.

Because of its association with the stage, escapist characters are also usually pretty hammy and melodramatic. They tend to be roguishly charming to boot. Basically, if a character's gimmick is escapology, he's gonna be larger than life. Escapology is, obviously, quite an universally useful skill, so you see both good and bad guys relying on it, but even bad guys tend to be pretty charming and charismatic if they're this kind if character. They will always show confidence in their skill, to the point of sometimes bragging about it or even using it as a signature of their character. There is no such thing as a timid or subdued escapist, since their ability to survive traps and bonds depends on being brave and confident of one's abilities. Even when an escapologist is actually a very serious character, he'll still tell you to your face that a trap won't work on him. For example, Batman, one of fiction's greatest escapologists, may be serious and not prone to bragging, but if you tie him up, he'll be the first to tell you "This won't hold me for long."

Examples of Escape Artist include:

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Anime and Manga

Comic Books

  • The wizard Zatara and his daughter, Zatanna. True, they possess actual magic as well, but they are both perfectly capable of escapology on their own, and have done so numerous times when not able to utilize their magic skill. Also, Zatara was teacher of escapology to...
  • ...Batman. Always prepared with the right tools and skills, from lockpicks to acid to liquid nitrogen. It's almost a cliche for villains to put Bats in a deathtrap and having him "miraculously" escape.
  • Speaking of Batman, he once opposed a thrill-seeking thief called the White Rabbit. Dressing like a Playboy Bunny, she likes to goad the police and the Dark Knight into chasing her, but always manages to elude and escape any attempt they make to apprehend her. It's eventually revealed that she can somehow be in two places at once, and is an ally of many other Gotham criminals, possibly having aided some of them in a mass breakout from Arkham.
  • Scott Free, AKA Mister Miracle. He is, with the possible exception of his protege, the DCU's(and perhaps all of fiction's) greatest escapologist. He has New God technology he uses when fighting crime but never uses it to escape anything, and literally no one has his level of skill in escape. He's so good at escaping, he managed to escape Apokolips. Darkseid's planet. Let that sink in.
    • And about that protégé — Shilo Norman, the second Mister Miracle, may well be even better. In his Seven Soldiers miniseries, he successfully escapes from many impossible scenarios. They are, in order: a black hole, the Omega Sanction (being serially reincarnated in his own mind, in ever more depressing and hopeless lives), and finally, in the finale, death itself, after being chained and shackled, shot in the head and buried.
  • Yorick, protagonist of Y: The Last Man, is an amateur escape artist. In his first scene, he's talking to his girlfriend on speaker-phone while hanging from the ceiling and working his way out of a straitjacket.

Film

  • Sartana has this amongst his many, many skills.
  • Robert Angier and Alfred Borden of The Prestige.
  • Captain Jack Sparrow has pulled this several times. Wiggling out of handcuffs via lantern oil in the second film, using the 'leverage' trick in the 3rd film and getting his hands free in the 4th film and using the palm tree's as an improvised catapult with him as as the missile.
    • "You will remember this as the day you almost caught, Captain jack Sparrow!"
  • James Bond.
  • In Suicide Squad, Harley escapes her cell (where her arms are bound by shackles chained to the ceiling) by killing the guard and then using his key with her feet before going One Woman Army on the other guards. To make this even more awesome, there was no FX involved with the key scene, Margot Robbie actually did the stunt

Literature

Live-Action TV

  • Jo Grant, companion to the Third Doctor on Doctor Who, was very handy at getting out of handcuffs, manacles, and the like. The lock picking course seems to be the only UNIT agent course that she excelled in.
    • River Song, a companion to the Twelfth Doctor, was sentenced to twelve thousand consecutive life sentences in the Stormcage Containment Facility for murdering him (in truth, she helped him fake his death) but despite Stormcage's reputation as The Alcatraz, it could never hold her, her prison cell pretty much becoming her rent free apartment for several years. If the Doctor ever needed her help or she had some social event to go to, she could sneak away and often be back before anyone knew she had left. Possibly the only reason she tended to come back was simply to prove she could.
    • The Doctor himself is an example. It helps that he's been trained by Houdini.
  • Parodied in the Monty Python's Flying Circus "Life of Tchaikovsky" sketch, in which a pianist freed himself from a sack while pounding out the opening chords of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto in B-flat minor.
  • Would the titular character of MacGyver count? He certainly has the technical expertise, seeing as he can escape almost any dangerous situation using any means at his disposal.
  • Boardwalk Empire had a performance by Harry Houdini's brother, who claims to be a much better escape artist than his famous brother. The audience at the show seems unimpressed since he lacks the showmanship of his brother.
  • Wednesday Addams in the Netflix series Wednesday has demonstrated the ability to escape ropes binding her to a chair, and do so in full view of a dozen or so people (including one standing less than a foot away) without anyone noticing.

Video Games

  • Carmen Sandiego. In every version, she can be caught, but no prison can hold her for long. Period. For example, in the game shows, she was considered apprehended if the contestant won the bonus round, but that only lasted until the next show.

Western Animation

  • Basil Mouse, of The Great Mouse Detective, is basically just a rodent-version of Sherlock Holmes - so of course, he's also a superb escape-artist, demonstrating it in the movie by escaping a ludicrously lethal Death Trap.
  • In one episode of The Real Ghostbusters, the team was having a hard time with a ghost that their trap could not hold. No matter how many times they trapped it, it kept breaking out. They later found out that the ghost was the spirit of Harry Houdini himself; clearly, he hadn't lost his touch.
  • From Archer; it's relatively easy for the title character to wriggle out of handcuffs, seeing as he's been arrested (for public drunkenness, public indecency, and many other crimes that involve public humiliation) rather often.

Real Life

  • Trope Codifier is Harry Houdini, the archetypal stage escape artist.
  • Many Real Life stage magicians, including Criss Angel, David Blaine and Penn & Teller.
  • As a species, orangutans are Real Life escape artists. You can find several stories of orangutans wandering around zoos, and the general public thinks it's just a normal part of zoo life. Nowadays the way zoos test whether any (air-breathing) habitat is secure is, put an orangutan in it. If it can't get out, nothing can get out.
  • Similarly, octopuses are extremely difficult to keep in a tank. They are strong enough to lift the lid off, and flexible enough to squeeze through extremely small holes.
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