Talking Your Way Out: Difference between revisions

Smart villains and the [[Evil Counterpart]] almost never fall for this. Occasionally the leader of the group will catch on to the hero's plan, but it's usually too little, too late at that point. Group dissolves, hero escapes, plan fails. Roll [[Aesop]] about trust.

Can be subverted by having the minions be too slick to fall for that trap.

== [[Fan Fiction]] ==

== [[Film]] ==

** Savvy?

*** [[Dangerously Genre Savvy|Very.]]

** Interesting side note: Jack doesn't just use this tactic, he ''relies'' on it, and in the course of three movies, with all the great escapes he pulls off, he only escapes once all by himself, and only by forcing himself to [[Swapped Roles|think like Will]].

* Done by the [[Villain Protagonist]] in [[Natural Born Killers]]

* Done by The Joker in ''[[The Dark Knight]]''. After Batman and Commissioner Gordon leave, he is left alone in the interrogation room with one of Gordon's detectives ... at which point The Joker goads the policeman into attacking him by explaining his motivations for killing six of that detective's friends. At which point, he makes his escape.

** What makes this a truly interesting case is that the detective was warned beforehand that the Joker would use exactly this tactic on him, and not to fall for it. The problem is that the Joker is just ''that good'' at manipulating people.

* In [[Poul Anderson]]'s [[Technic History]], Dominic Flandry is an Agent for the Terran Empire. Kidnapped by an alien race, who just assumes he is a decadent worthless low level agent, he soon has the entire leadership of the planet backstabbing each other.

* [[Roger Zelazny]]'s ''Creatures of Light and Darkness'': Set the Destroyer has been taken captive, immobilized, and disarmed by his enemies. Set's gift is the ability to find the weaknesses in his opponents. One of his captors -- a priest who is low on faith -- is persuaded by Set that by taking Set captive, the priest is an accessory to the murder of God. The priest promptly kills his co-conspirators.

* ''Next of Kin'' by Eric Frank Russell is the very pinnacle of this trope. John Leeming is the only human being on alien planet (inhabited by stocky reptiles and is a part of union, which is in war with Earth), imprisoned, stripped of all weapons and gadgets, he does not know their language (initially)... and he manages to talk his way out. Moreover - {{spoiler|he manages to make all the government of this planet believe that humans have distinct spiritual companions, he is given a spaceship, he is given the means to change it for a more advanced one and reach Earth... and the planet prepares to leave the anti-Earth union and encourage other planets to do it}}. Such is the power of diplomacy.

* Eli Monpress of [[The Spirit Thief]] basically has this as his power--rather than needing to form a specific bond with a spirit to gain its obedience, he can just talk to them, and more often than not they'll obey him. His first scene has him talking his way out of a dungeon by convincing the door to fall over.

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

** One episode involved him breaking up Hal's folk(?) band, The Gentleman Comers, pretty much only saying one sentence to each member. Note that he wasn't really trying to get out of anything, he was just manipulating them [[For the Evulz|because he was bored.]]

* [[Doctor Who|The Doctor]] is also a dab hand at doing this. The Seventh Doctor in particular has a knack for it; in "Paradise Towers", he manages to escape an execution by essentially convincing his over-bureaucratic captors to ''let'' him escape.

** Then there's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Rn4Vv3dH9Q this scene] from "The Happiness Patrol", where he talks a sniper out of shooting him at point blank range.

** He tries it again on the Master in ''The End of Time Part 2'' by giving him a speech on how "stone-cold brilliant" he is. His description soon switches to "bone-dead stupid" because the Master doesn't realise {{spoiler|his right hand man is really a Vinvocchi}}.

{{quote| I commend your loyalty. It must be difficult to maintain for an officer like Crais... an officer on the edge and out of control. I have unconditional authority on a Gammak Base. Captain Crais ''will'' go to the Chair: to stop that, you'll have to kill me... and all my men. Are you prepared to do that? Do what you know in your hearts is the right thing: put Crais in the Chair.}}

* This was Gabrielle's schtick on [[Xena: Warrior Princess]], at least until [[Executive Meddling|someone in charge]] decided she needed to [[Take a Level In Badass]].

== [[Video Games]] ==

* ''[[Fallout]]'' is one of the few video games where you can use this against the [[Big Bad]]. In fact, it's possible to talk your way into his stronghold, talk your way up to the boss, convince him of the error in his plan, get him to commit suicide, and [[Load-Bearing Boss|leg it as the base collapses around you]]. Ta da! Saved the world [[Pacifist Run|without firing a shot]].

** ''[[Fallout 2]]'' also lets you foil the Enclave through the gift of gab, though [[The Dragon]] will try to block your [[Load-Bearing Boss|hasty retreat from the base]] no matter how slick you are, forcing a confrontation. You can convince the Enclave [[Mooks]] to fight him for you, though; after all, he's not letting ''them'' leave either.

** In ''[[Fallout 3]]'' you can convince both the [[Big Bad]] and [[The Dragon]] into giving up. {{spoiler|The former by using self-destruct code or by proving that he is not doing the right thing, and the latter after a heated debate where you convince him that his government has no authority to do what it is doing.}}

* ''[[Geneforge]]'' lets you be a real [[Manipulative Bastard]] about this. Join the [[Big Bad]]'s faction, stroll into his base, convince him that you have repaired the damaged safety equipment that will let him use the [[Applied Phlebotinum|Geneforge]], bluff him into thinking that he needs to send his bodyguards away, laugh as he fries himself. Bonus bastard points if you then use the real safety equipment to successfully use the Geneforge yourself, and even more if you find the item that lets you break the Geneforge so that nobody else can use it.

** Variations on what's described (breaking it after using it, or breaking it without using it) are the only two very good endings in the entire series.

* [[Jade Empire]] The [[Final Boss]] actually tries to use this on YOU. If it works, you let yourself be killed, AND doom the world to a horrible, blighted excistance under a heartlessly brutal, immortal dictator who view people as mere things to use at whim. So DO NOT FALL FOR IT!!!

* You can do this in ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'', but usually it falls under Force Persuade.

* In [[Metal Gear Solid|MGS3]] you can talk the prison guard, {{spoiler|Johnny into showing you a picture of his family. The picture he wrote the cell door code on the back of, lest he forget. }}

* It's possible to do this in [[Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines]], if you play your cards right (Or seduce/dominate/dement) you can feasably do a [[Pacifist Run]] for the biggest part of the game. [[Disappointing Last Level|Sadly, the last few parts of the main campaign has you fighting, no ifs ands or buts about it.]]

== [[Web Original]] ==

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* Batman uses this method to escape the Injustice Gang in the ''[[Justice League]]'' episode "Injustice For All". Features a ''very'' rare instance of the Joker being the voice of reason, as he anticipates Bats's strategy but [[Bond Villain Stupidity|is unable to convince Luthor to let him kill Batman]]. Even more interesting: Batman actually plays several cards ''at the same time'', playing on Solomon Grundy's insecurities, playing the sympathy and sex appeal cards with Cheetah, and eventually delivering a massive bribe to {{spoiler|the Ultra-Humanite (which Humanite donates to PBS)}}. And then, because he's Batman, he reveals at the end that he could have escaped ''any time he wanted to''.

** And when caught and held defenseless by Scarface's gang, Batman convinces Scarface that the one who sold them out was Arnold Whesker, aka The Ventriloquist. Scarface angrily orders his men to kill Whesker, and when they hesitate think they are traitors as well. Batman escapes in the chaos and bring the gangsters down. The twist? Scarface ''is'' Arnold Whesker - he is just a [[Demonic Dummy|ventriloquist's doll]] that Whesker uses to manifest his psychotic [[Split Personality]].

** Perhaps this inspired [[The Hero|Aang]] to try this on Zhao four episodes later... but it didn't work.

* [[Re Boot]]. This is Bob's only option to deal with Hexadecimal in the early episodes, since Hex is far more powerful than Bob. When she succeeds in [[Taken for Granite|turning the entire city to stone]] Bob has to convince her that petrifying the city goes against her nature as a chaos virus. To be precise, petrified city is the opposite of chaotic- it's quiet, predictable, the same forever. This works and she reverses the effect and lets Bob go.