With My Hands Tied: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

So you've captured the hero, and have him at your mercy, but [[Bond Villain Stupidity|don't kill him]] just yet. So [[Bound and Gagged|tie the guy up and leave him]], he'll be harmless for now, right?

In some modern works, this is parodied by having the characters ''[[Willfully Weak|willingly]]'' impose a handicap to make things "fairer" for the enemies.

* Though he's not technically tied, the effect is much like it: in the first arc of ''[[Naruto]]'', the nerves from both of Zabuza's arms are effectively nullified, rendering him unable to fight while Kakashi gives him the standard "surrender, you can't keep fighting" lecture... until he catches a kunai ''[[Cutlass Between the Teeth|with his teeth]]'' and proceeds to gut an entire army of mooks with it.

** Deidara, too, gets one arm crushed and the other blown into an alternate dimension... and still fends off four ninja. Later, he tries to strangle Tobi with his legs.

* Tony combines this with [[What Kept You?]] in the ''[[NCIS]]'' episode "Under Covers," managing to kick a [[Mooks]] unconscious before the rest of the team could come to his rescue, [[Moment of Awesome (Sugar Wiki)|in spite of the fact that he is tied to a chair]].

* ''[[The Professionals]]''. Played for laughs in "The Female Factor" where Bodie fights a drunk in a pub without putting down or spilling the pint in his hand.

* In ''[[Dollhouse]]'', Ballard manages to deliver a pretty thorough beating to a pair of large thugs despite having his hands cuffed behind his back.

* On ''[[Dexter]]'', the title character is kidnapped, tied up and thrown in the back of a van by a dirty cop trying to force a confession out of him. Dexter kicks the into his face, then manages to wrestle the man's knife from him and take him down with his hands still tied.