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Damsel in Distress - TV Tropes

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DamselInDistress

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A female character is put into immediate danger in order to put the cast in motion. Her plight unites the cast, causing them to put aside their differences and work together to save her or provide the premise for The Quest and is considered Older Than Dirt.

The nature of the distress varies. The classic damsel has been kidnapped or captured and is locked away, awaiting rescue and afraid for her life and virtue. She may also be lost or stranded in a hostile area, trapped, or suffering any number of terrible fates where she needs help to survive. In other cases, the damsel's distress is due to someone in her own family, such as her husband, her Archnemesis Dad, or a Wicked Stepmother. If the abuser is her husband, she may be rescued by a Wife-Basher Basher. Although strictly speaking, since 'damsel' means a young, unmarried woman, if this character has a husband then she doesn't count as a true damsel in the literal sense.

This set-up is plausible if the damsel in distress is a beloved character, but can be very jarring if the audience fails to see what's so valuable about the damsel and why the rest of the cast should drop everything to go to her rescue. Some damsels are so annoying that the audience wouldn't mind seeing them dead; others end up in trouble in a way that just screams Character Derailment. This is particularly dangerous for the resident Action Heroine who will seem suddenly weak and helpless if her stint as a damsel isn't properly justified — if the moment is bad enough, she can be demoted to Faux Action Girl. On the other hand, anyone can have a bad day; perhaps she just had a moment of Badass in Distress after being thrown a Distress Ball.

A possible way to shake things up a bit is to give the damsel something to do besides stand around uselessly. The Damsel out of Distress will put up a fight, which can either help or make things worse. The Defiant Captive damsel will snarl and rage where her meeker sister would scream. There are even subversions in the line of Play-Along Prisoner: the Decoy Damsel puts on all the appearance of this trope, but her helplessness is all for show. Other times, even a genuine captive can help her rescuer save her with a Damsel Assist.

Sometimes the character gets kidnapped for the sake of her good looks or royal blood, but in other works she's more likely doing something that is a threat to the party that kidnaps her (reporters are common), which allows her to look smart and independent before she needs to be saved. Alternatively, she can end up prisoner as a Heroic Sacrifice; situations where she puts herself in peril so that others can get away are popular, even if her plan ultimately fails.

Generally expected to give The Hero a Smooch of Victory when he rescues her. Assuming he does, of course...

This is a type of Living MacGuffin. Chained to a Rock is an ancient form; Girl in the Tower and Hypnotize the Captive came later. Damsels may also be Bound and Gagged or put into Unwilling Suspension, especially when it satisfies Author Appeal.

If the kidnapper in question is particularly nasty, expect an I Have You Now, My Pretty situation to occur. If the character does not become a Damsel Scrappy but still is constantly captured, they are a Designated Victim. Compare with Disposable Woman, where a barely-developed character is killed off for Emotional Torque, but forgotten not long afterwards. Common for a Caged Bird Metaphor to be used. It's also a really common video game setup, particularly of the Excuse Plot variety, because it's a simple scenario that provides easy motivation for the hero to go on an adventure while allowing more focus on the gameplay.

A common variation is for the character in question to not be kidnapped per se, but instead simply placed in a situation where she needs to be protected by the other characters, such as a person of prominence being targeted by would-be assassins. This specific variation tends to be one of the more prominent manifestations of the trope in the modern day, as it can more easily allow the character in question to play an active role in the story instead of relegating her to a plot device. After all, just because a character physically needs to be protected doesn't mean she can't pull her weight in other areas. Depending on the nature of the story, this can oftentimes be a jumping-off point for a Bodyguard Crush, particularly in cases where a Lady and Knight dynamic is present.

For obvious reasons this trope is Always Female, unless a Crossdresser plays the role; if such a damsel is still the Love Interest for the protagonist, as the female version often is, "she" is probably Camp Gay (and the whole thing becomes more likely to be Played for Laughs). For the straight Spear Counterpart, see Distressed Dude.

See also The Dulcinea Effect, Distress Ball, Standard Female Grab Area, I Have Your Wife, Save the Princess, Hostage MacGuffin. If the girl is actually faking this for her own benefits, depending on her purposes she's either a Deliberately Distressed Damsel or a Decoy Damsel. A damsel who rescues herself is a Damsel out of Distress who probably used an Improvised Weapon. If she has a strong spirit despite captivity, then they are a Defiant Captive. If the hero leaves the damsel in distress (for the moment), that's Delaying the Rescue. If the hero tries to rescue them even though they don't need rescuing, then The Victim Must Be Confused. If the hero rescues the damsel with some help from her, that’s Damsel Assist. See also The Captivity Narrative for a plot based on this.

Not to be confused with the 2012 comedy film Damsels in Distress or the P. G. Wodehouse novel A Damsel in Distress.

This item is available in the Trope Co. catalog.

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    Arts 

• The Fernando Amorsolo painting Defence of a Filipina Woman's Honour features a Filipino man, bolo at the ready, in a defensive position in front of a young woman with a cloth covering her body. Details in the scene imply he is protecting her from a Japanese soldier.

    Ballads 

• Child Ballads:
  • King Estmere. The king goes wooing on the recommendation of his brother, and arrives to find the lady is being forced to marry. He rescues her.
  • The Maid Freed From The Gallows: A woman is about to be hanged if she is not ransomed. Various relatives arrive and declare they are there to see her hanged. Finally, her true love arrives and ransoms her. (Most American versions of this ballad feature a Gender Flip version, of a man about to be hanged, but this is the older variant.)

    Fairy Tales 

• Stories like "Sleeping Beauty", "Bluebeard", "Rapunzel", "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Snow White" are often this, because the heroines are actually not in a position to do anything when their rescuers arrive... other than stay in their comatose state. Even though the POV is theirs and not the Prince Charming's, the role is the same.
  • "Rapunzel" is actually an inversion - the prince does not rescue Rapunzel, he just gets her pregnant, and later on it is her tears that cure his blindness. Also in "Little Red Riding Hood" the eponymous character is too young and the grandmother too old to be really considered a damsel in distress and that the story originally ended unhappily, getting two endings tacked on later (first the wolf being killed by the passing huntsman, later the cutting-open and revelation that the Little Red Riding Hood and granny had survived).
• In "Biancabella and the Snake", Biancabella has her hands cut off and her eyes gouged out, and is driven into exile from her husband. The snake, being her friend, restores her eyes, hands, and ultimately her place.
• In "The Blue Mountains", the hero must suffer a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown for three nights to free the heroine.
• In “The Buried Moon”, the Moon Goddess finds herself trapped on earth and buried alive by monsters.
• In "The Death of Koshchei the Deathless", Marya Morevna is carried off by Koshchei the Deathless, and Prince Ivan must rescue her.
• In "The Frog-Tsarevna", after Prince Ivan stupidly burns his wife's frog skin, she is in the power of Baba Yaga and he must go on The Quest to rescue her.
• In "The Golden Apple Tree and the Nine Peahens", a dragon carries off the queen and her husband must rescue her.
• In "The Goose Girl", the Princess Protagonist is under the power of the servant who took her place and turned her into a goose-girl until the king figures out a way to get her tell her story without breaking her promise not to. (Gender Flip version in the Child Ballad "The Lord of Lorn and the False Steward", Child #271)
• In "The Grateful Prince", the king promises his baby to an ogre, and so takes a peasant girl and leaves his son with peasants. The ogre takes the girl and leaves, but the boy, on growing up, decides he can't possibly live on such a sacrifice and goes to rescue her.
• In "Jorinde and Joringel", Jorinde is turned into a bird by a Wicked Witch and locked away in the witch’s castle. Jorinde’s fiancé Joringel goes on a quest to rescue her, and in the process, the many other bird/maidens that the witch keeps.
• Princess Margaret's Wicked Stepmother casts a spell that changes the beautiful princess into The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh, and it is up to Margaret's brother, Childe Wynd, to save her.
• In The Love of Three Oranges, the heroine is transformed into a bird.
• In "The Maiden from whose Head Pearls fell on combing herself", the heroine is thrown into the sea and is rescued by a fisherman.
• Similarly in "The Maiden with the Rose on her Forehead", where the uncle's wife also burns the poor girl all over with a red-hot iron to make her ugly.
• In "Prunella", Prunella is a Wicked Witch's prisoner and she assigns Impossible Tasks; only with the help of the witch's son does she survive.
• "The Six Servants": The princess once gets kidnapped during her sleep, so the prince and his superpowered servants have to save her before the queen would check on them or they will lose the Engagement Challenge.
• In Soria Moria Castle, the three princesses are held prisoner by three trolls and the hero must kill the trolls to rescue them.
• Also in "The Three Princesses of Whiteland".
• In Tsarevich Petr and the Wizard, the hero's Missing Mom. Also the three princesses he meets while searching for her.
• In "The Two Brothers", collected by The Brothers Grimm, and "The Three Princes and their Beasts", collected by Andrew Lang, the hero saves the princess from the dragon.
• "The Yellow Dwarf" has Princess Toutebelle, who gets kidnapped by the titular dwarf on the day she was to marry the King of the Gold Mines. The King tries to rescue her, but the dwarf kills him, and she dies of a broken heart.
• In "The Young Slave", the heroine is the illegitimate niece of a lord, whose wife finds her in enchanted sleep and, in a fit of jealousy, beats her, knocking loose the comb that had kept her asleep, and turns her into a slave, abusing her so severely she thinks of killing herself. One day, her uncle hears her lamenting her woes and saves her.

    Fan Works 

• Always Visible: In some ways, Delia has these traits in her, at least according to Galbraith.
• Ariana Black of The Ariana Black Series gets kidnapped or otherwise endangered by Voldemort at least once per fic.
• In Damona In The Details, Damona is kidnapped by Komane and an exorcist who want to put her back in the Crank-a-Kai, requiring Nate to rescue her.
• Everyday Craziness in Pontypandy:
  • In "Bronwyn's Helper", Bronwyn and Gabby get stranded on the Wholefish Cafe's roof after the latch door gets shut on them. Penny gets Bronwyn down easily, however Gabby almost falls and needs Sam to catch her.
  • In "Valentine's Daze", Svetlana chokes on a scallop. Gabby saves her with the Heimlich maneuver.
  • In "Lift Life", Mrs. Adelstrop gets stuck in an elevator while in labour. Sam and Briar get the elevator moving again, while Penny ends up delivering the baby while they are still inside.
  • In "Sarah's Mermaid Adventure", Penny and Jodie are kidnapped and held hostage by Count Slither. The Mermaid Girls defeat Slither and rescue them.
  • In "Runaway Raft", Mrs. Chen and Lily float out to sea on a flimsy raft. Ben and Jodie bring them back to shore, with aerial support from Krystyna.
  • In "Sign of the Maze Monster", Freya gets trapped in the hedge maze while it's burning. Penny and Krystyna air-lift her out.
• Discussed in Fate/Reach Out:

  "Well then," Yosuke smiled. "Now we have a plan; Emiya fights, Teddie supports, I investigate, and Satonaka..." he paused as he stared at the lone girl of their party. "Well, try not to get kidnapped, alright?"
  "Ha-ha, very funny," said lone girl deadpanned.

• In the Turning Red fanfic The Great Red Panda Rescue, Mei is kidnapped.
• Greenfire: Most mares who stay around dragons are there because they've been kidnapped, but Rarity is both a willing visitor and a close friend of said dragon. That doesn't stop a roving knight from assuming this when he sees Greenfire and Rarity together.
• In hear the sirens calling/and the bombs are falling in the streets (we're all screwed), Starscream (who is a human female in the story) is kidnapped and held hostage by MECH.
• In Hellsister Trilogy, Darkseid locks Highfather's daughter D'reema away so she can't ruin his scheme by speaking the Life Equation.
• In Infinity Crisis, Jane Foster is captured by the villains as a hostage (justifiable as half of Thanos’s new allies were Thor’s enemies, so they naturally targeted Thor’s ex for maximum impact).
• Played With and Deconstructed in Infinity Train: Knight of the Orange Lily. Gladion sees his sister Lillie as this, believing her to be a Fragile Flower who requires protection from the Awful Truth about where her Poké-phobia stems from. But she did a lot of growing while he was off running around training, and has come to resent how he effectively abandoned her for years without word in order to become 'strong enough to protect her'... while keeping her and everyone else Locked Out of the Loop. A lot of problems could have been avoided if he'd actually TOLD others what he knew, but Gladion refuses to recognize he made any mistakes, preferring the notion that everything he did was a neccesary sacrifice for her sake, never mind how much she suffered in the meantime.
• Nala is this at times in The Lion King Adventures, most notably when she's kidnapped by Scar and Hago in King's Ransom.
• The Nightmare House, Leni Loud has a nightmare where she's immobilized and dragged away by giant, talking spiders.
• In the Star Wars Rebels fanfic Patron of the Art of War, given that Thrawn is overseeing her imprisonment personally, Sabine is not able to pull a Damsel out of Distress, though she tires at least once. She is forced to make the art he wants, after threating to remove her eyes when she defies him. All the while Thrawn is attempting to tame her, weeding out her rebel characteristics.
• In Sailor John: A Pirate's Vendetta, Emily and Lady Hatt are among those kidnapped by Sailor John and his henchmen.
• In Seeking for a Seeker, Windblade is kidnapped by traffickers after failing to convince Starscream to return to Cybertron, forcing him to rescue her.
• In Chapter 2 of Sew Cute Pretty Cure, Daffodil the fairy and Anna Double Scoops get trapped in the wind storm and need the Cures to rescue them.
• In Sword Art Online Abridged, Suguha wants to be this as part of her roleplaying in Alfheim Online as Princess Leafa. Unfortunately she can't get over her real-life kendo instincts, so even when a trio of Salamanders are menacing her and she's begging for her life in a Southern Belle accent, she can't stop herself from brandishing a sword at them, much to their annoyance.
• Tales of the Emperasque has Isha, Eldar fertility and life goddess, kept in prison by Nurgle. Her rescue is the first Moment of Awesome of many.
• While the Tokimeki PokéLive! and TwinBee series manages to usually avoid this trope since one of the appeals of the Side Stories and the major crossover arcs is to see your favorite Love Live! and Tokimeki Memorial girls who decide to become Pokémon Trainers be adept at using their Pokémon skillfully in Pokémon Battles, there are a couple of examples:
  • In "Introducing Anata", Yuu Takasaki is cornered by a new model of SWATbot that Dr. Eggman has created with Eggman daring Yuu to battle the robot with her Pokémon despite Yuu not being a Trainer. Thankfully, her fellow NijiGaku classmates/friends Hilda White and Shiori Fujisaki accompanied her and made short work of the bot with their Samurott and Mega Charizard X respectively.
  • In "A Friend Indeed!", Margo is cornered by three young teenage bullies and as part a Mythology Gag to Margo's movie debut, The Power of Us, one of the girls throws the lid of the ice cream they were carrying towards Margo, but Classic Sonic arrives just in time to prevent the lid from hitting Margo in the face and also manages to chase the girls off after beating their Phanpy!
• In The True Villain, Marinette becomes one after being kidnapped by a trafficker and separated from Tikki in the process.
• Twinkling in the Dark: In the prologue, Cure Peace, Cure Custard, and Cure Yum-Yum are tied up over a pond of Bad Energy sludge, with Joker threatening to drop them in.
• Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse: In the early chapters, due to being the Non-Action Guy (bordering on The Load), Nabiki Tendo is frequently captured or taken hostage by forces hoping to use her to get the upper hand against the Kamikaze Pirates. She is less than thrilled about this, lampshading that it used to be her little sister Akane that would get grabbed this way, and ultimately she works to become a competent fighter in her own right.
• Your Alicorn Is in Another Castle: Bowser does this throughout The Multiverse. Because he's contracted to. There are some ways this trope gets played with though: he often offers his services to princesses, who see getting kidnapped as a way to let down their hair, remove their mask, and just be a person rather than a ruler for a while. In fact, the whole story started because Celestia had hired him to kidnap her so she can get out of boring treaty negotiations, but forgot to tell him that Equestria now had three alicorns instead of just one, resulting in him kidnapping Twilight Sparkle by mistake.
• Zoo Coup Riot: Adelaide is kidnapped by the person who's been leaving threatening notes for Sid in order to force Sid to free all the zoo animals.

    Films — Animation 

• The Cat Piano: The female white cat singer is kidnapped by a human for him to use in his cat piano.
• Disney Animated Canon examples (in chronological order):
  • Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: Snow White spends the entire movie with her life in jeopardy because of Grimhilde.
  • Melody Time: Jenny and the female rabbit almost fall down a waterfall until Joe and the boy rabbit help them.
  • Fun and Fancy Free: The harp is kidnapped by the giant and forced to sing to him. Mickey, Donald, and Goofy have to help her escape.
  • Cinderella: Cinderella is locked in her room by Lady Tremaine in the third act and the mice bring up the key needed to unlock the door, once Bruno takes care of Lucifer.
  • Alice in Wonderland (1951): Alice almost drowns in her own tears when she cries and shrinks, then she almost gets her head cut off by the Queen of Hearts.
  • Peter Pan (1953): Wendy is almost always attacked by Tinker Bell, who almost murdered her, most notably when Tink made the Lost Boys attempt to bludgeon her to death. Later on, Wendy, her brothers, and the Lost Boys are all being held hostage by Captain Hook and his Pirate Crew. In order to save Wendy and the Boys, Peter Pan must fight against Hook and his crew, and have the Crocodile chase Hook and his fellow pirates away, once again. Tiger Lily also is a victim of Hook.
  • Sleeping Beauty (1959): Princess Aurora ended up falling into an enchanted sleep after pricking her finger on the spinning wheel while being hypnotized by Maleficent, much to the horror and disbelief of the Three Good Fairies. Prince Phillip's final battle (with some assistance from the Three Good Fairies) against Maleficent (as a gigantic, horrifying, fire-breathing dragon) is to save Aurora and the other residents in the kingdom that were also put into an enchanted sleep by the Three Good Fairies, which includes her parents (King Stefan and Queen Leah), his father (King Hubert), and the two main servants (Sir Minstrel and Lord Duke).
  • Robin Hood (1973): Maid Marian is a lovely Proper Lady but almost completely helpless, even when her love is about to be executed right before her eyes. However, she manages to convince Prince John to spare Robin through The Power of Love (with some help from a knife-wielding Little John), and hits a guard aiming for Robin with a pie, which just goes to show how helpful she can be when she tries.
  • The Rescuers: Penny is held against her will by Medusa and she needs to be rescued by Bernard and Bianca.
  • The Black Cauldron: The entire gang, including Eilonwy, get captured by the Horned King. Eilonwy was previously trapped in the dungeon before she escaped and met Taran.
  • The Great Mouse Detective: Ratigan kidnaps Olivia.
  • Oliver & Company: Jenny is held hostage by Sykes
  • The Little Mermaid (1989): Ariel is trapped by Ursula at the bottom of a vortex in the climax before Prince Eric plows into Ursula with a ship.
  • Beauty and the Beast (1991): Belle is rescued by the Beast from a pack of wolves after leaving his castle, which is what convinces her to return to said castle in order to patch up his injuries. Later in the film, she (and Maurice) gets locked in the cellar of her cottage by Gaston. Chip, who stowed away in her bag, uses the inventions to free her and her father, so they can save the Beast.
  • Aladdin: Jasmine is trapped in an hourglass slowly filling with sand during the final battle and nearly drowns in it until Aladdin breaks her out.
  • Parodied in Disney's Hercules.

    Hercules: Aren't you a damsel in distress?
    Megara: I'm a damsel... I'm in distress... I can handle this. Have a nice day.

  • Tarzan (1999): Jane is attacked by baboons and rescued from them by Tarzan, due to being an unprepared Fish out of Water in a wild environment.
  • Fantasia 2000: The ballerina is chased after by the jack in the box, who wants to force her to be his girlfriend.
  • Kida from 2001's Atlantis: The Lost Empire, who spends the last third of the film crystallized by Rourke due to her Royal Blood and Milo and his teammates actually have to rescue her and change her back before Atlantis is destroyed permanently and she suffers the exact same fate as her dead mother in the prologue. Additionally, if she didn't get saved, she may have been blown up and literally shattered, as she was on the zeppelin.
  • Treasure Planet: Captain Amelia is kidnapped by Long John Silver the cyborg and is threatened to be killed by him as an ultimatum if Jim Hawkins refused to open the map after finally retrieving it from the ship.
  • Penny plays one on the Show Within a Show in Bolt, and then becomes one for real when a fire breaks out in said show's studio.
  • Tangled: Rapunzel is kidnapped by Gothel as a baby. Later, Gothel tries to literally drag her away.
  • Elsa becomes this at the end of Frozen (2013) when Hans lies to her thinking that she killed Anna, thus allowing Hans to kill her, but fortunately, Anna performs a Heroic Sacrifice via An Actof True Love.
  • Parodied in Ralph Breaks the Internet, when Rapunzel asks Vanellope "Do people assume all your problems got solved because a big strong man showed up?" When Vanellope answers "Yes! What is up with that?", the Disney Princesses declare she's one of them.
• DreamWorks Animation examples:
  • Megamind: Parodied. Roxanne Ritchi routinely gets kidnapped by the titular supervillain, to the point where no deathtrap can scare her anymore.

    Roxanne: Can one of you punch my frequent kidnappings card?
    Megamind: You of all people know we discontinued that promotion.

  • Shrek:
    • Lampshaded and averted in the first movie, especially in a scene where Robin Hood and his Merry Men try to "rescue" Fiona from the ogre they believe has kidnapped her, only to have her rebuff him and beat up all his men in a combination of styles from Xena: Warrior Princess and The Matrix.
    • And in Shrek Forever After, where in an alternate universe where Shrek was never born and never came for her, Fiona eventually decided to rescue herself.
    • Played straight at first but later subverted with Fiona in Shrek 4D, who at first is helpless after Thelonius kidnaps her, but eventually gains the upper hand and beats him.
• Final Fantasy examples:
  • One of the major complainants fans had about Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is that Tifa doesn't get any massive kick ass moments like in the games, she does get one cool moment when she fights Loz but then is overpowered by his Super-Speed and has to be helped by Cloud again. She is however the last ally to help Cloud in the climax.
  • Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV: Luna is kidnapped by Glauca, though to her credit she doesn't stand by and let her rescuer do all the work.
• Played with in Happily N'Ever After, in which The Prince (whose name is revealed to be Humperdink) is searching for one of these (or a lady in waiting or whatever else is a typical princess) and sounds excited that Ella could be one of those things. When he asks if she's a damsel in distress, her response is "I will be. Kind of. At midnight". To say the least, Ella does more ass-kicking than servant boy Rick or Humperdink.
• Straight example in Hoodwinked!, where Red Puckett is Bound and Gagged and loaded into a tramway cabin filled with dynamite, and it's up to Granny to rescue her.
• Ariel's daughter Melody becomes this in The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea when she's transformed back into a human and Morgana locks her up in unmeltable ice. Melody's friends Tip & Dash have to save her.
• Lupin III:
  • In The Castle of Cagliostro, Clarisse is pursued by the Count and one of Lupin's priorities in this story is protecting/rescuing her.
  • The Fuma Conspiracy: Murasaki, who twice found herself the target of kidnapping and/or traps. The first was when she was captured by a Fuma Ninja during her wedding, and demanded the MacGuffin in exchange for her life. The demand motivated Goemon and company to steal the vase and deliver it to the Fuma.
  • Lupin III: The Columbus Files shows an example of Fujiko being a Damsel In Distress and a Action Heroine, but without being a Badass in Distress. During the opening, she loses her memory, and her entire personality changes. She's terrified of nearly everything, and everyone is a stranger to her. When she contributed to part of her rescue via pure Muscle Memory, that also terrifies her.
• The Nightmare Before Christmas: Sally briefly becomes one when she's captured by Oogie Boogie at the end of the film.
• The Pebble and the Penguin: Marina is kidnapped by the film's Big Bad, Drake, in the climax.
• Quest for Camelot when Kayley tells her mother Julianna she wants to be a knight and rescue damsels in distress... then immediately asks what is a "damsel, anyway?" Ironic because both Julianna and Kayley play the roles of the DID in the movie, Julianna throughout the plot after being captured by Sir Ruber and Kayley initially when she escapes into the Forbidden Forest and having to be rescued/babysat by Garrett before she takes a level in badass to recover Excalibur and save Camelot.
• Strange Magic: Dawn, being a Princess Classic is kidnapped by The Bog King as a hostage to exchange for a stolen love potion Turns out the King is not actually evil.
• Studio Ghibli examples:
  • Sheeta in Castle in the Sky needs her secretly royal butt saved frequently by everyone from Pazu to Sky Pirates and killer robots. She only subverts this twice, once while escaping on a train where she saves Pazu from Dola's boys with a shovel inciting the line "That's one strong girl" and when she makes a deal with the Big Bad so that Pazu is freed while she remains the Damsel. Should be noted her rescues do make some of the most exciting points in the movie.
  • For Howl's Moving Castle, at the start of the film Sophie is saved from being harassed by soldiers by Howl despite him also being pursued himself by the Witch of the Waste causing Sophie to promptly fall in love with him. This trope is played with through most of the movie, with Howl continuing to protect Sophie as necessary and Sophie looking after Howl throughout and ultimately giving him his heart back saving him from dying.
  • My Neighbor Totoro: Mei at the end of the movie when she runs off alone, it gets so dire the neighboring farmers believe she drowned in the river. Satsuki, Mei's older sister, retrieves her with the help of Totoro.
  • Porco Rosso: Porco has to win the dog-fight against his old rival Curtis otherwise the main female character Gina will have to marry Curtis.
  • In Princess Mononoke, San is introduced as an infamous figure and powerful threat to Iron Town and its leader Eboshi who she will stop at nothing to assassinate, but then she's knocked out by Ashitaka the hero and rescued from the town. Subverted later when San saves Ashitaka from bleeding to death despite initially being ready to kill him, only stopping when Ashitaka reveals he had saved het since she's "so beatiful". But sadly then it's played straight again as San is swallowed up by the demon boar and Ashitaka has to pull her out, for the titular character San is ironically the one who is most frequently in need of rescue.
  • In Spirited Away, Chihiro at the start of the movie needs to be saved and protected by Haku. It turns out Haku saved her even earlier than that as a river spirit during a flood when she was a toddler. The rest of the movie inverts this since she learns to be independant and save her parents. Hell Hayao Miyazaki got the idea for the movie when he witnessed his grand daughter being a "lazy bum".
• Princess Odette from The Swan Princess gets kidnapped by Sir Rothbart in the first movie and Zelda in the second one. In the first film, Odette also turns down Rothbart's marriage proposals without a hint of remorse or fear, even though she knows he's a powerful warlock who actually assassinated her father, King William. Also, she doesn't exactly wait for Derek to show up and does everything she can to try and let him know where she is and what he has to do.
  • In the second film, Odette is the one that does not get captured by the magician, Sir Clavis, though he does lock her up in Rothbart’s old castle before she escapes from the dungeon as a swan to help Derek. Instead, it was Prince Derek’s mother, Queen Uberta, who ended up being very unlucky as she spends most of her time in the film being captured, imprisoned, and taken prisoner by Clavius. Indeed, it drove Derek and Odette through out most of the film in order to save Uberta from Clavius and his conspirator, Sir Knuckles.
• Throne Of Elves: Princess Liya, being a Princess Classic, is attacked by the villain of the film and has to be protected by her romantic interest. She has no agency of her own, and the only thing she does is swoon and fawn over the hero who saves her. She even cries when she thinks he has died.
• Subverted in Titan A.E., when Akima is jettisoned into space, captured, and held to be sold into slavery. The rest of the crew undergoes a makeshift rescue operation, only to find out that she successfully knocked out all of her captors and is patiently waiting to be picked up.
• Tom and Jerry: Robin Hood and His Merry Mouse: While Maid Marian is arguably in a Gilded Cage living in the castle under Prince John's rule, she becomes trapped when the Sheriff of Nottingham orders that her room be guarded until her execution for treason (read: being Robin Hood's spy). She soon becomes a Damsel out of Distress.
• In Toy Story and Toy Story 2, Andy purposely has Bo Peep play this role, so Woody could save her. Not that she minds...
• Barbie:
  • Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper: Anneliese is kidnapped by Nick and Nack on Preminger's orders as part of his Evil Plan to get her engagement called off, but escapes on her own. Later, Erika is arrested when Preminger exposes her for impersonating Anneliese (she eventually gets out of her cell by stealing the guard's keys).
  • Barbie Fairytopia: Dahlia and the female guardians, including Azura, get kidnapped by Laverna. In the second movie, Nori and Elina get attacked by the plants in the Depths of Despair, and in the third movie, Sunburst is put underwater by Laverna.
  • Barbie: Mariposa and the Fairy Princess: As a kid, Catania was kidnapped and dropped by Gwyllion. Later on, Sophie, her Pegasus, saves her when she falls.
  • Barbie as the Island Princess: Ro and Tika almost drown before being saved by the dolphins. Prior to this, they are jailed.
  • Barbie & The Diamond Castle: The muses are turned into statues and taken to Lydia's cavern. Later, Alexa is taken to the cavern and hypnotized into jumping into acid. Liana herself gets kidnapped and forced to watch Alexa almost die.
  • Barbie in a Mermaid Tale: Calissa is jailed by Eris, and Merliah is trapped in her whirlpool.
  • Barbie in a Mermaid Tale 2: Kylie is lured to Eris' whirlpool and trapped. Merliah gets trapped again while helping Kylie. Later, the ambassadors are attacked by Eris. Most notably Mirabella, who is literally trapped in a tube, and then all the mermaids are trapped in an electric cage.
  • Barbie: A Fashion Fairytale: The flairies are kidnapped and held hostage by Jacqueline.
  • Barbie in the Pink Shoes: Hayley is kidnapped and turned into a statue by the Snow Queen, who forces her to dance against her will.
  • Barbie & Her Sisters in a Pony Tale : Barbie is attacked by wolves and saved by Majesty. Later on, Chelsea gets on a pony and is bucked off. She ends up being fine.
  • Barbie: The Pearl Princess: Lumina and Kuda are jailed by Caligo.
  • Barbie and the Secret Door: Nola and later the Queen Unicorn are kidnapped by Malucia. Later, Nori and Romy are rstrained with Malucia's magic.
  • Barbie in Princess Power: Baron Von Ravendale attacks the royal family, including Queen Karina, Gabby, and Zooey. Later on, Madison and Makayla Townshend get captured by the Baron offscreen and don't contribute to the story. Kara and Corinne must save them all, as well as the city.
  • Barbie: Spy Squad: Barbie, Renee, and Teresa are grabbed by the robots controlled by Agent Dunbar.
  • Barbie: Princess Adventure: Amelia is the target of Prince Johan's coup attempt. Barbie herself gets captured by Johan.
  • Barbie: Mermaid Power: Chelsea and Aquaryah get captured by Marlo Buchanan and put in a tank in her submarine. Later on, the sub floods and Barbie turns Marlo into a mermaid to save her from drowning.

    Films — Live-Action 

• The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T has Mrs. Collins, who spends most of the film either hypnotized or locked in a Gilded Cage.
• Princess Patma's sole purpose in Against All Flags is to be rescued: repeatedly.
• All About E: Trish is held hostage by Johnny with a knife to her throat, but E saves her.
• In both Annie (1982) and Annie (2014), Annie is kidnapped by her fake parents and sent on a car chase with them during the climax.
• Subverted in The Avengers (1998). Emma Peel is captured by Sir August and brainwashed into a hallucinatory state. You'd expect Steed to break in and rescue her, but instead she escapes from Sir August, fights off her delusions and breaks out to freedom by herself.
• In Batman (1989), Vicki Vale, due to the Joker's obsession with her. First, Batman has to save her from a Captive Date with the Joker at the Museum, and then the Joker kidnaps her at the climax of the film.
• In Batman Forever, Chase Meridian gets kidnapped by Riddler and Two-Face when they attack Wayne Manor, taking her to Claw Island, where she's rescued by Batman in the final act.
• Black Lightning (2009): Kuptsov prevents Black Lightning from destroying the Nanocatalyst by noticing Dima in the security camera and rushing to the new-years party to take Nastya as Hostage for MacGuffin.
• Blue Steel (1934): Betty Mason spends the entire movie having to be rescued from Malgrove and his gang of bandits by John Carruthers.
• Subverted hilariously in a scene of The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day with Agent Eunice Bloom. She's snatched into an impenetrable panic room by a baddie (right in front of the cops, no less), and pandemonium breaks out. One of the cops even worries that she might be "touched and stuff", and it's played as high drama for a bit. He needn't have worried; in the next shot, Special Agent Bloom has the baddie pinned down and sputtering for relief.
• Cliffhanger. Jessie Deighan turns into one. She's a helicopter pilot. She does mountain rescues. Then she gets scared by bats in a cave, and cringes in a corner while the he-men fight.
• The Climax: The heroine Angela spends the entire movie being menaced—either covertly or overtly—by Dr. Hohner, and being rescued by her fiancé Franz. (or Luise, or Carl or the Vienna police...)
• Clownface: Zoe spends a year as Clownface's prisoner until she escapes.
• Conan the Barbarian (2011): Tamara is captured and then rescued multiple times by Conan, whom she enters a Rescue Romance with.
• Cut to the Chase: Izzy it turns out is being held captive by Nola, and Max rescues her in the end.
• In The Dark Knight Rises, Selina Kyle plays this straight when she is cornered by Bane's henchmen on the rooftop while confronting John Daggett. She also fakes it in the bar shootout, where she guns down two of Bane's henchmen, then begins screaming hysterically when the SWAT team bursts in, only to sober up as soon as they have chased Bane's men out.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • Lois Lane (surprise, eh?). In just Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice alone, Lois has to be rescued by Superman three separate times. The first was Lex, by proxy, testing if Superman would come for her if she were in danger. The second time was Lex using her to summon Superman.
  • Lex also kidnaps Martha Kent to blackmail Superman into fighting Batman.
• Lauren's sole purpose in Death Ring is to be held hostage to ensure Matt's compliance. She comes good at the very end of the film when she shoots Ms. Ling to save Matt's life.
• Played straight in Desert Heat with a pair of blondes. Complete with threesome Rescue Sex.
• Played straight in Django Unchained with Broomhilda.
  • Kerry Washington said she took the part because African-American actresses aren't usually offered the "damsel in distress" role.
• In Doctor in the House (1954), Nurse Gibson is taken away by two St. Crispin's medical students during the riot and has to be rescued by the St. Swithin's lot.
• Giselle starts out like this in Enchanted but reverses roles with Robert in the end.
• Subverted in Ever After: when Danielle is sold into slavery, Prince Henry shows up to rescue her. But, being the capable heroine she is, she has already threatened the bad guy and freed herself.
• Eyes of a Stranger: Blind, deaf-mute teen girl Tracy is taken captive in her own apartment by the titular Serial Killer in the movie's climax, leaving it up to her sister to rush back to the apartment in time to save her.
• Fire with Fire: Talia is shot but survives early on when an attempt is made on Jeremy's life. He manages to save her.
• In the original script of Game of Death, Hai Tien's wife and child are kidnapped by Korean mafia to force him to undertake the titular game of death.
• Fiona during the climax of The Giver, in which she's sentenced to Release for her role in helping Jonas escape.
• Elle Brody's role in Godzilla (2014) is to be in danger from the Kaiju and motivate Ford to risk his life to save her.
• The Hateful Eight has Daisy Domergue. John Ruth captures her for the Dead or Alive bounty on her head, and believes that a Knight in Shining Armor of sorts is going to try to rescue her. [[Turns out four such knights mostly wiped out most of Minnie's Haberdashery of innocents to do just that.
• Hayride 2: Ol' Pitchfork catches Amanda and holds her hostage in the secret cellar of his house.
• Rachel in Highway to Hell is kidnapped early on and spends much of the movie as a prisoner of hell.
• In Hudson Hawk, a kidnapped Andie MacDowell pretends to suffer side effects from curare poisoning so she can annoy the typewriter symbols out of her captors and lampshade the trope: "I'm not a very good damsel in a dress, am I?"
• Cheryl in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka when she's kidnapped by Mr. Big's Mooks.
• Indiana Jones:
  • Willie Scott in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
  • Subverted at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Elsa became a distressed damsel when she found herself dangling over a crevasse after she tried taking the Holy Grail from its resting place. However, rather than letting Indiana pull her up to safety, she uses his hold to try and reach for the chalice, which had conveniently fallen just below her. In the final moment, she almost reaches the grail until her hand slips away from Indy's, causing her to suffer a Death by Materialism.
• It (1990): Bill's wife Audra is captured by the titular monster and is put in a comatose state, even after the surviving Losers's Club save her she remains motionless and shocked due to seeing It's true form. Bill returns his wife to normal by using the power of his bike Sliver.
• It (2017): Just after escaping her awful father, Beverly is captured by Pennywise and is taken to the sewer, leading the rest of the boys to chase to come to her rescue. Some fans were pissed that Beverly is seemly relegated to the damsel in distress role, when in the books and the original TV miniseries she is never put in that position.
• Isabelle getting captured by the giants is what sets the plot of Jack the Giant Slayer in motion.
• James Bond: A large number of Bond Girls fit this trope.
  • For example, Honey Rider in Dr. No. Dr. No decides to execute her by cuffing her to the inclined side of a pool with water pouring in from a large pipe. Bond finds her and releases her. Originally she was supposed to be attacked by large crabs while chained◊.
  • Thunderball: Bond's fellow agent Paula is kidnapped by a couple of Largo's thugs and taken to be tortured for information. Bond goes to Largo's estate to rescue her but arrives too late. Paula has taken a Cyanide Pill and killed herself so she can't be made to betray Bond and the operation.
  • Spectre: In the climax, Oberhauser kidnaps Madeline and traps her in a locked room in the old MI6 building, which is set to be demolished and has already been rigged to blow. Bond has to race through the building to save her life.
• Jane Got a Gun: Jane was made a sex slave and held in a brothel, with Bill rescuing her.
• Kimi: Angela escapes the thugs after some other people come to help her twice.
• King Kong:
  • The original 1933 film treated Fay Wray's Ann Darrow as nothing more than a prize for an evil gorilla.
  • The 1976 film starts this way, but Jessica Lange's Ann Darrow gets to know King Kong, sees that he's lonely and forms a bond with the big guy.
  • Naomi Watts' Darrow from the 2005 film takes the latter step further, and is more assertive in trying to stop a money hungry publicist from making Kong a circus attraction.
• The female lead in Legend (1985), it doesn't help that she's innocent to the point of stupidity either.
• Defied in Live Free or Die Hard when Gabriel attempts to evoke this by taking McClane's daughter Lucy hostage as revenge for killing his lover Mai. It doesn't phase McClane or Lucy because they quickly realize he won't kill her because he knows how serious a threat McClane really is, and will keep her alive as a bargaining chip. While she lacks the muscle to resist, being an unarmed college student against armed professional mercenaries, she also takes zero crap from them, resists every chance she gets, smugly tells McClane how many bad guys are left when ordered at gunpoint to plead for her life over the phone, actually manages to shoot one of the mercenaries in the foot, and even manages to push Matt Ferrel, the actual damsel in distress, into toughening up and resisting as well. In the end kidnapping her was the worst possible thing Gabriel could have done, as not only does she help foil his plans but McClane rescuing her by shooting himself through the shoulder to kill Gabriel actually improves their relationship to the point her animosity toward McClane is completely gone in the end.
• A Lonely Place to Die has a group of mountaineers getting killed off one by one trying to take a young Serbian child they found buried underground in the Scottish highlands to safety.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Averted in Iron Man. Pepper Potts has to be rescued, but she is enough of a threat that the villain feels compelled to shoot her instead of taking her hostage. She's also generally competent and helpful throughout the film. Indeed, the one scene that seems obviously headed for her being captured and turned into a distressed damsel has her instead easily evading the villain's clutches, and then immediately alerting the authorities to his evil plans.
  • Averted again in Iron Man 2 when Happy Hogan insists on accompanying S.H.I.E.L.D Agent Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow on her mission and fights a bad guy when they enter the building. By the time he has won the fight, he sees that she's taken down every other bad guy there is.
  • Exploited by Natasha in the beginning of The Avengers (2012). She's held captive by a group of Russian mobsters who are ready to kill her until Agent Coulson calls her, ready to bring her back in. She even notes how she's playing them like a fiddle. When Coulson explains why it's urgent,^note Hawkeye has been compromised by Loki she easily frees herself and drops everyone she was dealing with in no time flat. With Coulson listening in on the whole thing, showing all the concern warranted by being put on hold.
  • Iron Man 3 has Pepper taken prisoner again, but she ultimately saves Tony using part of one of his armors while under the influence of Extremis. It's worth noting that the same film also has Rhodey and the President of the United States needing rescue at various points.
• Tina in The Mask. Although she is able to get Dorian to take off the mask and then kick it to Stanley, which leads to the battle being won.
• In the first Men in Black movie, Edgar the Bug storms the morgue where Dr. Laurel Weaver works after learning Orion, the cat with the galaxy he's looking for is there. Here, he holds her hostage with a gun for a while to avoid getting stopped by agents Kay and Jay and promptly kidnaps her so she can take him to the flying saucers found at the towers of the New World Pavillion, which he plans to use to escape from Earth. He takes Laurel with him with the intent of eating her and feeding her to his family. Thankfully, Laurel quickly becomes a Damsel out of Distress shortly afterwards.
• Miss Meadows: Miss Meadows is kidnapped and held captive near the end. Though she does fight back, her fiance Mike must rescue her.
• Parodied in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Prince in the swamp castle is (obviously) actually a Distressed Dude, but it's worth mentioning as it is deliberately played as a Parody of a Damsel in Distress. Lancelot, in fact, thinks it is the latter, and is distinctly nonplussed when he realizes the truth.
• A willing example in The Mummy (1999). Imhotep wants Evy to be the sacrifice needed to bring his dead lover back to life, and she goes with him both on the condition that he spare the others, and knowing that he has to take her back to Hamunaptra to perform the ritual, which will buy them some more time to save her.
• Charlotte in the climax of Mystery of the Wax Museum, as she is under threat of becoming a waxed corpse.
• Subverted with Kelly in Mystery Team. Yes, she does get kidnapped... but it's not like the Mystery Team are much help in saving her.
• In Perfume, the Villain Protagonist sets his murderous sights on Laura Richis, a beautiful, virginal young lady. Her father becomes wary of the danger and does everything in his power to protect his daughter.
• The Ur-Example of this in film would probably be the protagonist of the 1914 silent melodrama serial The Perils of Pauline. A "talkie" version of the series was made in the '30s; the title was later used for a 1947 biopic of original Pauline actress Pearl White, and a 1967 film that was a camp spoof of the genre.
  • Pearl White also starred in a nearly-identical series, The Exploits Of Elaine, around the same time.
• Pirates of the Caribbean
  • Played with in the first movie. Although Elizabeth is kidnapped by the pirates, she initiates said kidnapping by demanding to go on board the ship and negotiate them leaving Port Royal, and just forgot to include her being returned to shore as part of the arrangement. They also take her thanks to her lying to say her last name is Turner (assuming they're after her as the Governor's daughter), mistakenly making them think she's the Living MacGuffin they need to end their curse. She's rescued midway through the movie by Will, and then has to rescue him in the climax.
  • Played straight and then subverted as said damsel takes a level in badass over the course of the movies. It gets lampshaded by Jack when he refers to her as "a certain damsel in distress... Or should I say distressing damsel." after her Shoot the Dog moment of leaving Jack to die. By the climax of the third film, the same young woman who had previously been kidnapped and held prisoner by Captain Barbossa's crew has become The Pirate King, thanks in no small part to Jack's gaming the system of pirate politics.
  • Syrena the mermaid from Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides as an almost literal Fish out of Water on land amidst pirates who want to harvest a tear from her; clergyman Phillip is the only one trying to keep her from harm. Ironically, she later plays a role in saving two other characters (finding the chalices thrown in the deep pools allowing Jack to save a dying Angelica and kissing Phillip when he's badly injured as the lore is that a mermaid's kiss can prevent someone from drowning).
• Pitchfork: Jenny gets kidnapped by the killer early on in the movie, and is found held in a makeshift cell in his shack behind bed springs used as cell bars. Thenkfully, she gets saved before the killer has a chance to hurt her.
• Played straight in The Princess Bride. Princess Buttercup gets kidnapped by Vizzini, nearly eaten by the shrieking eels, is the oblivious target of a murder plot, gets set on fire, falls into a sand trap, and nearly gets maimed by a rodent of unusual size. At one point she even contemplates taking her own life.
• In The Prince of Thieves, Lady Christabel and, to a lesser extent, Marian exist to be kidnapped and imprisoned by the villains so Robin and Sir Allan can rescue them.
• Averted in The Proposition, as this role is occupied by the mentally handicapped younger brother. Obviously, there is no Rescue Romance. At the end, however, Charlie still has to rescue the police captain's wife from being raped and killed, although the captain himself — despite being Ray Winstone — is also being threatened, though not with rape.
• The Retreat (2021): Val is rescued by Renee when she's set to be murdered next.
• Anna Cipriani's role in Revolver (1973) is solely to be held hostage and force her husband Vito into action.
• Marian in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is a downplayed example - she directly helps Robin under the nose of the Sheriff and only went through with his scheme because Nottingham was holding the rebels hostage and would've killed them if she turned down his marriage proposal. During her wedding/rape scene she is defiant throughout by outright telling him "It may be my body but it will not be me!" And during the final fight between Robin and Nottingham she does not a bystander as she grabs what she can to help Robin, which isn't much since it's in a chapel.
• RRR (2022)'s plot is triggered by the Governor and his wife stealing Malli, a little girl, from her tribe and keeping her cloistered in their mansion. Bheem sets out to rescue her; Ram volunteers to nab the rescuer.
• Reconstructed in Scooby-Doo (2002). They point out that while, yes, Daphne did get kidnapped a lot, she never let that discourage her from joining the gang in their latest mystery. She's also studied martial arts so that she is eventually able to look after herself.

  Daphne: [after defeating a henchman who tried to kidnap her] Now who's the damsel in distress?
  Henchman: Me?
  Daphne: Straight up!

• WPC Helen Bradford keeps finding herself in this role in Scream and Scream Again. Sent undercover to act as bait for the Vampire Killer, she is overpowered by Keith and only saved by the arrival of her back-up. Later she helps Dr. Sorel brake into Dr. Browning's facility, but is overpowered by Dr. Browning while keeping lookout. Dr. Sorel later finds her Strapped to an Operating Table, about to be used as an unwilling donor for one of Browning's transplant experiments. In her defense, none of the men in the movie have any success going one on one against Browning's enhanced humans (of which Keith is one) either.
• Sheroes: Daisy gets kidnapped by drug traffickers while on vacation in Thailand with her friends. The rest of the plot focuses on them working to rescue her.
• Shoot to Kill: Sarah spends half of the movie as a hostage of the Big Bad, being forced to guide him to Canada as her boyfriend and Stantin try to rescue her. However, she has several Defiant Captive moments and fights back in an effort to escape on two occasions.
• In Showdown in Little Tokyo, after Yoshida recaptures Minako he takes her with him as a hostage. He eventually ties her up covered in gasoline and tries to burn her alive in front of Kenner.
• In Small Soldiers, the Commandos capture Kristy specifically to use as a hostage and make Alan give them what they want. Once he rescues her, she immediately goes to town on the Gwendy Dolls used to attack her, retroactively proving herself a Badass in Distress.
• In the Spider-Man Trilogy, Mary Jane gets kidnapped by the villain in the climax of all three movies. She's also in distress twice before the climax of the first. They tried to play it less straight in Spider-Man 2. After Spidey gets knocked down in the climax, M.J. picks up a steel beam and tries to sneak up on Doctor Octopus (Doc Ock, learning from his earlier encounter with Aunt May, brushes her aside). Kirsten Dunst actually only signed on for Spider-Man 3 when they promised not to make her a Damsel in Distress. When plans changed, Sam Raimi tried to make it up to her by giving her more to do in the finale. She ends up saving Spidey by chucking a cinder block at Venom, and uses some web to swing out of the way of a falling truck.
• Star Wars:
  • Princess Leia manages to be this and simultaneously an Action Heroine. In A New Hope, her plea for help is not for a rescue but one to get the plans to the Death Star to Bail Organa on Alderaan. She isn't expecting a rescue at all (and the guys originally didn't plan to do it either), And she isn't exactly what one would call grateful when she does get the rescue, either.

    Princess Leia: I don't know who you are or where you've come from, but from now on you'll do as I say, okay?

  • She ends up captured by Jabba at the start of Return of the Jedi, and forced into Go-Go Enslavement but, in the end she's the one who kills him.
• Stuart Little 2: Played with. Margalo feigns this to get Stuart to trust her. In the end, she saves Stuart from falling to his death after he Plane Fus Falcon.
• Done remarkably effectively in Superman: The Movie with the famous helicopter rescue, but all of the climaxes in the movie involve this trope. Also used in the sequels.
• Played fairly straight in Sync episode 6 when computer prodigy Yoshi appears to have no sense of fighting or quick reasoning skill whatsoever. Ruthlessly exploited by our Genre Savvy main character when he gets her to panic in his favor by suddenly yelling, "Oh God, look at all the bad guys coming to get you, get on the motorcycle, quick, they're right behind us!"
• Tank Girl: Sam (a 10-year-old girl) is captured several times, with Tank Girl spending the movie tracking her down in order to save her. Subverted at one point when Sam cleverly uses a deadly toy to puncture a child molester's hand.

  Sam: That's what you get for being a perv!

• Double subverted in True Grit western: the main character is a 14-year old girl trying to prove her companions she doesn't need babysitting, and succeeding. However, eventually she does, in a perfectly classical way: first getting kidnapped by outlaws, than falling into a snake pit.
• Van Helsing:
  • Subverted with Anna. While she is a young woman in distress, it's less about saving her and more about giving her the help she needs to defeat Dracula, and in the second act, she's trying to save her captive brother. She does get captured midway through the film, but Dracula is merely using her as a hostage to get Van Helsing to trade her for Frankenstein's monster.
  • When Dracula's children are awakened and attack a village, special attention is drawn to a young woman who's being carried away by one of them, and Carl saves her. She then sleeps with him as thanks.
• Wild Wild West: Rita Escobar, whose husband was kidnapped by Dr. Loveless and who ends up getting imprisoned and kidnapped by Loveless herself.
• The Wizard of Oz: During the attempt to reach the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West, Dorothy is kidnapped by the Witch's flying monkeys and taken to the castle. The Witch decides to kill Dorothy so she can obtain the ruby slippers Dorothy wears. The Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion must infiltrate the castle and save Dorothy from certain death.
• Wolves: Angel Timmons. Her entire function in the story is to help Cayden learn how to control his werewolf side, and be rescued by him. Somewhat justified as she's physically outmatched by Connor and his pack, and if she runs away he'll kill her family.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • In X-Men, Rogue is kidnapped by Magneto for his machine.
  • In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Emma Silverfox is captured by William Stryker and he used her to blackmail her sister, Kayla.
• Year of the Gun: Alison is rescued from danger by David on two separate occasions.

    Music 

• It can be argued that Anhura from the musical-in-album-form Razia's Shadow fits this trope. She argues against her father and seems to have the same sense of a greater destiny as Adakias, but she doesn't do anything about it except sit around singing wistfully (Adakias has his share of wistful singing, but he's much more proactive). She's first a damsel when her father refuses to let her marry Adakias, but Adakias rescues her by eloping with her. This causes her to grow ill, and a third of the second act is therefore spent trying to cure her illness. Then once they do, Pallis bursts in, and Adakias sacrifices himself to save her when Pallis attempts to murder her. Depending what you think happened directly after the end of the song and before the narrator's epilogue, Anhura either ends up with Pallis, staying a damsel, just a rescued one, fixes everything herself while Pallis retreats, getting out of the trope, or everything fixes itself without her help, which keeps Anhura thoroughly useless and in this trope.
• Mentioned in Will Smith's song Wild Wild West:

  Any damsel that's in distress
  Be out of that dress when she meet Jim West

• "Holding Out for a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler: Bonnie is quite the proverbial one in Western style in the music video, calling out to the angels for help and invoking them to send a Knight in Shining Armor to save her.
• Subverted in the video of Mean by Taylor Swift. Taylor is shown tied up on railroad tracks by a villain, who is all gloating over her predicament. Not long after, a friend of the villain's comes along, the two villains get drunk, fall asleep, after which Taylor simply gets out of her ropes and heads off.
• Sweet Sue in the movie-melodrama parody song "Along Came Jones" (sung by Ray Stevens among others); she keeps getting menaced by Salty Sam and then rescued by the eponymous hero.
• Aqua's Lene occasionally becomes a damsel in their music videos. Sometimes she's the only one in distress ("My Oh My", until she subjugates her captors), other times her male compatriots share her fate ("Doctor Jones" and "Lollipop (Candyman)")
• Lampshaded in "Doctor in Distress", a Protest Song crying the 1985 decision to put Doctor Who on hiatus for 18 months, with one of the lines being "Each screaming girl just hoped that a Yeti wouldn't shoot her".^note (Albeit there was actually only one "screaming girl" who encountered the Yeti, namely Victoria Waterfield, who accompanied Patrick Troughton's Doctor in both of the stories featuring it)

    Music Videos 

• Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video has this twice, in the movie Michael and his date are watching at the start, then again in the date's dream. It's implied that it happens a third time once she wakes up.
• Tasha in LL Cool J's "I'm Bad" video.

    Myths & Religion 

• This is Older Than Feudalism, dating back at least to the Greek myth of Perseus and Andromeda.
  • The story of Hesione and Heracles is very similar to that of Perseus and Andromeda. However, Deianeira, another woman in Heracles' adventurous life, subverts it by taking matters in her hands shortly after the rescue.
  • Eurydice is in a classic Damsel In Distress situation. Unfortunately, Orpheus does not come up to expectations.
  • Subverted with Helen of Troy, who is anything but innocent in what happens to her.
• In Ramayana, Sita is a crown example.
• In Celtic mythology (Mabinogion), Branwen finds herself in this position. Subverted with Deirdre, who voluntarily put herself in the situation which was considered as distress by her fiancé.
  • To Deirdre's credit, she was in distress that the aging King Conchobhar wanted her as his wife and, for Deirdre, eloping with Naoise, Conchobhar's best warrior (and, in some versions of the story, his nephew), was a means to escape a man that disgusted her. For all the unwanted attention that she gets from men, she remains determined to live her life.
• Downplayed in the legend of St. George and the Dragon (a tale that has otherwise many parallels with the myth of Perseus and Andromeda): The princess is delivered to the dragon and saved by St. George, but she is not physically constrained, does not ask for help, and there is no romance between the princess and George, nor does the king offer her up in marriage.
• The legendary Battle of Clavijo had a hundred maidens (50 peasants and 50 noblewomen) demanded by the Emir of Córdoba to renew his Royal Harem or sell them as slaves. They were saved by Santiago (Saint James the Greater as he is known in the legend) when he descended from heaven to intervene the Spaniard behalf against the emirate forces.
• Circassian Mythology: In one of the Nart Sagas, Setenaya's "sister" Psatina is abducted by the giant Arkhon Arkhozh, and must be rescued by Warzameg. She isn't entirely helpless, however, and provides her hero with information that helps her escape.
• At least as old as The Bible itself, as shown by the case of Sarah, daughter of Raguel, saved by Tobias with Raphael's help.
  • 1 Samuel 30 describes how David's wives (yeah Ahinoam and Abigail were kidnapped by the Amalekites. David then goes on a quest to rescue them from Amalek.

    Pinball 

    Pro Wrestling 

• Randy Savage has twice seen his valet, Miss Elizabeth, kidnapped by George "The Animal" Steele and King Kong Bundy. Hulk Hogan in the nWo even forced her to say she no longer loved Savage on camera.
• Mountain Fiji was practically invincible, so her enemies in GLOW frequently resorted to attacking and or kidnapping her little sister, often resulting in Mt Fiji losing matches by forfeit or count out as she left the arena to go save her.
• Later in WCW, the nWo would try to send a message to David Flair by kidnapping his Loony Fan Daffney Unger. Scott Steiner actually acknowledged that it might not have been the best idea.
• Smackdown did an angle revolving around Kurt Angle admitting that he wanted to have sex with Booker T's wife Sharmell, leading to many scenes of her failing to fight off or out run Angle before Booker came to the rescue, although he usually got beaten up too, until the very end.
• Stacy Keibler had several instances where someone would attack her. Sometimes it was to provoke the guy she was managing, other times it WAS the guy she was managing, sick of her getting all the attention.
• Trish Stratus was once abducted by MNM on an episode of Monday Night Raw, causing Jerry Lawler to abandon his commentary duties to go find her. Subverted in that she wasn't in any danger, as Melina just wanted to challenge her to a Women's Championship match.
• TNA would later revisit the assault someone else's wife I want to have sex with angle with Scott Steiner going after Kristal Lashley until her husband Bobby made the save.
• At SHINE 15, Valkyrie used Solo Darling who was helpless after being beaten up by their future target Mercedes Martinez, to lure Amazing Kong away from their leader, The Radiant Rain.
• Eve Torres was targeted by Kane in early 2012, including a memorable Raw where she and Zack Ryder were stuck in the parking lot thanks to a flat tyre that took forever to change. It was then a huge swerve when John Cena rescued her, and she kissed him to turn heel, later revealing she had been using the whole thing as a chance to get attention.

    Webcomics 

• The Order of the Stick: Discussed in this strip: Haley is in trouble and Elan wants to rush off to rescue her. However, Durkon stops him, explaining that she is able to take care of herself. And that he is not. If he try to rescue her, he will just get himself killed, and that would make her very sad once she gets back on her own. Elan is forced to leave Haley to her fate. And yes, she does save herself. And Belkar. And Roy's corpse, so it can be resurrected later.
• CHEVALIER (hosted here) : Princess Faere in this fantasy adventure is a great example.
• Turned on its head in 8-Bit Theater, by the character of Princess Sara. Sara, through countless kidnapping attempts at the hands of countless villains, has apparently gained enough knowledge and experience to become a competent villain in her own right. She even tries to help Garland, her latest kidnapper, in his battle against the Light Warriors. Sadly, Garland isn't nearly as good at the whole "being a villain" thing as she is. "... but if something's worth doing, then it worth doing right."
• Gleefully mocked (if not outright subverted) in Adventurers!, where (lead character) Karn's mother (a White Mage) scolds neophyte White Mage, Lumi, for (among other things) "not being taught how to be kidnapped properly."
  • And in another strip, where Karashi is kidnapped, and has already freed herself and made it back to camp by the time Drecker finds the note left by the kidnapper and announces that they have to rescue her.
• Possibly the ultimate aversion in Super Stupor, a supervillain tries to kidnap a superhero's wife, and she brings him to tears, then maims him with a garbage disposal. The hero visits him in hospital, and the villain says he fears for the hero's own safety.
• El Goonish Shive "Painted Black" arc. Grace becomes one when she's captured while infiltrating Damien's base. She doesn't stay that way for long, and actually ends up being the one to defeat Damien after he gets her really, really mad.
  • The Princess Peach example is also discussed in this strip.

    Sarah: You'd think the princess would be able to protect herself. She lays down the law in those fighting games.
    Grace: Oh, it's all foreplay to her. She's kind of evil that way.

• In Monster of the Week Scully is perpetually Damsel in Distress, the fact that she doesn't particularly like, up to the point where "Time for: Scully in Peril!" became a Running Gag.
• Girl Genius has Zola, who was a professional Damsel in Distress. It eventually turns out that she uses this posture as her, fallback when things go wrong with her nefarious plans to get people to underestimate her. She's actually very dangerous and even gets the better of the Big Bad with a subverted Grand Theft Me before an epic final showdown in which she tries to kill the heroine, almost gets killed by one of the heroes, and then gets rescued by the other hero who had developed a habit of rescuing her in the past, allowing her to go on to hatch even more nefarious plans later.
  • Agatha, the title character, plays with the trope. Lots of male heroic types want to slot her into this role, but most of the time she turns out to be perfectly capable of getting herself out of her latest bind, and she rather likes to be the hero doing the rescuing rather than the one being rescued.
• Ronin Galaxy: This arguably happens twice to Taylor in the first chapter. First when she wants to escape her initial situation, and again after she believes she's out of dodge. Luckily Cecil and Giancarlo manage to track her down and save her (again.)
  • This happens yet again to Taylor, and Rin in the second chapter. The latter gender-swapping the role.
  • And again in the third chapter with Leona.
• The Cyantian Chronicles: Chatin and Cilke during Campus Safari, though they're not the type to be held long.
• Nerf NOW!!:
• Bob and George: Less so than Distressed Dude, since there are fewer female characters. At one point, Protoman deduces Roll is in trouble because she's the only female around. Though others have appeared since.
• The Pocalypse: Rosa, after she is captured by Andrius even though she has already been transformed into a Zompire. Also in the scene 26 of chapter 2 called Damsel in Distress, the heroes save a girl from vampires. She is not actually in distress.
• Wooden Rose: Nessa gets a sprained ankle after her horse throws her off in the beginning, and Aidan helps her by bandaging her ankle with his handkerchief and giving her his own horse to ride. She becomes smitten with him immediately, and he starts courting her afterward. Later, he's the cause of her distress via brainwashing her with magic dreams that implant a tree baby inside her womb, which nearly kills her, and mind-controlling her into letting herself be almost completely absorbed by his true form.
• The Phoenix Requiem: When Jonas abducts Anya to make her go riding, he declares he could persuade the authorities that he was rescuing a damsel in distress.
• In Endstone, Kyri defeats the bad guy to drop, unconscious, in the midst of a horde of dinosaurs. Jon reacts swiftly.
• In Thistil Mistil Kistil, the slave Hedda is threatened with Human Sacrifice and drugged to keep her compliant.
• In the Fake Action Prologue of Chapter 2 of The Specialists, Lady Liberty is taken hostage.
• Exiern has Peonie as the recipient of the frequent kidnapping card. Although it wasn't the first or the last time, it seems that Evil Sorcerer Faden was the nastiest as she complained "I was really scared this time". She hasn't managed to stop other people targeting her for an abduction yet though, and Tiff can generally tell what time it is by whether Peonie has been kidnapped yet or not.
• In Pacificators, Larima got kidnapped so often, her team are sick of it.
• In Dragon Mango, Mango thinks contemptuously of the idea of a princess in distress in this day and age. Meanwhile, a princess has vanished.
• In Cucumber Quest:
• In Faux Pas, when Penny recounts meeting the cutest boy, that he helped her hide from the fox adds to her parents' anxiety about the romantic possibility.
• FireSoup has the unnamed girl at Pig-Y Bank be threatened at gunpoint by a Totem Pole Trench burglar.
• White Dark Life has Cosmo get captured constantly by Dark Matt purely to spite the regular Matt (her guardian angel). Of course, given that these plans are actually just tricks to get the two to hate Dark Matt and extend his "lifeforce" and thus, not always thought that far out, Cosmo is usually more than capable of just walking out of trouble.
  • The trope gets played straighter in the roleplays, but only on occasion. Notable examples include "Dark Matt Bio" ^note Tulip, then Lindsay, "A rare moment indeed" ^note Daisy, then Peach (and later Felicia), then Cassandra, then Lindsay (sort of), "Fatty vs. Fairy" ^note Lindsay, "And that's why he shakes" ^note first Tulip, then Annie and Sonja, then Lara-Le, "Drunk Driving with Tora" ^note Tulip, "Boar Bio" ^note too many to count — the antagonists are a sexual slavery ring, that should say plenty "Professional Apologizer" ^note Lydia; this is the roleplay where it gets played straightest, due to the second half being an homage to Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, "Blindly Fooling Thyself" ^note Memori, "Inu & Uma Bio" ^note Dream, then (briefly) Lillian, then Miriam, "Flight Formation" ^note attempted on Ivy — key word being "attempted", and "Growing Pains in the Neck" ^note Leila.
• Zebra Girl:
  • Mabel, who is captured by Lord Incubus, who demands that Sandra releases him from his prison if she wants her back.
  • Crystal during the Heaven on Earth arc, when she is captured by vampires who threaten to kill her.
• Zigzagged in L's Empire. Daisy (who was kidnapped due to a case of mistaken identity) manages to break out of her cell and proceeds to wreak havoc in her captor's base until she's recaptured (though it took an entire squadron Zerg Rushing her to do so). Ultimately, someone else had to rescue her from a Death Trap, but she immediately used the weapon she gained in the process to go rescue another Damsel in Distress and take down the Big Bad.
• Yasha from Kuro Shouri is an example, though she's not terribly happy about it. She is the human container for a wanted demon - but without any fighting skill or powers of her own, Yasha is often attacked first, and sometimes even kidnapped.
• Kyun in Bastard has needed to be rescued several times. It's justified, however, by the fact that she's being targeted by a serial killer and later a second one and has no experience in that sort of situation.
• Princess Princess (2012): Sadie is introduced while locked in a tower, from which Amira rescues her. It crosses over with Deliberately Distressed Damsel as it's revealed she sabotaged many knights' attempts to rescue her.
• In Distillum Kavitha is kidnapped by mysterious thugs. The boys saving her is what sets the plot in motion. There are hints she was kidnapped on purpose to get Rob Welcomed to the Masquerade.

    Web Original 

• In The Gamer's Alliance, Amarawyn and Marya both get in trouble a few times, prompting heroes to save them from kidnappers.
• Whateley Universe: Jinn Sinclair in "Bottle a Jinn", when she is "absorbed" by Rich Bitch Solange (Jinn is a protagonist, but is non-corporeal, and Solange has the power of being able to absorb spirits and steal their powers). Lampshaded when Team Kimba try to rescue her and end up in a huge brawl that gets them into serious trouble with the school administration. They realize afterward that Jinn isn't helpless, is manipulating Solange against her will, and needed a much smarter plan from her team. Ultimately, Jinn cons Solange into letting her go just seconds before Solange will most need her powers.
• Tania in Wormtooth Nation starts off as one after being nixed.
• The normally competent Lord of the Supreme Council of The Questport Chronicles, winds up as her sister's prisoner. She's not happy to be rescued.
• The frequent abductions of Princesses Peach and Zelda are playfully deconstructed in this CollegeHumor video.

  Zelda: Ganondorf has an entire army of loyal minions, and they do whatever I say! Link just has that stupid fairy...

• In The Nostalgia Chick's Dark Nella Saga, the titular Big Bad tied the Makeover Fairy up the bathtub and tortured her by scraping her make-up off. She looked exactly the same afterwards.
• Miss Stockholm in Pop Quiz Hotshot, who is kept in the basement with a low cut dress and handcuffs. Notably she existed just for the pilot and got retconned out in episodes after, even Tamara (her actress) didn't enjoy being her.
• Played for Laughs in Episode 87 of Critical Role, when Keyleth notes that she technically counts as one in order to get Taryon to help her during a fight with some pirates. Keyleth:

  In this moment, I am a damsel and I am in distress. So cross it off,

  bitch!

  Come on!

• Minilife TV:
  • Clair Adams gets kidnapped by mummy terrorists in her debut episode, "Rescue Mission", and Chris and Ian rescue her.
  • In "Super Mini-Bros.", Emery Rose gets abducted by Ratzer and is rescued by Vince.

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