Trope Talk: Prison Break!
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- Опубликовано: 6 сен 2024
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Who doesn't love a good stock episode? Let's talk about what happens when you take "character doesn't want to be where they currently are" and boil it down to its absolute purest concentrated essence, and all the fun (?) shenanigans that ensue!
Got a favorite or least-favorite prison break? Shout it out in the comments!
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One thing about prison breaks that tends to get overlooked is that routines tend to make people lazy, even security guards. Do something enough times and you'll tend to overlook little things that might tip you off to something being wrong. Some guy you never seen before, says he's new, his badge looks legit, you wave him through. Someone standing around, why would that be fishy, you got more important things to do. Level 3 is usually off limits to anyone but the higher ups, but this person has proper clearance and getting too nosy just leads to more paperwork and Jim will probably chew you out if you wasted all this time for nothing, wave them through.
As someone who once worked security (not being issued a gun, a tasser or a baton notwithstanding), with the Lord Most High as my witness, it *_does_* get routinely boring.
I love how the Punisher series deconstructed this when the Punisher captures Micro. He explains this in detail, but Micro uses this concept to turn the tables on him, anyway.
Yeah, that's what I imagined. It's the same thing with corporate cyber security, some of your work is pointless because old office workers will just write their passwords in post it's and use the same pw for everything. People are always the weakest spot. Also lack of budget, maybe the prison has like 1/10 of the cameras not working because of budget constrains.
@alexsere3061 I imagine it probably gets worse the more high security a place is, because no would be stupid enough to try anything, and if they did, they'd be stopped before anything happened, right? So why would your average security guard in that position ever care? Makes me think of the boiling rock episodes of Avatar, where no one really questions the presence of two new guards that no one has seen before, only one way in and out so they must have been on one of the more recent gondolas. Even when Zuko gets busted, he does so because he deliberately acts fishy and tries to attack another guard, Sokka never gets busted because he keeps his head down.
Yeah, one of the most famous real life escape attempts in history (the Alacatraz boat escape) happened because the guards didn't notice three dudes building a raft out of raincoats they kept stealing.
That last point is what makes 2 of the 3 AtLA prison breaks (Boiling Rock and the coal platform) so amazing. If a building is designed for no reason other than to hold people, than flaws in that design are really obvious and break immersion. However, the aforementioned AtLA prisons aren't *just* designed for incarceration - they're also designed to oppress the inmates.
The prison rig is built in the middle of the ocean to make earthbenders feel hopeless. In order to justify being in open water, the prison rig also needs to be strategically useful and self-sufficient; thus, it runs on coal and refuels fire navy ships (which also use coal), which earthbenders can use. Boiling Rock's anti-firebender freezers, which aren't as infallible as they might seem, are exploited in a very clever way as well, and the plan would've absolutely worked if not for Chit Sang making a small, stupid mistake. The gondolas are also necessary for a prison of such convoluted design, and despite being easily defensible, they are nonetheless a weak point that gets exploited - if Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee hadn't been there, there is a decent chance that any issues in the escape would've been easily solvable.
In other words, if you want a prison with baked-in flaws that's still believable, design it with other purposes in mind: strange or convoluted locations to enforce isolation, slave labor, or excessive punishment and oppression. That last one is probably the hardest to exploit unless you're really clever or have worldbuilding loopholes like AtLA, but the other two should be pretty reliable.
Both Avatar series have a thing for "prison that's really good at dealing with a specific set of abilities". The Fire Nation are outright shown as being able to very effectively prevent escapes by people with any form of bending along with the "oppress them into hopelessness" thing, and even the coal platform prison kept its inmates far enough away from the one thing they could use that doing so wasn't viable until outside assistance got it to them. The White Lotus learned from them and the members of the Red Lotus had been imprisoned basically all of Korra's lifetime up until their leader randomly woke up as an Airbender one day because of metaphysical shenanigannery that no one could plan for. In fact, the only two kinds of successful prison break in either series have been "outside help shows up" (all but three of them) and "inmate develops unexpected powers that bypass the very effective countermeasures" (Hama, Toph, and Zaheer).
Honestly, the care and attention to detail the writers paid to "how do you imprison someone with magic kung fu?" in the actual show makes M. Night Shyamalan's failure of an adaptation and its "Let's stick the guys who can move rocks in a rock quarry!" idiocy even more painful.
Just don't run into the Fallout New Vegas method of imprisonment in which you have your inmates clear rock for railways. Using sticks of dynamite.
Not to state the obvious, but the flaw in Andor’s prison avoids feeling negligent because it’s baked into the themes of the show:
“The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.”
This massive ludicrously expensive monument to distilled tyranny is broken because of _a single leak_. One wrench thrown into the perfect clockwork of oppression and the whole thing jammed just long enough to give those inside a fighting chance.
Also, the coal in the Earth-Bender prison was stored seperately and needed to be brought to the Earth-Benders by Aang using Air-Bending, something the Fire-Nation could not anticipate. As for the Boiling Rock, using the cooling cells as raft had the additional flaw that they could not be rowed and that while the makeshift boat would not get hot, the air around it would, as the prisoners trying to escape were suffering from the intense steam.
The freezers are actually very effective at stopping firebenders. They could only unbolt it because of 'friend on the inside' with sokka, and the very rare talent of zuko's that allows him to not get ruined by cold temp. It is a technique that Iroh taught him. Iroh got the idea from his study of the other elements, namely airbenders. Though he couldn't study them directly, and its never really explained to well, we know that airbenders have developed techniques to not be effected by extreme cold very easily. Aang runs around in the snow in the same outfit he runs around most everywhere else. It is more in line with the 'developing a rare ability to counter this specific problem' than a weakness in the problem itself.
I absolutely love when the prison break plan is practically non-existent and only works cuz the protagonists are insane. Like, it's not that the prison security has a flaw, it's just that no sane person would EVER try to the recklessly stupid things the protagonists did.
I can't think of any examples, anybody got one?
Xanatos Gambit vs. Indy Plot
@@kingskelett6265maybe Impel Down
@@kingskelett6265 Luffy in impel down
@kingskelett6265 I was thinking of One Piece when Luffy breaks in/out of Impel Down. The best prison in the world that no one ever comes out of is thrown upside down by a silly (but ridiculously powereful) boy with no thoughts. There was no plan. Luffy doesn't really DO plans. He just causes chaos and property damage, and it all works out.
The Henry Stickmin series has a fascinating twist on the outside rescuer. In one of the routes in "Escaping the Complex", Henry gets rescued by the mafia. In the previous game, Henry had beaten the mafia leader, Reginald, leading Henry to take over while Reginald was left as second in command. The only reason Reginald responded to Henry's call for help was so he could personally betray Henry and take back command of the mafia.
The second game was also literally called Escaping the Prison. Help from outside there was called a Phoenix Wright knockoff
I love THSC so much! The entire series is just a cycle of breaking in and out of increasingly secure places with increasingly absurd methods
@@teemingwithasininiteaor not being able to.
In the original, stand-alone Escaping the Prison, it wasn’t a Phoenix Wright Knock-off, it was straight-up the Ace Attorney himself.
And in the “The Henry Stickmin Collection”, it’s as you said, they turned him into an Expy named “Felix White”
never thought i'd see someone mention THSC in the wild. this is a compliment
As a wise man once said " if you imprison an adventurer for adventuring then they will meet other adventurers and break out to adventure even more"
Does that wise man happen to be a fan of one piece?
Yatzee said he was less than enthused about anime, though that was years ago. 🤔
He's still not a fan of anime. It's only ever the stuff unlike most anime that he likes
You turn the prison into an Adventure and you can assume Adventurers are either really good at what they do or died long before you could've met them.
So really the only solution to stop a murderhobo is to murder the fuck out of them before they can do the same to you. Anything less is simply asking to get murdering sometime later rather than right this moment.
Is that from croshaw?
Ah, if there is a Prison Break Trope Talk, that means we absolutely need dedicated a Heist/Caper Trope Talk.
Agreed!
here here
Hesist?
@@Center-For-I.E.D.MismanagementThey meant heist
@@animeotaku307
I know.
Let's be honest. Despite having the title of "one of the most secure places on Earth", Arkham is basically at this point a one-night motel for Batman's villains...
A place to chill where Batman won't show up to beat them up.
They should just add swimming pools and start charging 'prisoners' during their stay.
Maybe that's why.
The villains are so comfortable together they don't want to leave.
Aren't vacation resorts meant to be pleasant?
It’s one of the most secure places on earth.
The only exception is every actual prison
I mean, like, if you're gonna put the Joker into the same prison every single time at some point he's gonna get pretty good at getting out of that prison
I applaud Red's self control to only use one clip from "The Blue Spirit", her favorite episode of Avatar
Yeah but in exchange she used like 30 clips of The Boiling Rock
I need someone to relieve Red of the idea that anyone would mind if she never talked about anything but Avatar
Shout out to the show literally titled Prison Break, which had to come up with increasingly dumber reasons for why the protagonists keep getting tossed in increasingly absurd prisons.
That's the kind of premise that only works once, maybe twice but we are already reaching.
Would have been way more interesting if they had to break into some secure place in a later season.
Plus one of the main characters goes on to play Captain Cold in the Arrowverse.
Genuinely surprised she didn't use a single clip from that show
ok.
'
The first season of Prison Break is one of the best examples of this trope.
Watching Suki go full Kyoshi Warrior on the Boiling Rock will always be my favorite.
same
I always thought The traditional dress looked heavy for moving around in. Without it she’s playing hop-scotch on people’s heads and pulling a Spider-Man somehow!
@@JaelinBezel Long flowing skirts are really easy to move in. They give a lot of space for movement and also cover the legs so that the enemy does not know what position you are taking.
There's no reason why Suki couldn't have pulled off this move in her traditional clothes.
The Boiling Rock is objectively a pretty poorly written episode, stuff often just kinda happens without much explanation or elaboration, but it's so rad that it's still one of the most beloved episodes of the show
@@samlewis6487 I think it's a fine episode for like normal animated kid show standards but by ATLA standards yeaaa it's not the best.
Weird thought, but a plot where arkham gets an ACTUALLY competent warden that stops the one-at-a-time prison breaks would be nice, maybe even including the entire rogue's gallery teaming up to break out and showing why the one-at-a-time thing is a better option, actually
Social commentary on the prison system, exploration of power dynamics, and a team up of Rogues for a large scale prison break?! How has this not been done yet?!
Bane with the rocket launcher doesn’t count?
Batman already has a competent warden villain named Lock-Up, whose whole thing is that he was an incredibly cruel warden, who was stripped of his post for abusing the inmates at Arkham, and became a violent vigilante in response.
He would be a perfect fit for that character
@@erinfinn2273 Because that would involve batmat's writers to actually be competent?
They did something a bit like this in TAS, with the episode Lock-Up. In that episode, a new warden is assigned to Arkham Asylum who succeeds at keeping the inmates from escaping... but he accomplishes this through cruel and unusual methods that ultimately get him ousted. He then becomes the supervillain Lock-Up, and goes around imprisoning anyone he sees as "part of the problem".
A classic case of the prison break trope comes from the Count of Monte Cristo, where Edmont Dantes is trying to escape the Chateau d'If (I may have spelt that wrong...) along side his teacher and friend through a prolonged attempt to carve out an exit. However, renovation ends up foiling their plans, and Dantes' friend passes away shortly after. However, the passing of this friend gives Dantes an unexpected exit: he's tossed out into the sea, pretending to be his friend's corpse. This plan is markedly dangerous as the Chateau is far from the mainland, and Dantes has no idea if he'll hit rocks instead of water, but the bet pays off, and Dantes successfully escapes. It's a simple and risky plan, but it's fun to see unfold.
The thing is, unless it's different in english version, which I haven't read, Dantes didn't know he'll get tossed in the water. His plan was to be buried alive, hopefully outside the prison, dig himself out and go from there. He only realized they toss corpses into the depths once he hit the water. But neverthless (did I wrote that right?) you're correct, that plan was a gamble, one which, fortunately, paid off and gave us this great story
@@kjm4721 According to the version I bought on Kindle, he was aware of the guards dumping corpses off cliffs before he took his friend's place.
I was looking for someone else talking about the Count of Monte Cristo! And to add to that, Chateau d’If changes Dantes tremendously, changing from a happy sailor to a sullen, vengeful, and cunning noble with a Mysterious fortune.
If I'm remembering correctly- they actually meet when the mentor tunnels into Dante's cell by mistake and is like "well damn, I don't have the resources to do a whole other tunnel"
@@THESP-rz3hg True. In my version it was more like Faria was digging close to Dantes' cell, Dantes heard that and dig his way to there and met him, but oh well~ close enough. Just wanted to point out that @Dragonpit ain't wrong either. They've met as you said and later tried to dig out another tunnel, which was foiled by renovation and Faria's health getting worse
Missed the part where if the friend on the inside does survive, they become a party member instantly
Double-subverted in season 3 of _Star Trek: Enterprise_ where the protagonists capture the lead baddie and put on an elaborate ruse to make him think that he and Scott Bakula just broke out of prison together and that the two are now partners in crime (but with the baddie having lost his memory). The baddie eventually sees through the ruse and is set free (with his memory of the con wiped) only for him to do an *actual* heel-face-turn literally two episodes later.
Red does this in Aurora
@@VictoriaStarrattBro I was literally gonna say-
Except when they sacrifice themselves to impersonate the warden and open the Gates of Justice so that everyone else can escape, leaving themselves time for only a brief, tearful goodbye over the Transponder Snail before they're consigned once more to life in the depths of hell.
@@smileyface81mc77 great minds think alike
My favorite meme with prison breaks is the ones that lead to first attempt failure by whoever is outside that usually creates this sort of interaction.
"Are you guys here to rescue me?"
"Nah. We got caught too."
"We were planning on rescuing you"
"Good job"
Tess, Erin, and Falst: Let's break Kendal out of the prison!
Alinua: Let's break the prison.
YES someone else who wanted to say this! That was the BEST moment honestly. (so far)
Took the words right out of my mouth.
Have a like so that more people see this and read Aurora. (For those who don't know, it's an webcomic by Red herself.)
""she was serious about that "stone by stone thing" wasn't she?""
Kendal: oh hey i figured youd do this meet my new friend Dainix
Firefly has an amazing subversion of the "If the plan's explained, it will fail" trope in the episode Trash. They explain the heist plan, it seems to go wrong, but it actually went perfectly according to plan because the group knew one of their members was planning on backstabbing them, so they incorporated it into the real plan.
And that Inara got to be the badass rogue character who pulled the TRIPLE-Double cross.
Andor's prison break arc was some of the best television I had watched in 2022. The suspense, the unique gimmicks, the horror, and the immaculate performances was just perfect.
Tbf the entirety of Andor was some of the best television in 2022
King fu panda and Star Wars casually making the greatest prison breaks in their respective decades
And Shawshank
And Toy Story 3
Andor was such a breath of fresh air, but there was something really unique about the prison arc I want to point out:
I'm not sure how many other prison-focused shows have done this or focused that much on it, but Narkina 5 in Andor emphasized the realistic aspect of prison that no one knows what's happening outside their own spaces. Not in the world, or not even past their own cell block. This sounds weird, but I had a similar experience in boot camp in the Marines where when they take your communications away and make you focus on what you're tasked there to do, you start to get antsy about what news you hear going around about things happening elsewhere. All you have to go off of is hearsay and secondhand, and when you don't know what's going on for sure, you start to get nervous. This was well represented in the scenes where the prisoners were communicating in and across the bridges.
It's just an extra layer of tension and information control that really ramps it up for both the characters and the audience.
I haven't been so engrossed in a show in a while. I've enjoyed a lot of them, but I couldn't tear my eyes away from that whole saga. It got my heartrate up, the suspense was built so effectively. And then they did it again with the funeral. Brilliantly-written series overall, and great performances.
@@Dookieman1975Shawshank is a great prison movie full stop, no need to add the word break, but it is a great prison break movie too
11:40 Suggesting that the Boiling Rock, a pair of episodes whose only real motivations and effects are based on character relations (Mai's betrayal, Ty Lee's betrayal, Suki X Sokka, Zuko X Mai, Zuko/Sokka bonding experience, Sokka saving his dad), is just an exciting action set piece.
In fact, thinking about it, if it were purely logic based they would have brought Toph, the only member of the Gaang that can bend rocks and metal and has never hesitated to punch a cop.
Edit: The more I think about it, the more interesting this gets. If this was just a strict "prison break" plot, Toph could and would have gotten them in and out completely unhindered in 10 minutes flat. But it's not about that. It's about "saving the jerk who dumped me" and "you should have feared me more" and "my girlfriend turned into the moon" "that's rough, buddy." None of these character moments would have happened if this was just a prison break and Toph broke the prison.
Where was Toph and the rest of the Gaang during the boiling rock? I can't remember why they didn't come along and help.
@@ReblazeGamingThey weren’t invited. Sokka caught wind of the prison from Zuko and went to go it alone late at night, but the way he brought it up the day before left Zuko suspicious, so he kept watch and basically wound up inviting himself along. With Appa not co-operating, the pair had to use Zuko’s balloon!
Okay but think about it. It's a hell of a coincidence that Suki happens to be there, Sokka's dad happens to be sent there, and Mai's family member happens to be the warden all in the same place. Which is. Wild.
@@samlewis6487 they specifically said that the people that are assumed to be the leader are sent here
You know what's better than prison break, a prison break-in.
Have you read the Impel Down arc from One Piece?
@@schwarzerritter5724That one was also on my mind
Outlaw Star
Pretty much hoxton breakout
*NUMB3RS S03E07 "Blackout"* is A-tier. FBI (and their pet mathematician) are investigating a string of intentional power outages as suspected terrorism. The real villainous goal was to deplete the fuel supply of a prison's backup generators so that the bad guys could infiltrate the facility on a refueling truck.
Impel Down of One Piece is an entire arc focusing around Luffy breaking into and rescuing a person from the world's most secure prison. Amazing arc that sees old villains return and forming temporary alliances.
I haven't even seen this part of One Piece yet...but I'm gonna go out on a limb and figure that Luffy doesn't care about breaking the prison and/or letting out actually dangerous criminals. Just because "rush in and break the whole power structure" is just his normal MO.
@@emilymoran9152You would be correct. For all of his genuinely good qualities, it's pretty consistent that Luffy can still be rather selfish and short-sighted even if he's basically never doing it with intentional malice. (If it's intentional malice on his part, then he's already punching you for something you likely genuinely deserved. Dude is not subtle.)
And great thing about impel down is magellan,the most secure and powerfull prison in the world actually has powerfull and strong warden that powerfull enough to defeat everyone,so the title of the most secure and powerfull prison are not just for showoff,the alliance can only run againt magellan and cant fight him back
if we are talking about the ""prison break"" of One piece, i think enies lobby is fondamentally that too. it has keys, guardian, higher stakes if not succeed, friend on the inside, friend on the outside, and convolution of the prisonners.
ahhh i was looking for a one piece comment. very fun prison break, showcases luffy’s character very well, etc etc
9:25 Imagine "I Said I Break The Prison" but as an accident.
"I'm going to break my brother out of prison! Oh, whoops. Someone took advantage of the chaos to set _everyone_ free. Oh well."
Would be funny if a gang or party gets incarcarated with their boss being put into the deepest part in total isolation, the last words when subtely asked what the rest should do they respond "break the prison."
After systematically disabling the security measures, leading the prisoners in a revolt, taking over the entire prison and storming the max sec section they rescue their boss...
...only to find out the boss meant for the rest of the group to just break out and leave them behind as a "go save yourself!" move. But now, after going through way more effort, the party just broke the entire prison because their boss didn't state the order correctly ^^
Mage: “Okay problem solved.”
Thief: (Concerned) “This isn’t. . . This isn’t what I meant at all.”
Mage: “You said we should break the prison.”
Thief: “By getting dirt on the tyrant of a warden and his cronies! Not dropping a literal meteor on the place!”
Mage: “We lived didn’t we?”
Aka seven deadly sins, when they break in to free Ban only for meliodas and him to have a full on arm wrestle that destroys the entire building
Sometimes a mass break out is more of a means than an end in the plan. For example to create chaos that distracts the guards. Although it usually happens with the more morally gray heroes, since it means some actual criminals will also get free
I love the trope where the hero is imprisoned alongside a villian and they team up to break out.
The second Telltale Batman game does this. Bruce gets sent to Arkham Asylum, and there's this VERY cheerful and friendly inmate in there who just wants to be his buddy. All smiles that guy.
Van Kleiss moment
Always love a Strange Bedfellows plot line.
Always love a Strange Bedfellows plot line.
That one Clone Wars episode that Anakin and Obi-Wan had to team up with Dooku
Stone Ocean's prison break was insane. Jolyne pretty much successfully did it, but decided to go back in ON PURPOSE in the end.
Hey, she needed to beat up an acid priest
Just saw Anime America's review of that arc.
Jailhouse Lock is also such a unique aspect of the entire jail break. That whole scheme Jolyne had to devise was so cool to see come together
Oh my god yes
honestly my fave prison break(s) in all of fiction are Stone Ocean's.
The big turning point in the story of the _Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers_ games is a prison break that entirely focuses on the character arcs: the heroes have to trust Grovyle in order to escape, which confirms who their true allies, and enemies are. I think it's a really good prison break scene, even though the entirety of the "prison" is the heroes all tied to stone pillars with ropes.
Well, one could very easily argue the entire dark future gauntlet is one big prison break
Thanks for reminding me of it, was long since I played that game!
Oh, my favourite childhood game! And yes absolutely. The whole character and worldbuilding condensed into that arc made for an incredible and solid turn in the story. Hands down one of the best story games I've ever played (though I'm not sure how much of that sentiment is up to nostalgia). The writing was solid and heartfelt the whole way through. And I think the prison break arc is indeed the entire time you're in the future, it's an escape from a darker future after all.
Also note the reason why you're tied to the pillars: it's an execution.
You and your partner are being summarily executed next to the guy who you thought was trying to end the world (and who you helped capture).
Which makes the scene all the better. Everything you think you know gets turned on it's head in a way that's so alien to Pokemon that it sets the tone for the rest of the game, making everything feel that much more impactful.
One of my favourite versions of this plot is where the antagonists are completely unaware the protagonist(s) they're looking for are actually stuffed within one of their own prisons unbeknownst to them
ooo This could be quite fun. What about seeing a bvilian with low resources do a prison break, but with comparable restraints to protagonists?
Andor moment
Hogan's Heroes.
Yeah, I laughed my ass off watching Andor cause the ISB was working so hard to track him and then cuts to him being already in an imperial prison lol
@@Zeb0101 The machinations of the empire
If the Henry Stickmin games taught me anything about breaking into or out of any kind of place: Don't trust rocket launchers smuggled in cakes, make sure a parachute is actually a parachute, and a teleporter has at best a one in three chance of working.
Since the teleporter only worked in 2 out of the 6 games (7 if you count that one game with only 4 options and a gap)
I really appreciated the implied acknowledgement that the Andor prison arc was both interestingly designed and full of exquisite character moments (and heartbreaking overall).
"Can't swim"
Aeon Flux did something similar where the thing the workers were ultimately and unknowingly making was the think that would kill or maim them in the end.
Hearing it all laid out like this really makes One Piece's Impel Down arc awesome with how much shit happened and went wrong and was so chaotic.
Literally every trope done at once.
This video also made me realize the Enies Lobby arc is ALSO a prison break arc
@@wrendoodle "I said, I break the prison!" xD
Another twist on this that I love is when the good guys break out a bad guy because they need their help to stop some even worse guy, especially if they’re the ones that put them there - there’s usually a lot of good emotional tension and some members of the group thinking that this is a very bad idea
Totally! That is a great trope!
"I'm gonna walk you through a hypothetical. ...Can I walk you through a hypothetical?"
Its hilarious how quickly Days of Future Past does this becuz Quicksilver is so OP, some good comedy though, then again Magneto is broken out of prison so damn often
Seeing the Tailong escape from Kung Fu Panda just reminds me of how much Color Theory the creators used for that movie. So brilliant
Whoops, it was at 69 likes and I ruined it
I like the Impel Down arc from One Piece.
Luffy breaks into the most secure prison in the world to rescue his brother. We meet some old characters that have been arrested and new characters that use this opportunity to escape. And the prison is designed based on Dante's Inferno!
It's a fun example because, Luffy being Luffy, doesn't take part in any meticulous planning at all- He facilitates a riot, and then in the confusion basically just *sprints to his goal.*
And in the end, it actually goes against what Red was saying. Luffy ends up causing a mass prison break... of prisoners who were mostly in there for a _reason_ , which had a bunch of bad consequences down the line. Granted, the few arcs right before the time skip might as well be renamed the Luffy Gets In Way Over His Head And Fucks Up A Bunch Saga.
It’s kind of funny, buggy went from a guy who was in like 8 chapters at the very beginning, like two chapters about 70 chapters later, and then pretty much restricted only to cover stories for about a decade. Then impel down rolls around and now he’s a fan favorite character with serious plot relevance behind him.
@@ExeloMinish It also serves to emphasize how Luffy isn't actually a good person. He's not a hero, he's a pirate, and like most other pirates is morally grey at best.
Leverage will always be one of the best examples of a "Prison Break" stories. There isn't only the "Nate escapes literal prison" but also the "Escape the Steranko" episode which was really great.
You could combine mystery and prison break by having the protagonists' plan center on finding the weakness some previous prisoner exploited. Like, there's one guy in history who got out, let's find out how they did that!
The Impel Down arc is one of my favorite arcs in One Piece, it's basically a "break into prison, free a specific prisoner (end up freeing hundreds), get out" arc. A good chunk of the "friends on the inside" are past arc villains, which creates a fun and unique dynamic.
Yet another reason Red should read/watch One Piece
"I want to be somewhere that's less on fire" is a real climate change mood.
sad goblin teenager watching the eye of Sauron setting over the horizon...
I’m in Louisiana right now. There’s a forest fire like, 20-30 miles southeast of me. It’s been burning most of the week. Everyone , please pray to Zeus. WE NEED A FULL THUNDERSTORM DOWN HERE! Sacrifice a cow if you have to! That’s what I’m doing!
for once, I'll say DON'T come to Canada. the situation here is...
yeah there's no real words for it, let's be honest.
As a fellow lover of Leverage, I always appreciate when half the B roll is from that series. Especially since they had a whole season premiere arc that was JUST a prison break (while also financially ruining the prison because it was, of course, also evil)
Just started watching the show and it’s so much fun
I really like the Impel Down arc of One Piece. First it's a prison break-in, to get someone out. Things go wrong. And now it's a prison break. Including breaking out a load of _actually horrible criminals_ because the help's needed and Luffy's not always a perfectly morally upstanding person, _he's a pirate._ And the wardens have an actual point in trying to stop him, because while the World Government they are running the prison for is pretty bad, so is all the violent pirates running around in the world.
The number of times Leverage and Andor show up here is a testament to how good those shows are.
Red, I can guess it might have been tempting to use a particular panel from Aurora for the “break the prison” slide…
An OSP video on prison breaks? And me without my trusty concrete digging spoon, my rope made exclusively from various bed sheets and my convenient one liner to start all out brawls in the prison yard...
"Hey! Riot!" *throw fellow prisoner I'm holding over my head at a crowd of other prisoners*
@@Crazael"Impressive" with a confused look on his face. (Boiling Rock, ATLA Season 3)
“Forget inner peace LeT’s RiOT!!” or whatever his line is XD
@@spacecat8511funny seeing him immediately tackled by the small old man
@@spacecat8511funny seeing him immediately tackled by the small old man
I think that part of the reason the villain breakout is seen as so effortless is because we're seeing the climax of an off screen prison break plot.
They can be a lot of fun to design for players in a game or TTRPG too. Even if like 90% of them ignore the more subtle and sneaky ways to break out, and instead immediately resort to violence, and then wonder why the prison is now fully hostile, making it hard to retrieve their confiscated gear. XD
The trick is to let the party wipe (whether intentionally or by fudged dice rolls) then have them wake up again, and have it be a dream/vision of what NOT to do.
@@erinfinn2273 In a TTRPG that's totally an option! :P
I was mostly reminiscing about a video game I wrote for, where the game intentionally does not let you save scum. And still, so many people appear to think "I can take these two armored guards with a pickaxe and rags for armor! ...Yay, I killed one! ...Wait, why is the entire fortress now permanently hostile, this is unfair" XD
@@AegixDrakan Mind if I ask which game?
@@erinfinn2273 Of course! The game is "Outward"! :)
It's a pretty challenging game (on account of the player being just a normal person, not a badass), but that just encourages playing smart until you actually CAN hold your own in a fight. :P
@@erinfinn2273 You can also work a time loop into the fiction, lets you really ramp up the challenge and lets the players figure out their escape plan through trial and error. Also you get to kill PCs is silly ways without ruining anyone's day.
One Piece’s Impel Down is my one of my favorite arcs, and I think it does the “break the prison” in a interesting way. Without spoiler it’s great way to see a lot of characters we haven’t seen it quite few episodes and to introduce characters that are still important to current One Piece.
For me, the funniest prison break happens in "Watchmen." It's quite funny how Nite Owl and Silk Specter go to prison to rescue Rorschach, only to discover that the vigilante has already escaped from the cell on his own, so the only thing they could do at this point was simply pick him up, but not before he first went to the bathroom 🤣🤣🤣
From the moment you mentioned how villains breaking out is usually just an inciting incident, I was watching through the whole video imagining a prison break episode *starring the villains*. Like, imagine if a whole episode got spent on the Joker breaking out of Arkham instead of it taking a whole minute at most.
I still think the best escape in real life was Eamon de velera who had several cakes smuggled into producing for him to make a key to escape. After that failed 3 times he and some others dressed as women and with a key someone gave them left at the back of the courtyard
can't remember the guy's name but there was a japanese guy who was put into increasingly more inescapeable prisons and still found ways to escape. like he escaped a prison mostly thanks to miso soup.
Drag solves all problems.
"I said I break the prison" is an excellent title for that subtrope. Love that. Even the title sounds epic.
One Piece has a lot of arcs/sub-arcs that could be called prison breaks, but the most notable is Impel Down, the actual prison break. Luffy breaks in to the World Government’s highest security prison to save someone from execution, causing tons of chaos early on because he’s not the best at stealth. He ends up getting captured and the person he’s trying to save gets escorted out of the prison for execution. When Luffy is able to get moving again, he doesn’t escape because he’s suddenly a lot stronger in typical shonen protagonist fashion, he escapes because he accidentally sent the full prison into a riot with how many people share his goal, want to follow him, or want to follow his allies.
Hey, red! Trope talk suggestion for you; "The incident" or "Noodle incidents" are a literary tool of a trope that gives more literary weight (funniness, scaryness, impact on the audience) to an event or noun than a description would, mostly by context and the reader's imagination.
Named Noodle Incidents because of a short series of Calvin and Hobbes comics wherein everyone at school gives the eternally frustrated 6-year-old grief about something he did in the past that is now known only as "The noodle incident." It is hinted at vaguely many times, but the writer ultimately leaves it up to your imagination; which is a strength because whatever the audience dreams up will be way more literarily impactful (in this case funny) than anything he could write down. And that's not even the only time that comic uses a noodle incident, see, there's this kids book calvin always wants read called "Hampster Hewwy and the Gooey Kablooey" and Now I'm ranting. Point is; by leaving the event, place, person or item, open to interpretation, it has more literary weight than the creator could have possibly written. The Legendary Super Saiyan may have looked a lot cooler in your head than just goku+blonde+power.
Another instance this trope is used is in an S.C.P. story wherein a certain slime MUST NEVER come into contact with a human corpse. Why? That's classified. A foundation researcher files the suggestion to test the slime on a human corpse because it's never listed what happens, only that it is a V E R Y bad idea, and the researcher is curious. He gets demoted and heavily scolded by an O-5, who states "Just don't." That one of the 0-5's, who have seen untold horrible horrible things, REALLY doesn't want this to happen, forces the reader to come up with something even the 0-5's fear, and is therefore even more terrifying than anything the writer could have written down.
A "Noodle Incident" or "The Incident" is a rare trope that involves telling the audience that something exists or happened, but not telling them what it was, in order to give the plot point more narrative weight than a description would give it, partly because of the imaginations of the audience. It is a great trope that I think you should cover.
I'm going to keep suggesting it on every trope talk and mythology video untill you do.
I think the best way to write in a weakness to a Prison is to focus on the people running the prison rather than the prison itself. Since stuff like human error and simply people being lazy can make even the most impenetrable prison vulnerable.
When Red brought up "I said I break the prison" my very first thought was Alinua in Zuurith. She uh. She certainly broke it lmao
I was already thinking about that just from the title of the video. But yeah, I was definitely thinking about that in that part of the video.
Love it! I can’t wait for the trope talk on pets/animal companions. A treasure trove of tropes and story beats
Ditto
@@emanuelrojas2aren't you supposed to say Bulba- wait a minute! Impostor noted! You are actually a Ditto!
@@CaptainvonDore Crap, I been found out!
@@emanuelrojas2 wait! You talk now?
An interesting variant of the prison break story occurred in the 90's Xmen cartoon. During WW2 Wolverine had to break a scientist out of a base, only to have this scientist betray him and remain with the Nazis. Years later it was revealed that this scientist was actually working for the Allies and betrayed Wolverine so the Nazis would trust him more. He then delayed their atom bomb research.
Definitely one of the better parts of season five.
12:30 Darth Sidhious peeking from the window and confessing it was all his design, while Red talks how to end up with a plot with no solution.
I love the subtle reference. :D
There’s also circumstances where the heroes are in prison with the bad guys. In Ninjago season 6 for example, where the ninja were framed and sent to the same place as their rogue’s gallery, they didn’t just have to escape. They had to ensure no one else escaped so they weren’t free to wreak havoc again. A large amount of the prison break episode was sealing all the exits back up after breaking them down.
I was kind of wondering if you were gonna bring up the “scariest inmate” part of these plots.
Like when a good guy gets to the prison there is some tough guy who essentially “runs the joint” who everyone fears and either beats up the hero or vice versa as a show of strength
I would say, there are two subtypes: There is the "Mob Boss" who runs stuff among the inmates, who either is an opponent, because the heores endanger his status quo or they need his help to get out, because he has access to some areas. And there is the "psycopath", some Cannibal or Serialkiller or otherwisely very dangerous individual, who is in there for a very good reason and who puts everyone at risk, if the heroes somehow let him escape...
Shoutout to the minecraft RUclipsr prison break arc which involved actually building real “impenetrable” prisons only for the one madlad to not only show how to escape them but also made it cinematic after a few prisons
Are you talking about Kenadian?
The best two prison breaks are The Great Escape and the 4th episode in early Lupin III Part 1. The Great Escape is just a classic and iconic, and I’m surprised it wasn’t mentioned in the video.
And Lupin III is just really funny because Zenigata is expecting Lupin to escape before his death sentence, but he doesn’t leave until the last day, and he gets out in a really clever way. It’s so funny because everyone is expecting Lupin to escape, but he doesn’t until the last minute.
Honorable mentions to Andor and Escape from New York.
Great Escape was an excellent film.
Seriously, I like this channel but they do seem more inclined towards the gen-z stuff, and anime, than actual classic iconic films that have codified the trope, a quick search would make it clear that Great Escape is one of the most iconic prison-break-out stories, I mean thats what Chicken Run is based on lol.
@@GuineaPigEveryday It’s even homaged in Avatar’s The Boiling Rock episode which had clips shown in this very video
@@GuineaPigEveryday I don't really mind, because these would be media that more of the target audience would have seen. I don't really see a problem with it unless they use historical information incorrectly.
I feel like I’ve learnt more from Red and her Trope Talks than I have from any English class
English class is not about learning how to write or even about tropes.
@@JessamyneGoulddid you seriously reply to yourself in agreement
Nah im just dumb and replied to my comment by accident when i was trying to reply to someone else’s
English class is about learning all of the rules to write/speak English before they tell you, "Psych! You can bend all of those as long as it makes sense to a random person off the street!"
This is actually fair if you have ever read a piece from someone that has really bad grammar/spelling. It becomes a this is what they wrote vs. this is what makes sense given my understanding.
English class still sucks though.
@@carolyn8740The best description of the English language is still: "English isn't a language. It is three languages in a trench coat who lures other languages into a dark alley before conking them on the head and rifling through thier pockets for loose grammer , syntax, and other "shinies"."
I really loved Kazuma's "prison break" in the beginning of KonoSuba's Season 2. It's pretty funny how Aqua failed TWICE to give Kazuma a useful item to escape and he simply didn't give a sh*t about that🤣
There's an Eoin Colfer novel, Airman, which is almost entirely a prison break, in that the protagonist has to escap the prison of their own trauma. Oh, and a literal prison.
It manages to combine a hijinksy prison with a clever escape plan, a couple of plot twists, and a heartbreaking character arc.
Oh I love that book. Probably what got me into this trope in the first place.
I loved that book. Angsty as heck and brimming with cleverness, just how I like it
I love how often Star Wars Rebels uses Prison Breaks. Pretty much everyone gets captured at one time or another. Some manage to break out on their own, others require rescues. Heck, Ezra gets captured late in the story to warn their double agent inside the Empire
@user-mf7zi4sx9f You say that, but this very video shows that Star Wars is still capable of producing good, even great, content. Andor was absolutely phenomenal
@user-mf7zi4sx9f I don't know where politics entered the discussion, but for my part, I never really watched the HP movies in full, but while I do disagree with some of Rowling's politics, and writing choices, I can still get some enjoyment out of the books to this day.
@user-mf7zi4sx9f dude if you don’t want to watch a good show fine, i just hate the excuse from ppl that its ‘too late’ and Disney has ruined their lives and can’t be trusted anymore, yeah no shit all of us hate Disney corp, we can still appreciate when they incidentally make a damn good show. Whats with this childish nonsense of ppl watching everything even Kenobi and Boba up to the point that Andor came out and was critically acclaimed and then suddenly everyone was like “im not gonna bother watching this ive been betrayed too often” grow up
I appreciate the sheer volume of Star Wars in this Trope Talk. Andor's prison break was such a treasure
Small one but Arc in Impel Down in One Piece is most definitely a hoot to enjoy.
It's also weirdly one of the only "I said I break prison" instances that at least acknowledges a possible problem with that (as a hero): releasing some genuinely vile people back into the world who will go on to prey on innocent people.
@@MusicoftheDamnedoh yeah, Luffy inadvertently saves Blackbeard because Magellan had to stop the prison riot he caused, therefore allowing Blackbeard to survive and recruit his new crew members from Level 6
@@MusicoftheDamned I mean most of the vile people joined a literal clown and the worst ones are either killed or joined a big villain who also broke in for thet purpose
@@samt3412 It's still hilarious to me that Blackbeard and crew almost died to someone who had like no idea who they were but decided to not mess around and just use his (second) strongest attack immediately.
@@gearedge Eh, most if not all of the people who joined Buggy aren't really people I'm counting since they seem like mostly harmless small-fries or at least people broken by the prison who are being kept further line by Buggy's self-aggrandizing idiocy anyway short of him going on a rampage against civilains (or the people gangpressed into the navy). Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure some genuinely high threat people also escaped without joining Blackbeard at all, which still would have happened without Blackbeard being there. Whoops.
It just occurred to me, SCP is kind of the prison break story from the view of the prison. It’s a nice little flip of the trope.
I want you to know how excited I get when suddenly a notification for a new trope talk comes up on my phone. Thank you Red
My favourite gag is a friend on the outside getting caught before they get that far and smash cutting to them getting thrown into prison next to the original prisoner
Lord Havelock Vetinari from the Disk World books has the best prison. every cell has multiple "escape" possibilities to give the prisoners hope that they could escape but in reality are just blocked off with even tighter security methods
That is SUCH typical Vetinari. XD
He also designs them so that HE can be reasonably safe and comfortable if he ever gets locked in his own prison...and of course knows the REAL escape route for when he gets tired of that.
@@emilymoran9152 Ah, "Guards Guards"... That was SUCH a fun moment. XD
One of the funnier prison breaks I've seen comes from The Grand Budapest Hotel. Since the entire story is being told to us as retrospect the entire break is being narrated as it happens, meaning not only does the plan get explained to the audience, but the plan that's described is the plan that worked, slightly subverting the "the plan they tell you about never works" thing.
A villainous "I said I break the prison" plot is basically MHA season 6.
Man I forgot that show existed
I've been trying to block season 6 from my mind. As far as I'm concerned, (spoilers below)
bringing back All for One and having him hijack Shigaraki's role as the main villain was easily MHA's biggest mistake.
@@matthewmuir8884 wait what he comes back? I thought that one of the primary themes was letting the next generation take the mantle? Wtf?
@@zamalamahama4894 Spoilers for season 6:
Yep, All for One comes back, and in a bit of a convoluted way. Basically, Shigaraki gets the All for One quirk grafted onto his body by the doctor responsible for the Nomu, and the result is that a vestige of All for One within the quirk takes over and possesses Shigaraki's body. It turns out that All for One's plan was never for Shigaraki to succeed him; it was for Shigaraki to become his new body. I'm not joking.
@@matthewmuir8884Seems like something AFO would do. He's an expert manipulator and it makes sense AFO (the quirk) would only have AFO as a vestige as comparison to OFA which has the previous wielders. Just on brand really.
I think part 6 of _Jojo's Bizarre Adventure,_ _Stone Ocean,_ does a really good job with its prison, because the prison is the setting for the majority of the story, and even though the main characters have superpowers they aren't all that helpful with escaping long-term. For instance, the main character can turn her body into string, which helps with getting through doors with gaps but doesn't help if she's caught on-camera, so the powers are used more as a way to fight than escape. It takes a lot of work and a lot of luck for the characters to finally escape, and the whole time the prison feels like its own character, oppressive and vindictive.
Six minutes! Prison break, huh? I'm gonna need some spoons, a Monopoly set, and some miso soup!
six minutes later, broken out using only the monopoly set. "what were the spoons and soup for?" "I was hungry"
@@Hunterdog It's eternally weird to me that people drink miso soup with a spoon.
@@Duiker36 If your weapon of choice in a prison break is a Monopoly set I think drinking miso soup with a spoon is the least of your idiosyncrasies
@@angrygoose23 fun fact: monopoly was actually used in WW2 to help facilitate escapes from POW camps. The boards would contain things like maps and money to help escapees.
another fun fact, this one guy who broke out of 4 prisons in japan used miso soup to rust away his handcuffs (since he was always handcuffed) and broke out that way. the salt content in the soup was the thing that allowed the handcuffs to rust
13:48 this makes me think of the Boiling Rock where Zuko can do recon into the Cooler because Iroh and the dragons taught him what real firebending is all about
What great timing! I just started watching "The Prisoner," where the prison is an isolated village run by a mysterious evil authority.
There was a great line in an early episode where the main character says something to the effect of, "One day, I will escape. And then I'll return."
The bad guy goes, "Huh? Return?"
"Yes, return. To save all the other prisoners and burn this place to the ground." 😂
Watch out for giant white balloons!
I am not a number, I am a free man!
Shawshank Redemption is one of the best examples of having several prison tropes included at the same time.
7:00 I love the X Y Z figures, a brilliant way to show what's happening
King Foo Panda definitely has the most visually interesting prison break ever
Was waiting with bated breath for an Aurora reference in this one, and i think "I Said I Break The Prison" scratches that itch, though sometimes i wish we saw more of the comic on this channel when Red brings up tropes and ideas that she's specifically written about. It's a fun little insight into the writing process and can tell us more about how Red writes stories outside of OSP, like the aside from Those Damn Phones.
I just realized that Blades in the Dark basically runs on the unspoken plan guarantee by design. Not only does it save time with not worrying about the details of the plan, but it opens the floor for the flexibility of the flashback mechanic during the heist. It allows the players to pull the "actually, getting the mastermind captured was our plan the whole time" card.
You should do one of these on hero-villain team ups, or Alliance of convenience as I’ve heard it referred to
"But in cases where friends on the outside are coming to help, they often end up meeting the imprisoned character halfway; running into them breaking out while they're breaking in."
The (better) Suicide Squad movie immediately came to mind as an example of that.
"Do you want me to go back in?"
"That wasn't condescending. "
You read my mind
You know, now that I think about it, The Martian is kind of a prison break story
I think another reason this is a popular and effective trope, aside from being character conflict boiled to its minimum, is that prisons (of some form or another) in their (loosely) real world sense are basically a stock setup for a plot. They're one of the few locations specifically designed to create obstacles (in a way more interesting than a traffic cone around some road works). So you don't need to do too much stretching of reality within your genre to create a conflict-riddled story.
Never have I wished Red would read One Piece more than her not talking about Impel Down in this video 😂
Same
On explaining the plan vs showing the plan: I actually really enjoy when a story does BOTH of those thing simultaneously, using the scene of the description to move into the scenes with the action. Alternatively, you could do that as a flash forward, but then also make the plan go wrong then they are actually executing it.
I just watch the video not too long ago about how the Black Liberation Army busting some people out of prison. They actually blew a hole through a prison wall.
One of my favorite prison break eps is from Danny Phantom. It showed a whole new side of the ghost world, brought back a lot of fan favorite and forced new team ups. And while most of the break was just "punch guards" his way of beating Walker was fun and new.
During a livestream a little while ago, Red was talking about working on a Trope Talk that heavily uses a specific plot element from the Dragon Prince as an example. She has since released maybe three or four videos on her weeks without that one showing up, and I'm beginning to wonder how long each of these have to be baked before they're ready for us to see. These videos really do take a lot of work, don't they?
The brutal reality of content creation is something you've spent an inordinate amount of time on will be presented to an audience who will devour it in relative seconds, burp in your face, bluntly tell you how they felt about it, and then say, "got anymore?"
And them asking if you have anything else is the best possible scenario.
The Concept of a Prison as an unsolvable puzzle is very interesting, because, fundamentally, that's kinda the Point...
Prisons aren't build to have Prisoners just leave, they are literally designed to contain people...
But at the same time, people don't like being imprisoned... And that makes the Plot so interesting... How do the characters deal with their imprisonment, and how do they escape...
In more morally good prisons, it can also give us an interesting glimpse into how the actual criminals deal with their crimes, and their Punishment...
It's a good glimpse into the Prison's/Government's Justice System, too!
Yay, glad that Andor is in the thumbnail! One the best TV shows in recent memory.
It just occurred to me that Avatar: The Last Airbender seems to feature at least one of every trope.
If this video doesn't mention the Leverage prison break episode, I will eat my hat.
4:20 Aaaaand there it is. Love me a good Leverage reference.
5:40 Literally just draws Eliot and Parker. Classic.
the true tragedy of this episode is that not enough of six of crows has been adapted to screen and red could only use one measly clip
One piece's impel down arc still has to be one of the best prison breaks ever
Octopath Traveler II has a pretty good one at the start of Osvald's story. It's pretty cool how Osvald (one of the 8 main characters of the game and the scholar of the group) manages to break out of a cold and unforgiving maximum security prison in a freezing, remote island using his wits and intellect as a scholar to study the prison thoroughly and plot an elaborate escape plan during 5 years of brutal incarceration, so that he can eventually exact his revenge against Harvey, a jealous former colleague of his who took everything from him and framed him for murdering his wife and daughter. And that's just the first chapter of his character arc.
13:11 Honestly even the last one can make sense. Just look at Ghost Trick!!!
"Every journey beings with a single step...This - is step one!"
"Secure the keys!"
"Whats step two!?"
@@mayhem436ASCEND FROM DARKNESS
@@SuperNeos2 "Step three!"
I remember doing the prison break in Far Cry New Dawn...and it was incredibly simple in concept. However, it still felt really cool. Like, "Those fools thought they could lock me up and make my name Chudwaffle? Well, I wonder how they'll feel when they find 7 of their guards dead and Chudwaffle is suddenly nowhere to be found".
I've played many stealth sections in games (most of them forced) but the fact that this was me breaking out of prison made it inherently more fun.
13:06 A common baked-in weak point is that the prison was originally built as something else, and then re-purposed into a prison. Alcatraz, for instance.
Or more broadly as a caper theme, several times in Zahn’s “Blackcollar” trilogy.
There are two prison breaks aside from Shawshank that come to mind:
The one with Captain Cold and Heat Wave
And the Boiling Isles Prison Break.
They also had a prison break episode in shows like Leverage and Burn Notice. Good episodes, too.
4:49 Sharks with Laser beams on their HEADS! 🤩