History Main / PrisonEscapeArtist

* In ''Film/{{Cube}}'', Rennes is a french escape artist known for getting out of jails. [[spoiler:Subverted when he triggers a fatal booby trap shortly after he's introduced. There'll be no easy way out of the Cube, folks.]]

* An OlderThanFeudalism example: future Sassanian (Persian) [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavad_I Shah Kavad I]][[note]]father of the more famous [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khosrow_I Khosrow I Anushiruwaan]], the long-time opponent of Eastern Roman (Byzantine) [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justinian_I Emperor Justinian I]] and generally considered the most significant emperor of the Sassanian Empire[[/note]] was placed into the 'Prison of Oblivion' by his uncle, Shah Sukhra. This prison proved to be rather inaccurately named, as he would escape from it, overthrowing his uncle and taking the throne himself. After a revolt among the nobles, Kavad was deposed and put back into the Prison of Oblivion - which [[WebAnimation/ExtraCredits continued to be very very bad at containing Kavads]], as he swiftly escaped and returned to power.

* Patrick "Paddy" Mitchell was the leader of the notorious "Stopwatch Gang" of bank robbers in the 1970s and 1980s. After they were finally caught, he escaped from prison three times in ingenious ways. After his last escape he hid out in the Philipines for 15 years before returning to the US and being arrested in 1994. He never escaped again and died in prison in 2006.

* Convicted murderer Richard Lee [=McNair=] managed to escape from authorities three times in three different decades from three different facilities. In 1988, he escaped from Minot Police station in North Dakota by using lip balm from his pocket as a lubricant to squeeze out of his handcuffs and then running out of the station, leading police on a three hours foot chase before he was caught. In 1992, he escaped from North Dakota State Penitentiary in Bismarck, North Dakota by crawling through an air duct in an education room until he reached the roof of the building, where he made his way across several more roofs until he dropped down outside the prison wall, earning himself 10 months of freedom before he was apprehended again. Transferred to the federal bureau of prisons after his second escape, he managed to escape from federal prison in Louisiana in 2006. [=McNair=] had a job in the prison manufacturing yard repairing old mail bags. He made his escape by constructing a special "escape pod", which he hid himself in on a pallet beneath a pile of mail bags. The pallet was shrink wrapped with him in it and taken to a warehouse outside the prison, where he cut his way out and escaped as soon as the work crew left. After escaping, [=McNair=] was stopped while jogging on railroad tracks by police officer Carl Bordelon. Bordelon had been assigned to look for [=McNair=] after the prison authorities discovered he was missing. But amazingly, after a 10-minute interview (which can now be seen on youtube), Bordelon let him go, completely unaware the person he was talking to was in fact the fugitive he was looking for. After this escape, [=McNair=] was able to remain free until October of 2007, when he was arrested in Canada by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and extradited back to the United States.

* The cast of ''Series/HogansHeroes'' break out of Stalag 13 so often that Klink might as well have just given them the keys to the front gate. And then they break back in when they're done with whatever business they had outside the camp, because it's in their long-term interests to let the Germans think that they're still locked up.
** One episode also has a career EscapeArtist (a former stage performer before the war) intentionally get caught and thrown into Stalag 13 as part of a long-term fame-building ploy to break out of every P.O.W. camp in Germany. This creates a problem for Hogan and his team, because Stalag 13's artificial status as The Alcatraz is the ''only'' thing keeping the German High Command from replacing Klink with someone far more competent.

** SelfDemonstrating/TheJoker is this among [[AxCrazy other]] [[TheSociopath things]]. Not only does he often break out of [[CardboardPrison Arkham]], he initiated a jailbreak from [[TheAlcatraz The Slab]] during ''[[ComicBook/JokersLastLaugh The Last Laugh]]'' storyline. In the case of The Slab, no one had been able to escape from it before. Even when he was put in a room with no entrances or exits, he still escaped...somehow.

* Wallace Nussbaum, the "Napoleon of Crime" of [[Creator/DanielPinkwater Daniel Pinkwater's]] Snarkout Boys series, breaks out of prison at least once per book and is implied to have done so more times. One book has him escaping from the supposedly inescapable Devil's Island.

* Convicted murderer Richard Lee [=McNair=] managed to escape from authorities three times in three different decades from three different facilities. In 1988, he escaped from Minot Police station in North Dakota by using lip balm from his pocket as a lubricant to squeeze out of his handcuffs and then running out of the station, leading police on a three hours foot chase before he was caught. In 1992, he escaped from North Dakota State Penitentiary in Bismarck, North Dakota by crawling through an air duct in an education room until he reached the roof of the building, where he made his way across several more roofs until he dropped down outside the prison wall, earning himself 10 months of freedom before he was apprehended again. Transferred to the federal bureau of prisons after his second escape, he managed to escape from federal prison in Louisiana in 2006. McNair had a job in the prison manufacturing yard repairing old mail bags. He made his escape by constructing a special "escape pod", which he hid himself in on a pallet beneath a pile of mail bags. The pallet was shrink wrapped with him in it and taken to a warehouse outside the prison, where he cut his way out and escaped as soon as the work crew left. After escaping, [=McNair=] was stopped while jogging on railroad tracks by police officer Carl Bordelon. Bordelon had been assigned to look for [=McNair=] after the prison authorities discovered he was missing. But amazingly, after a 10-minute interview (which can now be seen on youtube), Bordelon let him go, completely unaware the person he was talking to was in fact the fugitive he was looking for. After this escape, [=McNair=] was able to remain free until October of 2007, when he was arrested in Canada by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and extradited back to the United States.

* Ikey Solomon, the (partial) model for [[TheFagin Fagin]] in ''OliverTwist.''

* An episode of ''Series/MurdochMysteries'' has HarryHoudini, expert at escaping anything, escape from jail no less than three times after being a murder suspect.

* ''Anime/LupinIII'' escapes from prison multiple times. The second episode of the red jacket series has him get himself, Jigen, and Goemon locked up to create an alibi for a theft, which meant they would have to break out ''and'' in before anyone noticed they were missing.

* In an episode of ''BarneyMiller'' Barney is told by a snitch where an infamous prison escape artist is hiding out. He had been sentenced to 5 years for robbery 30 years earlier, but his sentence kept getting extended because of his frequent breakouts. The escape artist has decided to hang it up; although he does break out of the holding cell in the squadroom at one point in order to use the restroom. Nobody notices until he saunters back and locks himself up again.

[[AC: {{Anime}} And {{Manga}}]]
* Gunther Milch from ''Manga/{{Monster}}'' escaped twelve times prior to when he was introduced.

[[AC: {{Comics}}]]

[[AC: {{Film}}]]
* ''Film/TheGreatEscape'', the FilmOfTheBook based on the RealLife event. The inhabitants of the Nazi prison camp are the best escape artists among captured Allied soldiers, and Roger Bartlett (AKA "Big X") is the best organizer of escape attempts among them.
* Both ''Pour Elle'', a French thriller about a man attempting to break his wife out of jail and its English-language remake, ''Film/TheNextThreeDays'', feature one of these characters. In the latter, he's played by Creator/LiamNeeson.
* Frank Morris in ''Film/EscapeFromAlcatraz''.
* ''Film/ILoveYouPhillipMorris'' is based around Steven Jay Russell, a real life conman who has escaped prison multiple times in increasingly creative ways.

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[[AC: LiveActionTV]]
* The ''Series/SpacePrecinct'' episode "Two Against The Rock" featured a psychic alien Prison Escape Artist, who was rather inconspicuously named [[MeaningfulName Houdini]].
* River Song in ''Series/DoctorWho''. In the 2011 series so far, she has been shown exiting and entering Stormcage prison at will, even stopping to pick up a phone and holler over the klaxons, "Oh turn it off, I'm breaking in, not out!"
* Parodied with Major Errol Phipps in the ''Series/RippingYarns'' episode "Escape from Stalag Luft 112B".
* Michael Scofield from ''Series/PrisonBreak''.

[[AC: NewspaperComics]]
* The Spook in ''ComicStrip/TheWizardOfId'' is always escaping, but he's always caught again soon afterwards, usually because his plan backfired on him.

[[AC: TabletopRPG]]
* One of the prisoners, Axel Herrmon, from ''TabletopGame/{{Traveller}}'' Classic adventure 8 ''Prison Planet'' has escaped from the Imperial prison facility on Newcomb and another prison as well.

[[AC: VideoGames]]

[[AC:WesternAnimation]]

[[AC: RealLife]]
* As dramatized in ''Film/EscapeFromAlcatraz'', Frank Morris is a RealLife example, rendering ''every single prison'' he was held in as cardboard, including, you guessed it, Alcatraz. As despite what prison officials said (that he and his two co-escapees drowned) they NeverFoundTheBody, we can only assume that he's gone straight and is living a normal life under an assumed name... assuming he's still alive, that is (he did escape in June 1962, after all).

So you have a criminal. They have been caught, and they are going to the slammer. Justice has been served. Right?

If the criminal is a Prison Escape Artist, then absolutely not. To them, [[CardboardPrison prisons might as well be made of cardboard.]] They can wiggle their way out of anything. Yes, [[BeyondTheImpossible even prisons that are supposedly impossible to break out of]] such as TheAlcatraz. If you build a TailorMadePrison just for them, it will fail. Several methods can be used to achieve their escapes, including [[TunnelKing digging their way out]], [[AirventPassageway making use of air vents]], and [[TrojanPrisoner having some friends come in disguised as guards]], among others.

-->-- '''Colonel Von Lugen''', ''Film/TheGreatEscape''

->''"This man, Ashley-Pitt, for example. Caught in the North Sea, escaped, recaptured, escaped, recaptured. Archibald ''Archie'' Ives: 11 escape attempts. Even tried to jump out of the truck coming here. Dickes, William. Known to have participated in digging of 11 escape tunnels. Flight Lieutenant Willinski: four escapes. [=MacDonald=]: nine. Hendley, the American: five. Haynes: four. Sedgwick: seven. The list is almost endless... One man here has made 17 attempted escapes."''

* Wallace Nussbaum, the "Napoleon of Crime" of [[Creator/Daniel Pinkwater's]] Snarkout Boys series, breaks out of prison at least once per book and is implied to have done so more times. One book has him escaping from the supposedly inescapable Devil's Island.

* Creator/TerryPratchett's ''Literature/TheLastContinent'' gives us Tinhead Ned, based loosely on the real life Ned Kelly and Jack Sheppard. Sir Pterry's Ned was an inveterate sheep thief who kept getting caught, but who kept escaping just before he was hanged. Eventually they stopped locking him up and just hanged him as soon as they caught up with him. But Rincewind learns his secret when he himself is locked in Ned's cell. [[spoiler:Not only are the hinges on the ''inside'' of the door, but they're simple pin hinges. Any prisoner can just lift the door straight out of the hinges, then slot it back in place once he's out.]]

* Houdini did this as an advertising stunt. A typical example would him going to a police station, saying 'your cell can't hold me'. The would lock him in and he would get out and everyone would hear about it and go to his show.