History Main / ShirtlessCaptives

[[caption-width-right:237: A captive Batman relieved of his shirt by Rais al-Ghoul]]

It can be a prelude to, if not an integral part of: WorkingOnTheChainGang, MadeASlave,GalleySlave,

For some reason, captors often find it necessary to [[ShirtlessScene relieve male prisoners of their shirts.]] There's some question as to whether this is due to the need to prevent them from hiding a means of escape, a form of humiliation or punishment, or if the captors enjoy providing fanservice.

This is almost [[AlwaysMale entirely a male character trope]] for [[NipleAndDimed obvious reasons]].

It can be a prelude to, if not an integral part of: WorkingOnTheChainGang, MadeASlave,

For some reason, captors often find it necessary to relieve male prisoners of their shirts. There's some question as to whether this is due to the need to prevent them from hiding a means of escape, a form of humiliation or punishment, or if the captors enjoy providing fanservice.

This is almost [[AlwaysMale entirely a male character trope.]]

This is almost entirely a male character trope.

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* ''Series/BikerMiceFromMars''

* ''Series/HerculesTheLegendaryJourneys'': Hercules (Kevin Sorbo) and Ioluus run into monsters and get into a fight in which Iolaus is stabbed and dies by one of the monsters, which turn out to be women dressed in animal-like armor. Herc is so distraught that he gets captured by these Amazons. They tear his shirt off, yoke him, gag him and bind him to a sled and parade him into town. Everyone gawks at the hunk of man being shown off like some trophy. They bring Herc to see the Queen who interrogates Herc and beats him up a bit. He also spends some time in a cage.

* ''Action Jackson'' (1988). Jerich "Action" Jackson (Carl Weathers) is captured by the bad guys when his girlfriend is taken hostage. The next time we see him, his shirt is off and his wrists are tied to the ceiling of a car factory. His chief captor explains they plan to stage a car accident, and need to burn him alive to make it look convincing. He is saved at the very last minute. No explanation ever given even in the grand explication for why it is necessary for him to be bare-chested.

* ''Action Jackson'' (1988). Used by the Invisible Men to kill a witness, with a silenced gun held behind the ClipboardOfAuthority.

[[quoteright:237:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/demonsquestshirt_4665.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:237: A captive Batman relieved of his shirt by Rais al-Ghoul]]

For some reason, captors often find it necessary to relieve male prisoners of their shirts. There's some question as to whether this is due to the need to prevent them from hiding a means of escape, a form of humiliation or punishment, or if the captors enjoy providing fanservice.

This is almost entirely a male character trope.

!!Examples

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* ''Action Jackson'' (1988). Used by the Invisible Men to kill a witness, with a silenced gun held behind the ClipboardOfAuthority.
* ''RamboFirstBloodPartII'' Rambo enters post-war Vietnam to scout for living American POWs. When confronted by the Vietnamese military, his superiors in Washington decide not to come to his rescue and he is surrounded by soldiers brandishing assault weapons as an American helicopters leaves without him. The next time we see Rambo, he is in a pit of animal waste and mud, submerged to his neck and chained to a yoke at the wrists.Then, the Russians show up. They clean Rambo up and return him his pants and boots, while he remains shirtless, and then lead him in for a preliminary interrogation with our Russian friend with a piano wire about his neck and bound hands. The Russian talks to Rambo and basically tells him that they're going to torture him and execute him, to which Rambo replies with a stoic curse. Then, they strap him to an old bed frame and hook it up to electricity, giving Rambo a shocking time. Eventually, Rambo's Vietnamese girlfriend shows up with weapons and breaks him out.
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* ''Series/HerculesTheLegendaryJourneys'': Hercules (Kevin Sorbo) and Ioluus run into monsters and get into a fight in which Iolaus is stabbed and dies by one of the monsters, which turn out to be women dressed in animal-like armor. Herc is so distraught that he gets captured by these Amazons. They tear his shirt off, yoke him, gag him and bind him to a sled and parade him into town. Everyone gawks at the hunk of man being shown off like some trophy. They bring Herc to see the Queen who interrogates Herc and beats him up a bit. He also spends some time in a cage.
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[[quoteright:350:[[Series/{{Lost}} http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m99sj5YRDA1r5vxxg.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:[[{{Squee}} AAAHH! MY ESTROGENS!]]]]

[[quoteright:350:[[Series/{{Lost}} http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/l356cbf7a0001_1_14338_9530.jpg]]]]

* ''Series/HerculesTheLegendaryJourneys''Hercules (Kevin Sorbo) and Ioluus run into monsters and get into a fight in which Iolaus is stabbed and dies by one of the monsters, which turn out to be women dressed in animal-like armor. Herc is so distraught that he gets captured by these Amazons. They tear his shirt off, yoke him, gag him and bind him to a sled and parade him into town. Everyone gawks at the hunk of man being shown off like some trophy. They bring Herc to see the Queen who interrogates Herc and beats him up a bit. He also spends some time in a cage.

* ''Hercules: The Legendary Journeys'' Hercules (Kevin Sorbo) and Ioluus run into monsters and get into a fight in which Iolaus is stabbed and dies by one of the monsters, which turn out to be women dressed in animal-like armor. Herc is so distraught that he gets captured by these Amazons. They tear his shirt off, yoke him, gag him and bind him to a sled and parade him into town. Everyone gawks at the hunk of man being shown off like some trophy. They bring Herc to see the Queen who interrogates Herc and beats him up a bit. He also spends some time in a cage.

* ''RamboFirstBloodPartII'' and ''Rambo III'' gave John Rambo the [[RonaldReagan Reagan]]-esque patriotism that the previously disenchanted with America character has since become famous for.

* ''Film/XMenTheLastStand'' blurs the line between this and the TailorMadePrison with the government's mobile prison-van. [[VoluntaryShapeshifting Mystique]] is kept behind bars ''and'' with her hands shackled to the ceiling. [[TheJuggernaut Juggernaut]] and [[MesACrowd Multiple Man]] both got locked in standing metal coffins to seal off their abilities. The guards on the van were also armed with weaponized [[KryptoniteFactor Mutant Cure]].

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* ''{{Zipang}}'' diverges from history in the wake of the Battle of Midway when a modern Japanese Aegis destroyer is sent back to 1942 by a NegativeSpaceWedgie.
%% Code Geass is not this trope. It's Never Was This Universe--there are far too many points where the timeline diverges from ours. Commented in in order to keep people from trying to re-add Code Geass as an example here, and Code Geass is already an example on the Never Was This Universe trope.
* The world of ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'' (or at least that of [[Anime/FullmetalAlchemist the 2003 anime adaptation]]) diverged from the normal world when alchemy was discovered.

* ''Comicbook/{{Watchmen}}'': The exact point of divergence seems to be the presence of "costume heroes", which isn't ''too'' fantastic ([[BadassNormal none of them have any superpowers]]), but most of the really major differences can be attributed to [[PhysicalGod Dr. Manhattan]], whose appearance marks the point where the course of global politics and history dramatically shift, like the US winning the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar, or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan put on hold for awhile.
* ''{{Marvel 1602}}'' has everything fairly normal up until the future MarvelUniverse suddenly imposes itself on the past.
* One alternative world TheAuthority fought diverged when blue-skinned aliens arrived in Italy during the Renaissance.
* In the MarvelUniverse, [[ComicBook/BlackPanther Wakanda]] is one such example. Thanks to a meteor of {{Unobtainium}}, the Wakandan people developed advanced technology early, and thus were never colonized by European nations.
* The crashed alien spaceship in {{Comicbook/Miracleman}}.
* ''ComicBook/{{Uber}}'': Shortly before the Fall of Berlin, the Nazis develop superpeople using alien technology. Subsequent developments, in a deconstruction of StupidJetpackHitler, are carefully thought through and extremely depressing.

* ''FanFic/AScotsmanInEgypt,'' an epic TotalWar AfterActionReport, starts off with two drunk Scottish princes invading Egypt... and ''winning.'' And they (and their successors) [[TakeOverTheWorld don't stop there.]]

* ''TheFinalCountdown'' and a few imitators also have some sort of NegativeSpaceWedgie toss an individual, a country, or a military force back or forward in time so they can change history.
** ''TheFinalCountdown'' was a StableTimeLoop. Imitators, however, may not include this aspect.
* Possibly referenced in ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueCrisisOnTwoEarths''; when Superwoman is trying to decide which alternate Earth to send Batman to, she glosses over one where humanity has "mutated into hideous winged creatures of the night".
* ''Film/XMenFirstClass'' reenacted the Cuban Missile Crisis with mutants in the middle.

* The ''Literature/SixteenThirtyTwo'' series has a small modern American town physically relocated to 17th-century Germany by some process that the author discusses no further than to vaguely say that advanced physics could probably explain it. It does give a tiny bit of exposition about the Space Bats in question (an alien species that thinks of creating temporal anomalies as being True Art), and notes that eventually, they get their just desserts at our descendants' hands for the general hazard their art poses, but that's all in the prologue, after which they never appear again.
* John Birmingham's ''Literature/AxisOfTime'' trilogy, inspired by ''TheFinalCountdown'' (see above), depicts a military task force that gets sent [[TimeTravel back in time]] from 2021 to 1942 as a result of a failed experiment on one of the ships in the task force.
** ''Without Warning'' and its sequel ''After America'' also by John Birmingham, set in 2003 and after, features a wave of unknown energy that causes the population of most of North America to be suddenly disintegrated. Other, non-primate animals are either unaffected or destroyed on a seemingly random basis.
* In HarryTurtledove's ''TheGunsOfTheSouth'', the Confederate States win the UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar because time-traveling South Africans give them AK-47s.
** ''Ravage'' uses an identical premise, but falls under the category of future rather than AlternateHistory, as it takes place in the 21st century and was written in 1943.
** The (nowadays less-known) likely progenitor of the "CSA victory" variation of AlternateHistory, ''Literature/BringTheJubilee'' by Ward Moore, [[{{PlayingWithTropes}} utilizes the trope with a twist.]] The basic premise is a classic example: history is changed by a time traveller affecting [[{{ForWantOfANail}} one small event]] (accidentally, in this case). The twist is that we're shown the AlternateReality throughout the novel, while the actual time travel experiment with its consequences occurs near the end - the reason being that [[spoiler: in-universe, the historical reality ''was'' a Confederate victory (for wholly mundane and plausible reasons) and the AlternateReality of a dominant CSA is the actual reality in the novel. The result of the time traveller's actions is the emergence of an alternate timeline in which the USA won - i.e., our real world ''is'' the alternate reality in the novel's universe.]]
* The ''Literature/BelisariusSeries'' is a good example; its divergence is the result of warring [=AIs=] [-FROM THE FUTURE-].
** Let's be accurate: Its divergence is the result of warring [=AIs=] [-FROM THE FUTURE-], one of which was sent to [[RetGone prevent any timeline close to the one it came from]] and the other of which was sent back [[TimePolice to stop it]].
* The major point of divergence in the ''WildCards'' franchise is the outbreak of the eponymous virus on Earth, which bestows superpowers on its victims (that is, if you can avoid the [[SuperpowerRussianRoulette horrible death part]]).
* In an intentional {{homage}} to this trope, Creator/KenMacLeod's ''Learning the World'' is set on a planet inhabited by actual Alien Space Bats -- to whom humans are the mysterious alien visitors who change the course of history.
* Creator/KimNewman's ''Literature/AnnoDracula'' series and Creator/NeilGaiman's ''AStudyInEmerald'' have respectively {{Dracula}} and Creator/HPLovecraft's [[EldritchAbomination Old Ones]] as rulers of TheBritishEmpire instead of Queen Victoria. In Newman's, Dracula does this with Victoria's own approval, as her regent.
* SMStirling is noted for this trope, probably because he was a regular reader of the newsgroup where the term was coined:
** ''Literature/TheDraka'' has the initial divergence of American and French royalists being sent to the fictional colony of Drakia. It then has a number of others, such as the existence of an incredibly complete cache of classical literature in Western Africa, and the spontaneous appearance of several technological advances in a culture with little incentive to have them. For example, they send steam-powered warcars to help the Confederacy, and have enough dirigibles to launch an air raid that kills 50,000 people against Russia in the 1880s. They also have atomic bombs by 1944, but so does the United States.
** ''IslandInTheSeaOfTime'' starts with the Event: Alien Space Bats sending Nantucket (and a big ellipse of ocean surrounding the island) [[TimeTravel back in time]] to the Bronze Age.
** The ''{{Emberverse}}'' novels: in the 1998 from which Nantucket was taken, the same Alien Space Bats cause all industrial-level technology to become useless. {{Lampshade}}d as some of the characters explicitly use the term "Alien Space Bats" as a label for whatever unknown force caused most human technology to suddenly stop working.
** ''The Sword of the Lady'', these particular Bats are revealed to be [[spoiler: the ''Mind'', essentially the Jungian Universal Subconscious having an argument with itself]].
** ''TheLordsOfCreation'' series is set in an alternate history where Mars and Venus are habitable (having been made so centuries ago by the eponymous advanced alien race, for reasons not yet revealed).
* HarryTurtledove's ''Literature/WorldWar[=/=]Colonisation'' books - the point of divergence is aliens invading during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.
* In the RogerZelazny book ''Roadmarks'', the [[TimeTravel time-traveling]] main character keeps attempting this to fix Thermopylae (in the story the Greeks lost) but the TimePolice keep catching him.
* Elizabeth Bear's '' [[Literature/NewAmsterdamBooks New Amsterdam]]'' has alien space bats in the form of magic warcraft used by Native Americans, preventing Europeans from settling the Americas except spottily along the coasts.
* ''Thor Meets Captain America'' by Creator/DavidBrin has Nazi Germany essentially winning World War II because they were able to summon the Norse gods to fight on their side. [[spoiler:They ultimately lose it all when Loki - whose titles include "The Ever-Contrary" - betrays them.]] AlienSpaceBats was used to make a point here: this was the ''most plausible scenario'' the author could think of that would have the Nazis winning.
* Steven White's ''Saint Antony's Fire'' starts off with Ponce de Leon discovering the wreck of an interdimensional UFO, quickly followed by the resurrected aliens allowing the Spanish Armada to successfully invade England.
* Naomi Novik's ''Literature/{{Temeraire}}'' series is set in the Napoleonic Wars in a universe where ''dragons'' exist and are widely used by humans, especially militaries. The AlternateHistory elements are [[InSpiteOfANail not immediately apparent]], but there are numerous key differences; the Incans, for instance, are a major world power because of their dragons, and the Chinese, far from being in decline and getting bullied by Western powers, are one of the major players in the war as both sides try to enlist their aid, or at the very least keep them from joining the other side.

* A few ''{{Sliders}}'' episodes fell into this, with worlds where physical laws permitted magic and wizardry and dragons, whereas other worlds were ForWantOfANail. Still other worlds the Sliders visited combined these aspects.
** Interestingly, only one world had an event that fits the "alien" bit. According to the show, all those alien conspiracies on other worlds are actually true. The only difference on this world is that the government went public with FirstContact and established open trade with the Reticulans, resulting in many technological advances (including a virtual panacea, anti-gravity, and a manned mission to Mars). Disappointingly, the characters themselves don't actually get to meet any aliens. The best they get is a human who looks part-Reticulan thanks to a side effect of the panacea drug (his blood is also green).

* Alison Brooks introduced the alien bats to [=soc.history.what-if=] in her AlternateHistory spoof ''[[http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/bc76081aecbfec13?hl=en Irony And Steal]]''. Here, the bats descend on Manchester, England at the start of the Napoleonic Wars, having learned how to [[AliensSpeakingEnglish speak English]] from [[AliensStealCable listening to future radio broadcasts]], and supply tanks to Britain with which it can defeat France at El Alamein. Silliness ensues, including the Russian Czar marrying a bat, [[ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld dirigible arms races]], [[RichardNixonTheUsedCarSalesman Lenin becoming a baseball player]], and alien mutant ninja turtles replacing the population of Australia.
* On the Spacebattles forums, an entire section of the site is dedicated to what they call "Random Omnipotent Beings," or "[=ROBs=]" doing precisely this, starting off many role-play threads.

* The {{GURPS}} "Infinite Worlds" campaign has two major opposed alternate-reality-jumping factions (Homeline, our world circa 2027 if [[AppliedPhlebotinum paratemporal technology]] had been invented in 1994, and Centrum, a recovered post-apocalyptic OneWorldOrder of {{Straw Vulcan}}s with similar tech) often act as AlienSpaceBats in other timelines to further their own interests (which right now is mostly screwing up the rival faction). The players are probably going to work for one or the other.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'' has two small ones and one big one;
** In 1999, the Supreme Court grants certain major corporations the right to form ''private armies'' as "ex post facto" justification for ending a vicious food riot with a massacre instead of permitting the rioters to accidentally start an outbreak by eating hazardous medical waste. It's implied that the "[[http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Seretech_Decision Seretech Decision]]" was planned in advance from riot to lawsuit, because it's kind of stupid to transport hazardous medical waste through Manhattan during a food riot...
** Especially because the same year, the NRC was forced to give another corporation its own ''nuclear power plant'' rather than be accused of graft. And the corporation was able to spin an ecoterrorist attack on the plant into nationhood(the "[[http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Shiawase_Decision Shiawase Decision]]") by saying they'd have been able to protect the place better with mercenaries instead of local cops. And an attempt by the ecoterrorist group to clear their name is interrupted by a bombing believed to be the first shadowrun.
** The ''real'' ASB is when TheMagicComesBack in 2011...
* ''TabletopGame/{{Deadlands}}: The Weird West'' starts with a vindictive Native American shaman unleashing SealedEvilInACan, which leads to all sorts of weirdness, like the Battle of Gettsyburg being interrupted by zombies, and a huge earthquake splitting southwest California into a series of canyons lined with a new mineral called "ghost rock", which is basically coal that burns more efficiently but also makes creepy noises. And that's just for starters...

This is almost entirely a male character trope.