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  • 24: This will frequently happen to characters like Damsel Scrappy. Kim Bauer, daughter of Jack Bauer, was captured, bound, and gagged by the bad guys no less than three times over the course of the series. And once more in the video game, to boot.
  • Agatha Raisin: In "Agatha and the Wizard of Evesham", the killer uses duct tape to gag Agatha and bind her to her to a hairdressing chair.
  • Angel. Happens whenever Cordelia is captured. Usually in a futile effort to shut her up.
  • The Avengers (1960s): Emma Peel. Routinely. The only times she ever seems remotely put out by this is when it looks like a related Death Trap might go off while she's still, ah, indisposed.
  • Batman (1966): This happened quite a lot to several characters throughout the course of this show. The Dynamic Duo were often tied up during the cliffhangers, although they were gagged only a few times. And after being introduced at the beginning of the third season, Batgirl was tied up (while sometimes being gagged) quite a few times as well.
  • Better Call Saul: Jimmy McGill gets tied up tightly by Lalo Salamanca, who thinks Jimmy had something to do with the assault on his home, and gags him while Jimmy is the middle of trying to tell him it wasn't him, it was Ignacio. All this explains why Saul Goodman was so terrified at being kidnapped by Walt and Jesse in Breaking Bad, a part of his brain is always going to be trapped in that moment.
  • Billions: The very first scene of the series has Paul Giamatti in said situation. It turns out to be a session with a dominatrix - who is also his wife!
  • Blake's 7 shows that this trope doesn't work if the Damsel in Distress is telepathic and so doesn't need a voice to call for help.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer
    • Dawn, Buffy, Spike, and others get tied a few times throughout the series.
    • Glory is introduced interrogating a bound and gagged monk as an Establishing Character Moment; she's so self-centered it takes her a while to realise he can't answer her questions with the gag in his mouth.
  • Burn Notice: Features an interesting variation, in which Fiona willingly gets this treatment, and stuffed in a trunk, to convince the villain of the week that Michael is a dangerous criminal. Several minor characters have been similarly tied up as bait in one of Michael's plans as well. And then there's Mike pretending to be a crack addict, letting Sam tie him up and pretend to torture him.
  • By Any Means: In 1x03, Jack knocks out the Colombian ambassador's chauffeur and leaves him bound and gagged with duct tape when he 'borrows' the ambassador's limo.
  • Castle: One episode sees the main character being bound and gagged by his daughter to see how he can escape for a book idea. Said daughter takes the chance to empty his wallet to go shopping.
  • Cowboy Bebop (2021). In "Sad Clown A-Go-Go", Vicious plans to kill the leaders of The Syndicate by having his fellow capos Mao and Santiago hand him over as a Play-Along Prisoner, whereupon he will throw off his fake handcuffs and kill the Elders. However they betray Vicious and he's handed over gagged and in shackles. But when Mao cuts off Vicious' head she discovers she's just killed Santiago wearing a Holographic Disguise; Vicious (wearing a similar disguise to make himself appear to be Santiago) knew they would betray them, overpowered Santiago and swapped places, binding and gagging Santiago so he wouldn't give the game away.
  • Criminal Minds features many UnSubs who do this to their victims. On the main character side, we have Morgan ("Our Darkest Hour"/"The Longest Night"), Reid (three times), Hotch ("LDSK"), Prentiss ("Minimal Loss"/"Lauren") and Blake ("The Replicator").
  • Criminologist Himura and Mystery Writer Arisugawa:
    • After Moroboshi's assertion that she could easily manipulate Nanba, the scene cuts to her followers driving a truck with two handcuffed and gagged women inside — later revealed to be Nanba's wife and daughter, held hostage in exchange for Moroboshi's release from prison.
    • Arisugawa is grabbed off the street and chloroformed in "Execution in the Basement". He wakes up tied to a chair, and is then gagged by his captors when he starts to make a racket.
  • CSI: Subverted in one episode where there was an apparent robbery of priceless antiques with the guard bound with a long length of duct tape. However Gil Grissom's first clue that the robbery was as a fake was when he discovered that by the position of the tied up guard and nearby fixtures, the evidence strongly suggested that the guard tied himself up.
  • CSI: NY: Did it a few times...
    • With Christine, Mac's girlfriend, in "Seth and Apep," the NY half of the crossover where she was kidnapped.
    • With Camille, Sheldon's girlfriend, in "Smooth Criminal" when she was held hostage by a hired gunman.
    • Also happened to victims in "Who's There?" and "Where There's Smoke."
  • Dexter: His playmates are mostly bound and gagged when he's having his... fun with them.
  • Doctor Who:
    • This happens to one of the Doctor's companions seemingly every other episode.
    • Happens to Barbara in the first episode of "The Crusade".
    • The Third Doctor is bound and gagged in "Day of the Daleks", as is Jo Grant.
    • Romana gets tied up about five times in "The Androids of Tara", which must surely be some sort of record.
    • Adric and Turlough also got tied up, so at least the writers weren't being sexist.
    • Happens in "Frontios" to side character Norna.
    • Happens to Peri in "Mindwarp" and in the audio drama "The Macros".
    • Happens to the Doctor himself in "The Caves of Androzani", Part 3.
    • Rose gets bound in three of the first four episodes of series two of the new series. She is bound by Cassandra in "New Earth", then Chained to a Rock in "Tooth and Claw" to be eaten by the werewolf, then is bound to a torture rack in "The Girl in the Fireplace".
    • Jack gets chained up in "Last of the Time Lords".
    • "The End of Time": The Doctor gets strapped into a restraint chair. "Worst Rescue Ever!"
  • Elementary did this most notably in "A Giant Gun, Filled With Drugs" to the daughter of one of Sherlock's old friends.
  • Endeavour: In "DegĂĽello", the crooks kidnap Max in order to lure Morse into an ambush. When Morse arrives at the quarry, Max is bound and gagged and lying in the back of a builder's truck.
  • The F.B.I.: In "To Free My Enemy", a pornographer is kidnapped and his kidnappers keep him bound and gagged on the bed in the abandoned hotel they are using as a hideout.
  • Firefly: It didn't feature a whole lot of gagging, it did feature a lot of binding, particularly toward the show's resident Damsels In Distress, River and Kaylee. As a point of irony, by the time of the Big Damn Movie, River's newfound lethality allowed her to slip out of most of the binding she would have faced earlier in the series.
  • The Flash (2014): Snart and Rory leave Caitlin bound and gagged and Strapped to a Bomb in "Revenge of the Rogues".
  • The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: Played for Laughs. During a montage in which Will and Carlton are renovating an old apartment, Will gets fed up with Carlton bossing him around so he sticks him to a wall and gags him with an apple he was eating for good measure.
  • Fringe: In the episode, "August" (which reveals the existence of more than one Observer), an Observer kidnaps Christine Hollis and has her bound and gagged for most of the episode at a motel.
  • Fury: The Brave Stallion: Happens all the time to Joey and his friends.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • After Jaime's failed escape, Catelyn orders, "Take him back to his cell. Bind him with every chain you can find," then adds "...and gag him!" when he continues to snark at her.
    • Tyrion is treated to this after his capture in "The High Sparrow". Tyrion grunts constantly at his captor until he gets annoyed and removes the gag.
    • Cersei has Ellaria and Tyene Sand chained to the wall and gagged so they can't spit, curse, or beg while she taunts them about their upcoming Fate Worse than Death.
  • The Goodies
    • In "The Music Lovers", the Goodies have been kidnapped so they can produce a hit record for the Music Master. Unfortunately his brainless minions have them bound and gagged when they kept complaining, making that rather difficult.
    • In "The Goodies Rule - OK?", laughter has been banned so a husband has to tie up and then gag his wife to stop her laughing at the Goodies antics. He then ends up laughing at the sight of her like this, whereupon a government thug arrives and proceeds to beat him up.
    • In "Daylight Robbery on the Orient Express", The Reveal that the Goodies have been replaced by imposters is when they're shown giving an Evil Laugh at the sight of the real Goodies bound and gagged.
  • Gosei Sentai Dairanger: Early in the episode, Zhangliao captures Daigo, Kazu and Lin and ties them on three poles and gives each of them a gag.
  • I Love Lucy: Happens to Lucy multiple times in the series, but most notably in the episode "Lucy Cries Wolf", after constantly badgering Ricky with fake phone calls for help against local thieves, Lucy finds herself later in the episode kidnapped by two robbers. After a while a knock is heard at the Ricardo residence and it's Lucy bound from head to toe and gagged! As Ricky and the Mertzes tease her about how far she'll go to tell a lie, Lucy grumbles to let them know she really was kidnapped!
  • Jonathan Creek: In "The Sinner and the Sandman", Jonathan finds two people bound, gagged and tied to chairs, and unties them. Unfortunately for him, they are a pair of burglars the real householders had overpowered and tied up to await the police.
  • Justified:
    • Quarles likes to bind and torture male hustlers. In "The Man Behind the Curtain," Sammy Tonin mentions the rentboy back in Detroit whom Quarles left in a coma, an incident that played a role in Quarles' exile to Kentucky. Several episodes show Brady gagged, nearly naked, and bound to a bed in Quarles house before Quarles presumably kills him. At the end of "Guy Walks into a Bar," Donovan is shown bound and gagged in a bathroom as a naked Quarles approaches.
    • In "For Blood or Money", Clinton leaves both the manager of his halfway house and his mother-in-law bound and gagged in the string of crimes he commits while attempting to get to his son's 12th birthday.
  • Law & Order: Criminal Intent: In "Please Note We Are No Longer Accepting Letters of Recommendation from Henry Kissinger", a distraught woman takes over a preschool. She ties the director and a teacher to chairs and gags them. They are in the room as Goren attempts to talk her down.
  • Lost: The season 2 finale saw Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Hurley bound and gagged by the Others, though the gags were largely unnecessary.
  • The Magician: After knocking Dennis out, a hitman leaves him bound and gagged in his wheelchair as he prepares to assassinate Max in "The Manhunters".
  • Midsomer Murders:
    • In "Left for Dead", the murderer leaves Tom Barnaby bound and gagged on a mattress in the cellar. He has to be rescued by Jones.
    • In "The Dark Rider", the killer attempts to remove someone who is afraid of the dark from the line of succession by driving them into a permanent state of trauma by leaving them bound and gagged inside a priest hole.
    • In "Sting of Death", the killer places their third victim inside a sarcophagus which they start to fill with honey.
    • In "A Vintage Murder", Tina is bound and gagged and trapped in a cellar as wine begins to cascade dangerously from above.
  • Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries: Dot, Aunt Prudence and Mr Butler are gagged and tied to chairs by a killer who is waiting in ambush for Phryne in "Death at the Grand".
  • Motive: In "The Scorpion and the Frog", the murderer, who is a psychiatrist, leaves himself bound and gagged as part of a scheme to frame one his patients for murder.
  • Murder, She Wrote: In "The Murder Channel", a friend of Jessica's accidentally stumbles on a plot of some thieves. The thieves kidnap and keep her bound and gagged in the back of their van as they commit the robbery.
  • Murdoch Mysteries: In "Convalescence", Mrs Kitchen is kept bound and gagged while the criminals search her house for the missing loot.
  • NCIS: At one point or another, Jenny, Ziva, Paula Cassidy, EJ and Palmer all end up this way, not always with the gagging. It should be noted that while those are mostly female names on the list, the show does not have a fetish-based or Damsel in Distress bent. It seems to be mostly coincidence.
    • In one notable case, the team had just realized that Abby's new assistant (whom she did not want in the first place) had framed Tony for murder, and the assistant was threatening Abby with a knife when she figured out his plan. Gibbs rushed to Abby's lab, only to find an irritated Abby sitting in her chair. She pointed to her bound and gagged assistant and asked, "Now can I work alone?"
  • Odd Squad:
    • In "Fistful of Fruit Juice", Oprah, O'Donahue and Big Red are tied up by Olga when they expose her as being the culprit who has stolen the former's fruits and the latter's mailboxes. The only person she doesn't manage to catch is Yucks, who promptly blocks any escape path and stops the traitorous agent with juice.
    • In "O is Not For Over", Otto and Ohlm come across Polly Graph tied up and trapped with spider-cat string. It doesn't take them long to deduce that the rogue creature hit her stand.
    • Invoked in "20 Questions", when Oprah puts tape over her mouth to stop her from asking Backwards Bob any questions. She also offers some tape to Olympia, who promptly takes it and plasters it over her own mouth for the same reason.
    • In "Odds and Ends", Olympia, Otis, Oona and Oprah are trapped by being plastered to a wall with a large banana sticker, courtesy of Ohlm. As soon as he leaves, Olympia manages to free herself and the others by activating the "water travel mode" feature on her suit.
    • In "Odd Beginnings: Part 2", Opal, Omar and Oswald become tied up with rope by Orla's ancient Rope-inator gadget, due to the fact that she believes them to be villains. Once they answer her question to prove they're real bonafide Odd Squad agents, she lets them go and bands with them to save the 44-leaf clover.
    • In "End of the Road", Orla uses the Rope-inator gadget again, but this time, she uses it to tie up Magnet Maggie and William Ocean after they attack her and the other Mobile Unit agents and orders them to spill about The Shadow's whereabouts. They refuse, citing the No-Tattletale Code, but give the agents a hint, and when Tube Central Station begins to fall to shambles, Orla frees them and tells them to get somewhere safe.
  • Once Upon a Time:
    • In Season One, Episode 17 "Hat Trick," Emma Swan was drugged by Jefferson (aka The Mad Hatter) and woke up bound and gagged in his living room. Fortunately for her, she managed to break a nearby teacup and cut her bonds. She then discovered Mary Margaret Blanchard (aka Snow White) bound and gagged in another room in Jefferson's house. She attempted to free her but unfortunate Jefferson forced her to tie her friend back up in order to meet his demands of making his magical hat work again. Later in the episode, Emma manages to free Mary Margaret.
    • In Season 2, at the end of Episode 19 "Lacey" and the beginning of Episode 20 "The Evil Queen," Tamara reveals to Greg Mendell that she brought a "package" back from New York, opening the back of a trailer to reveal Captain Hook bound with white rope and gagged inside.
    • In Season 5 Episode 7 "Nimue," Mary Margaret is unfortunate bound and gagged again, this time by Zelena the Wicked Witch of the West after being tricked by the pregnant woman with fake contractions. The witch used Mary Margaret as a hostage in order to get the rest of the group to not attack her and carry out her plan with King Arthur.
  • Orphan Black: Alison has Donnie not only tied to a chair and gagged but blindfolded prior to trying to torture out of him whether he is her monitor or not.
  • Papiny Dochki: Maria is caught by guards, tied, and gagged.
  • Person of Interest. In "The Contingency", Detective Fusco and Leon Tao are captured by neo-Nazis who tie them up and put bondage gags in their mouths. When John Reese turns up to save them, he politely asks for them to be handed over, but says they're free to keep the gags in.
  • Power Rangers: Dino Thunder: In the Crossover Episode with Power Rangers Ninja Storm, the Ninja Rangers are called on by their mentor, who tells them of the return of their Big Bad, then gives them the power discs for their morphers. However, these discs brainwash the three and it turns out the mentor was the Big Bad in disguise. As for where the real mentor was, he was bound and gagged somewhere nearby and out of view.
  • Rebelde Way: Marizza is victim to this once Pablo kidnaps her and holds her imprisoned in his apartment. Also happened frequently in season 1 to the boys whenever the Logia appeared and captured them for interrogation (at least it happened to Manuel, Pablo, Nico and Marcos).
  • Revolution: In Episode 4, Charlie Matheson gets captured by Ray Kinsey, and ends up bound and gagged.
  • Round the Twist: In "The Whirling Derfish", Pete overhears Gribs and his lackeys discussing a plan to make Bronson, who had swallowed a magical fish that gave him the ability to swim incredibly fast, lose a swimming competition. When he confronts them about it, they promptly bind him in red tape and gag him, also keeping him from participating in said competition.
  • Scorpion: Happens to Cabe's ex-wife Rebecca when she is kidnapped in "Rogue Element".
  • A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017): In "The Bad Beginning", Count Olaf captures Sunny Baudelaire, he ties her up with rope, puts tape over her mouth, and dangles her out of a tower window in a birdcage. This seriously impedes Sunny's ability to speak, even though most people cannot understand her to begin with, but her words are still translated for the audience. However, she doesn't stay like this for very long as the Netflix series added a humorous scene in which Sunny Baudelaire and Fernald (aka the Hook-Handed Man) play poker. Despite her bonds, Sunny is still able to deal cards and she ends up winning multiple hands to which the Hook-Handed Man ends up being tied up and have tape over his mouth due to him losing the game.
  • Veronica on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, despite being an Action Girl who grew up in the jungle, is subjected to this more than anyone else in the series.
  • Sherlock: In the second episode, John and Sarah are kidnapped by Chinese gangsters and tied up, though only Sarah is gagged. Later in the second series, a CIA agent is bound and gagged with duct tape by Sherlock after he attacks Sherlock's landlady.
  • She Spies: Uses ropes and gags for its frequently-captured main characters. The show's mood is so light-hearted as to be downright corny.
  • Smallville:
    • This occurs, but they seem to like convenient unconsciousness better. Plus, the bad guys usually need the captive to talk so the gagged part is rarer.
    • Chloe gets a straight one in Checkmate though, and Clark rescues her in an epic Bullet Time Stop Motion Lighting scene.
  • Snobs: Female protagonist Abby Oakley ends up like this in episode 5 of this Australian series after she gets caught snooping by a pair of computer thieves who have managed to get her friend and fellow protagonist Marian framed for one of their thefts. She is held captive below deck on their boat, where she is tied to a chair and has her mouth taped shut, with the thieves planning to drop her off unharmed at a relatively out of the way location so that she'll have no choice but to take the long way home afterward...by which point the thieves plan to already be long gone with the money they'll have hopefully obtained from selling the stolen computers. Thanks to Marian and their titular canine companion Snobs, she is able to successfully get free and escape.
  • Sonny with a Chance: Played for Laughs, with the titular character bound and gagged by the studio manager's selfish daughter for not taking her to see Chad.
    Sonny: How come you didn't notice I was tied up!?
    Tawni: I don't know? How come you didn't notice my new nail polish? It's a two-way strike, Sonny.
    • It happens to Chad, Nico, Grady, and Tawni in another episode.
  • Strangers From Hell:
    • Moon-jo gags and ties up his victims before removing the gag to tear out their teeth.
    • Jung-hwa is tied up after she's captured.
  • Supernatural:
    • In the episode "Hunted", you would be forgiven for thinking that Dean like this was the main attraction, considering as most of the pictures released/trailers shown have him tied up. Guess they know who their audience is.
    • And when Castiel had duct-tape over his mouth in "Changing Channels", livejournal icons of the scene popped up almost instantly.
    • Supernatural also has its fair share of girls tied up, either needing to be rescued by the heroes, or having been tied up by the heroes because they are monsters or possessed by demons.
  • Teen Wolf: The hunters seem to like this method a lot, seeing as how Chris had himself and Allison bound up and gagged as a training exercise and Gerard did this to Erica and Boyd once they'd been captured.
  • Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:
    • Sarah spends almost an entire episode like this in the back of a guy's van. One wonders why he bothered with the gag at all, since every time she woke up with it on she just pulled it off.
    • Also, earlier in the series, Charlie's wife is kidnapped by Cromartie and bound and gagged in an old abandoned house.
    • Sarah's tied up by Cromartie in the episode Mr. Ferguson is Ill Today. And in the first season, Dr. Silberman ties James Ellison up and sets the house on fire to kill him.
  • Tom Turbo: An example of fantastical fare from Germany. This is a series about a talking bicycle and the random kids who help it solve mysteries, has someone tied up in more than half the episodes. That someone could be anyone from an adult who needs rescuing to one of the main child characters. Or both at the same time.
  • Top Gear: Clarkson is bound and gagged to a tree so May can make fun of... er, review the Ford GT in peace. Clarkson later gets revenge by locking May in the trunk of his own car.
  • Trace was never shy of showing victims or detectives this way. Most of the FES roster (Antonova, Amelina, Belaya, Dunaeva, Vlasova, Kotov, Lisitsyn, Tikhonov, Kholodov) were BOTH bound and gagged at one point or another.
  • Uchuu Keiji Sharivan: The villains captured four young girls. Those girls were blindfolded, tied each other, and placed in the cliff. The villains threaten to kill them if Sharivan interfere their plan.
  • Unnatural History: A fond approach for the Villains of the Week.
  • VR Troopers: Kaitlin, the Action Girl, was captured, bound, and gagged as bait to lure her friends into a Death Trap.
  • Warehouse 13: Happens to Artie of all people in the Season 1 finale. The gag is a NUKE that MacPherson put in his mouth.
  • A sketch on The Weekly with Charlie Pickering in the aftermath of the controversial raid by the Australian Federal Police on ABC headquarters has Charlie waking up in a basement tied to a chair with a bag over his head. He is interrogated by three shadowy figures silhouetted by a bright light. After Charlie vows not to tell them anything, it turns that his interrogators aren't anything to do with the AFP or intelligence. They are actually Tom, Lucy and Adam, and they were just bored.
  • The Weather: One skit sees Cricket tied up and gagged with tape in the trunk of a car. An open trunk, so that the character played by the caller can see her. She begs him to do literally anything to help, but due to the tape on her mouth, he can't hear her.
  • White Collar: Happens to Neal in season 4. Needless to say it resulted in much fangirling.
  • Wonder Woman: This happened to Diana Prince regularly. Usually she affirmed her Action Girl status by freeing herself, but occasionally was a true Damsel in Distress. Wonder Woman herself found herself in this situation by the Nazis in World War II although frequently they either didn't understand her weaknesses or disbelieved them. This rarely worked out well for Axis.
  • Episode 4 of the Saturday Morning Kids’ Show Wow opened with the hosts (Sophie Aldred and Simeon Courtie) being tied up by Sally Gunnell, as part of a Hostile Show Takeover.
  • Young Sheldon: "A Resident Advisor and the Word 'Sketchy'" ends with Sheldon taped to the wall with duct tape, with a student then taping his mouth shut.

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