Bring Him To Me - Television Tropes & Idioms

I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum — a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.

—Rule 10 of the Evil Overlord List.

A Big Bad brings the captured heroes to his/her lair — and frequently the very heart of it.

Yeah, this is always a smart idea. Bring your enemy deep into the control center of your base. There's no way he can mess things up from there...

Any simpler solution seems to be out of the question, afterall, for some reason, the Big Bad wants them alive.

Compare Kneel Before Zod.

Not to be confused with Bathe Her And Bring Her To Me.

Examples:

Comic Books

Double-subverted in the ABC Warriors comic book's 'Hell-Raiser' arc- The Big Bad brings the captured heroes to his spaceship's bridge, lampshades the trope (his Dangerously Genre Savvy speech at that point might make a good page quote, once I find it) and then immmediately springs his prepared Death Trap on them, having assumed in advance that they'd make it up there sooner or later anyway. Doubly subverted in that the heroes manage to escape, and naturally, they eventually get back to the bridge and crash the ship.

Film

Star Wars
- Return of the Jedi. The Emperor has Vader bring Luke to his throne room inside the new Death Star.
- Jabba lets in the droids, the bounty hunter, and Luke.
- Decidedly averted by Admiral Karath and Darth Malak in Knights Of The Old Republic, though. (Which is something of a surprise, for them.) While the heroes did get taken onto Karath's flagship, they were dumped on the prison level, and the higher-ups went down to interrogate them. Not that it helped, naturally...
James Bond:
- Happens to Bond and his Bond Girl in Moonraker, but I think it was more the henchmen's idea, since that's just where the Villain happened to be. Good thing, tho, because it allowed Bond to get near the controls and... well, you know.
- You Only Live Twice. Bond is captured while impersonating a SPECTRE astronaut and brought to the control center on Blofeld's orders.
- Diamonds Are Forever. Bond arranges to be captured by Blofeld on his oil rig headquarters. Blofeld has him brought into his office and later the command center.
- Goldfinger. After capturing Bond in Europe, Goldfinger has him brought to his horse ranch in the U.S., the control center for Operation Grand Slam.
- The Spy Who Loved Me. A variation - after capturing Bond Girl Major Amasova, Stromberg takes her to his headquarters, "Atlantis" to gloat over her and stick her in a skimpy outfit. Bond later follows and saves her.
- Goldeneye. Bond, having been captured, is brought into the villain's control room. Just to make sure nothing can go wrong, this room also contains copious supplies of aviation fuel and supercooled liquids.
In Star Trek First Contact, the Borg Queen has Data brought to the heart of the Enterprise. Of course, she has a little more than interrogation in mind If You Know What I Mean, but it all works out pretty well for the crew as a result.

Literature

Happens more than once in Animorphs; in the finale, it's part of a Xanatos Gambit on the Animorphs' part.
This trope is mentioned several times throughout the Harry Potter series.

Radio

Adventures In Odyssey: Gang leader Rodney Rathbone does this with Lucy during the "Darkness Before Dawn" arc. Jellyfish tells him what a stupid move it is.

Television

Happens in the new era Doctor Who season finales. All four of them so far.
- To be fair...
  - ... the Season One Daleks only did it indirectly by taking Rose hostage and actually tried to fight him on his way there, and his presence in their era at all was orchestrated by one of their unwilling slaves.
  - ... of the Season Two Daleks and Cybermen, neither of them made the place their HQ until after the Doctor's arrival, and Torchwood let him come to them on his own and basically only called him a prisoner as a formality and carted off the TARDIS.
  - ... The Master in Season Three neutralized him and practically everyone else almost instantaneously once he started his evil regime, leaving only the companion to walk the Earth for a year so she could build up the psychic energy to re-empower the Doctor and save the world. The fact that he let them in at all isn't explained by them having the TARDIS keys, but merely by him being a cheeky bastard.
  - ... and Davros and the Daleks (yes, they came back again after being destroyed thrice (once offscreen) and knocked down to the Last Of His Kind once; they're tenacious little buggers) tried like the blazes to keep him away by stealing the entire planet and timeshifting it out of the normal universe via the Medusa Cascade.
- So, to sum up, the Doctor is very very good at getting into places he's not wanted, and possibly even better at being wanted in places he should have to get into.
Happens in the Firefly episode "War Stories," where Bad Boss Niska orders his men to bring Mal and Wash to the torture chamber in the heart of his space station.
Happens so often in Kim Possible that it might be an unspoken villain tradition.
- It probably is: everyone seems very keen to stick to such tradition, and somewhat put out when they're ignored.

Video Games

In Cave Story, when the villains capture the protagonist they throw him in "The Labyrinth", which just HAPPENS to contain the engine which keeps the floating island afloat. Apparently, the people who originally made the Labyrinth threw in enough safeguards around the Core that the villains felt they could use the Labyrinth as a prison as well. And since destroying the Core is a nigh-suicidal tactic, the villains don't expect the protagonist to attack it.
Fallout 3 - The PC is taken to Raven Rock, the Enclave's Capitol Wasteland HQ. Although at first President Eden allows you to come up to talk, Colonel Autumn overrules his orders and wants you shot on sight. But don't worry, all your weapons and items happen to be safe and secure in an unlocked locker in your prisoner cell.
- Truly, considering how Genre Blind President Eden seems to be, it is a wonder Autumn didn't mutiny against him sooner.
  - To be fair, Eden let you out of the cell and gave you back all your stuff, because Autumn was already disobeying his orders, by refusing to use the FEV. It's perfectly acceptable to keep their stuff in a locked box in the cell, if the prisoner is kept in an impenetrable forcefield away from the box, that even deathclaws can't break out of.
Partly justified in Ocarina of Time: Ganondorf needs to bring all three parts of the Triforce together, and hasn't been able to find Zelda for most of the game. By the time he does, there's no better place to face The Hero than his own Tower of Evil anyway. Not entirely justified, though, as he really could've just threatened to kill Zelda; it's more that Ganondorf has too much style to destroy Link without finishing the job himself in an epic battle. A pity his only real weakness is that he keeps underestimating that one kid.

Webcomics

In the "Dangerous Days" arc of Sluggy Freelance, Hereti-Corp uses this trope. Though, in all fairness, none of the people they took prisoner had previously proven themselves to be much of a threat.