Chained to a Bed

"Madam, I need you to remain calm, and trust me, I'm a professional. But beneath this pillow...lies the key to my release." ^note "Of course, she misinterpreted my meaning entirely."

"Obviously if you're watching a scene with a woman tied to a bed while a man forces sex on her, the final act of that movie will involve said man getting shot in the face by Bruce Willis. If, on the other hand, it's a man being tied down and forced into sex by a pretty lady, well, you're watching a wacky romantic comedy."

— Cracked, "6 Romantic Movie Gestures That Can Get You Prison Time"

It's a tie game with no score.

A guy meets a cute girl. They have drinks, maybe lunch; witty banter is exchanged.

She takes him up to a hotel room. She produces rope (or sometimes handcuffs) and suggests he be chained to the bed and kinkiness will ensue.

The guy always enthusiastically agrees. At which point she cheerfully robs him blind and leaves, leaving the robbed (and naked) guy stuck until someone finds him.

A prime example of Comedic Sociopathy in that the victim is not only robbed (as in a mugging), but deeply humiliated in a public way while the trope is (almost always) played entirely for laughs at his expense.

Sometimes the setup is used for dramatic, rather than comedic effect, as the person who was chained to the bed is now helpless and at the mercy of the person who tied them up or whoever discovers them. In the comic example the victim is nearly Always Male; in the dramatic example the victim might be male or female. If it is a woman chained to a bed it's much more likely that it's deadly serious.

Compare Chained to a Rock, Bound and Gagged, and Shameful Strip. Overlaps with Kinky Cuffs and The Schlub Pub Seduction Deduction. Often a certain type of fanservice or a Casual Kink. Sometimes, it's part of a Hollywood Exorcism.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In a Capital FM advert, a man gets chained to a bed and can't reach the phone so he can call the station to win the contest.
• A British car advert has a couple enjoying an improbably sexy dinner followed by aborted bondage on the stairs. He is left cuffed to the bannister staring at a piece of paper which reads "Ask before you borrow it."

Anime & Manga

• Black Paradox have an example played not for fanservice, when Dr. Suga reveals his true colours to Marisou, who promptly decides to bail... only to pass out in shock when she sees Barrachi expelling dozens of paradoxical orbs from her facial tumor. When Marisou regains consciousness, she realize she's chained by her wrists and ankles to a bed in Dr. Suga's basement, and spends most of her remaining screentime (until the last chapter) shackled. There's a brief moment where Taburo, disgusted with Dr. Suga's actions, contemplates on releasing Marisou so that she can be his witness in exposing Suga's actions, but then Marisou starts having her visions and rants aloud about how Suga's about to cause the apocalypse, at which point Taburo changed his mind.
• This is similar to Yamazaki Sakura's preferred source of revenue in Blue Seed; she pretends to be a prostitute, insists that the guy take a shower, and then swipes his wallet. Hilariously, when one of them suggests some BDSM, she flips out on him.
• Conception Main Character, Itsuki Yuge, In titular needed hero to help a magical society propagate celestial offspring, In First Episode, he awakens tied to the bed of a huge Chamber; stripped down to his boxers.
• Good Luck! Ninomiya-kun has Shungo, who gets drugged and tied to a bed by Reika. She tries to have sex with him as soon as he wakes up, but is distracted by news of intruders.
• In the Please Teacher! OVA, Hatsuho drags Kei to a love hotel against his will and ties him to the bed, in order to spice up Kei and Mizuho's married life, or possibly so she could just have video footage.
• To Love Ru have one episode where Rito is tied up in a bed naked by the Amazon queen, who was about to have her way with him only to be interrupted by Lala.

Comic Books

• The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius. Barry Ween left one of his male enemies dressed in lingerie and handcuffed to a bed in a sleazy motel room. With another man. And no memory of what happened.
• In the EC Comics story "Bedtime Gory!" (Haunt of Fear #18), a woman ties her murderer's husband to a four-poster bed, promising she'll help make him a "big man." The bed turns out to be a Procrustean rack (in Classical Mythology, Procrustes was a blacksmith who kept a house on the road outside of Athens, had an iron bed, which he offered to weary passing travelers. However, he seemed to have this thing about his guests fitting exactly on the bed, so once they were asleep, he either "stretched them out" to fit the bed if they were too short, or "cut them down" to fit if they were too tall).
• Grimm Fairy Tales Presents Robyn Hood: In #1 of the ongoing series, Robyn does this to a sleazy politician; taking photos with his phone and uploading them to his Twitter account and sending them to everyone in his contacts list, including journalists.
• Preacher:
  • Tulip does this to Jesse and leaves him tied up for the whole day as revenge for leaving her behind when he went to Masada.
  • Jesse was also tied to a bed by Miss Oatlash for sexual purposes. But she did knock him out first. And dress him in an SS uniform due to her fetishes and political enthusiasm. Which was a bit awkward when his black female deputy encountered him walking around still wearing the uniform, as he'd been a bit too busy to try to find his clothes.
• Robin (1993): When Stephanie Brown gets handcuffed to a flimsy bed by her father's accomplices to make it appear they're using her against him she and Tim Drake use the bed to knock over a bunch of them before fleeing from their gunfire. She hates having to run but as she's just in PJs and Tim didn't bring any extra body armor in his hurry it's the only option they have.
• Sin City: Hell And Back: Wallace does this to Delia to restrain her after realizing she's working for the enemy.

Comic Strips

• Het Dagboek Van Anton Dingeman: Inverted and parodied. A guy who is wanted by the police for being fatally boring seduces a girl and ties her to a bed. While she is excited over the prospect of kinky sex, he proceeds to bore her to death with his stamp collection and vacation photos.
• Happens to a gay couple in the comic strip Chelsea Boys, both tied up in chairs by a kinky guy they met on the internet who then proceeds to rob them.

Fan Works

• Encanto:
  • In As The Embers Dim and Die, Camilo is kidnapped and chained to a bed by a crazed man who thinks he’s his other half.
• Emergency!
  • In "The One You Least Expect," John Gage gets mixed up with an abusive girlfriend who beats him and ties him to the bed as "a lesson". Roy shows up shortly after and rescues him but John has to help trap the woman because proving everything isn't easy with a small statured woman. It works, but not before he's tied up again and stabbed with a pair of scissors.
  • In "Counterblow", it's even more serious. John reports a cop for abuse and his girlfriend seduces John. She beats him and leaves him tied to the bed. As he and Roy are off shift, it's not until he doesn't show up for work 2 days later that he's found, dehydrated, nearly dead, in his trashed apartment. Naturally, it isn't a pretty sight. The woman was working with a Dirty Cop and he keeps stalking Johnny until he gets into a crash as the police chase him.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Five Score, Divided by Four: Part of Evan's pretty awful May. Shortly after realizing he's undergoing a Slow Transformation, he's chained to a bed by a nurse he sought out for help, who turns out to have a fetish for this sort of thing. He ends up breaking the frame with his newfound strength and stealing her car to escape.
  • The Omnitrix Hero: Shining Armor, who has become a bit of a Conspiracy Theorist towards all the aliens appearing in Canterlot, sees Flash Sentry transform back from one of his alien forms into his human form while knocked out. He takes Flash to an old abandoned apartment building and handcuffs him to a metal bed so he can't reach the watch and interrogates him, wondering if he is even human at all. After Shining leaves to try to stop Animac, Flash manages to free himself by activating the watch with one of the headboard's bars on the bed and transforming into Goop.

Film — Animation

• Batman and Harley Quinn. Harley captures Nightwing and duct-tapes him to her bed, since she's decided to go straight and so can't just kill him. On seeing Nightwing has become... aroused at seeing her strip down to her underwear, she decides to take advantage of the situation. Batman is not amused when he turns up.
  Nightwing: Like you never made out with a supervillain...

Film — Live-Action

• In 40 Days and 40 Nights, the protagonist has given up all forms of sex for Lent due to a string of unfulfilling relationships, but as he nears the end of his last day he's starting to crack. So he asks his roommate to handcuff him to his bed so he doesn't give in to the urge to "help himself". [[spoiler:He wakes up just in time to discover his ex-girlfriend broke into the apartment and is raping him while unconscious just to win a bet, and of course his Love Interest enters the scene just in time to get the wrong idea. He has to apologize to her, with the logical inference that if you're a man who's raped trying to fulfill your vow of chastity, it's your own fault.
• 9 to 5:
  • Frank Hart's three leading lady secretaries (Violet Newstead, Doralee Rhodes, and Judy Bernley) go much further than just chaining him to a bed — they install a restraining system that uses a garage door opener mechanism to keep Frank from harming any of the three secretaries should he try to make his escape. Judy's ex-husband Dick catches her in the bedroom with Frank attached to this security system and thinks that she's Sleeping with the Boss and into BDSM.
  • At the end of film, prior to the credits, a flashback scene has Frank Hart accidentally triggering the restraining system when he thinks he's using the remote to change the channel on his TV.
• The ABCs of Death: After failing in his final task, the protagonist of the "L" segment wakes up to find himself chained to a bed with a beautiful woman making love to him. For a few moments, things to going much better for him. And then they get much, much worse.
• Act of Vengeance: When the manager of the Baby Doll Club attempts to rape Lina, the Rape Squad knock him out and trash his apartment. When he wakes up, he is tied to his bed. The women remove his pants, first pretending that they are going to rape him, and then that they are going to pour sulfuric acid over his genitals. They finally pour blue dye all over his penis, so that if he attempts to rape anyone else, his identity will be obvious.
• Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct is fond of tying her lovers up to the bedposts with a silk scarf, and sometimes uses it as a setup so she can murder them with icepicks.
• Berlin Syndrome: Andi ties Clare to a bed at first in the face of her resistance. He keeps her lying out on plastic in her own waste there when he's at work. Eventually, she gets him to set her free from this and stay loose inside.
• In Blood Harvest the stalker chloroforms Jill while she's asleep, ties her wrists and ankles to the bed, removes most of her clothing, and takes pictures.
• In Bloody Mama, the Barkers are hiding out next to a lake. Lloyd tells Rembrandt, a woman who swam from the other side, that he's a Barker, then rapes her. Afterwards, not wanting her to report them, the Barkers tie her to a bed in her shredded bathing suit.
• Bound (2015) has Michelle's daughter, Dara, tied to the head of the bed courtesy of Ryan. It's definitely played for drama with her sobbing about how she can't get out of the ropes.
• Bride of Chucky has Damian Baylock being killed by the evil doll after Tiffany, Chucky's accomplice and the title character, handcuffs him to the bed.
• Susan Sarandon ties Tim Robbins to the bed in Bull Durham, just to read Walt Whitman to him.
• In The Crying Game, Dil ties sleeping Fergus to the bed with her black nylon tights.
• The last surviving female explorer in Dying Breed ends up chained to a bed by the inbred cannibal bogans, who intend to use her as breeding stock. As you can expect, this is played for all the horror it's worth.
• The Australian movie Envy has this happen to the protagonist's teenaged son, although the "kinky sex" bit is absent. Instead he's humiliated and traumatized by the female antagonist, setting off a Cycle of Revenge.
• Feral (2017): One of the campers ends up chained to the bed in Talbot's Creepy Basement to keep them from attacking the others once they turn.
• In The French Connection, Popeye Doyle wakes up like this and his partner lets him out. Played to suggest this is not a particularly unusual occurrence for him.
• In Heartbreakers, Sigourney Weaver's character is tracked down by her ex-husband (well, the most recent one, anyway) in the midst of her scheming to capture the next one. He begs her to take him back. Being too busy to deal with him just at the moment, she persuades him to let her tie him to her hotel bed blindfolded, then takes off and leaves him to be discovered by the maid. Who doesn't exactly rob him, but does refuse to let him go until he offers her a bribe. Incredibly, he later teams up with this character and her daughter to enact another scheme.
• In Hostage, Jennifer Smith (Michelle Horn) is tied to a bed by psycho Serial Killer mercenary Mars (Ben Foster). She's rescued in the nick of time by her kid brother before Mars can do anything rapey. In somewhat of a fulfillment of the trope's page quote, Mars is later killed during a confrontation with Bruce Willis (although not shot in the face).
• In Idle Hands, when things are getting hot and heavy with Molly, Anton ties his own hand to the bed. He's doing it for her safety, but she thinks he's just being kinky.
• In Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, Ilsa is tricked into being tied to her bed by Wolfe, believing that he's into S&M. Instead, Wolfe leaves her there, escaping the concentration camp. When the Nazis storm the camp, Ilsa believes they're going to rescue her. However, they shoot her in the head instead. This didn't stop three more sequels, though.
• National Lampoon Presents Dorm Daze. The plot involves a handbag full of stolen money. At one point, a guy offers a woman half the money in exchange for a good time. She tells him "By the time I'm done with you, you'll give me all of it." After handcuffing him to a chair: "Okay, I'm done with you."
• In A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Freddy poses as Hospital Hottie to lure Joey into an empty room where he ties him to the bed. With giant human tongues.
• Prairie Fever: When Olivia runs away from Monte, she leaves him tied to a bed and gagged with one of his own socks.
• Redwood Massacre Annihilation: At one point, we see one of the killer's victims is chained to a prison bed. The killer saws his legs off.
• In Richard III, Earl Rivers (also played by Robert Downey Jr.) is handcuffed to a bed enjoying the attentions of an air hostess, a cigarette and a favorite beverage when he is stabbed to death from below the bed.
• Romeo is Bleeding: After killing his mistress, Mona then handcuffs Jack to the bed and has her way with him.
• The Salvation: Madeleine is kept tied to one so the gang can rape her before she's killed, per Delarue's orders. Thankfully, Jon kills the men who guarded Madeleine and she's freed (helping to finish some off) before any can do it.
• Sex Drive: Lance lets the gas station attendant he met less than an hour previously handcuff him to the bed in her trailer. She asks if he wants to try the "rolling brownout." He quickly agrees, then asks: "Wait, brown?" he is next seen running naked out of the cornfield, carrying the headboard which he is still attached to.
• In the gangster film Shanghai Grand, The Lancer Ding-lik ends up being knocked unconscious and waking up in the main villainess' bedroom in this manner, handcuffed to the bedposts. What's even worse though, his captor, a complete sadist, had sliced his chest open and is ready to feed him to a hungry boa constrictor.
• Played for laughs when Sherlock Holmes walks right into this trap in Sherlock Holmes (2009), resulting in the page image. During a meeting with Irene Adler, he ends up blacking out after drinking the doctored wine she offered him. When he awakens, he finds she stripped him naked and handcuffed him to a bedpost, with only a pillow strategically placed over his crotch. And then to add insult to injury, she left the key to the cuffs under that pillow.
  Sherlock Holmes: [to the maid who finds him] Madam, I need you to remain calm, and trust me, I am a professional. But beneath this pillow lies the key to my release.
  Sherlock Holmes: [later, riding in a carriage with Clarkie] Of course, she misinterpreted my meaning entirely.
  Constable Clark: Naturally, sir.
  Sherlock Holmes: That's why I find this modern religious fervor so troubling. There's no room for misunderstanding.
  Constable Clark: Faith runs right over reason, sir.
  Sherlock Holmes: Indeed. And chamber maids were once such a liberal breed.
  Constable Clark: My wife's a chamber maid, sir. [pause] Anyhow, it's a good thing she was offended, sir. Otherwise we'd never have found you. The Inspector's been over to Baker Street himself twice this morning, sir.
  Sherlock Holmes: Ah, yes.
  [beat]
  Constable Clark: Just joking about the wife, sir.
• In Shish O Besh Sami gets chained to the bed by his abhorrent wife on their wedding night.
• Something Wild. A woman (Melanie Griffith) lures a man (Jeff Daniels) into being handcuffed to a bed, then makes him call his place of work and tell them he's taking the rest of the day while she's sexually stimulating him.
• In Sorority Row, Chugs arrives at her therapist's to find him handcuffed to the bed by one wrist; his last session apparently not having gone as he had planned it. He is then murdered while chained to the bed.
• In the very dark drug comedy Spun, the protagonist ties a girl to his bed, duct-tapes her eyes and mouth shut, and leaves her there for days.
• The Theatre Bizarre: In "Wet Dreams", Donnie wakes up from a nightmare where here is chained to a rack in a dungeon with a buzzsaw moving towards his groin, only to find his hands tied to the head of his bed. Only when a buzzsaw appears out of his mattress and starts advancing towards his crotch does he realise it is a Dream Within a Dream.
• In the slasher Valentine, Paige (Denise Richards) responds to Brian's advances with this (as well as a blindfold). After asking if he still wanted her to "wax it," she takes one of the nearby candles and pours melted wax on his crotch.
• In A Very Long Engagement, Tina Lombardi enacts her revenge on the man who destroyed her lover's pardon letter before he was executed, by seducing him, tying him to a bed and shooting in the mirror above him. The shards make him bleed to death.
• The Wasteland (2021): Lucia ends up tied by her hands and feet to the bed late in the movie, in a scene that makes it look like Diego is the crazy one now.
• In Wedding Crashers, one of the characters gets tied to his bed and is at the mercy of first his girlfriend and later her brother. This is even the movie being discussed in the latter half of the page quote.
• Subverted in the Irish film When Brendan Met Trudy. Brendan, has been seriously rattled by news reports that a woman has been running around chaining up unsuspecting men and castrating them. When Trudy (who Brendan already knows lied about her job) turns up with the paraphenalia and starts chaining him to a bed, he not unnaturally panics. Turns out she really was only looking for consensual, kinky sex. In a further twist she does in fact turn out to be a thief.
• In Wishcraft, Samantha wakes up after being captured by the killer to find herself chained to a bed and the killer using her as the target girl in an impromptu Knife-Throwing Act.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • X-Men: First Class: Emma Frost is chained to the bed's metal railings. No points for guessing who did it and how.
  • X-Men: Apocalypse: Unlike most male examples of this trope, it's Played for Drama, not for laughs. Apocalypse (with Archangel's assistance) places Charles flat on a slab and restrains him with cuffs as a set-up for the Grand Theft Me procedure, which involves a terrifying Mind Rape where Xavier's mind, body and soul are being violated.

Folklore

• A moderately famous urban legend has this happening to a man who is handcuffed to a bed in anticipation of kinky sex. She then leaves the room and a man dressed as Batman jumps out of the closet and rapes him. That's it.
  • A similar urban legend is about a man tying his wife to the bed so he can play a "Batman saves the girl" role play scene. But during the fun he jumped onto the bed and smashed his head on the ceiling fan, knocking him unconscious. The woman had to call for help until the police kicked in the door to save them. (The Big Book of Urban Legends, a book of short comic-strip treatments of various ULs, had this one illustrated by Kevin Maguire of Justice League International fame.)
• There is also The Odyssey, where Hephaestus chains Aphrodite and Ares to a bed as revenge for Aphrodite cheating on him.
  • Although there's a difference between 'guy stupidly lets a girl tie him to the bed' and 'guy and girl are busy on the bed when a net of golden chains made by girl's angry husband traps both of them'.

Jokes

• There is a joke about a man waking up to his wife giving him a silk cord and telling him: "Tie me up and do whatever you wish." He ties her up and goes fishing.

Literature

• In the short story "Bed of Roses" by Elisabeth Waters, the protagonist's suitor/stalker insists on "a night in her bed" in exchange for helping her to rescue her little brother. He should probably have asked for something else, considering that she's a member of a celibate order of Religious Bruisers, and as such lives in a barracks...
• Played for Drama in A Brother's Price after Jerin is kidnapped. The first time, he's assured that he won't be touched, and the second time, he's been delivered to the women who arranged for his kidnapping, one of whom rapes his mouth. Cira, who was Bound and Gagged and chained to the foot of the bed to watch, is furious.
• In Peter Robinson's Friend with the Devil, one of the investigating detectives finds a suspect tied to the bed in a hotel room. She proceeds to interrogate both him and his lover, before letting the lover untie him. It's just as awkward and absurd as it sounds.
• The trope is played not just for drama but for outright terror in Gerald's Game, which begins with a woman being handcuffed to a bed out in the middle of nowhere by her husband, who then dies of a heart attack. And she has about two days before she'll die of thirst. And then Death himself shows up...
• Hilary Tamar: In The Sibyl in Her Grave, bank director Edmund Albany gets found by one of the protagonists, almost naked and tied to a bed. It turns out that he referred to a French dominatrix as tu — a grave violation of propriety, since one ought to pay respect by using "vous".
• A very dark example of this is in Less Than Zero, in which a twelve-year-old girl is tied to a bed and given drugs as she gets used as a Sex Slave.
• This happens more than once to Lisbeth Salander in the Millennium Series. The first time, she's being strapped down by a sadistic psychiatrist, and the second time, she's being raped by her court-appointed guardian. She gets vengeance on both of them.
• Nick Velvet: Nick wakes up handcuffed to a bed after he is kidnapped in "The Theft of Nick Velvet". He manages to talk his kidnappers into hiring his services.
• In Night of the Living Trekkies, “Leia” provides a rare female comedic example when she turns up tied to a bed…in a Slave Leia bikini…during a zombie apocalypse…at a Star Trek convention.
• In Courtney Milan's Proof by Seduction, Gareth insists that Jenny wear a much fancier dress than the plain fare she prefers and won't let her voice any objections. She lifts her skirts to above her knees, slooowly peels down one of her stockings, and then climbs on his lap for makeouts. While he's distracted, she uses the stocking to tie one of his hands to the chair behind his back. Then she climbs off his lap and archly tells him to free himself. When he furiously declares that he can't reach the knots with his free hand, she tells him she can't reach the laces on the back of that fancy dress either. She's too poor to hire a lady's maid, and the plain dresses are the only ones she can put on and off by herself.
• Alluded to in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The Lady Bertilak threatens to have Gawain bound to his bed if he does not 'strike a bargain with her'. In some translations and adaptations, the Lady is teasing, and Gawain responds in kind. In others, Gawain is rather nervous or legitimately concerned about the threat.
• Stephanie Plum: In the first book, Stephanie is interrupted while showering and ends up handcuffed to the shower — an example of this trope being played to comedic effect with a woman. The book gets away with it because the guy who does it is just trying to keep her out of the way so he can search her apartment for something he believes she has. He ogles her a bit, but it's presented as being mostly playfulness (they have "history" together), as well as causing her to get embarrassed and cover up rather than make trouble.
• Vampire Kisses: Played with in the first book when Raven distracts Trevor by making out with him and then stealing his clothes that he had taken off, thinking that he was gonna score with her. The next day at school, she plays a prank on him by supergluing his underwear to her locker.

Live-Action TV

• In one of the many deaths in 1000 Ways to Die, a man wakes up after a wild party involving crossdressing handcuffed to a bed, a water bed to be exact. He struggles for a while until one of his stiletto heels cuts a hole in the water bed, and he drowns, unable to get any of the other passed-out guests to hear his screams.
• In Agent Carter, students of Leviathan's Red Room Academy have one hand cuffed to their beds every night while they sleep. One graduate, who uses the alias "Dottie Underwood", voluntarily continues this practice into adulthood, and as a result has a prominent scar on her wrist.
• Happens to Angel all the time since his friends believe that is the practical solution every time he is in danger of having lost his soul. Inversely his vampire ex-friends chain him up for having a soul. Can't really win that one.
  • In Season One after 'happy pills' inexplicably caused a temporary reversion to evil—apparently if he isn't really happy his soul goes into temporary suspension until the fake euphoria wears off?—and they overpowered him, Angel woke up extremely chained to his bed. He and his friends established that yes, he was really okay now and yes, they were willing to forgive him for scaring them out of their wits and nearly killing them. Then they walk off and leave him there indefinitely. Played for Laughs.
• In one episode of Archie Bunker's Place, a woman robs Murray at gunpoint in his hotel room and ties him to the bed just to keep him out of the way. When Archie barges in, she hides the gun, pretends that the situation is exactly what it looks like, and leaves with her loot; Murray plays along until he's sure she's gone.
• Boardwalk Empire. Played with in "You'd Be Surprised". Gyp Rosetti is tied to a bed having kinky sex when an assassin starts shooting his way past his guards. Gyp can't reach his pistol and shouts for the woman to untie him before the assassin kicks down the door; Gyp then uses her as a Bulletproof Human Shield.
• Happens to Xander, more or less, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Xander is the one to suggest that the rope might be for "kinky sexy fun"; the girl claims she just wants to suspend a canoe in her garage. We're not shown exactly how Xander ends up suspended over the Hellmouth.
• On an episode of Cheers, Sam wanted to relive one of his greatest sexual encounters (sex in an elevator with him tied up) with Rebecca. At the end of the episode, she ties him up, pulls his pants down, presses a bunch of the buttons and leaves him there.
• Chuck:
  • Karina chains Casey to a bed in "Chuck vs. the Wookiee". When Sarah finds him, her immediate reaction is to photograph him rather than try to rescue him. The eventual result is that Casey breaks the headboard off and beats down his captors with a piece of wood.
  • And then happens to Chuck in "Chuck vs. the Suburbs".
  • Casey is later chained to a radiator (no seduction in that case). He takes it with him, and uses it to hit someone.
  • Roan Montgomery also got chained to a bed and blindfolded by a Moroccan terrorist in "Chuck vs. the Seduction Impossible".
• Coupling
  • A girl ends up cuffed to bed, Played for Laughs. Only in this case she wound up stuck because Spank Man accidentally swallowed the key.
  • Patrick ends up handcuffing himself to the bed in anticipation of his girlfriend bringing back another woman for their supposed threesome. Needless to say, Earth logic need not apply. Again.
• In the 1980s TV Series Crime Story, a guy who is either a member of the Mafia, or some criminal underworld type, has a regular relationship with a woman who ties him up. Unfortunately, some of his peers from another criminal organization find out where he's at, and discover him conveniently tied up as they proceed to pump him full of lead.
• The killer-of-the-week in the Criminal Minds episode "Jones" employed this tactic with her victims.
  • As did the UNSUB in "Conflicted".
  • Used as a joke in another episode. "If a John wants to tie you up, walk away. If he wants to be tied up, do it and steal his wallet."
  • And in the climax of "Paradise", the lodge owner ties the woman of a couple to the bed (and her husband to a chair).
• On the pilot episode of Crossing Jordan, Jordan flirts with the investigating police officer throughout the episode, and at the end ties him to a bed so she's free to wipe the makeup off his arm and reveal the bite mark that identifies him as the killer.
• On CSI, this is called a "Trick Roll" and usually involves a prostitute drugging her mark into unconsciousness before robbing him.
  • Then there's the version where the prostitute ties the mark to the bed before forcing them to listen to Rick Astley.
  • Subverted in another CSI episode when a police officer with missing uniform was found to have engaged in some handcuff/uniform kinkiness but was not robbed by the woman - it was instead stolen when sent for much-needed cleaning afterwards.
• CSI: Miami:
  • In one episode, a dead man is found handcuffed to a bed. It emerges the hotel has branded cuffs available for just that sort of thing.
  • Another first season episode had a man anally raped. When the detectives cite how there was no forced entry Horatio drops a rather dark Quip to Black.
    Oh... I wouldn't be so sure of that.
• Gender inverted in Desperate Housewives, where Gabby, who wants sex with Carlos, agrees to let him tie her to the bed. He's not up for sex and goes off to have a nap. This is played for comedy.
• Happened to Greg's father Edward in Dharma & Greg, involving Penn from Penn & Teller. The girl cuffs him and walks out, then Penn comes in. A pause, then Edward says, "Oh, I sure hope you're here to rob me."
• Subverted in Dollhouse, when Echo only leaves her client this way when her programming glitches.
• A variant is used in the TV version of The Dresden Files, where Harry is handcuffed to the bed by a date post-sex so that she can steal Bob's skull.
• In the German Erotic Tales episode "The Night Nurse", a policeman is guarding a Soviet spy at the hospital. He's handcuffed to a bed and the hot nurse gives him a rather sensual bed bath. She then seduces the policeman and leaves him tied up as she's a Femme Fatale Spy out to rescue her colleague. (Turns out the whole thing is a fever dream fantasy the policeman is having about the nurse at the hospital, where he's guarding an ordinary criminal).
• Inverted in Farscape, in the episode "What Was Lost- Part 2." John Crichton is being interrogated by Commandant Grayza, the fourth season's Big Bad; her interrogations involve pheromone-assisted rape, and it is most definitely not okay. However, after dosing himself with a stimulant to resist Grayza's pheromones, Crichton suggests that the next round involve bondage: as a result, Commandant Cleavage is left tied to the bed, humiliated and seeking revenge.
• In one episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Carlton sets up a prank of this nature on Will to teach him to respect women (somehow). Will escapes being tied to the chair and, having twigged to the plot, calls up Carlton and "explains" the situation, saying that he panicked and killed the woman. Hilarity Ensues.
• Friends:
  • Julia Roberts guest-stars as a girl Chandler humiliated as a child, and dates him for a while only to convince him to put on her underwear and get naked in a bathroom stall. She then runs away with his clothes. While he is technically not chained to anything, the effect is exactly the same.
  • A variation occurs, AGAIN involving Chandler, later in the show, with Rachel finding Chandler handcuffed to a chair in her boss' office, whom he's dating. Cue him insisting she uncuff him, and her wondering whether it's worth the risk of her boss knowing she was in there and firing her (he's persuaded to stay when she promises to be "very generous" when her friends ask about this). Chandler later gets revenge by leaving the boss chained up, in her slip, for Rachel to discover.
• Mandy did this to her crazy ex-boyfriend in Game On.
• Highlander: The Series
  • This happens to protagonist Duncan MacLeod, who was over two hundred years old by then and really, really should have known better. The girl who did that to Duncan was a bounty hunter named Reagan Cole who uses sexuality as part of her MO to capture her prey. Once he was tied up, she blew a whistle and turned him over to the authorities, who were waiting in the next room. When she found out Duncan was going to be beheaded instead of imprisoned (it turned out Duncan had had relations with a duke's wife), she helped him escape. He got her back afterwards by kissing her, then tying her up to a wagon wheel and leaving her.
  • It happens to Richie too. The poor boy never did have any luck with his women.
• How I Met Your Mother, happens with Barney once...or so he says.
• Stacey does this to a mark in the first episode of Hustle (although its full significance does not become apparent till the end of the episode).
• In From the Cold: Rather than delivering the threesome which she promised him, Anya leaves poor Su-Yin tied to a bed (he thought it was some light bondage foreplay).
• Justified.
  • In one episode, the US Marshals are tipped off about an escaped con hiding with his girlfriend. Guess how they find them...
  • Boyd Crowder ends up doing this to Quarles near the end of Season 3. He messes it up however by having two Oxycontin addicts be guards, and leaving a nice bottle of the drug in the room.
  • In season three, Quarles binds Brady to a bed and tortures him to death. The crime was part of Quarles' long history of abusing male hustlers.
• Happened in at least the Spanish version of Lalola. Lola hires a prostitute to come to Jerkass Gustavo's house and handcuff him to the bed, making him late for an important meeting. The prostitute then puts lipstick on him, writes "SOY UN CAPULLO" (loosely, "I'm a bastard") on his chest in lipstick and takes pictures, which Lola hangs up around the office. It's fantastic.
• Sam does this in Las Vegas, before she leaves him to be raped by someone else.
• Played Straight in Life On Mars. Sam Tyler is drugged by a prostitute (who is, of course, working for the antagonist of the day) undresses him and leaves him tied naked to his bed, left for his co-workers Gene and Annie to find when they break into his house after he doesn't answer his phone. To make matters worse, she also took incriminating-looking photos of the two of them while he was unconscious.
  • The American remake Life on Mars (2008) also has the same scene, but with Ray instead of Gene and using Scenery Censor instead of the Waist-Up Nudity shot of Sam that the original used.
• On Lost Girl, the Morrigan has two pairs of handcuffs attached to her bed. In "Into the Dark," Bo comes to her, turns on her succubus seduction powers, puts the Morrigan in the handcuffs, and leaves, stealing a MacGuffin on her way out. Purely Played for Laughs; Bo is The Hero, and the Morrigan is a villain and only had the MacGuffin because Bo had stolen it for her earlier.
• In Season 2 of Mad Men, Don Draper is having one of his many extramarital affairs when, just before having sex, his Girl of the Week tells him that he has a reputation. Draper is not happy with this; he takes the belt of the bathrobe she was wearing, ties her hands to the bed with it (to which she responds enthusiastically), then walks away.
• Happens to Rayanne in a My So-Called Life episode. Played with in that she does it to herself as a joke, and only afterwards realizes that the key isn't there.
• NCIS:
  • Subverted in Season Two's "SWAK": A girl was tied up by her boyfriend in a hotel (as a joke, supposedly to stop her from running off with the cute Navy guys having a celebration downstairs) and was left there for days when he got killed in a traffic accident minutes after he left her alone to go get food for them. Humiliated, she lied when finally found and said she was raped, and her mother goes wacko when the nonexistent rapist is never brought in.
  • In Season Four's "Driven", a Navy programmer died, and while searching for the boyfriend as a suspect, he's found in exactly this situation.
• Happens in The New Statesman entirely by accident and the (rich female) victim loves the experience, even as Alan gets back to the hotel and concludes that he doesn't have time to deal with her cuffs if he's going to make the flight home. Possibly the only non-serious version with a female victim.
  "Now there's a man who really understands bondage!"
• New Tricks: The Victim of the Week in "Prodigal Sons" was chained to a bed in what was supposed to be an act of publication humiliation, but turned into murder when the killer entered with a Vorpal Pillow.
• Used in an episode of Nip/Tuck in which Christian's bitter on-again/off-again girlfriend Kimber tricks him into letting her tie him to a bed, supposedly in preparation for kinky sex...then proceed to torment him with a knife (she never hurts him, but takes great pleasure in making him think she's going to), fed up with the crappy way that he treats her—his most recent stunt involved trying to trade her in for a CAR. Afterwards, she leaves him tied up with a parting shot of, "You'll be fine, your maid comes on Monday."
• Marissa did it to a Jerk Jock in The O.C..
• Adebisi did this to Kenny Wangler on Oz, but that was implied to be a straight-out Prison Rape.
• Another accidental version in Peak Practice - it's a medical show, so the one with the keys has a bad fall and can't get to the cuffs to unlock them.
• The third time Leon Tao's number comes up on Person of Interest, he's handcuffed to a bed by a woman working for Nigerian Scammers who intend to kill him. When he realizes they intend to kill him, he goes from panicked and upset to confident because he knows Reese will be coming to save him. Again.
• Played With in an episode of Republic of Doyle, the main character Jake is forced to strip at gunpoint by a woman, who cuffs him naked to the ceiling. He's later found in this position by both his ex-colleagues and his Love Interests Leslie who all mock him for it, especially on his size.
  Jake: There's something a lot bigger going on here.
  Leslie: [glances down at his crotch] Not from where I'm standing.
• Rizzoli & Isles: In "Family Matters", a woman is tied to a bed and blindfolded by her husband in a hotel. While she is bound and blindfolded, someone enters the bedroom and beats her husband to death.
• In Robin Hood, Guy of Gisborne gets tied to a bed... by his sister. She then refers to him as a "present" for Prince John.
• Saving Grace: In "A Language of Angels", Grace is about to have sex with a male prostitute named Zack. As foreplay, she agrees to be bound to the four corners of the bed with handcuffs on each limb, facedown and completely naked. He then draws a smiley face on her back and writes his name on her butt with lipstick. Unfortunately, when he finds out she is a cop, he panics and runs away, leaving her bound. Ham comes in and leaves in disgust instead of freeing her. Earl comes in and lectures her instead of freeing her. Several hours later, Ham comes back and frees her.
• In the Mini Series Scarlett, as the villain's Sex Slave arrives at his home for their weekly session, she struggles to tell him that she no longer wants to be his plaything. He slaps her and throws her on the bed. After the Rape Discretion Shot, the scene fades back in to find her lying on the bed with her hands tied to the headboard, with him not the least bit affected at how traumatized she is.
• Used in an episode of Scare Tactics (2003) where the "victim" begs the person being pranked to free her, only to have the captor return and threaten the prankee with the same fate before the reveal.
• This happened to George Costanza in Seinfeld. His latest plan to pick up women is to ride the subway in a suit reading the financial section of the paper, making it look like he's a hotshot stockbroker. The woman he picks up this way indeed thinks he's rich, gets him tied to a bed, and uses the opportunity to rob him. Or rather try to — George doesn't actually have any money ("Eight dollars? I wasted my whole morning on you for eight dollars?"), so she decides to steal his suit instead.
  "Will I see you again?"
• On Shameless (UK), used chillingly when Paddy is held captive like this and forced to take heroin and comedically in the US version when Frank is viciously insulted by the three firemen who come to cut him loose.
• In Stargate SG-1, an amnesiac and confused Vala escapes from Mitchell by stealing his clothes and handcuffing him to a hotel room bed. The rest of the team finds him half-naked and covered in junk food.
• Inverted in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Favorite Son". Harry Kim is stranded on a planet of Amazon Vampire Succubi that secretly want to suck his life out by having deadly sex with him. He's discovered their plans, so when two of them come to seduce him he suggests to them that he'd like to do it with them tied to the bed. As soon as they're bound, his escape attempt ensues.
• Inverted on an episode of St. Elsewhere. Dr. Ehrlich (Ed Begley) hooks up with a slightly kinky young woman who asks him to tie her up. He gets her tied, then goes out to his car to fetch one more item . . . and the apartment door locks behind him.
• Played for horrific effect in True Blood. Jason Stackhouse gets captured in season 4 by werepanthers who tie him to a filthy bed, proceed to bite him, drug him with Viagra, and then have all the women of Hotshot gang-rape him in the hopes of creating more offspring.
• Self-inflicted example occurs in Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps: Gaz is convinced that he and Donna need something to spice up their relationship. Something romantic. So he strips down to a latex posing pouch, covers his crotch and nipples in whipped cream, handcuffs every limb to a bedpost and waits,with a large, flashing novelty dildo in his hand, for Donna to come home. She takes one look and freaks out, running out of his flat and leaving him there...
• Happens to Cliff in the Veronica Mars episode "The Rapes of Graff", with Keith getting a phone call from him and then finding Cliff in an apartment, handcuffed to a bed, and naked except for a blanket covering his private parts and had his briefcase stolen by the woman who he seduced and tied him. When Keith asks Cliff how he made the phone call, he responds, "Acrobatically".
• In The X-Files two-part episode "Dreamland", Mulder and a MIB have had their bodies switched. When Scully figures out that something's wrong (in part because "Mulder" has been coming on to her), she gets control of the situation by playing along with his advances and then handcuffing him to the bed. (When he tries to talk his way out of it, addressing Scully as "baby", she warns him that if he does so again he will be "peeing through a catheter".)

Music

• In "Lovers Lie" by The Atomic Fireballs, the singer tells how he woke up to discover that his lover has left him overnight. She also tied him to the bed and deposited all of his belongings on the lawn.
• The WASP song "Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)". Comic phrase in comic song: "I'll nail your ass to the sheet..." It's self-irony 'cause it's just riotous fancy of a finger-artist.

Music Videos

• In Die Antwoord's "Evil Boy", Yo-landi's verse has her boast about seducing a man, making him think they're about to engage in bondage play. She handcuffs him to a bed, blindfolds him, takes his pants off... then steals his wallet and runs away. This is also shown happening in the song's music video.
  Let me take your pants off, let's see what you made of
  Go through your pockets no, we're not gonna make love
  Go through your wallet, wow! Look at all this paper
  What a fucking sucker, see you later, masturbator!
• Another K-Pop example: In Epik High's "Fan," an obsessive "sasaeng" fan kidnaps an idol and keeps him chained to a bed. It's not played for laughs.
• Madonna is lying on a bed with chains to her neck in the music video for "Express Yourself".
• Happens to Joon of MBLAQ in Kan Miyeon's video Going Crazy. He's later shown with his hands tied with a red rope, which symbolizes exactly what it seems: The girl in the video apparently kidnaps young men and tries to force them to marry her. When they (very rationally) reject her, she keeps 'em locked up together in her closet. So, almost literally, the man in the video is Strangled by the Red String.
• In the video for The White Stripes song "Icky Thump" the singer and guitarist Jack White is chained to a bed and robbed by a Mexican prostitute with a glass eye. The scene is derived from the lyrics.

Video Games

• 96: Niles keeps a zombified Sixten chained to a bed in the cabin he lives in. Sixten asked to be chained down before he turned, but Niles couldn't bring himself to kill him, instead keeping him there in the hopes he can change him back.
• One of Aurica's cosmosphere levels in Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia has her tie Lyner up in this fashion in attempt to rape him. He even lampshades this trope word-to-word.
• In Far Cry 5, the 'good' ending has the player character chained to a bed in a bunker after a nuclear explosion, alongside the Big Bad of the game, being forced to listen to his rants forever.
• Leisure Suit Larry:
  • Happens in Leisure Suit Larry 1: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards. If the player has failed to acquire the knife necessary for Larry to cut himself free before this happens, its game over.
  • Also two different types of death scenes in Leisure Suit Larry 2: Looking for Love (in Several Wrong Places) — one with "Mama Bimbo", another with any of Dr. Nonookie's "helicopter girls".
  • A variation occurs at the beginning of Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail!, wherein Shamara (after indeed spending the night with Larry), leaves him handcuffed to a bed and steals Larry's wallet... Then he accidentally sets the hotel on fire.
• Played for Laughs in Maniac Mansion: If a male character is captured by Nurse Edna, she throws them in the dungeon, but comments "How silly of me! I should have tied you to my bed," before leaving.
• Oriental Legend, a video game based on Journey to the West, have you playing as one of Xuanzang's disciples out to save him after he's abducted by demons. You do eventually find Xuanzang - chained on a stone slab in the lair of the Rodent King, surrounded by lesser rodent mooks.
• In The Secret World, this wound up saving Madame Roget's life. She was handcuffed to her bed with fuzzy cuffs when The Fog rolled in, causing most of the townsfolk to march into the ocean and become zombies. Since Roget was tied up she couldn't go, the problem was that her partner, the mayor, did and he had the key. Thankfully, Deputy Andy was looking in people's house for supplies and survivors. Much blushing and Ship Tease ensued.
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: If Geralt tries to propose a threesome with both Yennefer and Triss, they will chain him to the bed, under the guise of sexy fun times, then leave with Geralt still restrained.
• World of Warcraft has a female comedic example. Some of the goblin joke lines reveal that female goblins like being tied up, and male goblins will steal their stuff while they're helpless.

Webcomics

• Happens to the title character of Dominic Deegan. Played completely for comedy, because it's Rachel and Dominic. Comic here. What's interesting is the massive amounts of Dude, Not Funny! reaction from the fan forum. It was very much implied to be non-consensual (as Dominic claims to have had "no choice in the matter"), so treating it as comedy (compared to the male-on-female rape that is treated as drama) has some unfortunate implications.
• Girl Genius: Tarvek wakes to find himself handcuffed to a bed after passing out in the bathroom following Gil rescuing him from the time stasis and his poisoned wound. At first he thinks it's Bang's work but he quickly surmises that he's been kidnapped from Gil's care.
• Last Res0rt uses a downplayed version of this routinely as a preventative measure / enforced "curfew" on criminal players staying in the Executioner's Quarters. Unlike most of the examples here, though, the chains still give them some freedom of movement as opposed to being left spread-eagle and completely vulnerable.
• Inverted in this Loserz strip where Jodie is the one chained to the bed, but it's after a Wild Teen Party and played for laughs.
• Tip in Skin Horse lets Julie chain him to a bed with her police handcuffs for some kinky sex. Afterward, she leaves him chained up "for his own protection." However, the handcuffs don't present Tip with much difficulty in the end.
  Tip: Honestly. Like I've never been handcuffed to a bed before.
• Happened to Danny in the webcomic Sorcery 101. Possibly unique in that girl (er, demoness) does not escape scot free. Very much not.
• One S.S.D.D. strip started with Anne telling her co-worker that she has this feeling she's forgetting something, then cuts to Richard tied to the bedframe.
• This strip from Toonhole.

Web Original

• The web miniseries Adult Wednesday Addams has an episode where Wednesday leaves a one-night stand chained to his bed, largely just because she's Wednesday. (He ends up being kind of into it.)
• A medical variant occurs on Demo Reel. The Fanatic Fan Family who abduct Donnie in "Blue Patches" keep him helpless and lying down by feeding him muscle relaxants. He manages to escape because the father forgets that they have to be administered regularly.

Western Animation

• In an episode of The Critic, a female projectionist (who happens to be a very obsessed fan of movie critic Jay Sherman) invites him to her apartment, drugs his glass of wine, and when he awakens he finds himseif tied up to her bed with rolls of movie film. By the episode's end, his best friend Jeremy rescues him.
• The Fairly Oddparents: In a non-romantic example, Vicky does this to Timmy at least once.
• And Quagmire in Family Guy. Fortunately, he was able to dial the phone for help. And no, he didn't use his hands. Or his feet. He used his penis.
• Non-romantic example in Rugrats (1991); in "Cuffed", Angelica accidentally gets handcuffed to Chuckie after playing with toy handcuffs her dad told her not to play with as they were being donated to underprivileged kids. They do eventually find the key, but then Angelica gets handcuffed to her own bed.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil has a subversion in which the Titular Character is chained to her bed by her best friend albeit not for any romantic reasons. Instead, it was for the purpose of controlling or stopping her Golden Super Mode transformation and the antics that follow subsequently. It didn't work at all.
• Mark's first appearance in Ugly Americans, a consequence of dating a demon.

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