Rename (alt titles 5/31): Prisoner Of Zenda Exit

47 wicks, and 14 inbounds.

For a trope this common (the villain escapes to do evil another day), that is pathetic.

And the name doesn't help. It's not as though the villain in The Prisoner Of Zenda is the only one who made an exit. There is also the hero leaving after the king is saved. Or the King's brother having a sort of exit (in the form of Redemption Equals Death). My point is the name is not indicative, and is not helping this trope.

I'm not sure what this trope is supposed to be. It describes itself as "Villain: Exit, Stage Left with a flourish" and "Strictly the province of the Worthy Opponent". I think the problem is that Villain: Exit, Stage Left describes itself as "the villain (less often, a hero) will always get away in the most undignified and cowardly fashion imaginable", so people are trying to find a place for Villain: Exit, Stage Left where the exit is not undignified.

I'd say adjust the description on Villain: Exit, Stage Left and merge.

Yeah, that trope is needlessly narrow (as in the point is the villain always escapes, not that it's glorious or undignified). I agree with merging.

edited 13th Mar '12 1:59:20 PM by DragonQuestZ

I thought this was the trope where the villain escapes by, like, jumping out the window.

This trope is supposed to be an escape by leaping from a high place into water.

Really? That's awfully specific... But I suppose it could work. Perhaps a bit of a re-write, and definitely a different name.

edited 13th Mar '12 5:53:41 PM by lebrel

I think that's two different things.

"Villain leaves in a dignified way" is one trope.

"Somebody escapes by jumping into water from a high place" is another trope.

Reading the page again, I think he has it right; it's supposed to be about "leaps out of a window into a convenient lake or moat and swims away"; the discussion page from an earlier version says "The key to a Prisoner Of Zenda Exit is a leap from a high place into water."

But the examples are a mess; some are about jumping out a window (or off a roof, or some other context involving jumping) without the "swims away" angle, some seem to be about the Pre Escape One Liner (which should be on So Long, Suckers!). So if that's what the trope is about, it needs a good cleanup.

It seems to have suffered some serious trope drift, not helped by tropers adding extraneous detail to the description that have muddied the waters.

I'll attempt a serious clean-up tonight; tightening the description and removing the examples that don't meet the high place/water/swim away criteria.

"Swims away" is probably a dubious qualifier. Jumping off a zeppelin and having a minion fly underneath to catch you at the last minute should count, for example.

I think the escaping part might be related to Soft Water? BTW, do we need to add a supertrope for villain escapes to be a recurring plot?

Does it matter specifically how the villain escapes? Seriously, the villain gets away so that he can fight the heroes later. Does it matter whether he jumps out a window or into an escape pod?

Well it needs to matter in some way, or it would be a duplicate of Villain: Exit, Stage Left ("The villain escapes after being foiled").

edited 14th Mar '12 12:44:04 AM by troacctid

This is a reasonably common scene and worthy of its own trope. The 'swims away' may not be strictly necessary, but 'leap from from high place into water when cornered' (with the implication of a certain degree of style) is the essence of the trope.

edited 14th Mar '12 12:48:53 AM by foxley

I've attempted a clean-up.

I've hopefully made the 'high place/water' element more obvious in the description. I've expanded the examples I'm familiar with to emphasise the core element, and removed those examples that obviously don't apply.

Can someone who is familiar with the other examples see if they fit?

"Well it needs to matter in some way, or it would be a duplicate of Villain Exit Stage Left ("The villain escapes after being foiled")."

Um, did you miss the second and third posts, where merging was mentioned as a possibility? Why make those separate? Why not just merge into a general trope about the villain always getting away?

"Jumping out of a high place to escape" is a trope. It doesn't have to be the villain who does that. It also doesn't necessarily have to end in water.

Anything else here appears to be already covered by Exit Villain, Stage Left.

Jumping from a high place to escape is No Escape but Down. This is a subtrope of that.

Aha.

So everything on this page is covered by No Escape but Down or by Exit Villain, Stage Left, and this page has a serious lack of wicks and inbounds and an obscure name.

So let's move the examples off and cut it; there's no need for this page.

I still think there's a legitimate trope here.

If this is a trope, needs a specific definition. Is it "villain escapes by jumping into water"? Is it really important for them to do this so they could face the hero again?

edited 14th Mar '12 5:46:27 PM by ThatHuman

Well, it's most likely No Escape but Down, Exit Villain, Stage Left and Never Found the Body.

That it is a combination of those things should be enough to make it its own trope.

Index Etc. (8)

• Escape Tropes
• Fight Scene
• Film
• Literature
• No Escape but Down (says that this a supertrope of Prisoner of Zenda Exit)
• Prisoner of Zenda Exit
• So Long, Suckers! (says that Prisoner of Zenda Exit is a subtrope of this)
• This Index Has Left the Building

Leaping Into a Body of Water as a Means of Escape (20)

• Action/Adventure Tropes
• Doctor Who S16 E4 "The Androids of Tara"
• Flashman (probably a body of water example since a parody of The Prisoner Of Zenda)
• Fullmetal Alchemist
• Jon Sable Freelance (Homage to The Prisoner Of Zenda, so probably a body of water example)
• Kiss Me, I'm Virtual
• Le Scorpion
• Nintendo Power (character flies over a moat)
• Pirates Of The Caribbean
• Queen of Swords
• Stardust
• Super Window Jump
• The Great Race
• The Prisoner of Zenda
• The Prisoner Of Zenda
• The Pyrates (probably a body of water example)
• The Simpsons M-Z
• The X-Files
• Time Wars
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left

Escapes in General (10)

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer (falling off a roof to land on a truck)
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer S3E21 "Graduation Day, Part 1" (same as the above example)
• Chuck (jumping out of a window in order to re-enter a building on a lower floor)
• Graceful Loser (potholed as escape)
• Magick Chicks
• Samurai Champloo
• Shadow Hearts
• The Incredibles
• The Three Musketeers (2011)
• Tsukihime

Other (1)

• Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (Villains leave you trapped in certain locations as they are being filled with poison gas/burning)

Unclear/Little Context (9)

• Better to Die than Be Killed (Described in the context of death tropes, so may be misuse)
• Book of the New Sun
• Crisis Core
• Don The Chase Begins Again
• Inspector Spacetime
• Scaramouche
• Tales of the Abyss
• Where On Earthis Carmen Sandiego
• Young Bond

Unless I made a significant error in this wick check, it looks like most people are using this trope to refer to an escape by jumping into a body of water. That being said, it seems like there is some confusion as to what the trope is really about since Prisoner of Zenda Exit is also being used to refer to villains escaping in general.

There may actually be a pretty good case for the idea that the trope is being underused because of the current name as many of its uses explicitly refer to The Prisoner Of Zenda. I think that may indicate that the current title is a barrier to people who are not already familiar with that work.

edited 15th Mar '12 6:50:07 AM by LouieW

Perhaps the name is also confusing because it's referring to The Prisoner of Zenda novel, but not the eponymous prisoner himself?