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Before there was Peach, there was Pauline.

  • In the Ace Attorney series, most female assistants fall under this at some point: Ema Skye, Trucy Wright, Athena Cykes, and Kay Faraday are all accused of murder at some point, Pearl Fey goes missing in the third game, and Kay Faraday is kidnapped in Investigations 2. Phoenix's main assistant Maya Fey, however, takes the cake. First meeting? Save her in a court case. Reunited in game 2? Save her in a court case. End of game 2? Kidnapped, must save someone else in a court case in order to get her back. Final case third game? Nearly murdered and then trapped in an icy cave. Meet her again in game 6? Save her in a court case. End of game 6? Kidnapped, must settle ownership claims to an artifact in court to get her back. The Layton crossover? Accused of witchcraft. Thankfully, she also spends just as much time out of distress and she's even rescued Phoenix on a few occasions, and she never lets herself be defined by the trouble she gets into.
  • The Adventures of Lolo trilogy involves Lala getting kidnapped by King Egger, and Lolo has to save her. However, in the third game, one can change this around by attempting to take out King Egger the first time as Lolo, in which King Egger will demonstrate to Lolo how it is like to be kidnapped. Of course, this leaves Lala to save Lolo.
  • AI: The Somnium Files: Saito Sejima, a serial killer, takes the teenaged Iris hostage in order to lure The Hero, Date, to a remote location. Iris's mother Hitomi, who comes with Date to save her daughter, is knocked out alongside Date and also taken hostage.
  • Midway through Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis, Mera and Tempest are kidnapped by the Fire Trolls after Black Manta is dealt with, requiring you to rescue them.
  • Plucky Girl Yuri Sakazaki from the original Art of Fighting, although after the events of the game she took up Kyokugen Karate from her father to defend herself and became nearly as proficient as her brother, Ryo, and their friendnote , Robert. Though Ryo initially objected to her taking up martial arts, out of concern for her safety, he's come to acknowledge her talents.
  • Kaori plays this role in Aselia the Eternal - The Spirit of Eternity Sword despite theoretically having the same ass kicking potential as any stranger would. But she never even acquires a weapon and is instead held hostage for almost the entirety of the game by one person or another.
  • In Assassin's Creed, Altair saves countless Distressed Damsels (and some Distressed Abbots and Islamic Scholars as well) from the city guards, and is rewarded by their family/students helping him escape from Mooks. Despite this happening in the middle of a city, nobody seems to react at all to the attempted abductions and rapes happening right in front of them. note 
  • Much of the plot of Asura's Wrath is this, being about Asura's struggle to save his daughter Mithra. In the end, no one could stop him from saving her, not even the creator of life itself.
  • Battle for Wesnoth: An important plot point in Northern Rebirth is the news that an elven princess named Eryssa has been captured by the orcs. Tallin decides to rescue her to get the elves to help his cause while simultaneously preventing the orcs from getting any ransom money.
  • Jade's distressed damsels in Beyond Good & Evil are quite original, in that she has to rescue her uncle, who is a humanoid pig, as well as all the orphans from the lighthouse.
  • BioShock:
    • Wonderfully averted in BioShock 2. Eleanor Lamb is setup to be one, but stick her in a combat situation and she absolutely massacres every Mook in her way. It is also revealed that she basically engineered her own rescue by resurrecting her rescuer.
    • Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite seems to be your average Damsel in Distress: she's trapped in a tower, guarded by a terrible ''monster' and must be rescued by the Player Character, Booker. But she's immensely helpful in combat to the point it could be said Elizabeth is escorting YOU, constantly fetching needed supplies and using her abilities to summon useful terrain and helpers from other dimensions. While you do need to rescue her from Comstock's scientists in the third act, by the end of the game, she reaches near godlike levels of power and effortlessly defeats her former guardian, a feat even Booker himself couldn't manage.
  • There's also a subtle deconstruction in BlazBlue. While on the initial surface, Litchi Faye-Ling is trying to 'rescue' Arakune from his fate as an Eldritch Abomination (and later be captured by Relius), in truth she's been dying of the same corruption and Kokonoe flat out refused to help her, and without any other sources of help, she's Forced into Evil by joining NOL. In other words, Litchi has been in distress mentally and had to act on her own because nobody is willing to help her, compounded with the fact that she has been hiding her growing corruption from everyone else except Kokonoe, which makes possible helpers like Bang, Taokaka or Carl completely unaware of her distress.
  • Body Harvest: The Man in Black captures Daisy at some point in the fourth stage and takes her to the Alien Comet to lure Adam into a trap.
  • Inverted, then played straight and also lampshaded in Borderlands 2. The first "damsel" the players have to rescue is resistance leader Roland, and the second is his girlfriend Lilith - who comments on it in a radio message: "Better dead than a damsel". After this example was featured in Anita Sarkeesian's "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games" series, writer Anthony Burch commented that he regretted using this trope.
  • Braid takes this trope and inverts it. In the final level (technically the first, chronologically), the princess is in distress because of you. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.
  • Breath of Fire:
    • Breath of Fire has Nina serve this role in her initial arc, when she's captured by the Karma Wizard while looking for a cure for her father, who said wizard poisoned. After the rescue, she never goes through it again. The first manga adaptation, however, just loved to turn her into a Faux Action Girl, even having another party member accuse her of being The Load to the rest of the group.
    • Breath of Fire II switches it with this game's Nina's sister, Mina, being kidnapped to blackmail her into "joining" a thieves' gang. There's also Princess Elfarran/Elforan in the HighFort arc.
    • Breath of Fire III also presents Nina in such a situation, when she's captured by Balio and Sunder to blackmail the king/her father.
    • Breath of Fire IV is set into motion by Cray and Nina's quest to find her missing sister, Elina, later revealed to have been taken in by The Empire. Unlike previous games, things don't end up well.
  • Castlevania descended into this trope slowly. Early installments forwent hostages altogether (only the arcade rehash Haunted Castle added Simon's wife Serena, as if fighting Dracula weren't motivation enough), and when they began coming, there was uncommon gender balance. The series' first canonical damsel was actually a a guy in distress, Christopher's son Soleiyu in Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge; Richter in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Morris Baldwin in Circle of the Moon further balance out the captured maidens in Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (one of whom isn't such a damsel at that). After Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, however, this trope began to do its worst, e.g. Lydie in Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, Mina and later Yoko in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, Sara in Castlevania: Lament of Innocence...
  • Sue Sakamoto in Cave Story is continually kidnapped or imprisoned by various parties. When playing as Quote, Curly does need to helped at certain points of the original story but otherwise is an invincible partner. In Curly Mode it's Quote whose the Dude in Distress.
  • In Cheese Cat-Astrophe Starring Speedy Gonzales, Carmel is captured by Sylvester, and the goal of the game is for Speedy to rescue her.
  • Subverted in Chrono Trigger as Marle, Princess Nadia is NEVER in this position. In fact, the only time in the entire game when you have to save her is when she's been effectively erased from time and can't help herself. The rest of the game she's a gung-ho Action Girl who won't back down from anything and the only other time it's possible for her to get captured...is if she's in your party at a story moment when you can also have characters like the super strong Robot and the frog Swordsman; and she still won't just sit there waiting to be rescued.
  • In City of Heroes there is a junior heroine, Fusionette, who is constantly getting in over her head, captured and needing rescuing. So much so that it's become a running joke among the community that she has to be the worst superhero in Paragon and the only reason that Vanguard even employ her is as an example of others of how NOT to do the missions.
  • Tawna in the original Crash Bandicoot (1996). Coco, though more prominently active herself, takes the role a handful of occasions in her teenage life during the Play Station 2 and the Game Boy Advance games. until the late 2000s' Crash Mutant Island.
  • Dark Souls has several. Rhea is trapped in the Tomb of the Giants after her companions either all abandoned her or died. Dusk of Oolacile and Sieglinde are trapped in golden crystal golems. Anastacia of Astora is murdered and you have to retrieve her soul to revive her. Then again, most of the dudes you meet need rescuing as well.
  • In the eighth and final level of Darkwing Duck Advance, a hack of Darkwing Duck (Capcom), Negaduck has captured Morgana Macawber. Darkwing's goal is to defeat Negaduck and rescue Morgana.
  • Daughter for Dessert:
    • Double subverted with Amanda. Cecilia has not coerced Amanda into anything, but she’s managed to win her niece over by giving her information about her mother that her father didn’t. Still, it requires a hell of a rescue operation to get her out.
    • Played straight with Lainie in the protagonist's flashback. He had to rescue her from the cult that she’d fallen in with to save her from a purification ritual.
  • Demon Hunter: The Return of the Wings: In the 5th chapter, Perna is taken hostage and then is also kidnapped, so Gun has to go after her. And after the Final Boss Perna goes missing.
  • Several girls in the Devil May Cry franchise are quite capable of protecting themselves from demons, but Kyrie's role in the story of Devil May Cry 4 boils down to getting saved by Nero. Agnus and Sanctus exploited this by kidnapping her to lure out Nero and steal the Yamato from him. Devil May Cry 5 also threw Trish and Lady into this role with Nero and Dante needing to save them, something that did not go over well with fans.
  • In Disney's Hide & Sneak, if starting the game as Mickey Mouse, his girlfriend Minnie Mouse unknowingly gets carried off into the sky by Lu-Lu and he has to catch up to her and rescue her. However, the roles are reversed if playing as Minnie herself.
  • Donkey Kong:
    • Pauline (Aka "Lady") is one of the most iconic examples in gaming, needing Mario to rescue her from Donkey Kong in Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong '94, and the Mario vs Donkey Kong series. She's pictured above for a reason.
    • Donkey Kong himself in Donkey Kong Junior, with the player playing as Donkey Kong's son trying to rescue his father from Mario. Characterization Marches On I suppose.
    • All of the playable Kongs (besides Donkey) are this to some extent in Donkey Kong 64.
    • The fact that Dixie Kong is very much not a damsel in distress is lampshaded by an outraged Cranky Kong.
  • Marian in the original Double Dragon, where the main objective was to rescue her from the Black Warriors.
    • Subverted in Double Dragon II: The Revenge. The arcade version starts off just like the first game, with Marian being surrounded by the Black Warriors, only instead of being knocked unconscious and taken into their hideout, she is gunned down to death by Machine Gun Willy. A similar thing happens in the NES version, only it shows Marian being attacked by a ninja (instead of Machine Gun Willy) and the game doesn't actually show the murder occur (the opening only says that it happened). Marian stays dead in the arcade version, but in the NES version she is brought back to life if the player completes the game on hardest difficulty level (playing this trope straight in a way).
    • She's a no-show in the arcade version of Double Dragon 3, but in the NES version the game's plot was rewritten (specifically for the localized version) so that the final boss turns out to be a possessed version of Marian named Queen Noiram ("Marion" spelled backwards).
    • Super Double Dragon was about saving Marian too, but you wouldn't know unless you read the manual.
    • Averted in the Neo-Geo fighting game and (Despite not in the main continuity) in River City Girls 2, where she's one of the playable fighters. The game explains that Marian got so fed up with getting kidnapped all the time that she spent one time kidnapped working out and freed herself. She, then, proceeded to kick so much ass that the Lee Brothers decided to open up a dojo out of boredom.
  • Johanna is this at the end of Double Homework. Even though Dennis wasn’t really about to sexually assault her, he was blackmailing her. Plus, the prank that Dennis forced her to play involved the two of them being together in their underwear, which could only have been mortifying for Johanna.
  • Zethia from Dragalia Lost, although she’s a bit of a deconstruction. She is perfectly capable of fighting against evil, and could probably fight her captors and run away if she wanted to; she just chooses to let herself be a pawn for the villains so that they will leave Euden and friends alone. Of course, being the noble hero that he is, Euden tries to rescue her regardless. Even if she’s doing it for Euden and friends, in a way she’s still hurting them, since the villains are using her to bring tyranny to Alberia, which means that they are still hurting the people, even if it isn’t direct.
  • Dragon Age:
    • Subverted in Dragon Age: Origins. In the "Paragon of Her Kind" quest, one of your goals is to rescue party member Oghren's wife, Branka, from the Deep Roads, where she is missing. It turns out that she deliberately led her entire clan (except him) there in search of an ancient Artifact of Doom. When it turned out the artifact was protected by lots of golems, ghosts, and death traps, she deliberately let darkspawn kill all the men and attempt to turn all the women into Broodmothers, a process that involves force-feeding them the flesh of poisonous monsters and their own relatives, gang-rape by monsters, and lots of Body Horror, so that she'd have a vast supply of monsters to set off the traps and kill the guardians. She's raving insane as well as utterly evil by the time you find her. You can spare her life and take the artifact for yourself, but the better choice, both morally and gameplay-wise, involves fighting and killing her, then destroying it. Even if you spare her, she refuses to be rescued, and stays in the Deep Roads with her prize. After the infiltration of Arl Howe's estate, the Warden him/herself can be arrested (along with Alistair, if he's in the active party at the time) and have to be rescued from prison by your choice of party members. Choose carefully, some combinations have truly hilarious results.
    • In the third act of Dragon Age II, a faction of mages and Templars working together to bring down Knight-Commander Meredith comes to the conclusion that Hawke is their enemy, and will kidnap someone important to Hawke as a means of luring them into an ambush. Who exactly is kidnapped depends on how the game has been played up to this point. If Hawke's remaining sibling is still alive, they will be the first choice. If both of the siblings have died, then it will be Hawke's Love Interest, unless Hawke is being played celibate or the Love Interest is in the active party when the abduction is discovered. If either of those is the case, the kidnap victim will be Hawke's closest friend. No matter who is taken, however, the result is the same - one Roaring Rampage of Rescue.
    • Dragon Age: Inquisition has an entire cadre of kidnap victims, a group of Inquisition soldiers taken hostage by a hostile barbarian who wants to fight the Herald of Andraste and knew that this was a surefire way to make them come to him.
  • In Dragon's Lair, Princess Daphne is being held prisoner in the castle of the wizard Mordroc by an evil dragon named Singe, and it's Dirk's mission to reach the dragon's lair and save her. In the sequel, she is kidnapped once again, this time by Mordroc himself, and Dirk has to chase the two of them across various wacky dimensions in order to get her back.
  • Dragon Quest:
    • Dragon Quest: Princess Gwaelin gets kidnapped by the Dracolord to force the King of Tantegel to "behave" and not cause trouble.
    • Dragon Quest IV: Rose is kidnapped and locked in a tower by Psaro out of a misguided desire to keep her safe.
    • Dragon Quest VII: A somewhat unusual variant, in that Nava becomes a Damsel in Distress by having her soul sucked into a Soul Sword... which the monsters then give to her and have her slaughter others with. Meaning that to save this Damsel, you have to beat the tar out of her first.
    • Dragon Quest IX: When Ivor and the hero first reach the pass where the Stornway soldiers try to excavate, they ask the boys about Patty. It turns out Patty disappeared on the road to Angel Falls and got lost in the Hexagon, an underground passageway between the two locations. The hero's later exploration of the tunnels leads them to discover Patty just in time to save her from the Hexagoon.
    • The entire population of Boingburg (with the exception of Rocket) in Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime.
  • Dragon's Dogma. The ending works on this premise, with whichever character you have the highest affinity with being kidnapped by the dragon and used as a hostage as your assumed love interest. Can lead to unintended hilarity if someone like Feste or Fournival is chosen. Aelinore also has this as her defining characteristic, and can potentially be rescued three times in the game.
  • Furiae in Drakengard doubles as this for family reasons (she's your sister, and technically a princess) and because she happens to be the linchpin Cosmic Keystone that prevents catastrophe. As the Downer Ending page points out, this isn't as idealistic as the other examples.
  • EarthBound (1994) has Paula in this role a total of three times - kidnapped by the Happy Happyists, kidnapped by zombies, kidnapped by Monotoli. The second time was Ness' fault, though. Ness himself was captured the second time along with Paula.
  • Echocalypse: The game's plot is the Awakener's journey to free their younger sister Rayna from her Echo Crystal Prison.
  • Epic Battle Fantasy: Both times, Natalie has been kidnapped by Lance:
    • Epic Battle Fantasy 5: She's being held in one location behind bars.
    • Adventure Story: Natalie has been kidnapped by Lance and it's up to Matt to rescue her, after fighting multiple bosses.
  • Etrian Odyssey:
    • Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan: At one point, the Medium is abducted because she holds the key to awaken the true form of Yggdrasil, the Heavenbringer. The player's party goes through the fourth stratum (Echoing Library) to chase Prince Baldur, who is forcefully dragging her to the Yggdrasil. The party manages to defeat the Prince (who is then revealed to have been corrupted by the influence of Yggdrasil, and pulls a Heel–Face Turn), but it's too late: The Medium is now captive inside the Heavenbringer, but her determination to save the world allows her to force a restrain to the monster, allowing the party to defeat it in battle and rescue the girl.
    • Etrian Odyssey Nexus: After the party conquers the Western Shrine, Princess Persephone goes missing. Once they reach Sandy Barrens in the Isle of Bluffs, it's shown that Blót used his Hexer powers to mentally control her, as he needs to take her to the Northern Shrine to fully dispel the seal that holds Jormungandr captive. The party reaches Northern Shrine and manages to defeat the captor, but Blót's twin, unbeknownst to the party, completes the job and orders Persephone to use some of her blood to break the seal. She's finally rescued in The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, shortly before the Final Boss fight.
  • Annoyingly in the Evolution games for the Dreamcast, White Magician Girl Linear WILL get kidnapped/convinced to leave the party right before the The Very Definitely Final Dungeon and subsequent boss fights. And the two games have final bosses that are definitely That One Boss. And she has the best healing and buffing skills in the game. Good luck!
  • EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: The child telepath Emerald gets kidnapped by the Dark Force Army in their search for items of magical power.
  • In Fairune Origins, only the Purple Fairy is in any kind of distress (stuck in a block of ice), the others are just kind of...floating around. Played straight in Fairune 2 however, as all three fairies get captured by mechanical Cube monsters when investigating the Storage Devices.
  • Fallout: In the first Fallout game, the Vault Dweller will encounter a small town known as Shady Sands en route to Vault 15. There, they will meet the town's leader, Aradesh, and his teenage daughter, Tandi. Upon returning from Vault 15, the player finds out that Tandi was kidnapped by a band of raiders known as the Khans. The player is given a number of options on how to handle this: they can negotiate with the Khans to release Tandi, they can go in guns blazing, or they can leave Tandi to her fate. Canonically, the Vault Dweller chose the second option, wiping out the vast majority of the raider gang. Tandi would later succeed her father as the leader of Shady Sands, and under her leadership Shady Sands went from a small town in the wastes to the capitol of the New California Republic. In a twist of irony, the ever growing NCR would end up pushing the Khans out of California entirely, leaving the gang a shadow of its former self.
  • Being a very popular long-standing franchise, Final Fantasy has many examples: Rosa, Aerith, Rinoa, Garnet etc. The very first game begins with a "Save the Princess from rogue knight" plot, before switching to saving the crystals. Subverted in Final Fantasy X with Yuna who, while kidnapped three times, managed to escape on her own the first time and actually made a plan to defeat one of the Big Bad's the third time (which the heroes, while pulling off an impressive Big Damn Heroes, messed up); she still eventually escaped on her own. The second time, she was actually being "kidnapped" by Rikku, so there wasn't any real danger (other than being forced to end her pilgrimage and being held captive in Home), though the other characters think there is at the time. Interestingly the franchise makes a case that this trope isn't conceptually bad, e.g Tifa from FFVII one of the most badass and capable Action Girls in Final Fantasy actually claims she wants to be this for Cloud in their The Promise, as being rescued by the boy she loves when in mortal peril — is something she dearly wants to experience.
  • Fire Emblem has had several of these:
    • Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light has princesses Maria and Elice, along with Midia, who all fight by your side once you rescue them. Also included is princess Nyna, although she's an NPC who mostly exists for story purposes.
    • In the original Fire Emblem Gaiden, every single female unit in Alm's army must be rescued before they're recruited. Celica's party also has to bail Est out after she is kidnapped by pirates.
    • In Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, the villains kidnap Maria, Elice, and Nyna again, plus your old White Mage Lena, to sacrifice them to revive Big Bad Medeus. In addition, you have to bust Est out of prison again after she is kidnapped to force your old friend Abel into the villains' service.
    • In Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, Edain, Deirdre, Julia and Lene start like this before they join you. It doesn't end well for most of them: Deirdre eventually ends up brainwashed and dead; Julia fares just as badly as her mother Deirdre, but she survives, eventually coming into her own when she gets the holy spellbook Naga and bravely vows to keep fighting; and it's implied in a veiled way, through Ares vs Bramsel's pre-battle convo and Ares and Lene's convo when she's freed, that she was raped by Bramsel after he took her captive.
    • In Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, Lilina is captured by Ostian rebels before you free her and she becomes a Black Magician Girl, Princess Guinivere is briefly taken prisoner in Chapter 13, and Badass Bookworm Cecilia (in her defense, she was injured by Zephiel) and Mysterious Waif Sophia are found imprisoned and also join your group.
    • In Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, there's Ninian and her Distressed Dude brother Nils, thanks to Nergal (though they later become a Quirky Bard and Quirky Dancer duo and join the team properly; there's also Priscilla (she's even got the evil marquess trying to force her into marriage!), who also eventually becomes a Red Mage after promotion.
    • In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Queen Ismaire of Jehanna. The worst thing? You do not get to save her, and she ultimately dies in the arm of her son, King Incognito Joshua. Additionally in Ephraim’s route, Tana is kidnapped while trying to track the group. She joins the party upon being saved.
    • In Fire Emblem: Awakening we have Lissa's best friend Maribelle taken hostage by Gangrel for trying to call a cease and desist to the bandit attacks, Nowi the Manakete who was put on an auction block and treated like a circus animal, Emmeryn, who's captured and threatened with death unless Chrom gives King Gangrel Ylisse's treasure, and Noire, Tharja's daughter who's captured by a slave trader and held prisoner until she finds a bow lying on the ground and her alternate self takes over.
    • In Fire Emblem Fates, all three paths have Saizo's partner Kagero get captured by Kotaro, and you have to rescue her. It even results in an Enemy Mine in the Conquest route, where you are at war with Saizo's country.
    • Fire Emblem: Three Houses has Flayn, who is kidnapped and must be found and rescued in an early mission. In addition, unless you choose to support Edelgard she will capture Rhea right before the Time Skip, forcing the player to take Enbarr to save her.
    • Fire Emblem applies the imprisonment plot device to both genders pretty judiciously - probably thanks to the easy "recruit opportunity" of prisoners of war. For example, the aforementioned Midia is imprisoned with four other characters, all of whom are men. In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Rolf is held hostage along with Mist, likewise the POWs Brom and Nephenee (plus Crimean Knight Kieran). In Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn Ilyana and Aimee are held prisoner, but so are the three male members of their caravan (and the incognito dragon prince, Kurthnaga). Midway through Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest, you have to rescue the Hoshidan royalty, consisting of two men and two women, from getting murdered in captivity by an unscrupulous underling. There are plenty of Distressed Dude examples littered throughout the games, too.
  • Galaxy Angel II: The main plot of Zettai Ryouiki no Tobira kicks off when Milfeulle Sakuraba, one of the main heroines of Galaxy Angel, is captured by Verel and held in the Central Globe of ABSOLUTE as a living battery, spurring both the Luxiole's crew and the Rune Angel Wing into action. She's rescued near the end with the help of her fellow Moon Angel Wing pilots and joins them for the final battle.
  • Princess Prin Prin from Ghosts 'n Goblins is kidnapped in every single game she appears in (four). It's a wonder why she never takes exception on it and evolves into Royals Who Actually Do Something territory.
  • Gift: Princess Lolita Globo.
  • In Book II of Guenevere, the titular player character and her sister-in-law Morgana are kidnapped by the Frankish ambassadors Grimald and Meligaunt. While King Arthur and the Knights are in active pursuit, it ultimately falls to Guen and Morgana to take matters into their own hands.
  • Deconstructed in Guilty Gear, where Dizzy is more powerful than her guardians, Testament, Johnny and Ky. The "rescuing" is more like calming her down when her power goes out of control. Dizzy herself is a Naïve Everygirl who hates violence with passion, so the experience of unintentionally attempting to kill people is traumatizing. If you listen to her in-game quotes, it seems that her enormous powers inflicts physical pain to her. And the few times she snaps? She SNAPS (like the Alternate Universe from the CD dramas in which she succeeds her mother Justice and destroys the world, or the Midnight Carnival ending in which she horribly kills I-No when she abuses her a bit too much.. In short, Dizzy needs no rescue from others... but from herself.
  • Gunfighter: The Legend of Jesse James: Jesse's girlfriend, Zerelda "Zee" pretty much exists to be rescued by Jesse in both games, the first where she gets abducted by Jack Carson's mooks and ends up Chained to a Railway leading to a lengthy Locomotive Level where Jesse must stop the train in time, and later in the sequel where she gets abducted by the new villain, Bob Younger, leading to Jesse infiltrating Bob's hideout to save her.
  • In House of the Dead 1, the thing that draws the heroes to the mansion in the first place is a distress call from Tom Rogan's girlfriend Sophie, who, despite apparently being a fellow AMS agent and the only survivor of her group, is mostly useless. Depending on how you fared, she may or may not survive. In the later games, you can rescue citizens or your partner from marauding zombies for extra lives.
  • Haunting Ground uses this as a gameplay mechanic, by requiring Fiona to have rely on Hewie as her primary means of defense against the game's stalkers. This is especially the case, when she's in full panic mode and unable to move. In most cases, her only recourse is to run and hide 'til the danger's passed.
  • Iron Man 3: The Official Game: Pepper Potts is kidnapped and held captive by Ezekiel Stane during Tony's fight against the Living Laser so she can surrender all of Tony's bank account information to him. It isn't long before he tries to torture her to death just so he can spite Tony.
  • Palutena in Kid Icarus. Apparently, being a goddess does not make one immune to this trope, although it's more Mind Control than actual kidnapping.
  • Princess Mari in The King of Dragons exists to fulfill this role. Though she actually lead the offensive of her kingdom against the hordes of monsters, she just makes things get worse.
  • Kingdom Hearts:
    • Kairi gets kidnapped no less than three times in the series, one per each number game. The last is particularly infuriating as it happened just after the game promised that she becomes a capable combatant, only for her to get kidnapped once again before getting Stuffed in the Fridge by Xehanort (but was justified in the ReMind DLC).
    • The other Princesses of Heart don't fare much better but are sometimes useful. For example, Belle has a particularly memorable scene in which Xaldin has both her and the Rose and is forcing the Beast to choose between them. Belle preempts the choice by elbowing Xaldin in the gut, taking the rose from him, and escaping over to Sora right before the party fights him.
    • Naminé is an... unusual case. At first she's a Damsel in Distress that Sora has to rescue. The problem is that this is a complete and utter lie. She's a witch who can control the memories of people connected to Sora. However, she's only doing it because she's a hostage to Marluxia. After Sora rescues her, she's trying to restore his memories... only to be forced into hiding soon after when she betrays DiZ and the Organization wants her dead. Doesn't stop her from rescuing Kairi, though.
    • Played straight with Megara. Her very first scene in Kingdom Hearts II has her being chased by Heartless, and she ends up in distress at least three times. The manga adaptation has her fare worse, where she ends up Bound and Gagged by Pete moments after Sora frees her.
  • Princess Cassima in King's Quest V and more so in King's Quest VI is a damsel in distress. She is held captive by the wizard Mordak in V and in VI, is actually kept inside a tower by the Grand Vizier Alhazred for a plot to marry her.
    • Similarly, the entire objective of King's Quest II is to rescue Princess Valanice from a tower prison.
      • And in King's Quest III, the Llewdor Oracle lights a fire under Gwydion's rear by showing him the three-headed dragon that's laid waste to Daventry. The dragon demands a Human Sacrifice, and the one "chosen" this year is Princess Rosella his long-lost twin sister.
    • Her first appearance notwithstanding, Rosella tends to take this trope for a joyride. In King's Quest IV, she's the one doing the rescuing, finding a MacGuffin to bring back from Tamir to heal her stricken father. She's briefly relieved of her inventory and locked up, but is freed soon enough due to Mook–Face Turn. King's Quest VII has her impulsively putting herself in harm's way, finding a way to free herself from the fire she landed in, and then rescuing a captured king. Top it off with her breaking the More than Mind Control Malicia pulled on Edgar - who seems to be an absolute sucker for this sort of thing.
  • Klonoa: Door to Phantomile: The Songstress Lephise is kidnapped by Ghadius in his plan to destroy Phantomile, and Klonoa has to save her.
  • Sylvia in the first Kung Fu Master, kidnapped if just to force his boyfriend Thomas to enter into a fight with the kidnapper and his group.
  • Kuri Kinton: The plot of the game is to rescue a senior police officer and his daughter. She's present in the background with him in the final boss fight.
  • Last Duel Inter Planet War 2012: The Excuse Plot of the game is to rescue Queen Sheeta from galactic conquerors known as the Galden Tribe. Considering that it's an arcade game and that Sheeta is rather fanservice-y, it was likely a deliberate decision to get more quarters out of its male demographic.
  • In The Legend of Dragoon, Shana fits the bill perfectly. Even when she joins the party she is the light-elemental-healer.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Peach's contemporary, Princess Zelda, fits the trope, but not in a way that plays the trope precisely straight. While finding/rescuing/protecting her is usually Link's ultimate or major goal in any game where she is present, she almost invariably cooks up some clever ideas whereby she can actively work against the Evil Plan of the Big Bad who captures her. The classic Damsel in Distress, by contrast, is tactically of no use whatever.
    • In the original game, she knows she's going to be captured as part of Ganon's plot, so she fragments the Triforce of Wisdom (which is what he's really after) and hides it in various parts of her kingdom, then enables her most loyal servant to escape to find help while she herself is taken prisoner.
    • In The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, though she is in a prison cell at the beginning, she is quickly rescued by Link. She only gets kidnapped again about a third of the way into the game; she gets rescued in the second-to-last dungeon, after which she and the other Maidens (themselves Distressed Damsels) use their magic to break the barrier barring entry into Ganon's Tower.
    • In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, she also acts as the mentor by secretly being Sheik. However, it's played painfully straight when she reveals her identity near the end of the game and immediately gets kidnapped.
    • In Oracle of Seasons, Din plays this role pretty straight forward, while in the game's counterpart, Oracle of Ages, Nayru is possessed by Veran (to be fair, she does help Link and Ralph escape from Queen Ambi). Zelda, if you linked your game, plays this trope very straight twice through Oracle of Ages, being kidnapped first by Vire, then again by Twinrova.
    • In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Zelda starts out as leader of a gang of pirates (in the form of a girl called Tetra), while Link's just some kid, which initially makes her more competent than the main character. She's also vital in the final boss fight. Link's sister Aryll instead serves as the primary damsel of the game's first half (because the Helmaroc King mistook her for Zelda) and two subplots involve girls who were also kidnapped from Windfall.
    • In the Wind Waker sequel The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Tetra spends the first half of the game AWOL and the second half as a statue just to make sure she had a reason not to be kicking ass by Link's side.
    • In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, she isn't kidnapped - she surrenders to the Big Bad to save her people from genocide, although it amounts to roughly the same thing. While unable to actively participate in the fight for most of the game, she is extremely helpful to the point of appearing to give up her own life when she does appear, and is a vital participant in the endgame.
    • Zigzagged in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, where Zelda's body is the one who got kidnapped, while her spirit actively teams up with Link while possessing a Phantom armor and assists in her own rescue, to the point of actually fighting alongside Link (including against the final bosses).
    • Played straight, after all these years, in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, where Link gets involved in the plot in order to rescue his childhood friend Zelda. She actually barely avoids a proper kidnapping.
    • Inverted in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, where Zelda's the one who's been keeping Calamity Ganon sealed inside Hyrule Castle with her for the last 100 years; Link's less her rescuer and more her backup.
    • Averted in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, where after Ganondorf reawakens, she is whisked back in time to the age of the Imprisoning War, where she plays a key role in the attempt to defeat Ganondorf in the past as the Sage of Time. When their attempt fails, she uses her knowledge of the future to convince her fellow Sages to make preparations for their descendants to aid Link when Ganondorf returns, then uses a Dangerous Forbidden Technique to become the Light Dragon, allowing her to not only restore the Master Sword after Ganondorf's power shattered and weakened it, but also play an active role in helping Link defeat Ganondorf once and for all in the present.
    • It's common in Hyrule Warriors to be forced to rescue allies who are in danger as part of the gameplay, but there are notable storyline examples. The Ocarina of Time arc starts by informing us that Princess Ruto has been kidnapped, and she falls into a trap from which you must save her in the next level. Agitha is saved early in the Twilight Princess arc, and the villain specifically sends enemies to capture her again later. And a massive part of the conflict at Gerudo Valley involves saving a stranded Lana. That said, all of the above-mentioned ladies are also Action Girls who get to kick plenty of ass. Oddly, despite disappearing after the first stage of the game, Zelda is never captured at any time in the story, though this is hardly a surprise when Sheik is the third playable character you unlock.
  • In the 1988 Shoot 'Em Up Last Duel developed by Capcom, the goal of the game is to rescue Queen Sheeta, the ruler of the planet Mu.
  • In Little King's Story, all the princesses are held in jars by the kings you have to defeat to add them to your set. Near the end of the game, whoever you brought with you is swallowed by a rat king, which later gets chucked out the window by the boy whose room you're in.
  • Live A Live:
    • The Prehistoric chapter has you playing as a young caveman named Pogo who falls in love with a pretty cavewoman named Beru. Beru's getting chased by an enemy tribe looking to offer her as a Human Sacrifice, so it's up to Pogo to save her. Being the damsel in distress aside, she's actually very strong in gameplay.
    • In the Edo Japan chapter, you'll come across a young woman about to be killed by some intruding guards. You can choose to rush in to save her, but you gotta leave her if you're going for a Pacifist run. Don't feel too bad about it though, cause she's actually a demon who was planning to kill you anyway.
    • The Medieval chapter starts out like a typical Save the Princess scenario. You play as the knight Oersted whose fiance, Princess Alethea, was kidnapped by the seemingly resurrected demon king and so he sets out to save her. Joining him are his longtime friend Streibough and the retired heroes Uranus and Hasshe. Without going into too much detail, things end very, very badly for every character involved.
  • The Lunar series rarely passes on an opportunity to incorporate a love interest rescue into one of its finales.
  • Magical Tetris Challenge: Minnie is hypnotized and kidnapped by Pete, who intends to marry her.
  • Liara's establishing character moment in Mass Effect involves rescuing her from a forcefield she got herself stuck inside, fighting off a krogan battlemaster while she hides in a corner, then saving her from a collapsing volcano. To avoid confusion, and confirm her love-interest status, she then proceeds to faint once she arrives on your ship, since she spent anywhere from hours to days without food or water in extremely stressful situation. Once she's had a proper rest she reveals herself for the badass she really is in the next mission you take her along. More so in the sequel.
    • Liara's establishing character moment in Mass Effect 3 subverts this trope fantastically while demonstrating her Character Development throughout the series. She is first seen scrambling through the air ducts, trying to escape Cerberus troopers who have attacked the base she was working at. As soon as she exits the ducts, she uses a biotic attack and a pistol to ambush and execute both troopers.
    • Yeoman Kelly Chambers gets this treatment late in Mass Effect 2, complete with getting dragged away by monsters, screaming her head off. The non-specialist crew of the Normandy meets the same fate at the same time. And god help the poor girl if you don't go to her rescue right away. Considering her fate in the third game, God help her even if you do.
    • The Rachni Queen somewhat counts, insomuch as a giant bug can be considered a damsel! If set free on Noveria during the first game, she is captured by the Reapers during the third. Both times Shepard can decide to rescue her.
  • In Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, Mona Sax's first line is: "God! I turned out to be such a damsel in distress..."
    • She gets to invert the trope, running into a burning building to save Max.
    • The line is an Ironic Echo from the first game, when she denies being a damsel in distress like her twin sister was.
  • Bandage Girl from Meat Boy who is constantly kidnapped by Dr. Fetus. In the last chapter in Super Meat Boy, she decides she had enough of it.
  • Mega Man:
    • Star Force's Luna Platz becomes one whenever the evil villains attack in the games. There are three occasions in the first game where this happens. When Taurus turns Bud into a monster, then when she (along with Bud and Zack Temple) are forced into doing the swan dance on a trip to AMAKEN. Finally when the kids teacher merges with an evil FM-Ian and goes berserk. Her role as the Damsel in Distress continues into the second game, as she is kidnapped by Hyde-Phantom, then almost trapped in a alternate dimension by Solo-Rogue (along with Bud, Sonia and Zack), then kidnapped by Hyde-Phantom, again and then finally kidnapped by a giant bird monster.
      • And it all comes to a head in the third game. The trip to Alohaha was supposed to be a relaxing affair, but then Jack and Tia corrupt Strong with a Noise Card, causing him to start an earthquake on the island and force him into a fight with Mega Man. Before you can say "it can't get any worse", JOKER shows up and erases Strong. Just as Jack and Tia transform to fight Geo, Luna picked the absolute worst time to show up - and Joker uses THAT opportunity to kill her! Strong, Luna, and Vogue (Luna's Wizard, the youngest of the lot) all get better, but Joker has established himself as a very serious threat - one that Luna fans absolutely despise.
    • Roll from Mega Man Battle Network has gotten herself into trouble at least once per game.
    • When Zero first wakes up at the beginning of Mega Man Zero series, he has to protect the girl who revived him, Ciel, throughout the entire first level, though justified in that 1) Ciel is a scientist, not a warrior; and 2) the soldiers who were protecting her all got killed by the enemy by the time they finally got to where he was and she was the Sole Survivor.
    • In Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters, one of the three selectable path objectives is to rescue Roll.
    • Mega Man must save Kalinka in Wily Stage 3 of ROM Hack Rockman 4 Minus ∞.
  • Mission: Impossible (Konami): IMF Agent Shannon Reed was assigned to be Dr. O's secretary to provide protection from any abduction attempts. When the doctor is kidnapped by The Sinister Seven, she gets taken as well, but is able to send out a coded message to the IMF that starts the plot. She ends up being used as a Human Shield by the boss of the fourth level.
  • In Monster Hunter: World, The Handler assigned to the player character to manage their contracts and paperwork very often winds up rushing off to explore and bumps into a dangerous monster. This tendency is lampshaded by the scholars, before the first Deviljho hunt, making specific mention of her staying in camp. Unfortunately, she has already ventured into the Ancient Forest where it is lurking before she can be warned. Sure enough, she is caught in a clash between Deviljho and Great Jagras and needs to be rescued from her current pickle before she literally ends up in a pickle.
  • Milon's Secret Castle: Queen Eliza, the queen you are trying to save, is being held captive by Mahirito.
  • Played with in Mystic Warriors: sure, Yuri could end up being kidnapped at the beginning of the game, but because she's the only girl in a pool of 5 playable characters, the odds are in favor of there being a Distressed Dude instead. The only way to guarantee Yuri becoming the victim is for there to be 4 players, and for all of them to select the boys.
  • Played with in an entertaining fashion in the Neverwinter Nights mod A Dance with Rogues. The Princess in the story is the player character and spends a lot more time rescuing people than not, and the character who most fits this archetype is Anden, a male character. Pia actually comments on this when you tell her the tale of rescuing Anden for the first time.
    • In Neverwinter Nights 2, after you rescue Neeshka from the Fort Locke guards, she says "Does that make me a damsel in distress? I hope not, I hate those women!"
      • She get snatched off-screen once you enter Merdelain.
  • Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi: Everyone who's not James or a monster. The most traditional example would be Rebecca, since the ultimate objective of the game is to rescue her from the Count before he can sacrifice her. Ironically, she's the only one you can't save.
  • One Way Heroics has Queen Frieda, who is locked inside a randomly-appearing heavily-guarded castle which you must fight through if you want to recruit her.
  • Pac-Man:
    • Among the characters that Pac-Man has to rescue from Ghost Island in Pac-Man World is his wife, Ms. Pac-Man. In Pac-Man World Re-Pac, her role is filled by Pac-Mom due to legal issues surrounding Ms. Pac-Man.
    • The intro of Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness has Professor Pac explain that an unnamed princess ruling over the four wonders of Pac-Land disappeared at the same time that an evil witch named Mesmerelda arrived and took over her palace. At the end of the game, however, it is revealed that the princess was actually turned into Mesmerelda by an evil spell, and Ms. Pac turns her back to her old self by destroying her crystal ball.
  • Persona 4 makes liberal use of this trope and Distressed Dude, with each kidnapped victim being one of the primary motivations for entering the TV world in the first place.
    • That said, this trope is subverted by each of the female party members in some capacity:
      • Despite being ambushed by her Shadow after running off on her own in Yukiko's dungeon, Chie plays a major role in rescuing Yukiko not long afterward. Further fleshed out in her Social Link arc, where she grapples with her burning desire to protect those around her. Also, she kicks tanks.
      • Yukiko's Shadow represents her desire to free herself from being forced to become the future manager of the Amagi Inn, and appears as a princess looking for her knight in shining armor. As her Social Link arc progresses, she toys with the notion of leaving the inn altogether, only to change her mind and take on the role of manager willingly and on her terms.
      • Rise Kujikawa, like Yukiko, appears to be the epitome of this trope at first; that is, until her Shadow is defeated by Teddie's Heroic Second Wind and she obtains her Persona. Moments later, Teddie's Shadow appears, and is ready to wipe the floor with the party until the exhausted and newly freed Rise steps up to provide analysis and support to the party (which was originally Teddie's job). Her S. Link revolves around her conflicted feelings about her career as an idol: she hates being the ditzy pop star, but she is reminded of just how inspirational she is to many of her fans (including her replacement, Kanami).
      • And then she becomes a playable character in Persona 4: Arena Ultimax.
      • Averted most prominently with Naoto, whose skills as an ace detective make her definite Action Heroine material. Plus, there's the whole matter of her struggles with her being a girl in a male-dominated profession.
  • Subverted with Demi and Kyra of Phantasy Star IV; they're both captured, but not to motivate anyone: Demi is immobilized by Zio when he takes over Nurvus, the system she works in, because she's the AI that runs it, but he has no use for her himself. Kyra has to be rescued from a forest of carnivorous trees; she got so pissed off at watching her friends suffering that she decided to go kill her way through the forest to put a stop to it. Turns out the party isn't any better at fighting them than she is, either.
  • The objective of the 1989 Shoot 'Em Up Phelios is to rescue Artemis from the titan Typhon. She's subjected to quite a bit of Fanservice between levels, with her being stripped down to her underwear. She has a bit of a Rescue Romance going on with the Player Character Apollo—who was actually Artemis' brother in Greek mythology, but the developers clearly weren't too concerned with mythological accuracy.
  • Pilgrim (RPG Maker): Inago, Akemi's little sister- the entire goal of the game is for Akemi to rescue Inago from Alice, who wants her soul and has brought her to her castle in the Other World for this purpose.
  • The 'Save Our Seeds' levels in Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time have 'endangered plants' which the player must protect from the zombies in order to complete the level.
  • Professor Layton:
  • Dana Mercer becomes one about midway through [PROTOTYPE]. Given that the one kidnapping her is a freaking Leader Hunter she is excused for screeching in panic. a Leader Hunter is about the size of an elephant, and can throw down with Dana's big brother Alex. Alex can tear tanks apart barehanded, and survive ''anything''. Dana can't do that.
  • Miyu in Red Steel is kidnapped on the first level, and the rest of the game revolves around bringing down the yakuza in order to save her.
  • Parodied in Reset Generation where EVERY player tries to 'rescue' a princess from every other player.
  • Resident Evil every playable female character (with the sole exception of Shiva in RE5) has to be saved more than once.
    • Jill Valentine the series's primary female protagonist is not free from this, in her debut she nearly gets killed by zombie hounds before Chis and Wesker save her. In Spencer Estate proper she still needs her male colleagues to pull her put trouble, Barry saves from becoming a ''Jill Sandwich'' when she gets trapped by a Descending Ceiling and in Chris's play through she has to be saved from Wesker's prison ensuring a Rescue Hug. The majority of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis subverts this greatly with Jill being the main protagonist, though she is saved by Carlos when the Nemesis manages to infect her. Resident Evil: Revelations also subverts this as Jill is the one trying to find and rescue Chris for half of the game, also the prologue to Resident Evil 5 "Lost in Nightmares" she's the one who saves Chris from Wesker by performing a Heroic Sacrifice spearing Wesker out of a window. Unfortunately the damsel comes backs as Jill is dying and Wesker decides to strip her down and put her in a test tube and experiment on her as the ultimate revenge against Chris. The Resident Evil 3 (Remake) got some ire for upping damsel moments for Jill with Carlos needing to rescue her a total of five times across the story.
      • Jill's role in Resident Evil 5 as whole is hybrid of Damsel and Dark Action Girl as she's Wesker's Dragon and Nina William's esque super assassin however she's also Brainwashed and Crazy and in need of rescuing, Chris manages to snap her out of Wesker's control and she even provides firepower against Wesker in the final battle though she doesn't get to fight Wesker herself which disappointed a good chunk of fans. To make matters worse the last we hear of Jill she's hospitalized and bored, until Resident Evil: Death Island finally brought her back into the action again.
    • Claire Redfield who was trained by her brother Chris in RE2 still has these moments. In her very first scene she is saved from the zombies by Leon the rookie cop but for the rest of the game she subverts this trope playing Mama Bear to Cherry, and she manages to avoid damsel status in the final cutscene against the G-Creature (despite screaming for Leon) by finding a opening in the train. In Resident Evil – Code: Veronica Claire subverts this majorly like Jill in 3, Claire in Code Veronica is an Bullet Time-happy action girl pulling some big Matrix moments in the opening cutscene and remains competent for most of the game despite being imprisoned in the first level. But Claire's winning streak doesn't last the whole game especially when she's captured by Alexia and it switches over to Chris, plus there was some painfully forced Rescue Romance with Steve Burnside that happens earlier. Averted with Resident Evil: Revelations 2 where Claire is the one babysitting and kicking ass to protect the teen damsel Moria who cannot fight herself (until the game's climax).
      • Claire's role in CG movie Resident Evil: Degeneration can sort of considered this, she along with some other survivors are trapped by zombies in a airport and she needs to be saved by Leon again the exact same way he does in Resident Evil 2. However when Claire and little girl Rani are surrounded by zombies, Leon tosses her his handgun and Claire takes out all of them in seconds so she's still the awesome action girl underneath, Claire is just committed to looking after Rani like she was with Cherry. Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness however plays this straighter with Claire getting kidnapped by the corrupt government officals, forcing Leon to literally pull her out of danger and into his arms. It doesn't help that the mini-series brings up Claire's feat of surviving Raccoon City but doesn't show the skills that helped her do so. In Resident Evil: Death Island, Claire is incapacitated by Dylan but this mitigated by the fact Chris and Leon (the poster boy badasses) were in the same boat as her, and the rest of the time Claire is presented as being just as capable as Chris, Leon and Jill.
    • Rebecca Chambers got this heavily but ironically enough they actually made her a damsel in reverse, by giving her a badass upgrade in the prequel, where she's a player character and therefore pretty competent. In Resident Evil 0 she's the only survivor of the Star's Bravo Team and while she has to be saved by her partner Billy Cohen from Leaches and falling down a hole at one point, Rebecca still kicks a lot of ass by herself even defeating the goddamn Proto-Tyrant. But since RE1 takes places after 0, some time between then and running into Chris (who has to save her) in the original game, she apparently snapped from the sheer horror around her and lost all her zombie-killing skills. In the CGI movie Resident Evil: Vendetta she's an absolute Damsel In Distress having be to be saved by Leon and Chris from the Big Bad Arias who of course has Villainous Crush on her and plans to to make her his bride since she looks like his dead wife. Averted surprisingly in Resident Evil: Death Island Rebecca is the one who saves Chris, Leon and Claire from being turned into zombies and while she's still treated as less superhumanly cool than the other four main characters, she's no less vital to the story as The Smart Girl.
    • Ashley Graham from Resident Evil 4, with her needing to be saved more than a dozen times across the story and constantly protected in gameplay. Made all the more hilarious by how she was shown to want very much to give Leon a Smooch of Victory (and a lot more than just a smooch) for rescuing her at the end... only for Leon to reject her and make sure she knows that he is not interested. To the suprise of many RE4make managed to give Ashely a great deal of Adaptational Badass while keeping her core damsel role, as she aids Leon many times throughout the game and can even kill a Regenerador for him. This treament along with her more likebale and realistic personailty turned her from one of the most disliked elements of the original game, to one of the most beloved aspects. Unsurprisingly this version Ashely has Leon respond more agreeably to her flirtation.
    • Ada has comes close to this trope more than a few times but only outright been a damsel in the climax of RE4 when Saddler overpowers her and holds her hostage. It seems like she's going to be a damsel in Resident Evil: Damnation but then immediately frees herself with a knife hidden in her stiletto.
    • Mia in Resident Evil 7 though she plays with this. When you Ethan the player, first seemingly rescue her from the Baker Estate she reveals she's infected and takes Ethan's hand off with a chainsaw forcing you to have to shoot Mia in the head (she gets better). Later on you are able to rescue her properly and cure her of the Mold but then you're attacked by Eveline and the game switches over Mia's POV who has to go save Badass in Distress Ethan.
  • Robopon has Lisa and Princess Darcy in the first game. While Lisa is a Defiant Captive, Darcy has the misfortune of being trapped in a mirror.
  • Rocket Knight Adventures: In each of the three 16-bit games, their respective princess is captured by Axel Gear, the arch-rival and Evil Counterpart of Sparkster, to serve as the prisoner of each game's respective Big Bad, with Sparkster's goal being to rescue the princess. The original game has Princess Sherry as the prisoner of Emperor Devligus Devotindos, Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2 (GEN) has Princess Cherry as the prisoner of King Gedol, and Sparkster (SNES) has Princess Flora as the prisoner of Generalissimo Lioness.
  • The objective of Rolling Thunder is to rescue Leila, Albatross' female partner, from the secret society GELDRA. A bit of Fanservice of her is shown after each stage, presumably to get players spending more quarters. She's Promoted to Playable in the sequel though.
  • RosenkreuzStilette begins with the protagonist Spiritia Rosenberg meeting up with her childhood friend Iris Zeppelin, the daughter of Count Michael Zeppelin. Then out of the blue, a dragon swoops in and steals Iris away, at which point Spritia sets off to stop the Count's rebellion and rescue Iris. Except not, as Iris is the game's true villain. Having manipulated everyone else for the sake of her own entertainment, Iris played the part of a damsel in distress to toy with Spritia's feelings, and then attempts to kill her upon revealing her true motives. Played straight in the sequel RosenkreuzStilette Freudenstachel, where the game opens with Spiritia herself getting kidnapped before cutting to Freudia Neuwahl setting off to save her.
  • In Rune Factory 3 your fiance is kidnapped near the end of the game. This doesn't make her look bad since the one kidnapping her is a super powerful dragon.
  • Subverted in The Secret of Monkey Island: Guybrush Threepwood goes through all kinds of peril to save Govenor Elaine Marley, who was captured by the Big Bad LeChuck. He gets to the church on Melee Island just in time to interrupt their wedding, only for Elaine to descend on a rope from the ceiling. Turns out she'd already made her escape, fooling LeChuck by putting a pair of trained monkeys in her wedding dress, and was actually planning to assassinate him while he was distracted by the wedding ceremony, but Guybrush inadvertently managed to mess up that last step by attempting to rescue her. At least Guybrush ends up getting the honor of finishing off LeChuck.
  • Sentinel: Descendants In Time has Carrie, Beni's sister. She's being held hostage by Doba to make Beni explore tomb 35. Subverted in the end, when it turns out that Beni is really Ramirez.
  • The final part of A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004) has Sunny and Violet be put in danger thanks to another of Olaf's schemes to get their fortune and Klaus has to save his sisters.
  • Subverted in Shadowgate. The player comes across a beautiful maiden chained in a tower, but if you try to rescue her she turns into a werewolf and kills you. You have to kill her before you can take the important artifact she was guarding.
  • In Shadowverse, Losaria gets kidnapped by shades at the end of the prologue. Arisa's story mode is focused on rescuing her.
  • Princess Satera from Shining Wisdom. You have to save her twice, once from being turned into a swan.
  • The Heroine of the original Shin Megami Tensei twice. The first time, Yuriko (Aka Lilith) kidnaps and nearly executes her via firing squad, both to make an example of her for leading a resistance against Gotou's coup and to remove any competition for the Hero's attention. The second time, her mind is invaded by the demon Arachne, whom the Hero needs to defeat in order to save her. In spite of this, the Heroine is still very much an Action Girl and is entirely capable of saving the Hero as well. Even at the cost of her own life.
  • If you romance a Governor's Daughter enough in the 2004 version of Sid Meier's Pirates!, then when you next visit the port the Governor will tearfully tell you that she has been kidnapped by the Evil Colonel Mendoza and beg you to hunt him down and rescue her. (Successfully doing so leads to the opportunity to propose marriage shortly after.)
  • In the Skate or Die games, CJ is kidnapped late into the second game, and rescuing Miss Aerial is Bad N' Rad's plot.
  • Although mostly able to take care of herself, there have been incidents in the Sly Cooper games where Carmelita Fox needed to be saved. This is lampshaded in the fourth game when Sir Galleth believes that a woman's role in combat is to be saved... and he was once rescued by Carmelita herself, much to his embarrassment.
  • Smurf: Rescue In Gargamel's Castle, The Smurfs (1994), and The Smurfs 2 have Smurfette as the damsel in distress, though in The Smurfs (1994), a few Distressed Dudes also need to be rescued from Gargamel.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) features Princess Elise taken hostage by Eggman, who pursues her relentlessly whenever Sonic gets her out of his clutches. Over the course of the game, Eggman kidnaps Elise no less than five times. Eventually, when she gets a few hints of what Eggman wants from her, she stands up to him by leaping to her supposed death to prevent him from achieving his goal. After that scene, it's only after Eggman threatens to destroy her city/kingdom that Elise chooses to return as his prisoner.
    • Also occasionally played straight with Cream.
    • Amy Rose a few odd times, most prominently in Sonic the Hedgehog CD. Interestingly, in LEGO Dimensions, Amy actually complains about being this and how it seems that it just overshadows her own heroics.
    • Tails occasionally plays a girlish-boy-in-distress kind-of role.
    • In the spin-off cartoons and comics, Princess Sally takes the role on occasion too.
  • Lola Tigerbelly becomes one towards the end of the first game in The Spellcasting Series, having been placed in a swinging blade trap by the Big Bad.
  • In Spelunky, each level contains a damsel which you can rescue by taking them to the exit for a single extra hit point (you're gonna need it). They also make for great throwing objects or altar sacrifices. In the classic version, if you rescue 8 of them in one playthrough, you can play as the damsel and rescue the Spelunky guy instead. In HD, you also change the damsel with a male version or a pug. The sequel replaces damsels with pets, and one of the unlockable Spelunkers may be the original female damsel.
  • Spud's Adventure has Princess Mato, who has no fighting abilities unlike the rest of the cast and must be rescued from the evil Devi.
  • In Star Fox Adventures, Krystal serves the role of the Distressed Damsel, being trapped in a crystal up until the end. Which is ironic, considering that she was originally intended to be a player character of Dinosaur Planet.
  • Bastila, a trained Jedi, is kept as a hostage during the first part of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. She'd just crawled out of a crashed escape pod's wreckage when she was captured, and her captors were intelligent enough to fasten a neural disruptor to her head (and she didn't have time to determine where her lightsaber was). She does manage to free herself the instant your rescue attempt manages to thin out the guards enough that she can finally get the disruptor off. However, she is quite offended if you comment that you "rescued the damsel in distress" later on, almost as badly as when Carth starts joking about losing her lightsaber being against the Jedi code.
  • Star Wars Chess every other good character in the good team is either male or a robot. Princess Leia being the only female is the only one who seemingly gets kidnapped in one of their "defeated" cutscenes.
  • Miss Summer Penny from The Stretchers ends up Dizzied by Captain Brains, necessitating the medic protagonists to rescue her. It is especially imperative they do so, as she's the train conductor for the Greenhorne Islands' major train service.
  • The non-Capcom developed Strider sequel, Strider Returns, has this as its main plot, sending the game's protagonist to rescue his darling Lexia.
  • Suikoden V has a subversion with Princess Lymsleia. While she is held hostage for most of the game, she chooses to use her authority to attempt an escape from the Godwins and in the war in the favor of La Résistance in a supposed assault on them rather than accept the state of affairs.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Panda Adventures: At a celebration, alien robots invade Fu's planet and kidnap the princess.
  • Super Pitfall: Heavily downplayed, as one of your goals is to save your cursed niece from the Underworld. You would only know this if you read the manual.
  • Super Robot Wars:
    • Kusuha Mizuha — her face just screams that she is a perfect target to make a Distressed Damsel, and in every installment of Original Generation, starting from OG 1, OG 2, OG Gaiden, there is always a scenario where she is kidnapped, first by Ingram in OG 1, then by Lorenzo & Murata in OG 2 (only in the remake. The scenario was not featured in the GBA version), and finally by the Bartoll units in OG Gaiden. Not even saying 'I'm not just some damsel in distress waiting to be rescued!' in battles can rectify this...
    • In Alpha series, however, it's inverted. Once Alpha 2 kicks in and the stories get more proper, it's usually her boyfriend Bullet that needs to be rescued.
    • Though not entirely subverting to this trope, somewhat the Ridiculously Human Robot Lamia Loveless fell into this trope in OG Gaiden. After all her whole ass kicking and dramatic development back in OG 2, her story in OG Gaiden involves her getting kidnapped and needs to be rescued TWICE (even our resident damsel needs to be rescued once this time). First she's kidnapped by the Bartolls, all while just being in the wrong place in the wrong time, stripped naked and be somewhat brainwashed to fight her allies. She was almost saved... but suddenly, the villains managed to snatch her back after the player has to wait for 6 months to see if she's dead or alive, and brainwash her AGAIN. So much that it takes a former badass enemy turned good to save her completely. Once she's completely saved, she returns being a formidable girl in battlefield (and that even depends whether the player wants to use her or not), though her story arc was over at that point.
  • The Excuse Plot of Sheriff is to save a damsel in distress from some bandits. Actually the first instance of a Nintendo game using this trope.
    • In Shin Super Robot Wars, Professor Eri Anzai gets kidnapped by Ze Balmarian Empire because her vast knowledge on the lost continent of Mu.
  • In Survivor: Fire, a family's house is on fire. The family features a mother, grandmother, and a daughter (in addition to a father and a son).
  • Tales Series:
    • Symphonia's Colette Brunel. Even though, gameplay wise, she's a powerful and useful Glass Cannon.
    • Shirley from Tales of Legendia, who is constantly kidnapped during the main quest.
    • In Tales of the Abyss, Natalia and Fon Master Ion are held hostage, she could have gone peacefully to avoid any conflict.
      • Ion is always getting kidnapped.
    • In Tales of Vesperia, Estelle is held hostage and used by the villain at the time of the game. She did not use her powers to save an Entelexia because she would have driven him berserk, and the amount of guards could have prevented a feasible escape.
    • In Tales of Rebirth, the first half of the game is dedicated to save dozens of damsels in distress (captured by the Queen of the land. Go figure). But Veigue really cares more about rescuing his not-girlfriend Claire, because she is just so much more important than all those other simpletons.
  • Many early games in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise have a similar plot, with intrepid news reporter April O'Neil being kidnapped by the Foot Clan, and the Turtles have to defeat Shredder, typically along with some other villains, in order to save her.
  • Princess Kiku in Tenchu gets kidnapped in every game she appears in. It's played with in Tenchu 4, where she orders Rikimaru to kill her as a way to defeat the Big Bad who was holding her hostage, and he eventually complies.
  • Three Wonders has the Princess of Asthar in Chariot.
  • Tiny Toon Adventures games:
    • Babs Bunny is this in the 1991 NES game of the same name, Buster's Hidden Treasure for the Sega Genesis, and Buster Saves the Day for the Game Boy Color, as she is captured by Montana Max in all three games. Buster's goal in all three games is to rescue her.
    • Babs' Big Break for the Game Boy features two examples. First, Fifi La Fume is captured by the Forest Ghost in Level 3. In order to rescue her, you'll need to find the switch that opens her cage. Once you rescue her, she will return the favor by using her stench to knock down the trees blocking the path. Then, in Level 4, Shirley the Loon is captured by the Wolverine, who plans to eat her. You have to defeat the Wolverine in order to rescue her.
  • One of the primary goals of Tomato Adventure is to save the player character DeMille's girlfriend, Patharan, who has been captured by King Avira and is being used to power his Super Cara-Cooker to turn everyone in the Ketchup Kingdom into toys.
  • At the end of Total Overdose, Ram has to save a Damsel in Distress in a sequence involving many tropes so dead they don't even have entries. The Damsel is tied to the front of a runaway locomotive by the Villain, and Ram must run along boxcars, jumping into and out of boxcars, fighting mooks, and dodging explosives. The subversions could be that the Villain wears a White Hat with an antique emblem of the US Cavalry on it, and that instead of a horse, Ram gets a motorcycle to ultimately ride to the rescue on.
  • The titular princess of Tsioque seems to be this as she's immediately captured and put in the castle dungeon. She averts this by breaking out of the cage herself.
  • Raven inverts this a few times in Ultima IX, then lampshades it when she has to play it straight. She later puts the Avatar into Distressed Dude territory herself...and makes him like it.
    • Played straight in the first Ultima Underworld: when the game starts, the Baron's daughter, Arial, has been abducted into the Stygian Abyss by the villain, and the Avatar is forced to prove their innocence by rescuing her.
  • The paramedics from Urban Chaos: Riot Response are usually in need of rescue, which makes sense since they're civilians trying to save injured cops and firefighters while under attack from insane gang members with ELECTRIC SAWS.
    • Also the firefighters, Officer Forrester, and your C.O. Adam Wolf are in need of rescue. The firefighters are excused because they too are unarmed and the Burners have guns. Officer Forrester when he is not being used as a human shield is rather competent at stealing your kills so he too is excused. Wolf is excused because they kidnapped him at his safe house. Both Forrester and Wolf tell you when to fire at the Burner and they mock their would-be kidnapper.
  • Vendetta has the player characters saving Hawk's apprentice, Kate.
  • The Excuse Plot of Violent Storm consists of the player characters rescuing their kidnapped friend Sheena.
  • Clementine is kidnapped at the end of Episode 4 of The Walking Dead: Season One by the man who was talking to her through the walkie-talkie, though she has direct agency in her rescue and can kill her captor if the player lets her.
  • WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$: Ana, in Kat's chapter. A skeletal spirit called Boneheads curses a regal individual whose name and gender are based on those of the player; and when Ana goes to the Castle to defeat the spirit she falls in a trap and is kidnapped. Ana sends a rescue letter to Kat asking for help. Winning the microgames symbolizes Kat being able to break through the areas of the castle until she reaches the roof, where the evil spirit, the player's avatar and Ana are.
  • Watch_Dogs has its main character spend significant lengths of time trying to rescue his captured sister.
  • Lynn in Witches' Legacy. The premise of each game is usually Carrie having to save her from being kidnapped and possessed. It's very satisfying in have her be the player POV in the bonus chapter of the fifth game and have her save Edward.
  • Lampshaded in Wizards & Warriors.
    • Each stage (except the last) ends with rescuing a Damsel in Distress, conveniently labelled as "the distressed damsel". (In the last stage, you appear to have rescued a princess, which I guess means that the other stages are variations of the "Princess is in another castle" trope.)
    • Three princess sisters appear in the third game of the series. In order to finish the game, you must promise to marry them after freeing them. Yes, all three.
  • In Woolfe - The Red Hood Diaries, Red's grandmother is seen being held hostage by B. B. Woolfe.
  • Subverted in World of Warcraft. For the Alliance, you get a quest to rescue the dwarven princess from Blackrock Depths. For the Horde, you're given the same quest in the hopes of improving relations with the dwarves. Not only she does not want to leave, but she is pregnant. And you just killed the father.
  • The MC's love interest, Elly, in Xenogears gets kidnapped by the antagonists near the end of the game. Fei and his friends worked together in the climax final battle to rescue her. The ending shows Fei finally succeeded in rescuing his lover after going through three past lives of losing her to tragedy.
  • Teana becomes this near the end of Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories, though this is more a ploy from Priest Seto to lure the hero to Heishin's chambers and claim his Millennium Puzzle, and Teana is quickly let go once the hero reaches her.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction, Ishizu gets kidnapped near the end of the game to force the player to hand over the Millennium Items.
    • Serenity is this in the Kaibaman show. It's just a show, but you have to duel against Leichter anyway.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! BAM, at the same time Yugi's arrested, Akiza gets kidnapped by Devack. By the time you reach her, she's been brainwashed.
  • Yakuza 0 The real Makoto Makimura is one of the most tolerable examples of the trope, by virtue of being both completely new to the world of criminal conspiracy and completely blind. She does express a desire to aid in her own rescue and tries to be proactive on several occasions, but that doesn't work out very well.
  • Multiple cases in the Ys series, but the worst offender has to be Elena in Ys: The Oath in Felghana, whom you have to rescue at least three times.

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