"Get out of that, if you can!"
One way of beating something with tentacles, long stretchy limbs, or serpentine features is by tying it up with said features. For smaller creatures, those about the size of the protagonist, this often involves physical tying. Larger creatures will have to be wrapped up with more complex maneuvers, similar to what one would use to dispose of a Misguided Missile.
Sub-Trope of Bound and Gagged, and almost always involves Hoist by Their Own Petard. Compare and contrast Tentacle Rope. Not to be confused with Human Knot or Naughty Tentacles.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Dragon Ball Z has Goku face a giant snake called Princess Snake. He defeats the snake by flying around it until it ties itself into a knot trying to eat him.
Comedy
- One of Steven Wright's deadpan jokes is that he once got fired from a pet store because he took three snakes and braided them, then tried to pass it off as a three-headed snake.
Comic Books
- The Incredible Hulk:
- Hulk has at least once defeated Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four by tying him in knots.
- He also tied Doc Ock's arms into knots in retaliation for the beating he received in a Sinister Six storyline.
- In X-Wing Rogue Squadron, a teenaged Wedge Antilles was restrained by Booster's tentacled copilot while going berserk as his parents were dying. Somehow, off panel Wedge slipped out and got to a window, and the copilot was seen looking startled with its tentacles knotted.
Fan Works
Films — Animation
- In the 1980s The Chipmunk Adventure movie, the Chipettes escape from a room full of snakes by tying two of them together and using them as a rope to get out of a window.
- As in the mythology example, this happens to Pain and Panic when they try to kill baby Hercules in Disney's Hercules.
- In The Jungle Book, Mowgli pushes Kaa's coils off a tree and he collapses on the ground in a tangled heap. As he crawls away, his tail ends up tied in a knot, which gets snagged and trips him up.
- In Robin Hood (1973), Prince John punishes Sir Hiss by tying a knot on his throat, then later by tying him around a pole (pictured above). It also used to be the page image for the movie's funny page.
- The animated film The Secret of Kells has the boy protagonist face off against a tentacle monster to retrieve another magnifying crystal to replace the one his mentor lost years ago. Part of his tactics for defeating the thing invokes the trope as he evades the tentacles.
- In Vivo, Vivo defeats a hungry python this way.
- Tarzan in one scene is being chased by an extremely long snake. Suddenly he comes to a stop and turn to face the snake which looks like it is about to get him but it gets stuck just short of of him. The camera then zooms out to show how Tarzan had tricked it into tying itself up as it chased him though the trees around them.
Films — Live-Action
- In Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, Larry escapes from one of the Xiangliu's heads this way.
Literature
- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them has Plimpies: fish-like creatures with two legs who nibble on the feet and clothing of unsuspecting swimmers. They are considered as pests by the merfolk, who will tie their legs into knots and letting them drift away to get rid off them.
Live-Action TV
- The Goodies: In "Scoutrageous", when the 'Lone Scout (Plus One)' (a.k.a. Graeme and Bill) are using their scouting skills to run a Protection Racket on a huge scale, one of their targets is the London Zoo, where they tie knots in a python and an elephant's trunk.
Myths & Religion
- Classical Mythology: When attacked by two snakes, the baby Hercules defeated them by tying them together.
Tabletop Games
- Mutants & Masterminds suggests allowing this as an Acrobatics or Bluff check against an opponent with Elongation.
Video Games
- In Burly Men at Sea, the brothers can tame a Kraken by tying two of its tentacles together.
- In the video game adaptation of Hook, the instruction manual says that the reason the snake enemies are attacking you is because you used to tie them into knots when you were a kid.
Webcomics
- In Freefall, the police chief points out to Sam
just how long it would take him to free himself if his facial tentacles were tied to an object. Sam complains that is something he wishes the chief did not know from experience.
Web Original
- The Adventures of The League of S.T.E.A.M.: In "Tall Tails", three men boast of their encounters with a kraken, including one man who claims he defeated it by tying its tentacles in a nice square knot. While he's talking, a kraken attacks, but as the man only has one arm now, he's got a good excuse not to volunteer to fight it off. "I need two arms for that!"
- In Bee and Puppycat, Bee's landlord Cardamon tells a "Just So" Story about the creation of jellyfish to his comatose mother. It involves the arms of an octopus rupturing from tying themselves in knots trying to frantically collect the strands of hair scattered by ocean currents a princess gifted him in gratitude. The chunks of his arms fused with the strands of hair and became jellyfish.
Western Animation
- Ben 10: Omniverse:
- Princess Looma manages to do this to Ester when they fought.
- Ben (as Crashhopper) also does this to Kuphulu, one of Zs'Skayr's henchmen, by tying him up in his own bandages. He gets left behind as well, adding insult to injury.
- In an old Felix the Cat cartoon, Felix travels underwater in search of a pirate's treasure and is forced to fight a boxing octopus for it. To win, Felix grabs each of the octopus's tentacles when it tries to punch him and ties them together.
- While the tentacle monster in Futurama's "Beast with a Billion Backs" is not defeated this way, this method or a similar one is used to delay Leela's capture to it.
- Looney Tunes short "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery". Duck Twacy (Daffy Duck) hunts down the gangsters (all inspired by Dick Tracy villains) who stole the piggy banks. One of them is Neon Noodle, a Frankenstein's Monster lookalike made of neon tubing. Twacy wrestles him and turns him into an "Eat at Joe's" sign.
- This was used in the first act of Mr. Bogus episode "Museum Madness". Bogus finds himself facing off against the pharaoh's pet cobra, before fighting the cobra in a Big Ball of Violence. After the fight ends, Bogus is victorious, with the cobra all tied up in knots.
- My Life as a Teenage Robot: When a deadly snake escapes from its enclosure at a zoo's reptile exhibit. However, due to said snake being a protected species, Jenny cannot use lethal force and instead tricks the snake into tying itself into a balloon animal poodle, to its confused mortification.
- The Simpsons: In a Treehouse of Horror epsiode, Bart becomes a Rubber Man calling himself "Stretch Dude." At one point the Big Bad has SD and Clobber Girl (Lisa) suspended over a vat of boiling lucite, tied there with Stretch Dude's own arms.
- In the Silly Symphony short "Birds in the Spring", a bird escapes a snake by flying through a hollow log and letting the snake tie itself up on the knotholes.
- Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Star and Marco defeat a Hydra with quick maneuvers to tie its necks up into a knot.
- Static Shock: One of the openings has Static using complex maneuvers against Rubberband Man to make him tie himself up.
- Steven Universe manages to defeat a worm-shaped gem monster this way in "Bubble Buddies", baiting it into wrapping itself around the legs of a worn-out, abandoned pier. Its struggling collapses the pier on top of it.
- In one episode of Superman: The Animated Series, Superman uses this tactic to defeat an alien monster with multiple tongues.
- In the opening to his cartoon, Touche Turtle does this to a land-walking octopus.
Real Life
- Several animals in real life are known to tie themselves into knots. Eels and hagfish tie themselves into knots as a defensive measure against predators and to help them tear food apart. Eels have also been observed tying themselves into knots to give themselves leverage to pull prey out of hiding places. Hagfish also tie themselves into knots in order to remove excess slime from their bodies. Snakes normally do not tie themselves into knots and usually only do so if something is wrong with their nervous system, which may be caused by a viral infection. Snakes also tie themselves into knots during experiments where they are subjected to microgravity by a rapidly descending airplane, but why they do this is unknown.
