Unwilling Suspension

"Sorry to leave you hanging."

— Anarky, Arrow, "The Candidate"

A Bound and Gagged prisoner is suspended from the ceiling, usually by a rope.

This is not usually intended for torturing the prisoner, but in reality, this could cause undue pressure on the body, and bad blood flow. Perhaps even dislocate something — there's a reason why BDSM models engaging in suspension art tend towards the light-weight and extremely flexible end. In most fiction, the prisoner does not appear to suffer any particular physical discomfort (If the viewer thinks too much about this, it results in Disbelief of Unwilling Suspension).

Hanging by the wrists, a common variation, would in Real Life quickly cause permanent damage to the hands and within a few hours cause death by suffocation/"Suspension Trauma", not quite unlike a crucifixion. Many a dungeon has a prior inhabitant still hanging by their wrists in skeletal form. Sometimes the victim is only hanging on the wall or tied to a beam or cross rather than the ceiling, though still usually off the ground.

Sometimes this trope involves only suspending the arms of the victim rather than the entire body, which can be used to justify this trope more, as the victim could conceivably last longer if they actually have contact with the ground. Of course the other physical and psychological impacts of being restrained for long periods of time will be entirely ignored.

Reasons for using this trope include:

• It provides for more effective immobilization of the prisoner. Tie somebody to a chair and they will be able to maneuver the chair toward a Conveniently Placed Sharp Thing nine times out of ten. Hang them from the ceiling and they have nothing to get traction against. Also, enough rope to hold someone's weight will also be enough rope that it's hard to get out of, especially if the Real Life consequences kick in.
• The victim can be suspended above a chasm, piranha pond, Spikes of Doom, or other Death Trap, as a disincentive from struggling loose.
• Author Appeal and/or Fanservice.
• Simple Rule of Cool.
• Simple Rule of Symbolism. When a hero gets captured, especially after Take Me Instead, usually this serves as the Crucified Hero Shot.
• In rare cases, the villain may actually be doing this to deliberately hurt the prisoner.

Favorite victims seem to be The Hero(es) or the Damsel in Distress (especially a princess and/or the President's daughter).

Compare Chained to a Rock.

See Also: Crucified Hero Shot with which this trope often overlaps, mainly because all of the logical problems this trope presents were accounted for and exploited in crucifixion, which was basically a preexisting deconstruction of this trope. Dangled by a Giant, where a gigantic character dangles a smaller person by holding the back of their shirt between their fingers, which is usually done against the smaller character's will.

Compare: Casual Crucifixion

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Berserk:
  • Both Griffith and Guts are subject to this trope; in fact, this is how the reader is introduced to Guts on the first page of the manga...
  • Schierke also does this to Isidro as punishment for trying to peak at Farneze and Casca taking a bath.
  • In a very fan disservicey example, it happens during the Eclipse to an unconscious and forcibly stripped naked Casca, a few moments before Femto (Griffith reborn as a God Hand) violently rapes her.
• Bleach:
  • Nemu Kurotsuchi◊ got once tied up like this, courtesy of Szayelaporro Granz. With tentacles She survived his Gabriel ability, and the drugs Mayuri placed in her system were key to Szayel's defeat and death..
  • Also, Yumichika, Ikkaku, and Matsumoto when they fought Luppi.
• Happens to Anna Stephanie, David Rutherford and several others during a particularly nasty soon-to-be public execution in Blue Comet SPT Layzner. Fortunately, Eiji Asuka steps in and saves them.
• In Brave10, Isanami gets to hang over a precipice courtesy of Kamanosuke before he joins the Braves, and Anastasia gets hung up upside down while she's a prisoner of Date.
• Charlotte: In Episode 11, while Kumagami is interrogated by two of his captors, they tell him to take a look to reveal Nao who is now suspended by a rope with her wrists stretched overhead, stripped to a lingerie, and is covered in bruises.
• Digimon:
  • The Digimon Emperor does this to the Digidestined aside from Daisuke in an episode of Digimon Adventure 02, telling him that he can only save one. Daisuke replies by offering himself to be killed, but luckily, it turns out not to be the real Digidestined at all.
  • In Digimon Data Squad, the Digidestined are ambushed by a bunch of (spider-like) Dokugumon, which net the Digimon together while suspending the teens like this.
  • In episode 46 of Digimon Ghost Game, the protagonists are captured by an Oleamon trying to eat her first victim (Kotaro) and, while held captive inside a warehouse, have their wrists tied up and stretched overhead while suspended by a hook.
• In Dungeon Tuber, there is one chapter where a demon girl captures the main cast and the rest of the party members, and have them all tied up and hanging midair by their wrists overhead (except for the short old man).
• In Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu, Kaname and the other students do the same to Sōsuke after he turns their art class into a battleground. They then use him as an abstract art piece.
• The titular character from Izetta: The Last Witch is subjected to this in Episode 9 by the Big Bad, who proceeds to painfully chain Izetta up and suspend her with her arms overhead — she spends the rest of the next episode dangling helplessly and unconscious while enemy soldiers plan on capturing her, thankfully she's rescued by the cavalry before she was sent to the enemy HQ as a Prisoner Of War.
• Happens to Kyo's girlfriend Yuki in the manga version of The King of Fighters KYO, when a masked Badass Biker kidnaps her to force the recently depowered Kyo to a duel. Subverted: the stranger is Saisyu, who's subjecting a borderline Brainwashed and Crazy Kyo to a Secret Test of Character. When Kyo "passes", wakes up from his state, and recovers his flames, Saisyu is satisfied so he cuts the rope and Yuki falls down... and into Kyo's arms.
• In Kouryuu no Mimi, this happens to Natsume's forbidden Love Interest Kanako. Even more, she's tied up and hung in the middle of a construction site. Subverted since it's soon revealed that it isn't actually her, but one of the villains Noriko in disguise, and Natsume ain't fooled for one second, though the real Kanako shows up after the battle is over to give Natsume a hug though.
• Lime-iro Ryukitan X: One episode has the girls captured, chained, and hanging with their arms above their heads as one antagonist proceeds to torture them.
• Love Hina:
  • In some of the final chapters, Tsundere female lead Naru Narusegawa is captured by one of her dorm mates Kaolla Su and left tied and suspended. Averted in that the bindings are tied in a way that they act as an impromptu support harness (no, it's not a crotch rope), making this example a bit more plausible than others.
  • Motoko is tied up and suspended in an earlier chapter as well.
• Happens to Fujiko in Lupin III: The Secret of Twilight Gemini. Even worse, she's also naked.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • During the first season Fate is typically suspended from the ceiling in chains while Precia whips her for failing or not succeeding well enough.
  • Later on in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, this is played more comically when Otto and Deed catch Chantez holding a sparring match with Vivio without their supervision, and Otto punishes Chantez by restraining her using a tortoise shell bondage bind, after which Deed uses ropes tied to her wrists and ankles to suspend her from a tree, all while calmly explaining to Vivio that what she did was wrong.
• In a more light-hearted version of this trope, Episode 5 of Minami-ke has Kana roll up Chiaki in a sheet and suspend her from a clothesline to make a rain charm.
• Mikura Suzuki of the Mezzo DSA series ends up in one episode tied up and suspended in the air.
• Natsuki in My-HiME is knocked unconscious by a Robot Girl and wakes up like this.
• In Now and Then, Here and There, the Decoy Protagonist is suspended outside the massive death-ship for three continuous days... during which time they fire something we swear wasn't a nuke.
• Commonly used in the early years of the Pokemon anime.
  • In Here Comes The Squirtle Squad, the titular squad ambushes Team Rocket and ties them up, suspending Meowth from a tree branch with Jessie and James tied to the tree itself.
  • At the end of The Flame Pokémon-athon, Dario has Team Rocket tied up and suspended from a tree and then pecked repeatedly by his Dodrio after losing to Ash and Lara Laramie's recently-evolved Rapidash.
  • Team Rocket's Meowth's backstory included an instance of him being tied up and suspended from a tree in an example of Kids Are Cruel.
• Commonly used in Ranma ½.
  • When Principal Kunō tries to force Ranma into obedience by knocking Akane out, then dangling her from the ceiling. Doesn't work — she breaks free immediately when she wakes up and gives him a piece of her mind (and a footprint on his face).
  • In the same story arc, Ranma later gets tied up and hanging from the ceiling. Unfortunately for Principal Kunō, he omits to secure Ranma's legs, and the martial artist is very adept at fighting with them, even holding a bamboo staff between his toes.
  • Done to Ranma again to use him as bait for a mirror duplicate of his female side. Then they went off to have dinner. Hey, at least they left his meal out in a tray for him... just out of reach.
  • Happōsai, more than once, as punishment for his indiscretions and just to keep him out of the way.
  • Akane (pictured above) is surprised to find herself tied up in a tree as the "prize" for Ranma's second major fight with Ryōga.
• Sailor Moon:
  • In a season 1 episode, an impostor Sailor Moon is "captured" in a scheme to lure out Tuxedo Kamen. She is suspended by her wrists above her head and dangled from a crane.
  • In season 4, we see Helios's human body like this, naked as well as bound by what seems to be spider webs. And upside down, even.
• In Sakura Gari, at some point Masataka finds a photograph in which he sees a girl subjected to this. She is a former maid from the Saiki household, and Sakurako is the one who tied her up like that... to then subject her to Cold-Blooded Torture for doubling as The Mistress to Souma.
• Sgt. Frog:
  • At the end of the "Wet King" episode, Sergeant Keroro ends up tied up like this outside the Hinata household, with bruises.
  • Also in the series premiere, after Keroro is first discovered by Fuyuki and Natsumi. Attempting to escape by slipping out of the ropes only makes it worse as the ropes stop short at his oversized head and tighten around his neck.
  • We see a variant in one brief flashback — as punishment for wetting the bed, young Fuyuki had a bamboo threaded through his pajamas to hang him up to dry alongside his bedding.
• The X-Laws from Shaman King used the iron gibbet cage, a torture/execution method that includes this trope, on their enemies:
  • First, a bunch of Ancient Egypt-themed Shamans attacked the Laws in public. One of them had an eagle Animal Motif and attacked the X-Law leader Jeanne from mid-air... then he suddenly found himself in a gibbet. He was still inside it as Jeanne used her Spirit companion to execute him and his partners.
  • The X-Laws later captured Manta, put him inside another gibbet, then used him as a hostage to force Yoh and Co. to meet with them. Manta managed to break through with the help of Mosuke, then Ryu and Tokagero caught him in mid-air safely. Then, a fight started. Then, Hao stepped in...
• The wrists variation is used on Death the Kid in Soul Eater, and played for all the Fan Disservice it's worth in between Mood Whiplash moments. Kid's lack of reaction is arguably justified but it still looks far more painful than it apparently is. Gopher beating him while he's tied up is especially horrible.
• The Three Musketeers 1987 anime adaptation — Milady invites a captured Constance to hang around.
• In the manga Torikago Gakyuu during the twin arc, woobie protagonist Mikage is kidnapped by the Ax-Crazy Yuikai and held in the school's clock tower. Yuikai proceeds to tie him up and beat him in order to encourage him into willingly giving up his freedom and becoming Yuikai's slave and consequently having his ears cut off so that the last words he'll ever hear are from his master... or dying. When Mikage refuses, Yuikai drops him out the window where Yukan, Yuikai's elder twin sister grabs the rope on his foot. Consequently, this leaves Mikage dangling upside down by one foot with his hands tied behind his back and an enormous drop below him. He remains that way for an uncomfortably long time, ultimately to his advantage thanks to his Split Personality, but it must have been painful nonetheless.
• Tricks Dedicated to Witches is a rare instance where it is used as a form of torture. The church's method in order to break Liese and cripple her hands is to string her up with her wrists pulled and stretched above her head, with the floorboard manacle cuffed to one of her ankles being used to apply pressure. Her expression makes it clear that it's a painful experience and her wrists even start to bleed from it.
• In episode 4 of Trigun, while the main trio is simply tied up on ground level, poor Stefany (the lady who loves to play cards) is tied up and dangling from the salon bar's ceiling.
• In Voltron/GoLion, Prince Lotor/Sincline ties up Princess Romelle/Amue this way.
• This happens to Maki in one episode from Weiß Kreuz where in addition to being gagged, she is hanging with her arms up while in captivity.
• Makie and Renzaburou from Wicked City are seen like this after the last fight with the Spider Woman. For worse, they're hanging upside down and their bounds are made of the spider web that Spider Woman shot from her Vagina Dentata.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh!, Mokuba was once seen in this position and being hung off from a helicopter to force Yugi and Kaiba into a duel with two of Dark Malik's henchmen.

Comic Books

• Asterix: Cacofonix the bard (whose singing could curdle fresh milk) is almost always Bound and Gagged during the ending feast. Often, he's suspended as well.
• The Legend of Zelda: In one of the stories done by Valiant, Link is suspended by his wrists when captured by Ganon's minions.
• Soulsearchers and Company: In #5, Kelly and Janocz are tied back to back and hung from the ceiling of the witch's cottage.
• Storm (Don Lawrence): Ember is a victim of Unwilling Suspension a few times. In "The Living Planet" she is suspended above a sea of lava, while in "The Mutineers of Anchor" she is suspended by her wrists above an abyss. A variation can be seen in "The Hounds of Marduk", but this time an unconscious Ember is tied to a crane, and her legs are lowered into a healing vapour.
• The Warlord: In #131, Morgan is suspended by his ankles above a vat of boiling oil by his Rival Turned Evil Maddox. Maddox places a burning candle beneath the rope suspending Morgan so that when the candle burns through the rope, Morgan will plunge headfirst into the oil.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Wonder Woman (1987): A post crisis story involves Wonder Girl Donna Troy trying to fill the role of Wonder Woman while Diana is absent but getting defeated by Sizeshifter Giganta, who chains Donna Troy up and wears Donna as a necklace as a punishment for the "crime" of "impersonating" Wonder Woman.
  • Wonder Woman (2006): Circe strings up Wonder Woman, Donna Troy, and Wonder Girl(Cassie Sandsmark) above a boiling cauldron in preparation for stealing their powers.

Comic Strips

• In Hägar the Horrible, tax cheats and other offenders frequently end up hanging from the wall by their wrist chains.
• A recurring gag in Peanuts has Charlie Brown trying to fly a kite only to get tangled up in the string and hanging upside down from a tree.
• In The Wizard of Id, those who offend the king frequently end up hanging from the wall by their wrist chains.

Fan Works

• Rocketship Voyager. Because the Retro Rocket has no Artificial Gravity unless under acceleration, any cargo is held in place by a spiderweb of elastic webbing throughout the cargo bay. The Maquis prisoners they're transporting are also kept there, heat-sealed between the layers of webbing over the cargo-loading hatches. However, this also means that all of them survive when Voyager is hurled across the galaxy because the webbing absorbs the force of the decelerating rocketship.
• The Ultimate Evil: After Shendu manages to sneak past the Guardian of the Book of Ages and use it to alter history, the Guardian is left suspended by chains in the temple.

Films — Animation

• Near the end of Bolt, Penny gets "tied up" and suspended from the ceiling of the set (she's safe because a pulley harness is attached beneath the cocoon of ropes).
• Played with in Dot in Space (the last of the Dot and the Kangaroo sequels) as Dot ends up stranded on an alien planet where she is tied up by bubble-shaped soldiers who suspend her by holding each end of the rope while floating in midair.
• In The Incredibles, Bob, and briefly most of the Parr family later, are captured by syndrome and held in a containment field of his zero-point energy, suspended by outstretched wrists and ankles, but primarily the wrists. Fortunately the zero point energy seems to also negate the effects of asphyxiation, allowing Bob to hang for an entire night without any physical problems.
• Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland has King Morpheus appear tied up in this fashion. The whole thing turns out to be an illusion the Nightmare King projected to lure Nemo out of hiding because apparently the Nightmare King can't see very well in the dark despite having Glowing red eyes.
• Used for a rescue attempt in Oliver & Company when Tito the chihuahua hotwires a crane that Oliver and the rest of Fagin's dogs use to suspend Jenny who is tied to a chair in order to help her escape from Sykes.
• In The Rescuers Down Under, Cody comes across a mouse tied up and hanging from a poacher's snare and tries to rescue it. In the climax, Cody himself is tied up and suspended from the crane on Mcleach's truck with the evil poacher intending to lower the boy into a crocodile-infested river.
• In Shrek 2, Shrek, Donkey and Puss are all suspended from the ceiling after they are captured on Fairy Godmother's orders and thrown in a dungeon.
• In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Roger and Jessica are tied together and suspended from a rope and are menaced by an out-of-control jet of Dip.

Films — Live-Action

• The women in the movie 9 to 5 do this to their boss.
• Joy is hung by her wrists over a two-story drop in Bangkok Knockout to lure the heroes in. When Joy is rescued, she basically rubs her wrists and is fine. The behind-the-scenes footage shows that the actress was in a harness, but the drop was real.
• The Turkish film series Battal Gazi have this happening in the second and fourth movies. Battal Gazi and his father in the second (hung from the top of a tower), Gazi's son and several members of a captured La Résistance unit in the fourth (over a spiked pit).
• The Action Girl, Kat from Black Mask gets caught in a rather uncomfortable position being hung in midair, with another passing character telling her to "Hang on!"
• In Birds of Prey, Roman Sionis has Mr. Keo and his family suspended by their ankles while Victor Zsasz cuts their faces off.
• In Blooded, a member of the RLA binds Liv's ankles and wrists, and then hoists her up on the same hook Been and Charlie had hung the stag on when draining its blood. He then threatens to gralloch her like the deer.
• The victims in Blood Harvest are strung up by their ankles before their throats are slit.
• The Bravados: After catching Taylor, Douglass hangs him from a tree by his ankles before interrogating him.
• After JB captures Candi in The Butchers, he suspends her from her wrists in an old shed.
• Cadaver: After being knocked unconscious by Lars, Leonora wakes up in the meat locker, hanging upside-down.
• In the 1987 Hong Kong movie City On Fire 1987, undercover cop Chow is arrested and tortured by other police officers (who are unaware he's a cop), including being handcuffed from a bar in a locker room. Unlike most examples of this trope, he's shown to be in visible pain both during and afterwards.
• The 2015 Lifetime Movie of the Week Cleveland Abduction, based on the real-life Ariel Castro case, notably opens with Taryn Manning in a suspended hogtie◊, then shows the entire scene about fifteen minutes in as she is hogtied with extension cords and suspended-for real, no tricks-for a few minutes. Suspended hogties, it should be noted, are astoundingly rare in actual porn, let alone normal films, and major props to the actress for managing to do the scene.
• In Cry Blood, Apache, Vittorio hangs Benjy upside down above a creek so he has to struggle to keep his head out of the water. As he tires, he will eventually drown.
• In D-Day, after the hero Ivan was captured by enemy mooks and knocked out by a dart, he regains consciousness minutes later and finds himself hanging from a ceiling by chains.
• Day of the Evil Gun: After being captured by the Apaches, Warfield and Forbes are strung up by their wrists in the Bandito camp.
• In Death Bell, the killer hoists Myung-Hyo off the floor by one ankle and leaves her hanging there. And then drops her to her death.
• Desolation: Abby finds her friend Jen hanging upside-down in the woods after the killer abducts her. She also finds a huge chunk of flesh cut out of her back.
• Happens to Django — upside down and naked — before he is sold to the mining company in Django Unchained.
• Yun Fei, the hero of Hand of Death was captured alive by the villains and tortured while hung by his ankles. Only to escape on his own later on by bending his own waist while suspended and untying the rope using his teeth.
• The Hanoi Hilton: While being tortured, prisoners are suspended from the ceiling by the arms and wrists, leaving them with gruesome rope burns.
• In The Guillotines, the sole female member of the Guillotines, Musen, is captured alive by rebels and subjected to interrogation, including being hung by her wrists a few feet above ground while being whipped.
• In Hardcase, Major Tozar has Jack strung up by his wrists from an arch in an attempt to force him to talk.
• The climax of In the Line of Duty 4: Witness, when Donnie, Rachel, and Luk have to rescue Luk's mother, who was captured alive and suspended from a tall balcony.
• Julia X: When The Stranger brings Julia back to his garage, he binds her wrists together, slips the bindings over a hook, and hoists her off the ground.
• The famous meat locker scene in The Long Good Friday. London Gangster Harold Shand sends his men out to grab local hoods and haul them in for interrogation to find out who is bombing his businesses. They're pulled out of a truck and trundled along the pulley system hanging upside down. The actors had to keep being supported between takes to prevent them from passing out.
• In The Man Who Came Back, the warden has Paxton hung by his wrists until he dies. Paxton pretends to die in order to escape.
• New Police Story: In the film's Downer Beginning, this is the fate of Jackie's entire police team, sans Jackie himself, by a group of sadistic Cop Killer criminals. They end up being dropped to their deaths, one at a time.
• Nite Tales: The Movie: In "Karma", the Cannibal Clan string the bank robbers up in the basement before eating them alive.
• No Retreat, No Surrender 2: The climax has the hero's love interest and the resident Action Girl being dangled by their wrists over a pit of crocodiles.
• The first Once Upon a Time in China have Fei Hung's protege, Leung Fu, captured by the villains and restrained by being hung underneath a ship's deck, but he's released in time to assist Fei Hung in the climax.
• In The Postman Fights Back the damsel who turns out to be The Mole gets captured by her own employer, the sadistic main villain Lord Hsu, who tortures her by having her hung by one wrist while standing on a rolling wheel.
• Princess Madam has a unique example, where Action Girl Mona gets tied up ten meters above ground level... by both her arms and legs, which are pulled out into an "X" shape.
• The climax of Red Wolf. The terrorist leader known as the First Mate intimidates the hero, Alan, by dangling Alan's six-year-old niece twenty feet in the air with a Time Bomb, threatening to drop her to the ground. As the detonator is strapped to the child's left foot (specifically, underneath the sole) touching the floor would lead to a messy explosion, which Alan needs to stop at all costs.
• In Robin Hood, Clayton is grabbed by the Moors and left dangling by his ankles over the town square as bait in a trap for the other crusaders.
• The hostage standoff in Royal Warriors, where the sidekick Michael gets hung by his wrists on the top floor of a high-rise building. Michael ultimately decides to Better to Die than Be Killed and cuts the rope, allowing himself to fall to death.
• Happens to Velma in the 2002 Scooby-Doo movie. She falls off a scaffold and gets her foot caught in the scaffold's chain. When the chain goes taut, Velma is seen hanging upside down.
• Sherlock Holmes:
  • In Dressed to Kill, Holmes is suspended by his wrists from a hook in the ceiling of a garage, and then left there to asphyxiate.
  • From Sherlock Holmes (2009), this happens to Irene Alder when she tried to follow Holmes and got tied up to a Conveyor Belt o' Doom by her wrists by Blackwood. To compensate for the pressure, Watson had to put her up on his shoulders to lessen it.
• This is done to the inflatable "Citizen" in the Save the Citizen game in Sky High, to simulate villains doing this to their captives. Will Stronghold mentions at the end how after they replaced the citizens with the inflatables no-one saved the Citizen anymore, but we're to assume that's a joke because he said as much.
  "Remember when we used actual civilians?"
  "Yeah..."
• In Sleepy Hollow High, Z and Bobbi hang Justin from the rafters of an old barn for informing on their drug dealing.
• Snow White & the Huntsman are captured by the dwarves, who hang them upside down by their ankles (fortunately they don't pass out before convincing the dwarves to let them go).
  Huntsman: Come on Beith, is this how you treat a friend?
  Beith: Oh no-no-no, ya puttock. This is how I treat a friend. (whacks him with a pick handle)
• Special Silencers sees Indonesian badass Barry Prima tied up and hung upside-down by his captors. But he somehow managed to free himself by swinging around, using his teeth to grab a scythe embedded nearby, then bend himself to cut the rope with the scythe in his mouth.
• The first Taken film had Bryan Mills being hung from his wrists on a set of ventilation pipes. Being played by top badass Liam Neeson, Bryan quickly escapes his predicament and overpowers all his captors soon enough.
• Downplayed in Tarzan’s Fight For Life: 1958, where the Ape Man spends several hours tied to a wooden yoke barely touching the ground.
• Ten Dead Men: After capturing Ryan, Bruiser and Stone hang him from the rafters. Bruiser uses him as a human punching bag until Stone knocks him out with a baseball bat when it is time to transport him to the rest of the gang.
• Thor: Ragnarok: At the start of the movie, Thor is chained and held in a suspended cage in Muspelheim. Then the cage opens and he falls down until the chain brutally stops him (a shock that would certainly have killed a human, but he's Asgardian). Hence Thor is left dangling before the realm's master, Surtur. The ensuing conversation is a bit impaired by the chain slowly spinning Thor away from facing Surtur, forcing the villain to stop monologuing until Thor turns around again.
• In Timber Falls, Clyde and Ida like to hang their male captives by their wrists while they torture them.
• Train: After being stabbed through the chest, Todd wakes up to find himself hanging from his wrists in one of the train cars.
• The Badass Biker gang hung one of the Wild Hogs from a tree this way. They tried to rescue him by driving their bikes under him and yanking him as they went by. It didn't work.
• In Wishcraft, Desiree gets suspended from a traffic light after been Caught in a Snare by the killer.
• The 1925 Silent film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz has an odd variation, in which Dorothy is tied only by her waist, so her arms are still free and flailing.
• Yellowbeard: Following The Mutiny led by Mr. Moon, Captain Hughes has a rope wrapped around his legs and is hoisted into the rigging.
• Yojimbo: Ushitora's gang does that to Gonji in the climax for the help he gave to Sanjuro. The coffin maker frees him when Ushitora and his remaining men are busy in the final showdown with Sanjuro.

Literature

• The Beyonders: Jason meets Ferrin while in a variation of this predicament. A gang of toughs had removed Ferrin's head and hung it in a bag from a tree while burying his body nearby. Jason is quite surprised until he learns Ferrin is a displacer who naturally can separate his body. It's later revealed Ferrin actually paid the gang to do this, a way to get close enough to Jason in order to spy on him for Big Bad Maldor.
• Monmouth is hung from the ceiling of a ship's slave hold in The Chestnut King. A variation in that he's suspended bound and inside a sack, so suspension trauma isn't an issue...but dehydration and heat exhaustion are. Uncle Frank manages to rip the sack with his teeth and release him before he dies of it.
• City of Bones by Martha Wells: When Khat is arrested by the Trade Inspectors, he's left overnight with his hands chained over his head. Unusually for the trope, it is intended as a method of torture, and he's much worse for wear afterwards.
• In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "The Slithering Shadow", Thalis does to Natala before flogging her.
• In Adrian Tchaikovsky's Dragonfly Falling, Salma is suspended like this before questioning.
• The Dresden Files:
  • In the second book, Magnificent Bastard Gentleman Johnny Marcone gets hogtied (which generally means the ankles and wrists are tied together behind the back) and suspended over a pit trap as werewolf bait. Even Dresden, who despises the man, acknowledges that it must be excruciatingly painful and sympathises.
  • In a later book, Dresden himself is tied up with his wrists above his head for hours, but the only ill effects he suffers besides lots of wrist pain equating to carpal tunnel syndrome is a loss of his magic due to running water being poured over his head.
  • Oddly enough, in that same book, Dresden's vampire-infected ex-girlfriend Susan is tied up hanging from a magical rope by Dresden for a short time, to keep her from attacking and killing him in a blood-lust-driven fury. They then engage in a very ill-advised consensual sexual encounter with her in that state. This being the DF and Butcher, consequences from this bad judgement do eventually ensue.
• In Everlost, there's a monster known for "chiming" his captives—that is, hanging them upside down from the ceiling. Since the characters in Everlost are all ghosts, this doesn't cause them pain or put them at risk of death, but it does get very, very boring after a few centuries.
• In Fengshen Yanyi, the villain Zhao Jiang is defeated by the Immortal Jiuliusun, snatched by his Immortal-Binding Rope and hung from the roof of the Reed Pavillion where the Kunlun Immortals have their headquarters for the rest of the war, much to the ire of the enemies. Later, the Shang forces try to get even by capturing Huanglong Zhenren and subjecting him to the same fate, but he's released by Yang Jian. Later, the three Xiao Sisters try to pull this trope on Lu Ya Daoren, as well as having archers shoot him dead, but he's able to No-Sell their attempts and leave by turning himself into rainbow-colored lightbeams.
• Full Metal Panic!: Sōsuke threatens a local gang leader who has kidnapped Kaname by holding the leader's younger brother and suspending him from a series of ropes that he then detonates in turn; once the opposition has surrendered, Sōsuke reveals the whole thing was a setup and the boy was safe the whole time; the kid was in on it.
• In The Girl from the Miracles District, Nikita's kept prisoner like this, with her hands chained to the ceiling and her toes just barely touching the ground so that she'd be unable to stand properly. It proves less than effective when she hulks out and becomes over a foot taller.
• In the Villain Opening Scene of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort uses magic to suspend his prisoner in the air before eventually killing her
• In Episode 6 of High School Prodigies Have It Easy Even in Another World, Shinobu allows herself to be captured by the Imperial Army in exchange for not harming an animal-eared villager. While imprisoned inside the dungeon, Shinobu, who is stripped down to her lingerie, is suspended in chains with her arms above her head.
• After Kappa manages to kick James Bond unconscious during their fight at a train tunnel in The Man with the Red Tattoo, he ties him up and leaves him dangling from the ceiling, leaving him to die from the impact of the next locomotive on the tracks.
• In The Mermaid of Black Conch, fishermen catch the mermaid Aycayia, bring her back to the jetty, and hang her up by a gaff hook in her tail next to the big game fish. She hangs there all evening while drunken passersby ogle and sometimes sexually assault her. After it gets dark, David cuts her down and takes her to his house.
• Nibelungenlied: After King Gunther won Queen Brunhild's Engagement Challenge by cheating, he tried to consummate their marriage. She was displeased when she realized he wasn't actually strong, beat him up, and hung him from the ceiling to humiliate him.
• In Relativity, August Moon holds Melody hostage in this way as bait to lure in her husband. At one point he threatens to release the chain and let her drop.
• In the Second Apocalypse, the Messianic Archetype character suffers the Circumfixion, in which he is lashed to a ring and hung upside down from a tree. Like Christianity's crucifix, the circumfix subsequently becomes a religious symbol.
• In the first story of A Series of Unfortunate Events, Count Olaf suspends Sunny in a cage and blackmails the other Baudelaire children into playing along with him by constantly reminding them that he can make the cage fall on walkie-talkie command.
• In The Silmarillion, Morgoth takes Maedhros hostage and suspends him by his right wrist over a precipice of Thangorodrim. The rescue of Maedhros involves amputation.
• Sword of Truth: In the Law of Nines, in keeping with its total deconstruction of any ideas anyone had that anything BDSM-like is good, goes into great detail about those dangers of being suspended by one's wrists at the top of the page.
• The Tribe: In the second book, "Camp Cannibal", Spencer finds the Camp New Leaf counselors tied up in their sleeping bags, which are hung from a tree.
• Arthur de Richemont gets subjected to this in one episode on Ulysses: Jeanne d'Arc and the Alchemist Knights, after she is taken to a torture chamber, she is tied by her wrists and hanging against the wooden beam with her arms overhead while her captors plan on something unpleasant to her while hanging helplessly.
• In Graham McNeill's Warhammer 40,000 Ultramarines novel The Killing Grounds, the Grey Knights suspend Ventris by his manacles when he's their prisoner; his survival may be Justified by his being an inhuman supersoldier.

Live-Action TV

• Happens to a car thief in 1000 Ways to Die ("Car Jacked"). When he tried to steal a rich man's car and got into his garage by descending from the ceiling, his leg got tangled in a rope and he ended up hanging upside down for several hours, which killed him in the end.
• In 24: Live Another Day, Kate Morgan gets hung in strappado and subjected to electric torture by Rask's men in Episode 6 "4:00pm-5:pm". Actually done for real◊, with a safety harness for the actual suspension as seen in this promo photo◊.
• Arrow:
  • Oliver Queen is often shown shooting a criminal with a bolo arrow, forcing a confession, then leaving them strung up for the police to find.
  • In the Season One finale Oliver is captured by Malcolm Merlyn, who leaves him hanging in an Abandoned Warehouse with his arms attached to chains. Oliver shows that an entire season of doing shirtless pull-ups was not just for Workout Fanservice when he climbs the chains until he can free himself, then uses them as weapons to take out the guards.
  • In "The Magician", we see Thea Queen with Einstein Hair before the camera view rotates to show she's been kidnapped by Nyssa Al-Ghul, who has her hung up by the heels from the rafters of an abandoned factory.
• Babylon 5: In "Dust to Dust", G'kar sees a vision of his father, suspended from a tree and left to die for the crime of accidentally spilling a drink on a Centauri lady.
• In Bones, Brennan is kidnapped by a crazy ex-agent, tied up and hung by her wrists, unable to move and leaving her at the mercy of her kidnapper. Fortunately, Booth came in just in time to stop him, leading to a moment between him and a crying Brennan.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In "First Date", Xander is suspended above the Hellmouth by a demon. Really, Xander, you shouldn't have suggested that use for the rope yourself...
• Doctor Who:
  • In "The Masque of Mandragora", Marco is hung by his wrists while he's being tortured.
  • After a pair of local louts make the mistake of attempting to pick on Lady Peinforte and Richard in "Silver Nemesis", Lady Peinforte leaves them hanging upside down from a tree in their underwear.
  • "The Witch's Familiar" begins with Clara tied up and hanging upside down due to Missy.
  • "The Halloween Apocalypse" opens with the Doctor and his companion Yasmin Khan giving a Badass Boast that they will get out of their latest predicament, which involves them handcuffed upside down to an anti-gravity bar on the verge of failure, suspended above an ocean of boiling acid, on a planet that's about to be engulfed by a red giant sun. Oh, and there are Kill Disks ready to kill them if they try to escape. Which they do, of course.
• A science fiction variation in The Expanse where a suspected terrorist is just draped on a couple of arm hooks, but having grown up in a weak gravity environment it's a lot more torturous for him than it would be for someone with the muscle development to withstand Earth's gravity.
• Forever: In "The Ecstasy of Agony" Henry is suspended off the ground chained to a Saint Andrew's cross by his kidnapper, who then uses a pulley attached to a leather collar to pull him upwards by the neck even further, to the limits of the bonds on his wrists and ankles, choking him.
• Gods Of Honor, the TVB adaptation of Fengshen Yanyi, has Nezha (depicted as an adult in this version) ordering this punishment on Yin Shih-Niang, his own mother, still blaming her for abandoning him as a child two decades ago and not realizing she's forced to leave him because of a prophecy.
• In pilot episode of Gotham Gordon ends up suspended from the ceiling of the slaughterhouse after angering Fish Mooney. When his partner comes to negotiate freeing him, he joins him soon and only intervention of Fish's boss saves them.
• Hustle: "Picasso Finger Painting" opens with Ash hanging upside down by his ankles in a deserted warehouse. He proceeds to explain how he ended up in this predicament.
• Justified: In "Bloody Harlan", Dickie hangs Raylan up by one ankle and proceeds to wale on him with a baseball bat.
• In Legend of the Seeker, Richard, Denna and Cara were all hanged by their wrists and tortured (in the pure fetish fashion) when in possession of Mord-Sith under command of Darken Rahl. And all of them were successfully punished and broken into submission, if only for a short time.
• Happens to Frank and Jesse Colton when they are captured by Chinese gangsters in the MacGyver (1985) episode "The Coltons".
• The Magician: In "Illusion in Terror', Blake is suspended by his ankles and left to die in a burning barn.
• In the Miami Vice episode "Bad Timing," robbers string Crockett up by his wrists and take potshots at him.
• The villains of the Midnight Caller episode "With Malice Towards One" handcuff Jack to a pipe on the ceiling while they beat and taser him.
• Happens to Barnaby in the Midsomer Murders episode "Death in the Slow Lane" after he is knocked out by the murderer. The killer plans to drop Barnaby onto a sharp set of ploughs at the end of their conversation.
• In a season three episode of The Musketeers, Aramis is captured and hung from a pole with chains around his wrists. He's mobile enough to bounce his way off it and have a fight before being captured and put back up; when he comes down the second time he can still run around, aim but not fire a gun, and shout at Athos and the others.
• Invoked in the Robin Hood episode "Lardner's Ring". Marian pretends to be Robin's hostage in order to convince Guy to stop attacking Robin.
• In the Starsky & Hutch episode "Bloodbath", cultists kidnap Starsky and hang him up by his wrists so they can sacrifice him.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Played for Laughs when Julian Bashir and Miles O'Brian get talked into joining Worf's pre-marriage ritual, assuming the rowdy Klingons will indulge in the usual drinking and feasting. It turns out to be several days of starvation and self-inflicted torture. Cue our heroes chained to a pole, hanging over hot coals.
  Bashir: It's working... I'm having a vision... I can see the future... I can see it so clearly. I'm going to kill Worf!
• Supernatural:
  • In "What Is and What Should Never Be", the djinn strings up its victims by the wrists while it drains their blood.
  • In "How to Win Friends and Influence Monsters", a camper wakes up to find himself hanging upside down from a tree while still in his sleeping bag. After he gets eaten, tabloid headlines refer to him as the "human burrito".
• Super Sentai shows that this trope isn't VERY effective when used in a room with fire NOT below the victim (and if the hands are not placed behind, usually).
  • In Dai Sentai Goggle Five, Miki gets trapped into an evil picture diary and gets suspended in a spread-eagle position, then the picture diary gets burned, which in turn, surrounds her in flames. Instead, she makes a flip, then uses the fire to burn the ropes.
  • In Dengeki Sentai Changeman, Mai gets taken hostage and suspended with hands above her head, inside a room. Then, Buuba blasts her room, putting fire inside it. Again, she flips around, burnt the ropes using the fire created.
  • In Hikari Sentai Maskman, both Momoko and Haruka are tied up this way in the episode where they are supposedly brainwashed by the Thief Knight Kyros to become bank robbers. This is more effective since Kiros did not use fire in any form, and instead uses spikes of doom, and both girls are only able to escape due to the boys' timely Big Damn Heroes.
  • Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger vs. Space Sheriff Gavan: The Movie: the Gokaigers are going to be executed by firing squad by the Space Police, and are held in place this way.
• One of the sets in You Can't Do That on Television is a dungeon in which kids were chained up by the wrists. The facts that they were standing on a stepstool and the shackles were wide enough that they could easily slip out of them were quite obvious.

Music Videos

• In the video for Pet Shop Boys's "It's a sin", Neil Tennant (playing the role of a man who's imprisoned by the Inquisition) is briefly seen inside what seems to be a gibbet, a suspended cage used for Cold-Blooded Torture. See below in "Real Life"

Myths & Religion

• This is one of the tortures of Hell described in the Qu'ran.
• The medieval torture described in Real Life, below, is probably the origin of the Tarot card called the Hanged man, in which a bound man swings from a gibbet by one foot.

Pinballs

• The "Monkey Mayhem" table of Extreme Pinball shows the protagonist hanging by a rope tied around her wrists over a pit of monkeys.

Pro Wrestling

• The Undertaker used to do this to his victims when he ran the Ministry of Darkness Power Stable. He'd tie his "sacrifices" to a large T symbol and hang them above the stage.

Video Games

• Batman: Arkham Asylum:
  • Countless times, you can do this to terrified mooks. Before dropping them on their head as their teammates patrol underneath. Repeated with the other games in the series. Eventually, the mooks may get wise to this and start destroying the indoor gargoyles you do this from.
  • This happens to Commissioner Gordon in the final level, bats thinking he'd already left the island.
  • Reprised in the sequel, where Two-Face does this to Catwoman at the beginning of the game, and Batman then does this to Two-Face afterwards.
  • If you interrogate a Riddler informant near a ledge, Batman will naturally perform a High-Altitude Interrogation on them. Once he has his information he'll drop them, leaving them hanging upside down from a cable. If the fall is short enough, however, they'll just fall.
• Episode 4 of Banzai Pecan has most of the Hunnie Bunnies tied up like this. Pecan can optionally beat 'em up despite being rendered helpless.
• In BlazBlue: Chronophantasma, if Tsubaki Yayoi is hit by Relius's Astral Heat, she's shown in this position and with her back turned as well as her butt at the viewer. Similarly, Azrael is seen bound upside down, Kagura is tied up from what looks a LOT like a gallows (only he's bound rather than "properly hanged"), Izayoi is restrained by a pillar "made" of mechanical hands, and Kagura's Battle Butler Hibiki is strapped to a device that strongly reminds of a breaking wheel.
• Changed
  • If Colin gets transfurred into a moth, Stiger will capture him and use his web to tie Colin's wrists, on a boxtie position, and legs, and leave him hanging against the ceiling at Stiger's mercy.
  • Some of the Thunder Science Security force's fates at the hands of Tail is this. While in the process of being transfurred, a latex will emerge from the head and lift them up, leaving them dangling and helpless (either in a kneeling position, or barely moving their limbs).
• Chrono Cross: After Riddel is captured by soldiers from Porre, she is taken to a room where she is chained by her wrists and suspended with her arms overhead, while being interrogated and tortured by Orcha.
• The kidnapped Donkey Kong in Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest appears like this twice before the final battle against K. Rool.
• Marian in most versions of the original Double Dragon. There's actually a close-up of her tied up this way before the final battle in the iOS/Android version.
• Twice in Emerald City Confidential. When the main character, Petra, is first captured by Lion during an investigation, he ties her up and suspends her from a bridge, except only one of her wrists is dangling leaving the other one free. This later also happens to Anzel, a Runaway Fiancé Petra is tracking down, when he is chained up in the Phanfasm prison.
• Eternal Dread 2 features two types of suspension techniques and 3 adds another one.
  • When you run into goblin camps, you will occasionally encounter dead bodies of female warriors strung up by their wrists overhead. Should the player heroine lose their HP while inside the cavern, they will be subjected to this fate... except they're alive and they'll trash and flail their legs wildly while screaming for help to no avail.
  • The level 2 punishment inside the crusader camp should the player heroine be arrested is to tie their wrists behind their back and hang them upside down from a pillar. This happens again if they're captured inside Nakka's lair, and is the fate for the traitorous leader of her own group after she is defeated.
  • On certain Gnoll camps, there will be bodies of females who are hanging by their ankles without any restraints on their wrists. The heroine can be subjected to this, but they will always be dead.
  • In one goblin camp, there is a body of a dead female warrior being suspended in a hogtied position. If a heroine loses to a Jötunn, they will be restrained like this (and, like the above, will always wind up dead).
• Fight'N Rage has one of the captive females being tied up this way, and, depending on the route, she either gets lifted up and slammed to the ground by Attary or simply held for interrogation by 3 of the generals.
• Rena and Master Genryusai at the end of Final Fight 2.
• In Gaiapolis, the Damsel in Distress the heroes needed to rescue is held this way. Her wrists are bound and stretched above her head while suspended by a rope.
• In The Legend of the Mystical Ninja, Koban Cat is found tied up and suspended from a great height.
• At the start of Götzendiener, the Princess (named Kishu Rim Misa) is kidnapped by the Demon Lord and is suspended in chains with her arms overhead. She manages to free of her chains herself after both the Hero and the Demon Lord struck a Mutual Kill on one another.
• Golden Axe
  • In the first game, when you defeat Death Addler and rescue both the king and the princess, they are lowered this way in chains, with the former hanging upside down, while the princess is hanging with her wrists overhead.
  • In Revenge of Death Adder the main heroes at one point are captured by dropping a cage huge on them. And in the next scene, all of them are bound by ropes and suspended with their wrists above their head, which they managed to free themselves by wriggling the rope until it snaps.
• Justin in the original Grandia.
• Some of the kidnapped "cavebabes" from Joe & Mac (specifically the raven-haired ones) are tied up this way.
• The final level of Jungle Hunt, where the Damsel in Distress is suspended over a cauldron.
• In the indie adventure game The Marionette, the protagonist, at the end, is tied up by his arms from ropes suspended from the ceiling in a way that evokes the game's title.
• One of Morrigan's victory animations in the 2D Marvel vs. Capcom games is her dressed up as a dominatrix with Lilith being chained and suspended mid-air with her arms overhead as Morrigan prepares to discipline her. This particular victory animation was cut in the Clash of Superheroes international release but is restored in New Age of Heroes.
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: The torture sequence has Snake hanging from a hook on a track, and the momentum of his swing is used to increase the force of the blows he is receiving. This is repeated in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, only this time, his feet are off the floor, and we see him dangling in the cutscenes.
• On occasion, you can find prisoners in Metal Slug being strung up by their wrists above their head (except for soldier POWs where they are strung up by their ankles instead). When you cut one down, he flaps his arms as he drops. In Metal Slug Code J Fio after she was captured in the prologue is also tied up and suspended the same way as regular POWs.
• In Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, Guybrush and Wally are suspended by their wrists over a pit of boiling acid.
• GLADOS from Portal strongly resembles a bound woman, as shown in this picture. It makes sense once you know her history.
• When Gradriel from Princess Crown is captured by a group of pirates, she is held captive from outside the ship while suspended by a rope with her wrists stretched above her head.
• Happens to Ada Wong of all people in Resident Evil 4, where she is tied up in this fashion. Leon shows up and cuts her down before the Final Boss. The same situation happens to her in the 2023 remake, except, her wrists are no longer bound behind her back but, rather, raised above her head.
• Tails in Sonic Advance 2; prior to the beginning of the game, he is kidnapped by Eggman. When you fight the boss of Music Plant, he's swinging from a pole on the machine.
• Around the midgame in Spec Ops: The Line, Colonel Konrad starts contacting Walker over a walkie-talkie, and, in one instance, offers Walker a Sadistic Choice of choosing which of two men to save, both of whom hanging by the bridge with their arms overhead: a civilian convicted of stealing water, or a soldier who massacred the other man's entire family for the crime. Part of the end game reveal that Konrad was dead long before Walker arrived, and was hallucinating all along. The soldier and civilian who are strung up are actually dead, decaying corpses.
• Super Mario Bros.
  • Peach is tied up like this at the opening of Super Mario RPG.
  • As well as in Paper Mario preceding the first phase of the final boss. Also in the commercial, she's dangled above a paper shredder.
  • Also, in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Popple and Rookie are shown like this right before the Chuckolator fight, but are (violently) released by their captor before it spins over to the Bros.
• April O'Neil in the story mode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters for the Super NES. Also happens to Splinter in the original TMNT arcade game when he's taken captive by Granitor.
• Under Night In-Birth: In Seth's Arcade Mode, he wraps Linne in a futon and hangs her from a tree after defeating her. After defeating Hilda, he goes back to Linne to wax poetic about the sins of the Night Blade and completing his mission... but when push comes to shove, he doesn't kill her with the Insulator to end her Born-Again Immortality, and instead leaves her hanging from the tree while she protests her situation.
• In Vigilante, Madonna can be seen before the final level and during the final battle hanging like this from a construction hook.
• All the captive maidens in Wizards & Warriors are strung up with their wrists above their head.

Visual Novels

• Spirit Hunter: NG:
  • In the fight against the Screaming Author, Akira and his companion end up wrapped in its wires and are dangled from the ceiling. They have to find a way to fight against the spirit despite being upside-down and only with a limb or two available.
  • A more gruesome take happens in one of the Screaming Author Bad Ends - Rosé is grabbed by wire from various directions, which hoists them into the air and pulls with such force that it bends their joints in unnatural directions, eventually killing them.

Web Animation

• On The Edge:
  • Ana-Tsurushi: Hanging upside down in feces - Shigeo has three gangsters hanging by the feet before subjecting them to the titular punishment: dipping them into a pool of feces and insects, some of them poisonous.
  • Judas' Cradle: A fortune teller who brainwashed her clients into spending themselves broke for her gets hanged by her hands, feet, and waist by Shigeo before repeatedly dropping her into the titular device until she died.

Webcomics

• Bob and George:
  • George spends the entire third game parody as one of these. Like here. When reminded about his superpowers and asked why he didn't free himself that way, he leveled the castle in a fit of rage.
  • Bob and Mike also ended up as Distressed Dudes like that.
  • Blues, with a Lamp Shade on the dangers, plus joined by Rock Man. This seems to be The Thing To Do for Distressed Dudes in Bob and George.
  • So Mega Man gets it, too, and it's George's Fate Worse than Death.
  • First of all, the Author was there.
  • And then there was Nate — where it's not only a robot, it's admitted to be torture.
• In Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures, Dark Pegasus accidentally reveals Dan's fetishes (to his delight).
• Girl Genius: The perils of being in Gil's vicinity.
• In Killroy and Tina, Brandon allowed Killroy to put him in one of these.
• Minions At Work: They should have noticed what the boss was like.
• Pibgorn: here (where the titular character is in a strappado position, with a rock tied to her ankles applying pressure) and here (where a man is wrapped in chains and dangling with his arms overhead).
• In Sandra and Woo, Sandra and Cloud do it to Larissa after she interrupts their long-delayed First Kiss. The page tags even reference Cacofonix.
• Sluggy Freelance: Sam ties Dr. Shankraft and his chief minion Hanz together and dangles them from the ceiling by their ankles. Since they're ungagged and within sight (but not reach) of Shankraft's command console, they exposit on what the security system picks up and provide comic relief of the Chained Heat variety until the building they're in is destroyed.
• Tales of Greed: The protagonist of "1 Minute" is hung upside-down by his kidnapper, who wants to kill him and activate the minute-long time loop after he dies to see what happens. The protagonist is trapped in a time loop of dying, and the way he's tied up makes escape nigh-impossible.
• In earlier strips of The Whiteboard, Swampy had a tendency to wind up duct taped or stapled to the ceiling that almost qualified for Running Gag status, until his girlfriend Sandy called Doc out on it. Roger has also been suspended from the ceiling via a staple gun a few times.

Western Animation

• In Codename: Kids Next Door, the villains have a fondness for tying up the heroes and dangling them upside-down, usually by their feet.
• In Dan Vs. "The Wolf-Man", Dan catches what he thinks is the wolf-man (actually a kid in a costume) and hangs him upside down from his ceiling.
• DC Animated Universe:
  • Batman: The Animated Series:
    • Robin is chained up this way above a rising pit of water after being kidnapped by the title character in the episode "Bane". For best effect, they added an equivalent of Cement Shoes to his feet.
    • "Judgement Day" has Raven and Lark (the Penguin's female bodyguards) hanging bound and gagged from the ceiling after being subdued by the Judge.
  • Superman: The Animated Series:
    • Both Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen are tied up like this after being kidnapped by Luminus in "Solar Power".
    • In "World's Finest", this happens to Lois again as part of the Joker's plan to kill Superman.
  • Justice League
    • The entire team in the Episode "A Better World" where they were shackled to X-shaped structures in high tech cells by Evil Doppelgänger
    • Wonder Woman in the Episode "Maid of Honor", where she was hanging from the wall with her arms outstretched in a dungeon, until Batman broke her out.
• DC Super Hero Girls: In "#SheMightBeGiant", Giganta ties up Wonder Woman with her own Lasso of Truth and she ends up dangling from the letters of a storefront.
  Wonder Woman: The Lasso compels me to tell the truth... this is humiliating.
• Freakazoid!:
  • The Grand Finale, "Normadeus", had our titular hero being Caught in a Snare and placed in front of the Lobe Finestra 3000, a wooden weapon that the Lobe forced PBS master carpenter Norm Abram to create which can resonate at specific frequencies to destroy matter, strong enough to kill Freakazoid once it's blown!
• In an episode of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002) Skeletor punishes his cronies by hanging them upside down... over a pit of lava. With fire serpents in it.
• The beginning of two Mighty Mouse cartoons — "The Perils of Pearl Pureheart" (1949) and "Sunny Italy" (1951) — has Pearl Pureheart dangling upside down by one foot.
• The New Adventures of Superman: In "The Ghost of Kilbane Castle", Lois and Jimmy are left suspended above razor-sharp blades.
• In the "Treehouse of Horror X" episode of The Simpsons, Stretch Dude and Clobber Girl (a.k.a. Bart and Lisa) are tied up (using Stretch Dude's own arms, because they are stretchy) and dangled over a vat of lucite, which the Collector (Comic Book Guy) uses to turn real celebrities into life-size maquette figures.
• Shaak Ti gets bound up by electric wires by General Grievous in Star Wars: Clone Wars.
• Star Wars Rebels: In "Zero Hour", after being outed as The Mole and captured, Kallus gets suspended from a ceiling beam in Ezra's tower by his handcuffs while Thrawn explains to him how he's deduced the location of the rebel base.
• Koopa does this to Oogtar in an episode of Super Mario World, dangling him over a hungry dinosaur.
• Total Drama:
  • In "Hide and Be Sneaky", Geoff goes against the Guys' Alliance as enforced by Duncan by not voting for Bridgette to leave that night. She gets eliminated anyway and, not wanting to lose her, Geoff yells after her that he didn't vote her off. It saves his relationship, but it draws Duncan's ire. When it's time to sleep, he ties Geoff up in his sleeping bag and drags him outside to spend the night dangling upside-down from a tree.
  • For the only iteration of "Brain Blast" ever, Geoff gathers the peanut gallery, which in "Aftermath II: Revenge of the Telethon" consists of Justin, Harold, Beth, Eva, Trent, Sadie, and Katie. The seven of them are tied up and hung above a tank filled with hungry sharks. As they're slowly being lowered, Brainzilla is tasked with defusing a bomb blindfolded to save them. Due to a hit to the head, Brainzilla returns to being Izzy, and she hits the bomb with a hammer. It blows up the contraption alongside the rest of the stage, injuring but still freeing the peanut gallery from their predicament.
  • Ezekiel abducts Chris and hangs him upside-down from the mine ceiling above a vat of toxic waste in "Zeek and Ye Shall Find". Despite the danger, Christ taunts his captor until Ezekiel sics two rats on the rope holding Chris up. Only just before the rope would be gnawed through does Chef enter the scene and chase the rats away, but it takes a fight with Ezekiel before Chris can be freed.
• Happens in Totally Spies! We could cite a specific example, but we're sure that's unnecessary.
• Transformers: Generation 1:
  • Optimus Prime got this after his failed attempt to save Elita One.
  • So did Blurr in "The Face of the Nijika".
• Happens to Jean early in X-Men: The Animated Series, but she quickly frees herself.

Real Life

• The Cold-Blooded Torture method known as either gibbet or "the gallows and the pit" involves suspending the victim upside down over hot coals, a fire, etc., often via either further injuring the victim or placing him/her inside a sort-of cage, the titular "gibbet". It's also named horca y hoya in Spanish and tsurushi ("reverse hanging") in Japanese. It was frequently used against Japanese Christians (kirishitan) and their allies in the isolation times, like in the cases of Saint Magdalene of Nagasaki (full-blooded kirishitan), Saint Lorenzo Ruiz (Chinese-Filipino, associated with Jesuit missionaries and kirishitan), Saint Jacobo Kyousei Tomonaga (kirishitan), Blessed Petrus Kibe Kasui (kirishitan Jesuit priest), and Saint Giordano Ansaloni (Sicilian missionary stationed in Japan). In fact, the tsurushi is often seen in religious arts that feature Lorenzo Ruiz, like◊ these◊. This is probably the origin of the Tarot Card, the Hanged Man, depicting a bound person swinging from a gibbet by one foot.
• Back in the day, orthotists used to mold back braces by hanging people from the ceiling and relying on gravity to help them get the basis of a reliable plaster mold, wrapping clients in plaster while they hung. By the mid-2000s, however, they switched to taking measurements while clients are on solid ground ^note  if the client is a woman, they'll also ask for her bra size and using a 3D printer.

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