Basic Trope: A female character is easily subdued and captured if her upper arm is grabbed by a mook or other villain.
- Straight: Alice is kicking ass, until Emperor Evulz comes up from behind and grabs her arm. She starts screaming for Bob to save her.
- Exaggerated:
- Evulz just pinches Alice's arm and she goes down.
- Evulz grabs Alice's arm and she ends up completely paralyzed or Taken for Granite.
- Alice is a Reality Warper and The Omniscient. Emperor Evulz has shapeshifted into a mosquito. He lands on Alice’s arm and she is instantly Killed Off for Real.
- Alice is Made of Iron but her upper arm is her Achilles' Heel, and Evulz is able to rip the whole arm off from this specific spot.
- Downplayed:
- Evulz grabs Alice's arm with both hands, and clearly shows effort in not letting her go.
- Evulz’s two minions each grab one of Alice’s arms.
- Justified:
- Alice is one-armed or has her other arm broken and thus cannot struggle efficiently.
- Alice can't struggle because her other hand is holding an extremely volatile McGuffin and she's focused on preventing it from falling to the ground and detonating, or she's trying to override Evulz's evil, nuclear-powered "Taking You with Me Protocol".
- The arm-grabber in question has a nasty bladed gauntlet (chainsaw attachment optional) expressly for this purpose, and pretty much pulverizes Alice's arm, leaving her incapacitated.
- Alternatively, the gauntlet has a taser build into it. Grabbing Alice's arm results in it releasing the charge, knocking her out.
- He doesn't just grab her arm, he puts her in a painful hammerlock.
- He went for a pressure point.
- Evulz has Super-Strength and Alice doesn't. She couldn't free herself even if she tried.
- Evulz is an energy stealer, and drains people's energy by gripping them, thus subduing Alice by grabbing her exposed flesh.
- Alice is a Robot Girl and her switch is situated on the inner upper arm.
- Alice had already taken a pummeling from Evulz and is barely conscious as he brings her before Bob to gloat. The sheer lack of care Evulz shows in 'restraining' her is only to underline her condition as she's bruised and battered and can barely seem to keep her head up.
- Alice’s arm is broken and being gripped on it hurts.
- Alice is a naked Shameless Fanservice Girl and Evulz is uncomfortable with female nudity, so he avoids touch her back and goes for her arm.
- Inverted:
- Alice grabs Evulz's arm, and he goes down in agony.
- A Mook grabs Alice's upper arm roughly, breaking the Power Limiter armlet she was wearing. Oh, Crap!.
- Emperor Evulz comes up from behind and grabs Alice's arm. Since she is wearing an electric taser glove, Evulz ends up getting electrocuted and falls.
- Evulz grabs Alice’s breast or butt, to her disgust.
- Gender Inverted: Bob is kicking ass, until Emperor Evulz comes up from behind and grabs his arm. He starts screaming for Alice's help.
- Subverted:
- As Evulz grabs Alice's arm, she judo flips him over. When he's on the ground, she stomps his groin and says, "You really thought that would work?"
- Evulz grabs Alice's upper arm as the first step of a judo move.
- Alice can emit electricity. Do the math.
- Double Subverted:
- After Alice judo flips Evulz, he grabs the other arm and flips her over, pulling himself up at the same time. "Yes."
- Evulz comes prepared with electricity-proof glove/armor or substances that negates electricity.
- Evulz goes for Alice's arm, but simply breaks it instead - while Alice is reacting to the pain, Evulz grabs her other arm and she's rendered completely helpless.
- Parodied:
- All women have this weakness, and so they wear armor on their upper arms.
- Evulz has no qualms with pinning down Bob, but when he needs to subdue Alice, he politely asks her if it would be okay for him to grab her arm. (Turns out she can just say no.)
- Alice faints when her upper arm is grabbed by anyone, no matter the situation.
- Zig Zagged: Emperor Evulz grabs Alice's upper arm and she becomes helpless. But as he starts dragging her to his helicopter, she knees him the groin and is able to make a mad dash for the battle field again. THEN, a Mook grabs both her arms and she is rendered helpless again.
- Averted:
- Nobody ever tries to grab Alice by the arm.
- Whenever someone grabs Alice by the arm, she easily pulls away.
- Enforced: The writers may feel- or may have been told- that other ways of subduing a female character (like a "full nelson") are too graphic or sexual to portray (as, for example, a man would have less latitude with what areas of a woman's body he can grab without it being considered sexual), so they resort to this move as a compromise.
- Lampshaded: "Oh my God... He grabbed my upper arm... How will I ever live now?"
- Invoked: As Alice and Evulz face off in a rather impressive fight scene, a Mook calls out "Grab her arm!"... and it works. Bob to the rescue!
- Exploited:
- Alice lets herself be grabbed by a misogynist and Wrong Genre Savvy villain in order to get inside his lair and destroy it from the inside.
- Alice grabs Emperor Evulz' nutsack with the arm he grabbed to make him let go.
- Defied:
- She took up Judo for just such an occasion.
- "Why are you wearing spiked armbands?"
- Evulz attempts to grab Alice by the arm. Alice, being the Lady of War that she is, promptly slices Evulz's hand off before it reaches her.
- Discussed: "AH! Bob! Help me!" "What? You can fight a dozen ninjas with your hands tied, but you can't shake off a man who's grabbing your arm? Sheesh..."
- Conversed: "Odd. Most villains would grab her by the arm instead of kicking her in the groin."
- Implied: Alice has already been imprisoned. Her captor boasts on how easy he kidnapped Alice just by grabbing her arms.
- Deconstructed: Due to this, women are not allowed to fight unattended or without a male escort no matter how tough they are.
- Reconstructed: Alice learns some moves to avert this situation or wears specific arm armour, which is customary for Action Girls in the setting.
- Played For Laughs:
- Emperor Evulz knows no less than 56 methods of paralyzing a woman through just the nerves on her upper arm: All the better to capture princesses with!
- Jake is grabbed in this spot by Evulz, and collapses into an exaggerated dead faint.
- Played For Drama: Alice is riven with self-loathing due to the fact that for all her skill, she can never free herself from this maneuver.
Back to Standard Female Grab Area
