Comments by "Gilad Barlev" (@GSBarlev) on "Trope Talk: Prison Break!" video.

@kingskelett6265 Pretty much any time a character says, "We go in through the front door." Most often it's more that the prison isn't built to withstand, say, a Hulk, or where (in a SF context) a character is really good at appearing to be dead. Top of mind the hospital heist in "Firefly" (break in + break out)¹, and some show or movie (can't remember which) where a villain's mook or dragon allows themselves to be captured only for them to blow themselves up once they made it to the prison (thus opening the door big ole hole for the real macguffin to escape). ¹Don't try to tell me that a government hospital is meaningfully different from the prison.
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Xanatos Gambit vs. Indy Plot
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Double-subverted in season 3 of Star Trek: Enterprise where the protagonists capture the lead baddie and put on an elaborate ruse to make him think that he and Scott Bakula just broke out of prison together and that the two are now partners in crime (but with the baddie having lost his memory). The baddie eventually sees through the ruse and is set free (with his memory of the con wiped) only for him to do an actual heel-face-turn literally two episodes later.
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@JamesM1994 Ah, so your assertion is that a mental institution is more restrictive Which seems like a defensible position to me
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@JamesM1994 If they put you there against your will, lock the doors and control who, when and how you communicate with the outside world, I don't really see how. I left another comment about Nellie Bly and Ten Days in a Mad-House I dare you read the summary and come back to tell me that it doesn't sound like an extremely horrific prison.
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8:05 Shout-out to real-life examples of this, namely Nellie Bly who got herself thrown into a women's mental institution so that she could document all the atrocities being committed on Blackwell's Island. Cite: Ten Days in a Mad-House Also relevant to 9:30
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NUMB3RS S03E07 "Blackout" is A-tier. FBI (and their pet mathematician) are investigating a string of intentional power outages as suspected terrorism. The real villainous goal was to deplete the fuel supply of a prison's backup generators so that the bad guys could infiltrate the facility on a refueling truck.
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