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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 forearm and she goes down.
- Justified: Alice had a horrible case of carpal tunnel syndrome as a child and never fully recovered from it, so squeezing her arm is a kind of Kryptonite Factor.
- Alternatively, 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.
- Alternately again: He doesn't just grab her arm — he puts her in a painful hammerlock.
- Or deliberately went for a pressure point.
- Alternatively, AGAIN, the mook just has a really really strong grip.
- Alternatively, AGAIN again, the mook is an energy stealer, and drains Alice's energy by gripping her arm, thus subduing her.
- Alternatively yet again, this is Alice's first outing. When Emperor Evulz grabs her, she panics
- Alternatively, YET AGAIN, picking a fight with the opponent isn't the best option in this case, and the grab makes Alice realize that she almost lost her temper when she shouldn't have
- Inverted: Alice grabs Evulz's arm, and he goes down in agony.
- Evulz grabs Bob's arm, and causes him to go down in agony.
- A Mook grabs Alice's wrist roughly, breaking the Power Limiter bracelet she was wearing. Oh Crap.
- Emperor Evulz comes up from behind and grabs Alice arm. Since she is wearing an electric taser glove, Evulz ened up getting electricuted and falls.
- Genderflipped: Bob is kicking ass, until Emperor Evulz comes up from behind and grabs his arm. He starts screaming for Alice's help.
- Lampshaded: Alice is grabbed and complains of how she can never fight when that happens.
- 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?"
- Double Subverted: After Alice judo flips Evulz, he grabs the other arm and flips her over, pulling himself up at the same time. "Yes."
- Parodied: All women have this weakness, and so they wear armor on their upper arms.
- Deconstructed: Due to this, women are not allowed to fight unattended or without a male escort no matter how tough they are.
- Reconstructed: In the world the protagonists live in, 90% of the ostensibly female population are RobotGirls who have a disabling switch on their arms.
- 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.
- 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!
- Defied: She took up Judo for just such an occasion.
- "Why are you wearing spiked armbands?"
- 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 rather than kicking her in the groin."