What's an X Like You Doing In a Y Like This?

When a character (usually female) is captured by the Big Bad or seen in a suspicious place by other characters. Also used as a (bad) pickup line.

The traditional wording is "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"

Examples of What's an X Like You Doing In a Y Like This? include:

Film - Live Action

• George of the Jungle has Ape's book on "human courtship rituals" (Coffee, Tea or Me, a real-life book about two lusty young fictional stewardesses) offer this pickup line: "What's a nice girl like you doing in a plane like this?"
• A short by Martin Scorsese is titled "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"
• Evie from The Mummy 1999 gets the line mixed up while drunk. "I know what you're thinking. What is a place like me doing in a girl like this?" Rick responds, "Something like that."
• Following:

The young man: So what's a nice girl like you- The blonde: Doing in a place like this? The young man: -doing with a bald old cunt like that?

• The 1976 Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Fantasy has the heroine singing "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this" when she accidentally discovers a young woman getting it on with a knight in an open field.

Film - Animation

• In Finding Nemo, Bruce the shark asks Dory and Marlin, "What's a couple of bites like you doing in a zone like this?"
• Hanna-Barbera's animated musical version of Alice in Wonderland, produced in 1966, was subtitled What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (which was also the title of one of the songs).
• In Disney's Home on the Range:

Bull #1: What are a couple of ladies like you... Bull #2: Doing on a drive like this?

Literature

• Inverted in the Robert A. Heinlein novel The Number of the Beast, when a dissection of a dead female alien who had been posing as a male human leads to the discovery that her legs each had two knees, one bending forward and one bending backwards. Cue the quip, "What's a nice joint like you doing in a girl like this?"

Live Action TV

• In the Doctor Who story "The Web of Fear", someone asks a female scientist "What's a girl like you doing in a job like this?". She's not impressed.
• In The Pretender episode A Stand-Up Guy, Jarod strikes up a conversation with a woman whose restaurant has become a gang hangout, and asks her in a joking tone what a nice girl like her is doing in a place like this.
• In the Star Trek: The Next Generation first-season episode "11001001", said by Riker to a hologram: "What's a knockout brunette like you doing in a computer-generated gin joint like this?"

Magazines

• Parodied in "Movie Dialogue We'd Like To Hear" from Mad Magazine:

"Ever since I came in here tonight, somethin's been puzzlin' me... what's a crummy girl like you doin' in a nice place like this?"

Music

• Bob Dylan: "What's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?"
• The Spanish band Burning references the line in the song "¿Qué Hace Una Chica Como Tú En Un Lugar Como Éste?"
• Frank Zappa loved this line and used it in at least five different songs.
• John Schneider's "What's A Memory Like You(Doing In A Love Like This)"

Newspaper Comics

• In a cartoon by Swedish artist Beverloo:

Girl at party: What a nice girl like me is doing at a place like this? I'm a hooker, of course!

• A Garfield comic had this exchange:

Garfield: What's a girl like you doing in a place like this? Arlene: But this is a nice place. Garfield: Like I said... What's a girl like YOU doing in a place like THIS?

Theatre

• There was a musical revue in the 1970s called "What's a Nice Country Like You Doing in a State Like This?"
• City of Angels:

Stone (to Bobbi): "Let me take you away from all this," is that the routine? "What's a nice kid like you, et cetera?" What is a nice kid like you, et cetera?

Video Games

• Upon linking up with the mole in Fallout's Final Dungeon:

“What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” “Uh heh… Waiting desperately for someone to use that pathetic line on me.”

• Guybrush says this to De Singe in Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 1: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal: "So, how'd a dazzling urbanite like yourself wind up in a sleepy pirate island like Flotsam?"

Western Animation

• Used in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, in the virus episode.
  • In season 4 a mook tries to hit on Asajj Ventress like this.