Seize Them

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"My trusted lieutenant will be trained to strut around in black robes intoning things like "Seize them!" and "Evil will triumph!" in a booming, sepulchral voice."
—The Additional Evil Overlord List Cellblock B
"Zombie guards, seize him! Tell me that's not fun to say."
—Harvey Birdman; Attorney at Law

A uniquely aristocratic command, shouted by particularly melodramatic villains.

The Baroness has stumbled across The Hero in an alley. The Evil Prince has discovered The Five-Man Band infiltrated his Deadly Decadent Court. The Evil Chancellor has crashed the revolutionaries meeting.

The Good Guys are outnumbered. The Big Bad is there with an army of Mooks. They do the only logical thing. They run!

Alternatively, the Evil Chancellor and his retinue just fell for the heroes' plan and the King tells in no uncertain terms that he heard their Engineered Public Confession.

This phrase is usually preceded or followed by some of these other Stock Phrases:

Seize them!

Examples of Seize Them include:

Film

  • Robin Hood
  • The Scarlet Pimpernel
  • History of the World Part One: "Ah, seize this!"
  • Mortal Kombat: Shang Tsung tries this when the heroes have infiltrated the Black Tower to rescue Sonya under the guise of the brown-robed monks. But Princess Kitana, who is also among them, stops them in their tracks with a "STAY WHERE YOU ARE!" before denouncing the Big Bad for trying to "interfere with the Tournament" and win it by treachery.
  • The modern version was uttered in Tommy Boy by Zalinski: "Don't let him leave the premesis, Marty." This was preceded by the far more middle class "GET HIM!", said by Tommy.
  • The Disney version of Robin Hood.
  • The Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz, in the castle as the Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion and Tin Man escape with Dorothy and Toto.
  • Played for laughs in Three Amigos by Steve Martin, when surrounded by the Big Bad's Mooks.
  • Bionicle: Legends of Metru Nui

Literature

  • Animorphs: Visser Three says this all the time.
  • In Guards! Guards!, the Palace guard is at one point to seize Vimes. Genre Savvy as they are, they question the wisdom of attacking a lone person, who might even start swinging on the chandelier.
    • In another book Rincewind has had so many variations on this phrase that he muses (while running) that his nickname is "Don't let him get away!".
  • In the Star Trek novel How Much for Just the Planet? the evil queen says "Seize them! Oh, I do love saying that! Seize them again!"
  • In the Tortall Universe book Wolf-Speaker, Rikash says (in an 'it makes sense in context way') "Get that SQUIRREL!!"

Live-Action TV

  • Doctor Who episode "The Steel Sky"
  • Farscape. John Crichton is infiltrating a Peacekeeper base disguised as an officer. It's later revealed that Scorpius can see heat, and this vision showed that Crichton wasn't even the right species.

Big Bad Scorpius: Guards, that man is an impostor. Seize him.

    • An interesting example, since this trope is usually an indicator of Incoming Ham, yet Scorpius delivers the line with an utterly flat affect.

Mystery Science Index 3000

Radio

Hig Hurtenflirst: (to foot warrior) Well then just seize the prisoners.
Foot warrior falls over
Hurtenflirst: Prisoners.
Arthur and Lintilla: Yes?
Hurtenflirst: Seize each other.

Video Games

Web Original

Web Comics

  • Digger caught this from the hyenas at one point.

Western Animation

  • The Herculoids episode "The Mole Men".
  • Futurama episode "A Clone of My Own". The Near-Death Star Robots, and...

Guard: Get them! I mean, seize them!

    • Another version, subverted:

Bureaucrat 1.0: Guards! Bring me the forms I have to fill out to have her taken away!

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