Largely replacing the traditional ransom note due to the rise of the internet, the Hostage Video involves hostage-takers releasing a recording featuring one or more of their captives, providing evidence that the unfortunate victim(s) are truly at their mercy, while doubling as a psychological intimidation tactic. The hostage, often tied to a chair, will typically be forced to read out a message: listing their captors' demands, or to denounce themselves, their country or organisation. If the captors also appear in the video, expect them to be masked, toting firearms, and speaking with digitally distorted voices.
It can arise in a variety of contexts, from a villain's demonstration to the hero that I Have Your Wife, to a group of hijackers threatening a massacre if they don't get what they want, to a captured leader being forced at gunpoint to encourage La Résistance to lay down their arms and submit to their new overlords. If the hostage-takers want to horrify the recipients (and the audience), the hostage will bear visible marks of beatings and torture — the message may even become a Snuff Film if there are multiple hostages and the hostage-takers want to prove, in an especially grisly way, that they're not bluffing. To add extra jeopardy, the hostage takers will usually include an ultimatum, or even go so far as to add a countdown to the video or live feed of the hostage.
If the hostages' location is unknown, their would-be rescuers will usually try and trace the source of the video through deduction and Hollywood Hacking wizardry. This is almost guaranteed to fail, with the baddies having expected this, planting false leads that drive the rescuers into a trap and/or allow them to escalate their already-unreasonable demands.
However, a particularly canny hostage will be able to use the video as a means to get their own message out, whether that's through code words, sign language, or Morse Code communicated through finger-taps or blinks.
Very likely to appear in a Post-9/11 Terrorism Movie. Compare murder.com for another trope where torture and death is broadcast over the internet. Truth in Television, having been infamously utilised by Ruthless Modern Pirates and terror groups such as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State.
Examples:
- My Hero Academia: Unchained Predator: The Steel Sabers release a hostage video as a ploy to buy more time to empty out I-Island's support items before killing all the hostages. However, by the time the video is being filmed, Nine and his lieutenants are aware of the Slayer's presence on I-Island, but not where. When they see the Slayer on I-Island, he is casually walking up behind the three Sabers before they watch him pull out a blood-covered chainsaw and do a Public Execution, much to the whole world's horrified shock.
- In Blooded, the Animal Wrongs Group forces each of the hunters they have just pursued across the island to read a prepared statement denouncing hunting and renouncing their previous beliefs, which they video and intend to up load to the web. Liv, Ben, Charlie and Eve all comply, but Lucas regards his position as the public face of the hunting lobby as being too important and remains Defiant to the End.
- Hot Shots! Part Deux. The Iraqis force Colonel Walters to make a video saying how well treated he is (the obscene hand signals he's giving make it clear what we're supposed to think of this).
- In Iron Man 1, The Ten Rings film themselves holding Tony Stark at gunpoint as they make demands in Urdu. Audience members who don't happen to speak that language won't find out until later it's not a ransom demand. The terrorists are renegotiating. The group was hired by Obadiah Stane to hit a military convoy transporting an American businessman, but unaware that their target was Stark, and they're demanding more money to finish the job now that they realise who their captive is.
- In The Kingdom (2007), Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman) is used to make one after being kidnapped by Saudi terrorists, and the machete makes it clear how it will end. He starts knocking various equipment over, forcing them to delay the video (and his execution) until they reset it. Those precious seconds he bought are the only reason he lives long enough to get rescued.
- The second Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous had a hostage video of Cheryl and Stan, which was the whole reason the rest of the movie happened.
- My Daughter's Ransom takes this in a different direction: Rachel is tied to a chair and made to make a video in which she denounces people in her life and apologizes for things, but does not admit she is a prisoner, and the fact that she is tied to a chair is hidden by the camera placement.
- Used in Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident. Artemis then gets Foaly to trace the video.
- Used again in The Last Guardian, by Opal bartering her freedom for her younger self's life. She doesn't uphold her end of the deal.
- In The Red Vixen Adventures Rolas must make one for his family to see after he's captured by the titular Space Pirate.
- 24 likes this trope a lot, such as with Secretary Heller in Season 4. In Season 8, this leads to a Downer Ending when they learn the video wasn't live but prerecorded and the hostage is already dead.
- Airwolf did this once, with a group of totally uncooperative hostages.
- Arrow: Moira Queen is about to have a live televised debate with her political opponent Sebastian Blood, when a video of her daughter Thea appears on the projection screen, showing she's been kidnapped by Slade Wilson.
- The Bill had this happen to Abigail Nixon, who was tied up in a shipping container and left to suffocate.
- In the first episode of Black Mirror a member of the royal family gets kidnapped with the single demand of the Prime Minster to have sex with a pig on live TV. The real kicker is that it's sent over YouTube so everybody knows about it.
- Les Boys: In one episode, Marcel is kidnapped by Jack the Bat due to Stan owing him money. He then appears in a video that is sent to Stan, with the video ending with Marcel getting beaten up by Jack's goons (although it's not shown due to a hand covering the camera's lens).
- Castle- A victim of the week who has been kidnapped manages to sneak in a hidden message to his father in his ransom video.
- CSI had one with where the rest of the time could watch their teammate Nick Stokes trapped in a box and Buried Alive.
- The baddies on Day Break (2006) leave one these behind showing Hopper's brother-in-law bruised up and tied to a chair.
- In an episode of Jonathan Creek, a confusing hostage tape kicks off the mystery. The plot twist is that the tape in question was not the hostage tape, the contents were being livestreamed to the TV.
- Judge Judy: In a case from 2000, a plaintiff and her sister trapped a defendant in the back seat of her two-door car to get her to confess on video to keying it, and presented the video as evidence. Judge Judy threw it out as illegal, explaining that the plaintiffs had effectively kidnapped the defendant, making the defendant willing to provide a False Confession to anything just to get her freedom of movement back. Without the video, the case was dismissed.
- NUMB3RS did this in "Prime Suspect" where Ethan Burdick's daughter is ransomed for his solution to an equation, with his daughter, Emily, being forced to tell him the demands.
- In the short-lived 1990's spy series Under Cover, a senior official in the Government Agency of Fiction is kidnapped and forced to give one of these to relay their demands, concluded by him screaming as the terrorists start torturing him.
- One piece of background material from Homefront's tie-in website was a video released by radical American militia-types showing a captured Korean soldier forced to denounce his home country and praise America. The site's "curator", ostensibly using the site to chronicle everything following America's collapse to the present day, expressed discomfort over including the video, since it showed just how far America had really fallen, but felt compelled to anyway for the sake of completion.
- In Not for Broadcast, Katie Brightman, an economist known for speaking in support of the Advance government, is abducted by Disrupt and forced to read out a speech retracting her support for Advance. On Day 912, you have the option of playing a recording of the speech in place of one of the ad breaks, bolstering support for Disrupt's ongoing uprising.
- Yandere-chan uses this in Yandere Simulator, kidnapping Musume Ronshaku in order to get her father Mr. Ronshaku, a notorious Loan Shark, to release Kokona's father and all his other clients from their debt to him.
- Homestar Runner: In Strong Bad in Jail Cartoon, Strong Bad tries to make one after kidnapping the Poopsmith for ransom. It lasts five seconds before he's discovered by Homestar, who followed a "mysterious trail" left by the Poopsmith, much to Strong Bad's disgust.
- This Is It used this trope to promote their Kickstarter for Don't Hug Me I'm Scared . The first one is a more descriptive video showing Red Guy reading out the captor's demands (money) while a synthesized voice describes what the show is about and what the kickstarter is for. The next two are much shorter and really, really threatening.
- The Game Heroes do this with The Nostalgia Critic when they kidnap him. What do they want? More people to buy their t-shirts.
- Joueur du Grenier: For the Mission Impossible review, Fred abducts a games journalist who originally gave the game a glowing review, forcing to read the original column out loud.
- Rapunzel's kidnapper has her make one in University Ever After, in which she reads a riddle giving her friends a twelve hours to figure out what the kidnapper wants and where they're keeping her.
- Al-Qaeda was very fond of this trope and frequently released them online, which was later used by other Islamist terrorist groups. Unfortunately, they don't have happy endings and we will NOT link to any of them.
- A bizarre variation: One such threat was staged by a bored young Iraqi man, in the form of an action figure being used in place of an actual person
. Responses ranged from mockery (either of the perpetrator for attempting such a patent fabrication, or of the media for taking it even the slightest bit seriously) to fervent support for the supposed jihadis (which mysteriously dried up without a word after the fellow responsible admitted it was all a hoax).