Damsel in distress in the context of "Monster"

A stock character, also known as a character archetype, is a type of character in a narrative (e.g. a novel, play, television show, or film) whom audiences recognize across many narratives or as part of a storytelling tradition or convention. There is a wide range of stock characters, covering people of various ages, social classes and demeanors. They are archetypal characters distinguished by their simplification and flatness. As a result, they tend to be easy targets for parody and to be criticized as clichés. The presence of a particular array of stock characters is a key component of many genres, and they often help to identify a genre or subgenre. For example, a story with the stock characters of a knight-errant and a witch is probably a fairy tale or fantasy.

There are several purposes to using stock characters. Stock characters are a time- and effort-saving shortcut for story creators, as authors can populate their tale with existing well-known character types. Another benefit is that stock characters help to move the story along more efficiently, by allowing the audience to already understand the character and their motivations. Furthermore, stock characters can be used to build an audience's expectations and, in some cases, they can also enhance narrative elements like suspense, irony, or plot twists if those expectations end up subverted.

As a literary genre, the chivalric romance is a type of prose and verse narrative that was popular in the noble courts of high medieval and early modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a chivalric knight-errant portrayed as having heroic qualities, who goes on a quest. It developed further from the epics as time went on; in particular, "the emphasis on love and courtly manners distinguishes it from the chanson de geste and other kinds of epic, in which masculine military heroism predominates."

Popular literature also drew on themes of romance, but with ironic, satiric, or burlesque intent. Romances reworked legends, fairy tales, and history to suit the readers' and hearers' tastes, but by c. 1600 they were out of fashion, and Miguel de Cervantes famously burlesqued them in his novel Don Quixote. Still, the modern image of "medieval" is more influenced by the romance than by any other medieval genre, and the word medieval evokes knights, damsels in distress, dragons, and other romantic tropes.

Prince Charming is a fairy tale stock character archetype who comes to the rescue of a damsel in distress and must engage in a quest to liberate her from an evil spell. This classification suits most heroes of a number of traditional folk tales, including "Snow White", "Sleeping Beauty", "Rapunzel", and "Cinderella" even if in the original story they were given another name, or no name at all.

Elements of the Prince Charming character date at least back to Charles Perrault's Sleeping Beauty, published in 1697. Often handsome and romantic, these characters are essentially interchangeable, serving as a foil to the heroine; in many variants, they can be viewed as a metaphor for a reward the heroine achieves for the decisions she makes. The prominence of the character type makes him an obvious and frequent target for revisionist fairy tales, usually portraying him as narcissistic, dimwitted, and solely focused on romance, and often as a foil to either the heroine or their true love interest. "Prince Charming" is also used as a term to refer to the idealized man some people dream of as a future spouse.

A swashbuckler is a genre of European adventure literature that focuses on a heroic protagonist stock character who is skilled in swordsmanship, acrobatics, and guile, and possesses chivalrous ideals. Swashbuckler protagonists are heroic, daring, and idealistic. They rescue damsels in distress, protect the downtrodden, and use duels to defend their honor or that of a lady or to avenge a comrade.

Swashbucklers often engage in daring and romantic adventures with bravado or flamboyance. Swashbuckler heroes are typically gentleman adventurers who dress elegantly and flamboyantly in coats, waistcoats, tight breeches, large feathered hats, and high leather boots, and they are armed with the thin rapiers that were commonly used by aristocrats.

Princess and dragon is an archetypical premise common to many legends, fairy tales, and chivalric romances. Northrop Frye identified it as a central form of the quest romance.

The story involves an upper-class woman, generally a princess or similar high-ranking nobility, saved from a dragon, either a literal dragon or a similar danger, by the virtuous hero (see damsel in distress). She may be the first woman endangered by the peril, or may be the end of a long succession of women who were not of as high birth as she is, nor as fortunate. Normally the princess ends up married to the dragonslayer.

Donkey Kong is a 1981 platform game developed and published by Nintendo for arcades. As Mario (occasionally referred to as "Jumpman" at the time), the player runs and jumps on platforms and climbs ladders to ascend a construction site in New York City and rescue Pauline (occasionally referred to as "The Lady" at the time) from the giant gorilla Donkey Kong. It is the first game in the Donkey Kong series and Mario's first appearance in a video game.

Donkey Kong was created to salvage unsold arcade cabinets following the failure of Nintendo's Radar Scope (1980), and was designed for Nintendo of America's audience. Hiroshi Yamauchi, Nintendo's president at the time, assigned the project to first-time video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. Drawing inspiration from "Beauty and the Beast" and American media such as Popeye and King Kong, Miyamoto developed the characters and scenario and designed the game alongside chief engineer Gunpei Yokoi. Donkey Kong was the most complex arcade game released at that point, using graphics for characterization, including cutscenes to illustrate a plot, and integrating multiple unique stages into the gameplay. The game pioneered the platform genre before the term existed, is the first to feature jumping, and is one of the first video games with a damsel in distress narrative, after Sheriff. It had a limited release in Japan on July 9, 1981, before receiving a wide release in the region some weeks later.