It is Snyder's first film based on an original concept. As she collects items she needs to escape, she enters a series of fantasy worlds where she and her fellow inmates are strong, experienced warriors.
A young woman named Babydoll accidentally shoots her sister in a struggle with their abusive stepfather. Their stepfather had murdered their mother and discovered that she left everything to her daughters in her will. So he commits Babydoll to a hospital for the mentally insane and bribes orderly Blue Jones to forge psychiatrist Vera Gorski's signature to have Babydoll lobotomized.
Babydoll slips into a fantasy world in which the asylum is a brothel owned by mobster Blue and she and the other patients are sex slaves. Gorski is their dance instructor. Blue intends to sell Babydoll's virginity to the High Roller; in reality, the doctor scheduled to perform her lobotomy.
Babydoll performs an erotic dance during which she fantasizes she is in feudal Japan , meeting the Wise Man. The Wise Man tells her that she needs four items to escape: a map, fire, a knife and a key.
There is a fifth unrevealed item that only she can find which requires "a deep sacrifice" and will bring a "perfect victory". She fights three samurai giants, then finds herself back in the brothel. Babydoll convinces the four other girls to join her in escaping. She dances as a distraction while the others obtain the necessary tools. During her dances, she fantasizes about adventures that mirror the escape efforts, such as infiltrating a bunker protected by World War I German soldiers to gain a map as Sweet Pea copies a map of the building in Blue's office , storming an Orc -infested castle to retrieve fire crystals as Amber steals a lighter from the mayor , and fighting robotic guards on a train to disarm a bomb as Sweet Pea steals a kitchen knife from the Cook.
