Forced To Watch / Western Animation

• American Dad!:
  • In one episode Roger goes on a campaign to ruin the life of a man named Sidney who Roger believes stole from him. This vendetta includes destroying Sidney's garden and raping his favorite sycamore tree. Later, Roger sends Sidney a letter that says, "Your sycamore had saplings. I made them watch."
  • In an episode where Stan puts his mind in the body of a horse, he (in the horse body) keeps getting poked in the face by a little kid despite Roger warning him not to. To the kid's shock, horse-Stan threatens to go to the child's house and kick his mother to death while he watched.
• Amphibia: Played for Laughs. Anne joins the tax collectors, only to discover that every single person in town supposedly skipped their taxes. When they get to Anne's legal guardian Hop Pop, Anne is absolutely sure he paid, because "He made me watch." Cut to Hop Pop cheerily showing Anne how to do taxes.
• Archer: In "On the Carpet", Malory threatens to literally emasculate Krieger if he won't tell her what he's so contrite about. When he reveals he blew up all the cocaine they were supposed to sell out of grief...
  Malory: Wodehouse, be a dear and fetch me some more ice. Oh, and a bowl, a mirror, some needle and thread, and a straight razor.
  Krieger: W— what's the mirror for?
  Malory: So you can watch.
• One episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender has an Earth Kingdom general try to force Aang into the Avatar State by making him watch as he slowly bends Katara underground, presumably to suffocate. It works.
• Comically inverted in Batman: The Brave and the Bold's Lighter and Softer Animated Adaptation of Emperor Joker: after Bat-Mite becomes powerless by accidentally giving all his powers to the Joker and making him a Reality Warping god, the new Clown Emperor would use his newfangled cosmic powers to kill the Dark Knight and then bring him back from the dead. To make matters worse, he attempts to make Batman go insane. Despite Harley Quinn's pleas to spare the lives of Batman and Bat-Mite, the Joker complies of sparing Bat-Mite by turning him into a Jester!Harley version of him, then forcing him and Harley to watch (along with the newly-created Joker-Mite) while the Clown Emperor forces the Dark Knight through a comedic, torturous Death Montage in an attempt to make him go insane! Poor, powerless Bat-Mite... or is that Harley-Bat-Mite?
• Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: Zurg manages to capture Booster, XR, and Mira and gloats about the tortures they are in store for. He's especially proud of Mira's, saying she can ghost right out of cell. Doing so however causes alarms to go, breaking her concentration, leaving her in her cell. The torture is that she has to watch her teammates be tortured, powerless to stop it. Except it's a kid's show. So XR finds being stretched enjoyable (it gets out the kinks); and while Booster's cell is supposed to turn his strength against him and throw him around the room, he sees it as a Bounce House and great fun. So Mira just smirks at him.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers: There are three instances of this in "Summit to Save Earth, Part 2".
  • Soon after the beginning, as the Planeteers are leaving Zarm's spaceship, he creates a transparent barrier between them, and himself and Gaia whom he captured, stripped of her powers, rendered mortal and encased in crystal not long before. Then, as if on second thought, he breaks the crystal, causing Gaia to fall to the floor with a moan of pain, while the kids can only watch helplessly.
  • Near the climax, Zarm forces the Planeteers to "fight" him right in front of Gaia. Being on the verge of death, and still powerless, she can't do anything to stop him from No Selling their efforts and destroying their rings... or from trying to brutally murder Ma-Ti before her very eyes.
  • At the same time, the older Planeteers, already having their rings destroyed and each being trapped inside a separate force field, can only watch in horror as Zarm announces Gaia's imminent death and prepares to kill their youngest teammate.
• Code Lyoko:
  • "Ultimatum" nearly forces this trope on Yumi. XANA, having kidnapped her and Odd to force Aelita to hand herself over to him in exchange for their lives, gets tired of waiting and begins torturing Odd with electricity while Yumi, weak after spending hours in a freezer warehouse, can barely stand as she cries out Odd's name. Only Ulrich showing up and disabling XANA prevents anything further.
  • "The Key" forces Yumi, Ulrich, Odd, and Jeremie to watch Aelita die from the lab.
• Code Name Kids Next Door: A non-lethal version occurs in the episode "Operation P.O.I.N.T" in which the KND in a misguided mission destroy the skating ring known as The Point where the teenagers where hanging out for the night. And as punishment for ruining their night, the teenagers take them back to Sector V's treehouse where they tie them up, sit them on a couch, and force them to watch them skate and have a good time.
• DC Animated Universe:
  • In the first animated movie bridging the original Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series, World's Finest, Joker decided to get revenge on Lex Luthor by destroying everything LexCorp built in Metropolis with one of Luthor's own weapons and making him watch.
  • In the final episode of Justice League Unlimited, Darkseid tells Superman that this is his plan. He talks about how he is going to destroy the planet and kill everyone on it, and only after Superman has seen it will he kill him.
• Family Guy:
  • The episode "Amish Guy" has Peter doing the really old cartoon gag where the steam coming off a freshly baked pie forms beckoning fingers and tries to go up Peter's nose, which is supposed to draw Peter into eating the pie. When Peter refuses, the steam somehow starts ripping off Peter's clothes so it can rape him. We then see the steam is also holding Quagmire's eyes open, forcing him to watch.
  • In "Once Bitten", Brian is sent to an obedience school and is forced to watch a movie depicting an old woman vacuuming, a dog catcher, and a live-action photo of Michael Vick.
• Freakazoid! had a mild version of this played for laughs. The villain, Gutierrez, wants a code that will give him superpowers. When the hero and his mentor refuse to give it to him (the hero doesn't even know the code), he reveals he has the hero's family captured as well. The method of torture used on the family? The best of Marty Ingles.
  • "What kind of sadistic creature are you!?!"
• Iron Man: Armored Adventures has this example:
  Living Laser: New York is gonna burn. And I'm gonna make you watch.
• A flashback in The Legend of Vox Machina shows a teenaged Percy being tortured for information by Ripley and the Briarwoods. When he doesn't give Ripley the answers she wants (because he genuinely doesn't know), she orders his younger sister Cassandra be brought in as well so Percy could watch as she did the same thing to her. It's strongly implied that the reverse happened too, as both Cassandra and Percy bear the marks of torture by the time of their escape.
• Oddly averted by Megabyte of all characters in ReBoot. Before giving his henchmen the okay to dissect Frisket, he tells them to take Enzo away so he doesn't have to see it. He doesn't let him say good-bye either, though.
  Megabyte: The boy doesn't need to see this.
  Enzo: Can't I at least say good-bye?
  Megabyte: Well... ... ... no.
• The premise behind Robot Chicken, the show opens as a dead chicken is brought back to life, then watches a bank of monitors with his head locked in place and eyes forced open. One of the monitors is blank as the show begins and zooms in upon it, supposedly this is what the chicken is going to be forced to see, and we will see it. In seasons 6 and 7, the tables are turned and the chicken puts the scientist in the same situation.
• In the Rocko's Modern Life episode "To Heck and Back", Heffer is confronted with his gluttony in Heck, and forced to watch Rocko dying inside his guts (after Rocko fell in while trying to retrieve a chicken bone that had gotten caught in Heffer's throat.)
• Played for Laughs in an episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle, when Boris "tortures" Bullwinkle by...forcing him to watch Natasha eat a chocolate sundae. ^note  This isn't a situation, by the way, where Bullwinkle had been starved or otherwise deprived first; it's just a classic case of the show's stakes and tactics being less than realistic.
• Samurai Jack: This is a favored tactic of Aku when he goes about conquering.
  • When he first arose he defeated and chained up the Emperor, Jack's father, but left him alive so he could watch Aku destroy his kingdom and people.
  • During "Jack and the Lava Monster", he did a similar thing to a Viking leader; imprisoning him in crystal while he laid waste to the man's village and family. He was left trapped in that crystal for millennia unable to die a hero and ascend to Valhalla.
  • During "Jack and the Ultra-Robots" he has the scientist Extor build him a team of super-empowered robot soldiers to kill Jack with. Upon their completion, he has them destroy Extor's village and kill everyone.
  • When he tries to gain Jack's trust by shapeshifting into an ally, Ikra, he constructs a similar tale about her father being imprisoned in fire as his home was destroyed.
• The Simpsons:
  • After Mr. Burns accidentally walks into a tree, he orders its acorns killed while the tree watches.
  • The trope is Played for Laughs in one "Treehouse of Horror" special, where Homer is carving pumpkins for Halloween. He doesn't realize that a giant, sentient, man-eating pumpkin is watching...
    Homer: I'm gonna give you crossed eyes, like you might see on an idiot, a stupid triangle nose, and a big mouth full of the ugliest-shaped teeth there are: square! And I'm going to make your friends watch!
  • The Clockwork Orange scene mentioned above is parodied when Mr. Burn uses a similar device to force Santa's Little Helper to watch scenes of terrible violence in an attempt to make him a vicious attack dog.
• Smiling Friends: The utterly suicidal Desmond agrees to let the Smiling Friends help him try and find joy in life... but states that if they can't help him, he'll make them watch blow his own brains out. Thankfully, it doesn't come to pass, and a murderous Bliblie eats the bullet instead.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "Krab-Borg", SpongeBob and Squidward think Mr. Krabs is a robot who can talk to electronics. They tie him up and force him to watch them interrogate his expensive appliances. Most of them end up destroyed, making the money-grubbing crab scream and cry.
  • In "Patty Caper", after Mr. Krabs gets caught for stealing the Krabby Patty secret ingredient (so he wouldn't have to pay the $1.99 delivery fee) and trying to frame SpongeBob, the judge sentences him to give away Krabby Patties for free for an entire day, to which he tearfully replies that he couldn't bear the sight of that. Cut to SpongeBob handing out free patties while Krabs is strapped to a chair and screaming in horror while laughing cops hold his eyes open.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In "The Lawless" Two Mandalorian super commandos hold Obi-Wan captive and one of them knocks him in the back with the back of his blaster when he tries to prevent Maul from killing Satine, which he eventually gets even with him by doing so.
• Star Wars Rebels: In "Zero Hour", Kallus, The Mole, is unmasked and held captive on the bridge of the Chimaera to watch Thrawn's assault on the rebel base.
• In Teen Titans (2003) Slade uses the threat of this to make Robin do a Face–Heel Turn.
  Slade: If you join me, if you swear to serve me, if you never speak to your friends again, I will allow them to live. But if you disobey even the smallest request ... I will annihilate them, Robin. And I'll make you watch.
• Wander over Yonder
  • A family-friendly version occurs in "The Hole Lotta Nuthin'": Wander is extremely hungry, but he can't move too much because his finger is plugging a black hole that threatens to suck up the galaxy. He manages to use the suction of the black hole to bring a nearby apple close to him, but it's just out of reach. Hater shows up, picks up the apple and eats it in front of him, and even taunts him by asking if he's hungry.
  • A... less family-friendly version occurs in "The End Of The Galaxy". Lord Dominator freezes Wander in an ice block and attempts to impale Sylvia with her drill while forcing him to look.
    Dominator: I destroy your friend and then I watch you cry!
• The Yogi's Treasure Hunt episode "Yogi's Heroes" had Dick Dastardly and Muttley capturing Snooper and Blabber and forcing them to watch episodes of the villains' 1969 TV show until all they can do is march around in a stupor chiming "Stop that pigeon...stop that pigeon..." Even Blabber comments that their brains will turn to mush.

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