Conditioned to Be Weak

"You let one ant stand up to us, then they all might stand up! Those 'puny, little ants' outnumber us a hundred to one. And if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life! It's not about food, it's about keeping those ants in line."

— Hopper, A Bug's Life

This trope is when a physically powerful character is only submissive because of their mental conditioning and mental barriers, such as brainwashing, fear, trauma, or their upbringing. A character who is conditioned to be weak is often physically and mentally abused into following whatever orders they are given or they are raised in a way that encourages them to control their behavior so they don't hurt anyone.

These characters are often dominated by someone or something who is physically weaker than them but has a psychological advantage over them that allows them to control the other character without fear of consequences. This can come through mental barriers or through a Restraining Bolt.

This can go one of two ways:

• A heroic character is dominated by an Abusive Parent, a Big Brother Bully, or a toxic friend, and the story is about them finding the strength to stand up to their abuser.
• A villainous character is only under control because they were conditioned by another villain who is undoubtedly worse than them. If and when they realize that they can do something about their situation, then that creates a problem because their conditioning was the only thing keeping them on a leash and stopping them from being complete monsters.

In psychology, this is called "Learned Helplessness". A person or animal subjected to constant, seemingly inescapable negative stimuli will come to believe that they cannot escape similar stimuli.

Contrast Upbringing Makes the Hero. Goes with Willfully Weak, "No More Holding Back" Speech, I Am What I Am, Godzilla Threshold, and Be Yourself. Will often cross over with Extreme Doormat. The doormat in question may often learn to put their foot down. Can be followed by a physical Breaking the Bonds. May overlap with Nightmare of Normality. See also Restraining Bolt. Sub-Trope of Behavioral Conditioning.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Dragon Ball Z: Broly – The Legendary Super Saiyan: The title character and main villain, Broly, who is the most powerful Saiyan in the galaxy. The only thing keeping him docile for most of the film is the brainwashing/control device his father placed on him. As soon as he breaks out of his condition upon transforming into the Legendary Super Saiyan, which overwhelms and destroys the device, he proceeds to go on a rampage, mopping the floor with the heroes and eventually killing his father before finally being defeated by Goku.
• Hunter × Hunter: Killua has a needle in his brain, secretly placed by his Knight Templar Big Brother Illumi, to make sure he avoids fighting stronger enemies at all costs to keep him safe.

Comic Books

• Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: Overlord is a "Phase Sixer", a One Transformer Army built with a nearly-indestructible frame who can wipe out entire planets by himself. Unsurprisingly, Megatron was quite wary of giving such power to a Decepticon without any sort of insurance, so he had Overlord's brain altered in a way that made him unable to be able to think of how to beat Megatron in a fight. Unlike many versions of this trope, Overlord is aware that this has been done to him and he's spent centuries looking for a way to undo it because he really, really wants to fight Megatron.

Fan Works

• In Sailor Moon/Ranma ½ fanfic The Dark Lords Ascendant, Unit Zero, the clone of Sailor Moon, is capable of wielding the all-powerful Silver Crystal much like the original. The villain who created Unit Zero, Tanizaki Kazuo, basically tormented and abused her to keep her under control and not use the power against him, given that the Silver Crystal is something he can't either control directly or win against in a straight-up fight.
• There's some of this in the My Hero Academia fic The Harvest. In addition to torturing and underfeeding Aizawa, along with temporarily damaging his eyes, Overhaul uses psychological warfare in order to convince Aizawa that it's impossible for him to fight back or escape. He treats him like a personal servant, lets his colleagues make an evil "game" out of trying to subdue and gang rape him, and feeds him from chopsticks while eating his own meal. However, while raping him shortly afterwards, Overhaul makes the mistake of addressing him as "my weapon", causing this conditioning to snap as Aizawa realizes that despite being physically weakened, he didn't need a physical weapon to defeat Overhaul.
• Pony POV Series: In the Dark World arc, Discord places a spell on Spike, now an adult dragon, to keep his natural greed and hoarding instinct in check and make him more controllable. He then decides to remove it right as Twilight and Applejack are trying to snap Rarigreed out of her brainwashing. This makes Spike desire everything for himself, including Rarigreed who he has always been in love with, and become incredibly violent toward any pony who tries to stop him.

Films — Animation

• A Bug's Life: Hopper, the grasshoppers' leader, is aware that while they're individually stronger than the ants they extort, the ants outnumber them a hundred to one. Thus, Hopper invokes this trope, keeping the ants in constant fear. Sure enough, once the ants decide to fight back, they manage to overthrow the grasshoppers.
• In South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Satan and Saddam Hussein are a dysfunctional couple where Saddam is the abusive boyfriend who alternates between abusing/degrading Satan and emotionally manipulating him. Despite Satan being much more powerful, he's been so browbeaten and worn down that he lets Saddam walk all over him... until at the end of the movie he finally snaps and kills Saddam. Afterwards, Satan muses about this trope.
  Satan: He spent so much time convincing me I was weak and stupid that I believed it myself.
• Space Jam: The Nerdlucks are normally very small and easily controlled by Mr. Swackhammer, who is comparatively bigger and stronger than them. When they absorb the powers of basketball players and become The Monstars, they still let him boss them around and abuse them despite looking physically stronger than him. After losing the match, The Monstars are again abused by Swackhamer but finally stand up to him after realizing they are now stronger than him and can fight back.
  Jordan: Why're you taking it from this guy?
  Bupkis: Because he's bigger.
  Pound: He's bigger?!
  Bang: Than we used... to be...
  Monstars: ...wait...
  Swackhammer: What are you doing?!
  (cue The Monstars shoving Swackhammer in a rocket and sending him away)

Films — Live-Action

• Captain Marvel (2019): On top of her Restraining Bolt and initial Amnesiac Hero status, "Vers" is constantly told by Yon-Rogg that she's too emotionally driven and that using her powers against him in sparring indicates she's too weak to beat him without them. After "Vers" remembers her prior life as Carol Danvers and discovers the depths of Kree's gaslighting, Yon-Rogg attempts to Honor Before Reason her in their final confrontation, challenging her to fight him without powers again to prove she can. This time, she promptly blasts him, saying, "I have nothing to prove to you."
• Danny the Dog: Danny is a young man who has been raised as a human attack dog for his Uncle Bart, who is a mobster. Part of this training involves being conditioned to be docile while wearing a metal collar and shifting into attack mode when it is removed. When he comes to live with Sam and Victoria, he doesn't let them remove it because he is afraid he will instinctively attack them.
• The Truman Show: Truman's entire life has been lived on what is essentially a reality tv show, and the director behind the show, Christoff, has planted certain fears and phobias in Truman, to either keep him docile or make him less likely to want to leave. For example, since Truman's community is supposedly an island, he was given a fear of the ocean and boats by making him believe that he witnessed his father (or rather, the actor playing his father) die and drown in a boat accident. However, as Truman increasingly realizes that his life is fake and artificial, he defies his fear of the ocean due to his determination to leave.

Literature

• From the New World: The story takes place in a village in the distant future where all humans have developed incredibly strong Psychic Powers, but are conditioned by the government since birth via a combination of hypnosis and brainwashing into being incurious, obedient to authority, and passive, with the protagonists being exceptions due to their brainwashing having been deliberately lessened so that one of them might develop the traits required to be the successor of the village leader. Additionally, all humans are conditioned to associate harming another human with their powers with intense pain — killing another human triggers such intense feedback that it is guaranteed to cause a lethal stroke, with a character experiencing extreme dizziness and pain from destroying even a hologram of a human being.
• In The Ship Who..., shellpeople are conditioned to be happy as themselves, to not care all that much about the normal human experiences they miss out on as the biological AI cores that they are, to enjoy their work and to be very reluctant to commit suicide, the last of which is also applied to the brawns acting as Handy Helpers for them. They all know about this conditioning and a few chafe at the idea, but it remains unbroken.
  • On the Lost Colony of Ozran, a feudal class of "mages" who retain access to old technology that they don't understand use it to oppress and modify their cousins the "furfaces", who were made to literally grow fur and have animal-like snouts. The furfaces do all their manual labor and are fed drugged food that damages their memories, keeping them pliant and inclined to passively worship their mage-lords. A shellperson discovering this fears that the furfaces are in danger of becoming a Formerly Sapient Species. One furface who took ill and couldn't eat for a few days noticed his mind sharpening and switched to foraged food, becoming clever and resentful of his overlords.

Live-Action TV

• The Boys (2019): Homelander is the central antagonist of the series and the driving force behind Butcher's hatred of superhumans. Homelander was raised to be a living product of Vought through isolation and scientific experiments. As a result, he craves external validation and cannot afford to look weak, something Vought exploits because they know how dangerous Homelander is and his utter disregard for human life. As the series progresses, Homelander is blackmailed by Queen Maeve with video footage of him abandoning a passenger plane and threatening to kill everyone onboard. However, Homelander calls her bluff and says that if she uploads it, they've lost their leash on him and he can go on a rampage without anyone to stop him. He even takes over Vought and finds comfort in his demographic of white males, who unconditionally support him despite killing a Starlight protestor in front of them.
  Homelander: I don't make mistakes. I'm not "just like the rest of you." I'm stronger. I'm smarter. I'm better. I am better. I'm not some weak-kneed fucking crybaby that goes around fucking apologizing all the time. And why the fuck would you want me to be? All my life, people have tried to control me. My whole life. Rich people, powerful people have tried to muzzle me, cancel me, keep me impotent and obedient, like I'm a fucking puppet. You know what? It worked. Because I allowed it to work. And guess what? If they can control me, then you can bet your ass they can control you. They already do. You just don't realize it. I'm done. I am done apologizing. I am done being persecuted for my strength. You people should be thanking Christ that I am who and what I am because you need me. You need me to save you. You do. I am the only one who possibly can. You're not the real heroes. I'm the real hero. I'm the real hero.
• Star Trek: Discovery: This is revealed to have happened to the entire Kelpien race: originally, they were apex predators who nearly drove another race known as the Ba'ul to extinction only for the latter to turn the tide with their superior technology. Instead of wiping them out, they decided to make sure the Kelpiens could never challenge them again by instituting a belief system known as "The Great Balance" that decreed that the Kelpiens were a prey species for the Ba'ul. The same belief system claimed that the vahar'ai, a painful biological process all Kelpiens undergo was a mark of being chosen to be culled, and any Kelpien who refused would suffer horrible pain and madness. In reality, the vahar'ai causes the loss of the Kelpien's fear ganglia and gives them far greater offensive abilities, which was what allowed them to hunt the Ba'ul in the first place. After discovering the truth, Saru triggers vahar'ai in the entirety of the rest of his race, which allows them to fight back against the Ba'ul and in the distant future, the two races seem to have come to an understanding.
• The Umbrella Academy (2019): On top of taking pills that restrained his Make Some Noise powers, as in the original comic, Viktor ^note Formerly Vanya in the series was also brainwashed into forgetting his powers and believing he was "ordinary" by his sister Allison's Compelling Voice and the family's subsequent ostracizing of him as the "ordinary" one. This belief subconsciously held back his powers, his violin playing, and his entire personality until he discovered the truth and became the most powerful of the Umbrella Academy.

Video Games

• Fallout 3: Charon is a potential companion of the Lone Wanderer and the ghoul bouncer of the Ninth Circle. According to Ahzrukhal, Charon was brainwashed into obeying whoever had his contract. Ahzrukhal insists that he is not a slave, and implies that Charon did something in the past to deserve his "employment" with Ahzrukhal. If the Lone Wanderer acquires Charon's contract, Charon will approach Ahzrukhal and murder him in cold blood as revenge for all the dirty work he made him do because the contract was the only thing keeping him from killing Ahzrukhal on the spot.
• God of War Ragnarök:
  • This interpretation of Thor was abused by Odin into doing whatever he commands under the belief that it would make Odin proud of him. Despite being Odin's best warrior, Thor is so terrified of his father that he lets Odin verbally and emotionally abuse him. After fighting Kratos during Ragnarok, Thor is finally convinced to stand up to his father but is immediately killed by him.
  • The Lyngbakr is a massive whale-like creature captured and chained by Mimir in Svartalfheim as a way to gain Odin's favor by harvesting its fat for oil. After being imprisoned himself, Mimir comes to fully regret it, and tries to free it as soon as he returns to Svartalfheim ages later with Kratos and Atreus. After Kratos breaks the chains binding the creature, the creature still wouldn't leave its pen even after trying to encourage it. Kratos remarks that "it has become accustomed to its chains" and Atreus confirms this by saying the creature likes the feeling of wind on its face.
• Knights of the Old Republic: The Wookie Chieftain Chuundar admits to the amnesiac Revan that he took steps to make his people weak so Cezrka Corporation could take more of them as slaves. Revan helps the Wookies rise up against Chuundar and Czerka and free their world from the slavers.
• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: Implied with Vivian, as when the player first fights the Shadow Sirens, Vivian is easily the weakest member of the group and goes down quickly. Once she joins the party, if the player upgrades her stats, she can be as strong as her Big Sister Bully Beldam by the end of the game, giving the implication that Beldam was doing her best to keep Vivian down and weak via bullying.
• Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: When the player first meets Miraidon/Koraidon, they're rather weak and incapable of fighting. Whilst the player gradually helps them get their abilities back, this doesn't include their ability to fight, suggesting that a mental block is a reason for this. The end of the game confirms this to be the case thanks to the result of an attack from a more vicious Miraidon/Koraidon, which severely traumatized them — once they overcome their trauma, they become able to fight again.
• RimWorld: The darkest backstory a colonist can have is "Urbworld sex slave", where they have been genetically-engineered to be incredibly attractive yet too physically weak to fight back. Suddenly, being stranded on a distant planet doesn't seem all that bad.
• The Walking Dead: Season Four: Deconstructed, Marlon and Brody are the 18-19-year-old co-leaders of Ericson's Boarding School for Troubled Youth. Both of them were responsible for the abduction of Minerva and Sophie, who were taken by The Delta, a military-themed gang of raiders who abduct children to conscript them into their gang. Marlon and Brody are terrified of them because their group is mainly composed of children and teens, whereas The Delta is composed of stronger and more capable adults. However, it's eventually revealed that The Delta are not as competent as they let on. The Delta are easily outsmarted by the kids, they only have a small squad to abduct the kids, and they have to make sure they can capture as many children alive as they can by attacking undefended camps. As Abel would point out during an interrogation scene, they are throwing away adult lives for the sake of "a few beansprouts who can barely hold a gun."

Web Video

• Pop Cross Studios: In Benny Sharp Saves Christmas From Lots and Lots of Demons, one of the main characters, Cosmara "Mara" Noroi, is a member of the Predator Coalition of Demon Hunters, who has a Curse that gives her superhuman speed, strength, and reflexes, in addition to making her The Needless, which makes her far stronger than even the magic-using members of the Coalition. However, seeing as that curse also slowly turns Mara into a Demon of Human Origin every time she kills a demon, Clayton, the Coalition's leader (and Mara's former boyfriend), brutally forbids her from participating in active combat situations, purely because he's paranoid that once Mara kills enough demons, she'll automatically become an evil demon herself. Because of this, Mara is a cripplingly shy Shrinking Violet whenever she goes on missions with the Coalition where she's not allowed to kill demons, even though it would save lives, purely because she's afraid of the contempt her teammates will treat her with, especially Clayton. Benny Sharp is disgusted by the flat-out abusive way Clayton treats his former girlfriend, and encourages Mara to stop fearing what other people think of her and use her powers to save their lives. In contrast to most heroic examples on this list, however, Mara does not use her powers against her abuser — Benny does that instead, when Clayton tries to kill Mara out of fury for disobeying him, and Benny beats him into submission with his suit of Powered Armour.

Webcomics

• Slightly Damned: Earth dragons are tamed by encouraging them to struggle against their tether while young and weak so that they think it can still hold them when they are strong. This is used as a metaphor for Kieri's feelings of inadequacy due to her abusive upbringing.

Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball: Hector is a Gentle Giant, mainly because his mother has done her best to keep him calm since his size and strength could lead to great danger if he ever lost his temper.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: Ed is the strongest of the trio but is also a docile simpleton because his mother raised him to believe that it is never acceptable to hit his sister Sarah, no matter the situation. For this reason, Sarah regularly bullies him and only gets away with it because Ed turns a blind eye to it. When Ed is in a bad mood, he actually yells at her for the first time after she berates him. She's genuinely afraid of him after this and quickly relents and leaves him alone for the rest of the episode.
• Lambert the Sheepish Lion is an accidental case. Lambert is a lion who was adopted by a sheep, and naturally acts like one because he doesn't know any different. When he hears his mother desperately crying for help as a wolf threatens to eat her, Lambert finds it in himself to roar and scare the wolf away.
• Littlest Pet Shop (2012): In "Sue Syndrome", Mitzi is a skunk who produces a perfume-like scent. She lets others smell it as often as they want even though it exhausts her, due to being too polite for her own good. She's repressed this frustration so much that she has lost the ability to produce any foul smells. Pepper encourages her to put her foot down and outwardly show her negative emotions, and she is finally capable of smelling bad once more.

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