At certain times a character feels they need a suitable enemy or opponent to test out their skills. Perhaps they're a Challenge Seeker looking for the big life-fulfilling thrill. A predator looking for some very particular form of prey. Maybe they're an Egomaniac Hunter searching for their most dangerous hunt. Perhaps even a baddie Yearning for a Nemesis that fits their needs.
But alas, no such target is present. Only amateur upstarts, inferior rivals, and weaker targets. What can the character do? Groom them to their liking, of course! Not to be confused with literally grooming your enemy.
This trope involves the circumstance where a character actively grooms and trains another for the express purpose of antagonizing them later. The groomer in question wants their prey to be at their best when they have their fun and will actively work to maximize their potential to be the kind of target that checks all the groomer's enemy criteria. If the groomer is a villain or hero, expect an active Create Your Own Hero or Create Your Own Villain scenario. Most of their charges will be completely unaware of their intentions as a Treacherous Advisor and much Hilarity Ensues when the truth comes out.
If the charge is aware their mentor has it out for them and accepts this, expect them to be a very receptive but inevitable Deceptive Disciple. If the target is meant to be food for the groomer, expect an Adopt the Food scenario until the inevitable dinner time if the groomer hasn't changed their mind by then.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- In Bleach, Aizen makes the claim that Ichigo's battles and constant growth up until then had all been part of his plan, starting with the Hollow that attacked his family at the start of the series and ultimately forced Rukia to give him Shinigami powers. And he's probably not lying.
- Fairy Tail:
- Zeref is an immortal Death Seeker who wants Natsu to be the one to defeat him. He set him on the path towards doing just that by putting him under Igneel's care, since Igneel was looking for orphaned children to train into Dragon Slayers who could defeat Acnologia, and Natsu was much too rambunctious to follow Zeref's instructions.
- During the Grand Magic Games, after Fairy Tail proves how powerful they can be when fueled by their feelings for each other, Saber Tooth gets the idea to provoke Fairy Tail into giving their A-game by laughing their asses off as Lucy gets a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from Minerva. It works all too well, as Natsu dishes a Curb-Stomp Battle to a fully powered Sting and Rogue without relying on any Super Mode of his own, humiliating Saber Tooth and turning Fairy Tail into the crowd favorite.
- In the sequel, Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest, Natsu faces this from his stepbrother Ignia, Igneel's biological son, who was gunning to fight Acnologia before Natsu beat him to the punch. Feeling let down that Natsu couldn't win without the help of his friends, Ignia periodically goads Natsu into toughening up for a proper one-on-one fight in which to give himself the fight of his life, at one point loaning Natsu a sample of his own power to prove just how far he still has to go.
- Dracule Mihawk conducts this trope towards his aspiring rival Zoro in One Piece, first sparing his life after giving him a messy scar during their first fight upon recognizing his potential, and later formally training him during the Time Skip to see if he has what it takes to truly surpass him as the World's Greatest Swordsman. Both of which are centered around Mihawk being chronically bored with his World's Best Swordsman status and wishing for an enemy to truly test his skills against.
Comic Book
- In Flashpoint, Gorilla Grodd, who in a timeline without Flash has become the Myopic Conqueror of almost all of Africa, does a half-assed version of this that smacks of the ennui he feels from his rulership. He lets a human child soldier from a failed rebellion live in the hopes that the child will grow up and try to kill Grodd, just so he has something to do.
Fan Fiction
- In The Mountain and the Wolf, the Wolf indulges in this trope to fulfill his Blood Knight desires:
- Before the siege of King's Landing, the Wolf is seen to be Running Both Sides by ensuring that both Daenerys and Cersei's forces are at their strongest (taking out Euron before he can destroy too much of Daenerys' fleet, but also getting the Golden Company's War Elephants to Westeros) all to ensure the best opponent would remain. It turns out he was hoping for a climactic battle (and pushed Daenerys into attacking via False Flag Operation when it seemed the city wanted to surrender).
- He's also taken Jaime prisoner and forces him to fight his men along with having Jaime's gold hand enchanted to give him a Morph Weapon, while Cersei is kept prisoner in a state of permanent debauchery. In both cases it's hinted to have something to do with Slaanesh.
Film - Animated
- Megamind: Feeling despondent after the supposed death of Metro Man, Megamind decides he needs a replacement hero to give himself a sense of purpose as a villain once more. As such, he gives the hapless Hal Metro Man's superpowers and mentors him as a supposed parent surrogate to raise him to be the hero he wants to antagonize later. Unfortunately, this plan backfires when Hal, who had been indicated to be a selfish Jerkass under his seemingly friendly surface, almost immediately goes Drunk with Power and quickly eschews any ideas of using his powers for acts of goodness and heroism, simply deciding to abuse them for his own gain instead, becoming a supervillain far worse than Megamind ever was in the process.
Film - Live Action
- The entire Big Bad plan revolves around this trope in The Jade Faced Assassin. In the story, a pair of twins born as result of an affair between a swordsman and an heiress of two warring clans, caused an uproar in the martial world. When both the parents are killed in a bandit attack, their two babies - a boy and a girl - are taken by the heiress' elder sister, a leader of the clans herself, to be raised in different families, where seventeen years later, the elder sister will manipulate the twins Separated at Birth to kill each other. The winner will then be given ruling authority to restore honor to the family name.
Literature
- The Witch of Knightcharm: Morgan, the top student at an evil Wizarding School, seems to be treating a rookie Necromancer named Alejandra forces way. Morgan first kills Alejandra's sister Julia (in such a way that Alejandra can't resurrect it) and then forcing Alejandra through brutal training sessions with the promise of allowing Alejandra a chance at vengeance against her, Morgan, if Alejandra completes all the training and passes all the tests. Alejandra isn't yet strong enough to force the issue and has no choice but to agree, so Morgan is able to train her.
- Worm: Jack Slash does this with Theo Anders well before the kid even triggers as part of the sick series of tests his group of serial killers, the Slaughterhouse Nine, are doing in Brockton Bay. Later revelations about his character and power show this is part of his efforts to stave off boredom.
Video Games
- In the Afro Samurai videogame, Justice fights Afro in a Battle in the Center of the Mind and states he indirectly groomed Afro into the revenge-obsessed killing machine he would be become, all for the sake of later challenging him after the murder of his father, and mocks Afro for assuming he's any better of person than Justice at all.
- This is subtly implied in the Afro Samurai main series, where Justice challenges Afro to fight him again when he's ready to duel him for revenge. He acts unsurprised at their final meeting before stating he put Afro on the path to revenge so that he could be strong enough to bring him the Number 2 Headband so that he may obtain true Godhood.
- Nagito plays with this trope in Danganronpa due to his fixation on hope. Nagito is fanatically obsessed with the concept of hope, and believes it is the strongest force in the universe, so strong that it will always overcome despair, so the stronger the present despair, the stronger the hope that will arise from it will become. Thus, he has a habit of occasionally cultivating as much despair as possible, and as a member of Ultimate Despair, he intentionally tries to make Komaru into either a successor for Junko Enoshima or an adversary against despair to embody the hope he desires.
- In Disgaea 3, Super Hero Aurum had been posing as Mao's butler, Geoffery, to guide him towards becoming a more powerful and evil overlord than his father had ever been so he could defeat him, believing he no longer had a purpose after defeating the strongest villain.
- In Final Fantasy XIV the Stormblood expansion, the Garlean Empire's crown prince, Zenos yae Galvus finds pleasure in nothing but challenging combat, which is hard to come by in the decades-ago conquered and subjugated lands he rules over as viceroy. Enter the player character, the Warrior of Light. In your first two encounters with Zenos, he wins handily but, because you're the first person in a while able to put up any kind of fight against him, he spares you and bids you become stronger through repeated battles with his minions and with him so that you might be suitable prey for his greatest hunt. Once you do become strong enough to fight him and win, it sets Zenos on an obsessive path to do anything for a rematch so he can feel that joy again, even if it means destroying his own Empire and the world to do so.
- In Promise of Wizard, Oz kidnapped Arthur from his home to literally eat him once he had raised him into a strong enough wizard. And then he got attached and pivoted.
- This trope occurs in Olcadan's Soulcalibur 3 ending of the Soul Series. Olcadan decides that since he can't find a worthy enough opponent to his liking, he'll just have to train up one himself, and proceeds to try doing so with two thieves he easily curbstomps beforehand.
Webcomics
- Parodied in Tom the Dancing Bug. The character God-Man, an Invincible Hero who is literally God, molds a criminal from whole cloth, interfering with his conception and giving him DNA increasing his propensity for violence, removing the boy's father so he will grow up angry and become a bully, then as an adult puts him in situations where he will be tempted to resort to crime, all so he can have a bank robber to punch into next week.
Western Animation
- Wolf in Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts experiences this trope as part of her Dark and Troubled Past. She was raised by a pack of Newton wolves as one of the children of the Pack Mother. She intensely trained with them and, after a year, it appears her adopted siblings and parents have accepted her as one of their own. But then it turns out she was just raised to be a final hunting test for the other pups to test their hunting skills. Only one of her adopted siblings hesitates to turn on her, truly considering her a sister, before relenting and declaring that "we're wolves, you're a human".
- In Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Cad Bane, due to his intense rivalry with Jango Fett, indulges in this trope to train Boba Fett explicitly because he wanted Boba to reach the same level as his deceased father, at which point Bane would challenge and kill Boba because that'd be the closest he'd get to beating Jango.
- In Timon & Pumbaa, this happens to Pumbaa in the episode I Think I Canada. A carnivorous wolverine enrolls Timon and Pumbaa in a training camp so they can get in better shape. Pumbaa is delighted at his new physical fitness, only to be horrified when the wolverine reveals he trained Pumbaa specifically so he can have the most fit of prey to eat before attacking him.
