Reel Torture

Nostalgia Critic: And in the remotest parts of Southeast Asia, it is still considered the number one preferred form of execution.

Dr. Klahn: Show him Batman & Robin!

Captive CIA Agent: NO! NO PLEASE, ANYTHING BUT THAT!

— The Nostalgia Critic, review of Batman & Robin

This trope relates to a method of torture in which somebody is Forced to Watch a movie, TV show, video recording or photo reel (the latter is especially common) that they find terrible.

What makes this scene different from The Ludovico Technique is that the former is done as a form of Brainwashing while Reel Torture is just about torturing or punishing a character without the intent of brainwashing them. This trope is usually Played for Laughs but sometimes can be used seriously.

Used repeatedly in Mid-Review Sketch Shows, the Caustic Critic in question often treating or comparing the movie/comic/video game/etc. as being similar to a torture device and will comedically overreact to it as though it were physically painful to them.

Subtrope of Cool and Unusual Punishment. Related to Forced to Watch and Suckiness Is Painful. If the film the victim is made to watch is a real life film, this trope may also be a form of Take That!. If the reel is a person's vacation trip, then it may be an example of a Boring Vacation Slideshow.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Assassination Classroom: In the Assassination Island arc, the class forces Koro-Sensei to watch a recording of him reading adult magazines. They do this in hopes of demoralizing him so that their planned assassination attempt will be easier.
• Banana Fish: When Ash is arrested for murder, one of the cops forces him to watch one of the child pornography videos filmed of Ash when he was younger.

Comic Books

• The Punisher: "In The Blood" has Jigsaw capture Frank and try to break him by showing the vigilante footage of Jigsaw having sex with Frank's wife who has apparently come Back from the Dead. It's actually a hitwoman who was surgically modified to look like her.

Comic Strips

• FoxTrot: The kids sometimes play "television roulette," where one person rapidly clicks the remote until told to stop, and whatever program it lands on the viewer is forced to watch it all the way to the end. Landing on an infomercial or a John Tesh concert is treated as an especially grueling torture.

Fan Works

• Mortal Kombat XL Character Banter Snafu the Great: Chapter 6 features intro dialogues for Ryu Hayabusa. One of these dialogues has him telling Johnny Cage that the latter's critically panned movie Ninja Mime is used as a method of interrogation in Ryu's village.
• Haywire: As part of Albedo's Cool and Unusual Punishment, he is forced to watch all of the favorite shows of Bubbles, Dee Dee, Sarah and Numbuh 3, which are naturally very cutesy and meant for younger girls. This is on top of being forced into a tea party where the girls shove all manner of sweet treats and tea down his throat, having his nails done and being forced to endure all their stuffed animals.

Film — Live-Action

• Addams Family Values: The second film has Wednesday, Pugsley and another boy refuse to take part in the summer camp play. As punishment, the camp counselors lock them in an isolation cabin and make them watch various films such as The Sound of Music and Annie, which they can't stand.

Literature

• Adrian Mole: In Wilderness Years, Adrian imagines torturing Pandora's middle-aged lover Cavendish by showing him a video of Pandora marrying Adrian.
• Captain Underpants: In one of their comics, George and Harold have gerbils being driven into homicidal maniacs because they were being forced to listen to Cher. In the Spanish prints, Cher was replaced by Julio Iglesias.
  Captain Underpants: This would make anybody turn evil.
• The Exploits of Ebenezum: During a trip into the Netherhells, Wuntvor witnesses a noted dramatist getting tortured by being made to watch horrible demonic renditions of various already notoriously terrible vaudeville acts by two characters named Damsel and Dragon.
• The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death: Wallace Nussbaum captures Uncle Flipping and attempts to torture the secret of the avocado computer out of him. How? Using old German comedies. Unfortunately for Nussbaum, it doesn't work, since Uncle Flipping happens to love those movies.

Live-Action TV

• Daybreak (2019): Turbo and Mona Lisa force their Jock underlings to watch incredibly disturbing Educational Shorts in order to make them give up a traitor in their midst.
• Family Matters: One episode has Steve drop by to see Laura, only to be told by Carl that she doesn't want him to know where she is. Steve decides to "entertain" Carl by showing him a photo reel of his trip to the Wisconsin Cheese Festival. The reel barely starts before Carl breaks and not only divulges where Laura is but what she will be wearing and how long she will be there.
  Steve: I knew you'd crack.
• The Good Place: After Shawn is caught in his attempt to sabotage the second neighborhood, The Judge threatens him with being forced to watch heartwarming videos of soldiers returning home to their dogs. This actually freaks out Shawn (who is basically Satan).
• Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Excuse Plot has a bunch of mad scientists seeking out a movie so bad that they can use it to take over the world. So they force their test subject (and his robot friends) to watch a gauntlet of B-movies, observing to see which one breaks his mind. Unfortunately for them, the guinea pig keeps his sanity by making fun of the movies as he watches.
• True Detective: A non-humorous version. After restarting their investigation into the Yellow King murders, Cohle and Hart find a former colleague who helped the cult cover up more killings. When he refuses to help them, they show him a videotape of what his work led to: the ritual sacrifice of a young girl. The audience isn't shown the footage, but him screaming in horror is heard.

Video Games

• Liberal Crime Squad: One of the torture methods that could be used on hostages in earlier versions of the game was making them watch Bible Black.
• Rakenzarn Tales: If optional boss Raku is defeated in the Extra Scenario, he decides to take care of annoying foe Verzog by forcing him to watch a cheesy show with over-the-top brooding characters.

Web Animation

• Bonus Stage: The first time Joel dies and goes to hell in "Morbid", Satan gives him a choice of three punishments, two of them being a 24/7 viewing of Time Squad or Shrek 2; Joel is later forced into the Time Squad punishment.
• Terrible Writing Advice: The ending of the video on characterization shows the CEO of Megacorp torturing the Dark Lord by making him watch My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Subverted in a later episode, where it was revealed that the Dark Lord escaped and ended up watching the whole series in his own time.

Webcomics

• Exterminatus Now: Parodied when a captured assassin expects the protagonists to force him to watch Battlefield Earth or something. Instead they threaten to castrate him with a buzzsaw.
• Roomies!, It's Walky!, Joyce and Walky!: The Head Alien's preferred torture is forcing people to watch The Sound of Music. This is treated as horrific by all characters except Walky and Joyce, who both like the film. When Cerebus Syndrome hits, this is played more seriously as the Head Alien first forces Joyce to watch porn (which warps her innocent mind) and later uses The Sound of Music to keep prisoners helpless while he starts mass-executing them.
• The Whiteboard: Doc punishes Bandit for spiking his shampoo with Nair by duct-taping him to a couch and forcing him to watch Martha Stewart.

Web Original

• GoAnimate: Some of the "grounded" videos have the parents using this as a form of punishment for their children for whatever bad thing they did. These can range from shows aimed at little children (Barney & Friends, Dora the Explorer, and Super Why! being popular examples) to shows aimed at older children (classic Nicktoons like Rugrats, Spongebob Squarepants, The Fairly Oddparents, and The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius being popular examples).

Web Video

• The Blockbuster Buster: In his review of the 2003 adaptation of The Cat in the Hat, he says he would rather watch The Room (2003) while strapped to a chair with his eyes strapped open while Tommy Wiseau sits next to him and gives his own personal commentary.
• Diamanda Hagan:
  • While Diamanda isn't above actual torture and murder, she tends to force her fellow internet reviewers to watch bad movies as a form of torture, either anonymously or as part of a Crossover review.
  • A Running Gag in her videos has her swapping audio whenever a character is being tortured with Sensory Abuse with the Atop the Fourth Wall theme song.
• The Nostalgia Critic: In his review of Batman & Robin, the Critic jokes that the movie is so bad it is used as a form of punishment in some countries.

Western Animation

• American Dad!:
  • In "Wild Women Do", Klaus ties Steve to the bed and forces him to watch a tape of him doing hundreds of terrible celebrity impressions. After six hours of torture, Steve breaks down and starts giggling, at which point Klaus decides to set him free. This backfires when Steve immobilizes Klaus and demands him to keep doing impressions for his amusement.
  • In "Tearjerker", the eponymous villain produces a film called "Oscar Gold", which depicts the life of a mentally challenged, alcoholic Jewish kid and his cancer-riddled puppy during The Holocaust. He then ties Stan to a chair and forces him to watch it, intending to have the protagonist literally cry to death.
  • In "Poltergasm", Klaus accidentally subjects himself to this when he breaks his back while staying at a hotel, leaving him to watch the looping video on the TV's information channel with the remote just out of reach. Worse, nobody comes in to help him because he put a "DO NOT DISTURB" sign on the room door.
• Back at the Barnyard: A Cutaway Gag has Freddy tortured by being strapped to a bench and forced to watch a movie about kids in high school making a musical.
• Bob's Burgers: In "Mother Daughter Laser Razor", Louise and Logan are punished for their misbehavior during a mother-child bonding seminar by being locked in a room and forced to watch Freaky Friday (2003) in loop.
• Codename: Kids Next Door Special - The Grim Adventures of the KND: Mandy tortures Numbuh One into giving away Billy's location by forcing him to watch a tape of Fred Fredburger blurting out ridiculous non sequiturs.
• Disenchantment: One of the many punishments in Hell is being strapped to a chair and forced to watch your worst memories on a film screen over and over again, with a bag of popcorn next to them that's just out of reach. For Hansel and Gretel, it's the moment of their deaths when Bean killed them. For Bean and Elfo, it's the moment where Bean chose to revive Dagmar instead of Elfo. The latter is very pissed off at her when he finds out about it, with his anger lasting until the next few episodes.
• Family Guy:
  • "The Former Life of Brian" has Dylan tying Meg up in the basement and forcing her to watch 178 hours of Monty Python's Flying Circus sketches that were neither funny nor memorable.
  • "Baby Not on Board" has Stewie forcing Cleveland and Quagmire to watch the looping DirecTV information channel. This becomes a Brick Joke when, during The Stinger, they're still watching it and are reciting the words from memory with the announcer.
• The Flintstones: The episode "Reel Trouble" has Fred's latest obsession with home movies get him into trouble when he accidentally films a robbery in progress. When the two perpetrators come to Fred's house to steal the film, they are accidentally incapacitated by Fred's bowling ball landing on their heads. When the police arrive to arrest the crooks, they find them tied up and forced to watch Fred's home movies of Pebbles. The crooks are actually relieved to be taken away.
• Freakazoid!:
  • In "The Chip," the Douglas family is held hostage and subjected to a Marty Ingels marathon.
  • The climax of the short "Hot Rods From Heck!" sees Freakazoid making an Attack Drone car explode by showing it a TV playing a special of "seven hours of Tony Danza!" The car even shows a brief moment of anthropomorphism by acting in sheer revulsion before going boom.
• Harley Quinn (2019): In "The Final Joke", Joker tortures Doctor Psycho by strapping him to a chair and forcing him to watch videos of feminist rallies.
• Pinky and the Brain: The episode "Leggo My Ego" shows a flashback of how Brain was punished for asking for more porridge by being forced to watch old Western films Clockwork-style.
• Robot Chicken: In "You Can't Do That On Robot Chicken", the Bloopers host is chained up in a basement and still has his optimistic attitude even through being told he'll be forced to watch nonstop Movies On-demand, but once he learns that the only film he'll be watching is Christmas with the Kranks, he lets out a Big "NO!".
• Rocko's Modern Life: In "Ed Good, Rocko Bad," when stray dogs are sent to the pound, one of the tortures they are subjected to is watching reruns of Mervin the Happy Cat.
  Dog: Somebody neuter me!
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In the episode "No Free Rides", one of the obstacles Mrs. Puff tries to go through to ditch SpongeBob after stealing his boat is "Educational Television". While the reels are never shown on-screen, it's implied to be agonizing enough for SpongeBob that it causes him to lose his grip on the boat (for the time being, at least, as the next scene shows SpongeBob appearing in place of the boat's radio to sneak up on Mrs. Puff).
• Tiny Toon Adventures:
  • "Who Bopped Bugs Bunny?": after Buster and Babs defeat Sappy Stanley, Bugs is revealed to have been forced to watch Stanley's old cartoons until he's an unhinged, blubbering mess. Buster and Babs snap him out of it by handing him his Schloscar award.
  • In the cartoon, "Slaughterhouse Jive" from the episode, "Going Places", as revenge for turning them into giant sausages, Buster and his friends strap Montana Max to a chair and show him a Squick-filled informative video on how meat byproducts are made, featuring an anthropomorphic cow named Happy who gets thrown into a meat grinder.
    Happy: "For those of you at home with weak stomachs, I suggest tuning in the Disney Channel".
• Total Drama: During the second season's finale, one of the punishments Duncan receives for not knowing the answers to Chef's questions is to watch a movie titled "The Miracle of Childbirth" (since horror movies don't scare him). Screaming ensues.
• Yogi's Treasure Hunt: One episode has Dick Dastardly torturing Yogi's friends by forcing them to watch his old "Stop the Pigeon" cartoons.

Real Life

• When he was still Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger once jokingly threatened to subject the state legislature to a showing of Jingle All the Way unless they passed a budget. He has also claimed that he threatened to make his kids watch the Red Sonja movie ten times in a row if they misbehave. By his account, it apparently works since he has never had much trouble with them.
• It is rumored that Saddam Hussein was forced to watch South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, in which he was depicted as Satan's gay lover, while he was in custody of the USMC. Ironically, Hussein was apparently a fan of the animated series.

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