Reforged into a Minion

"WORTHLESS KORIDIAN, YOU MUST BE HARDENED WITH FIRE! GO AND KILL!"

— Militron, Link: The Faces of Evil

So, you are a powerful villain in need of a Quirky Miniboss Squad. You need to replace The Dragon who has failed you one time too many. Or perhaps your Monster of the Week never works and you are thinking of trying The Psycho Rangers. But where can you find a servant both competent enough and willing to serve you? Not everyone can create minions from the ground up, particularly the forces of evil. But perhaps you don't need to create anything.

See that guy, Not Quite Dead after a Heroic Sacrifice? He will do. A quick brainwashing, sometimes also a new name and new clothes, and while you are putting his damaged body back together, you can always make a few... improvements. If no half-dead hero is available, you can always use the remains of the previous season's Big Bad, or even some of your past victims. What is important is that they are not just Brainwashed and Crazy. The new minion must be customized for your needs. So turning dead heroes undead does not count by itself, but creating a Death Knight will.

May coincide with That Man Is Dead and obviously We Can Rebuild Him. Sometimes involves a Deal with the Devil. Evil Costume Switch is pretty much mandatory.

As mentioned, this trope requires the victim to be custom-modified. Also it must be someone either important (a powerful wizard, a king) or plot-relevant (the hero's childhood friend) prior to the transformation and important for the villain's plans after. This can be effective as it puts the former hero's strength on your side, and also puts the other heroes in the uncomfortable position of having to fight their former friend. On the other hand, heroes do have the nasty habit of beating them back to themselves, so in the worst case, the villain may just end up bringing back a hero the villain spent so much time and resources killing in the first place, only stronger. Whoops!

Compare The Corrupter and Minion Manipulated into Villainy. If the subject has Heroic Willpower, may result in a Phlebotinum Rebel. A type of Face–Monster Turn. Can result in a Monster from Beyond the Veil. Not to be confused with Degraded Boss, where a boss enemy becomes a regular mook.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Afro Samurai, this is Kuma's backstory. After nearly being killed when Afro first got the Number 2 Headband back, he's brought back from the brink of death by Dharman and the Empty 7 after being turned into a cyborg-samurai.
• Blassreiter: Almost everyone, especially when XAT was almost entirely infected with Pale Rider. Some managed to remember themselves and turn on their would-be "masters" anyway, but most were taken over completely.
• In Digimon Frontier, when Big Bad Cherubimon is unable to recreate/find a Digimon to wield the powerful Spirits of Darkness, he instead snatches up a wandering human (or rather, the human's ghost/astral projected soul), brainwashes him, and forces him to take the Spirit instead, creating the terrifyingly powerful Duskmon, who comes damn close to wiping out the season's Digidestined. Unfortunately for Cherubimon, the human he snatched turned out to be Kouichi, one of the heroes' long-lost brother, and that lingering connection keeps him from killing the heroes long enough for them to orchestrate a Heel–Face Turn.
• Fairy Tail: During the Tartaros arc, the titular guild of genocidal demons attempts to transform the captured Mirajane into a loyal demon subordinate. Unfortunately for them, because the "Demon Factor" they use to perform this is the very power that she makes use of with her Satan Soul, getting pumped full of it ends up not only revitalizing her and letting her break free, but allows her to use Take Over on the demonic tentacles inside the lab to wreck it, thus preventing them from utilizing their Resurrective Immortality.
• The Mazinger franchise:
  • Mazinger Z: This is Dr. Hell's favorite trick. This is how he got himself his Co-Dragons. He found Brocken bleeding to death on the ground and turn him into a headless Cyborg. While exploring the underground mazes of Bardos he found two mummified bodies. One half of each body was crushed under rocks, so he sewed the intact halves together, revived it like a Cyborg with a mechanized brain and named it Ashura. And his Mooks? He — or his henchmen — killed people and he turned the corpses into cybernetic slaves programmed to serve him. Now you know what happened to all the people who died in the battles between Mazinger-Z and Hell's Mechanical Beasts.
  • Great Mazinger: Ironically, Emperor of Darkness did the same thing to Hell himself, turning him into his newest Dragon.
  • UFO Robo Grendizer: The Vegans grafted brains of prisoners into their Saucer Beasts. Duke got a severe Heroic BSoD when he was told he technically had killed one friend of his every time he blew up a Robeast.
• My Hero Academia: The Nomu qualify in some cases, particularly Oboro Shirakumo, who was a hero student and best friend of Aizawa and Present Mic. The real target when Oboro was killed was Aizawa’s Erasure, but Oboro's corpse was loaded with multiple quirks and possibly parts of other people to create the warp gate user Kurogiri. He was programmed to protect and care for the young Shigaraki, and would act unresponsive if it didn't pertain to his ward. Aizawa and Hizashi are so furious that they're ready to kill when they find out, and they don't know if there's anything left of Oboro to try and save. While they try reaching out to him in Kurogiri, with his face even manifesting in half of the mist surrounding Kurogiri's head, the strain just causes Kurogiri to go comatose afterwards.
• Naruto:
  • Madara Uchiha does this to Obito Uchiha, turning him into Tobi. Notably, though, Obito wasn't Brainwashed — at most, Madara had him under More than Mind Control after a Despair Event Horizon caused him to undergo a Face–Heel Turn, and even then, Obito basically decided to hijack Madara's plan for his own use with no intentions of resurrecting him. Even when Madara gets revived through other means, Obito makes no secret that they simply have mutual goals at this point.
  • This is the true power of the Infinite Tsukuyomi. Humans trapped in the illusion and cocooned to the God Tree are very slowly drained of their chakra and will power until they become shells of their former selves, turning them into an army of White Zetsu soldiers for Kaguya Otsutsuki to command in her fight against her own clan.
• One Piece:
  • Bartholomew Kuma strikes a deal with the Five Elders and a reluctant Dr. Vegapunk in order to cure his adoptive daughter Bonney from the sapphire scales by gradually his mind wiped and gets converted into a mindless Cyborg by the World Government. Sadly, St. Jaygarcia Saturn was the one who had Bonney ill in the first place by taking Kuma's wife Ginny and performing and experiment on her which resulted in failure and Ginny contracting the illness, and used this as a leverage to twist the Pacifista Project into creating wepons of mass genocide.
  • It's revealed in the Wano arc that this is how Kaido recruits much of his crew; if an enemy demonstrates themselves to be exceptionally strong, he doesn't kill them, but instead takes them prisoner and offers them a place on his crew. If they accept, they're happily welcomed into the family. If they refuse, he breaks down their wills through torture until they swear allegiance to him.
• Sailor Moon:
  • The Shitennou were Endymion's Generals before everyone was sent into the future to be reborn and fight Queen Beryl in the future. Present day however, they've been brainwashed and now serve her as the Quirky Mini Boss Squad.
  • She does this to Tuxedo Mask himself, having Kunzite kidnap him as Sailor Moon is revealed to be Princess Serenity. The irony being, just as she remembers her love for TM and his for her, he is kidnapped, brainwashed, and turned against her.
  • It's also the main shtick of Kunzite in the anime version: turning civilians into Monsters of the Week to try and find the secret identities of the Sailor Soldiers, once doing this to Sailor Venus' best friend from London. Quite ironic, considering he's one of the Shitennou (who in the anime don't appear to have the same backstory as in the manga)...
  • That's the origin of the Phages, the Monsters of the Week of the fifth season: as a side effect of having their Starseed extracted, people with a fake Starseed (that is, everyone but the Sailor Soldiers) become a phage.
  • In the manga, the Daimons of the Death Busters are civilians (or, sometimes, cats and dogs) who had their souls removed and replaced with beings from the Tau Star System, transforming them into monsters at random times. Note that this is when the process fails: successful Daimons keep a human appearance.
  • While the anime used objects as the vessels of the Daimons, we still have two similar examples: Germatoid uses professor Tomoe as host in the anime before leaving him near the end of the season (where in the manga Germatoid was Tomoe after becoming a Daimon), while a Daimon in Sailor Uranus' and Neptune's flashback was a kid who assumed the form of a failed Daimon.
  • In the Stars arc of the manga (and the Sera Myu musical Le Mouvement Final), Galaxia disintegrates Tuxedo Mask and the Inner Senshi (except Saturn), then brings them back as puppets to fight Sailors Moon, Chibi Moon, Saturn, and Chibi Chibi.
• In Tekkaman Blade, every Tekkaman is an example. The Radam captured a bunch of explorers and subjected them to a harrowing procedure that infused them with awesome superpowers and a parasite controlling their thoughts. Takaya, who is D-Boy's father, used the last of his strength to free Takaya and interrupted the process. As a result, Takaya had the superpowers of a Tekkaman but lacked the mind controlling parasite, but at the cost of going berserk if he stayed transformed too long, possibly because the process was interrupted prematurely.
• Tokyo Ghoul: One of the Sequel Hooks involves Aogiri's plans to do this, using captured Ghoul Investigators for use in hybridization experiments. These plans come to fruition two years later, when Seidou Takizawa makes their very bloody debut as Aogiri's new Owl. Formerly the Plucky Comic Relief for the human-focused chapters, he performed a Heroic Sacrifice trying to protect Amon and was written off as killed in action by his superiors. Driven insane by experimentation and torture, he turns out to be completely aware of his past and hints at a feeling of resentment over being abandoned by his superiors. His inferiority complex has been used to twist him into a vicious killer, encouraging him to seek out and try to kill Sasaki to prove himself superior to his predecessor. More importantly, this gets strangely subverted, since Sasaki himself is technically Kaneki who suffers from amnesia. Well, if that's subverted or not depends on the viewer, since the CCG can be seen as the Big Good as well as the Big Bad. Somehow.

Comic Books

• In Avengers Undercover, Alex Wilder, the original leader of the Runaways, is restored to life as part of a plot to corrupt his ex-girlfriend Nico Minoru.
• Captain America: This is what happens to Bucky Barnes, former kid sidekick to Captain America. He's brainwashed by Soviets and turned into the Winter Soldier, an elite killing machine.
• Empowered: This is the M.O. of supervillain Deathmonger, as she's a Necromancer.
• Fantastic Four: All of the heralds of Galactus are former mortals who made a Deal with the Devil: spare my planet in exchange for my service. Galactus would then bestow them with a small portion of his own power, creating both a link between the two and transforming the new herald into one of the most powerful beings in the cosmos.
• The Incredible Hulk: Back in The '90s, the Leader used the dead body and mostly dead brain of Thunderbolt Ross to power the Redeemer armor.
• Judge Dredd: This is the horrible fate that befell on poor Judge Kraken in the lead-up to Necropolis. Initially brainwashed by the Sisters of Death, he freed their allies the Dark Judges from the interdimensional void they were trapped in. Judge Death deemed such service worthy of recognition, "rewarding" Kraken by inflicting Mind Rape on him and turning him into a fifth Dark Judge, who wept as he slaughtered millions but could do nothing to stop it.
• New 52:
  • This was, ultimately, how Harley Quinn became a villain; The Joker brought her to the factory where his own transformation had occurred, and forcibly dunked her into the same vat of chemicals, with similar results. (Probably the biggest reason why Harley is far more insane in this version than previous ones, often just as much as he is.)
  • In Supergirl's books, Brainiac came upon a dying Zor-El (Supergirl's father). Brainiac mindwiped Zor-El and rebuilt his body, turning him into the new Cyborg Superman.
• Nnewts:
  • In Book 1, Wizzark transforms Urch into a reptile, naming him Lizzurch and ordering him to hunt down Herk.
  • Blakk Mudd, introduced in Book 2, turns any Nnewt it touches into a Lizzark. This actually happens to Herk himself.
• Star Wars: Bounty Hunters: After Valance's cybernetics are damaged to the point of no longer being able to keep him alive during War of the Bounty Hunters, Vader has him resuscitated and rebuilt to serve him, with a death threat against his loved ones to coerce him.
• Transformers:
  • Megatron: Origin (a prequel to IDW's Transformers run): Ratbat is revealed to be a rare villain example. As a senator he tried to capitalize on Meagtron's rise to power by supplying his then fledgling rebellion with weapons, only to have his minion Soundwave turn on him in favor of Megatron and proceed to 'thank' him for his service by reforging him into one of his cassettes.
  • The Transformers (Marvel): Starscream was wrecked at the end of the Underbase saga. A few issues later, he was salvaged by Megatron, who forced the Autobot Ratchet to rebuild Starscream into a mindless, extremely powerful Decepticon Pretender.
  • In The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, the DJD's Pet Turbofox is eventually revealed to be a lobotomized Agent 113, a.k.a. Dominus Ambus.
• Wonder Woman (1942): Queen Atomia has created a machine that can turn people into her mindless "Neutron" and "Proton" slaves, altering their physical body and greatly reducing their mental capacity. When she tries to use it on Diana and her friends Diana destroys the machine.
• X-Force: One Bad Future has apparently every superhuman individual turned into Deathlok drones.
• X-Men:
  • The Horsemen of Apocalypse, particularly Archangel/Death.
  • Psylocke was long thought to be this after she returned from Japan transformed into a psychic ninja assassin. The truth turned out to be a bit more complicated.

Fan Works

• Child of the Storm has the classic example of the Winter Soldier. The sequel also has the Red Son, intended to be the successor to the Winter Soldier and made from Harry.
• Dragonball Z: Legacies: In the Bad Future, it's revealed that after most of the Future Z-Fighters were murdered by Sentinel Buu, he dug up Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, Goten, and Goren's corpses before resurrecting them as brainwashed cybernetic zombies to serve as his generals. When he introduces them to the surviving heroes, they are all horrified and disgusted with one even considering it a Fate Worse than Death.
• HERZ: Combined with Grand Theft Prototype due to the semi-organic nature of the Evas. After Shinji subdued the MP-Evas in 2015, NERV rebuilt them, mind-wiped them and reprogrammed them to serve them.
• Letters From Tomorrow: Chloe was always very loyal to Max, but throughout the game she gets herself killed a number of times because she has more bravery than skills. Here, the future Max used her Mental Time Travel to manipulate Chloe's past in such a way as to turn her into the ultimate badass; encouraging her to exercise and learn how to fight, improving her relationship with her step-dad so that he can teach her how to shoot, and even convincing her to take defensive driving courses, all so that the present Max would have a bodyguard when she needed one. The present Max is horrified when she realizes what her future self has done, treating her best friend like a tool.
• Miraculous City: Hawkmoth does this twice in the final arc. First by force akumatzing Chrysalis into the loyal Queen Chrysalis, with the added bonus of brainwashing her akumatized Disastrous Team into obeying her. The second time he does this to a captive Marinette, turning her into Miss Fortune using her fear of her teammates being in danger thanks to picking them as heroes.
• The Mountain and the Wolf: The people the Wolf sacrificed to Chaos (Gregor Clegane (twice), Petyr Baelish, Ramsay Bolton, and Euron Greyjoy) are returned as hideously mutated Champions of Chaos during an unholy ritual. He's not particularly happy about it, as he didn't consider them much of a fight when they were alive, and makes his contempt for them clear by only referring to them by demeaning nicknames.
• The Palaververse: Soulforging, a process where an Antlertean mage would wipe the mind and soul of another being clean and completely rewrite their identity, turning them into an undying, loyal servant, sometimes transferring their soul into another vessel or turning them into a spectral being. In Treasures, the Antlertean Lord Fallow’s fortress is home to a great number of reforged minions, ranging from criminals to a fraud to a servant that was going senile.
• Percy Jackson: Spirits: Many dark spirits were forcibly captured and corrupted by Vaatu's willing servants and other corrupted spirits. Thinking about this just makes Percy hate Vaatu even more.
• Pony POV Series: Discord did this in Dark World to the Mane Six and the Doctor, turning them into the Chaos Six and the Valeyard.
• The Return: This is the SOP of all the Succubae, both the protagonists and the antagonists. The worst offender in it is Alexia though. Even the other demons thinks she's excessively evil about it. Sailor Dark Mercury has a similar stance towards recruitment.
• Roar of the LION: After Penny is destroyed during the fall of Vale, Inori retrieves her remains and rebuilds her into her latest Extermination Armor model. Ruby is horrified to see her in such a state during the battle for the Relic at Haven Academy and spends the resulting fight against her desperately trying to reason with her.
• Shattered Skies: The Morning Lights: The cloaked, scythe-wielding, skeletal, and eternally silent figure known as the Time Reaper initially appears to be an Eldritch Abomination under Joker's command, which enables him to wreak havoc throughout time and space. Only at the climax of Act III is it revealed that the Time Reaper is Sailor Pluto... more specifically, the upper half of Pluto's still-living skeleton, kept perpertually an inch from death to disrupt her cycle of Reincarnation.
• The Things We Wish We Could Forget, a Red vs. Blue fanfic, has Alpha-Church recovered by Malcolm Hargrove after he is thought dead from the EMP blast at the end of Season 6, and is reprogrammed so that his memories and moral code are erased so that he will aid in Hargrove's campaign to wipe out Chorus as the amnesiac and amoral mercenary Valdis. He eventually snaps out of his brainwashing thanks to his returning memories of the Reds and Blues.
• In Transformers: MHA, Shadow Striker used to be an Autobot who fought against the Decepticons. But being captured and experimented on by Shockwave has rendered her into a cold, emotionless killer that shoots down any Autobot for the Decepticon cause.

Film — Animated

• Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker: The Joker turns out to have done this to Tim Drake, in a way that marks his definitive crossing of the Moral Event Horizon in the DC Animated Universe. After capturing him while he was on patrol, Joker proceeded to horribly torture and brainwash the poor kid over an extended period, eventually turning him into "Joker Junior". The brainwashing held out until Batman and Joker's final battle when Joker ordered Tim to finish Batman off, only for Tim to kill Joker instead, although it took a year of psychotherapy to bring Tim back to himself after this. Even that didn't completely rid Tim and the others of the Joker, unfortunately.
• Despicable Me 2: Gru's Adorable Evil Minions are kidnapped and turned into truly Evil Minions by being injected with Psycho Serum.
• Justice League Dark: Apokolips War: After the disastrous first battle against Apokalips, some of the remaining members of the Justice League are captured by Darkseid and brainwashed into serving him. Batman becomes Darkseid's top advisor, Cyborg becomes the sentient core of Apokolips' computer system, and Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Hawkman, Mera, and Starfire are converted into a cyborg squad of Furies.
• In Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension, in the other dimension, Perry the Platypus is captured and turned into Perry the Platyborg, general of Doofenshmirtz's army.
• What happens to Megatron and a few of his Decepticon soldiers in Transformers: The Movie, when they cross into Unicron's path after the other Decepticons throw them into space to die.

Film — Live-Action

• The Black Hole: The entire crew of the Cygnus.
• In several of the Hellraiser films, Pinhead turns some of his earlier victims into new Cenobites to expand his retinue. One of them (Angelique) was even a demon herself who outranked him initially.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier: Bucky Barnes, Captain America's childhood friend is captured, brainwashed and turned into a cyborg assassin by Hydra.
  • In Captain Marvel (2019), Carol Danvers was an ordinary human pilot until she destroyed an engine powered by the Tesseract and absorbed some of its power in the ensuing blast, before losing consciousness. Rather than kill her, the Kree abducted her so they could use her as a soldier.
  • A villainous example occurs in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania with Darren Cross. After being severely maimed and shrunken down to a subatomic level at the climax of Ant-Man, Kang the Conqueror reconstructs him as his right-hand man MODOK.
• Phantasm: The Tall Man uses human corpses to create Lurkers; their brains are used to create the Sentinel Spheres.
• Stargate: Continuum:
  • Before his execution, Baal notes that he regrets that Teal'c never became his First Prime. In the altered timeline, he persuaded Teal'c into serving him instead of Apophis before he became the latter's First Prime, with the promise of a Free Jaffa protectorate within his empire.
  • Qetesh gloats that she might do the same thing after her soldiers mortally wound Teal'c by bringing him back with the sarcophagus. Teal'c defies her by pulling a Taking You with Me, blowing up himself and Qetesh.
• Star Wars: Emperor Palpatine's conversion of Anakin Skywalker into the infamous masked Cyborg Darth Vader counts, although Ani had already joined the Dark Side and was significantly weaker afterwards.
• Super Mario Bros. (1993) has a scene of Koopa reforging the rebel musician Toad into a mindlessly obedient Goomba with the help of his De-evolution Machine.
• In Terminator Genisys, Skynet uses this to devastating effect by converting John Connor into the T-3000, whose strength of will doesn't let him retain his free will, only ensuring that he makes it through the process without being driven catatonically insane.
• In Troll (1986), Torok transforms the various tenants of the apartment complex into creatures to do his bidding, only Jeanette retains her original appearance after her transformation.
• TRON: Legacy: There's a reason Rinzler never takes off the mask, speaks in a distorted stutter, and stops fighting Sam once he realizes that Sam is a User. He's a corrupted Tron.

Literature

• The Beginning After the End:
  • Subverted with Elijah Knight. During the attack on Xyrus Academy, he ends up being captured by the servants of the Vritra and is taken with them back to Alacrya. Naturally, when he returns to Dicathen years later at the close of the war as one of the Alacryan Scythes, Arthur assumes he had been brainwashed by the Vritra. It turns out that "Elijah Knight" was in fact a false personality created to help him blend in Dicathian society, and that the Alacryans merely restored his true identity: Nico Sever, the former childhood friend of Arthur's past life King Grey, who has been willingly working with Agrona and the Vritra out of a desire to exact revenge on Grey for the murder of his fiancée Cecilia.
  • Played straight with Tessia Eralith. After the war's conclusion and Arthur's apparent disappearance, she goes on a secret mission back to her homeland of Elenoir only to be captured by the Vritra and turned into the vessel for an entity known as the Legacy, who as it turns out is Cecilia. Cecilia herself is also an example, as Agrona gave her False Memories both to make her more compliant with his plans and to make her more hostile towards Arthur/Grey.
• The Black Company: The Taken are powerful wizards, defeated in battle and remade into powerful servants by the Big Bad. The transformation seems to involve death and the victim remains human in shape only at best.
• In Counselors and Kings, Big Bad Akhlaur is a necromancer who possesses a spell that can forcibly convert another wizard into a lich and place them totally under his control (much to the horror of his Bastard Understudy, Kiva, who didn't think such a thing was possible and realizes she may have bitten off more than she can chew with her attempts to manipulate him). The only victim of the spell on-page is Akhlaur's former friend Vishna.
• The Dark Elf Trilogy: In the second book, Zaknafein is reanimated this way by a drow ritual known as zin-carla for the purpose of hunting down Drizzt.
• The Dragon Crown War: This is how Chytrine got her Quirky Miniboss Squad, the sullanciri. A group of heroes were sent to kill her, and she captured them, manipulated them into accepting a Deal with the Devil with her, and then used immensely powerful magic to convert them into Nigh Invulnerable undead warriors. The specifics of the transformation varies from sullanciri to sullanciri (it's implied to be at least in part Personality Powers), ranging from Anarus (Wolf Man), to Ganagrei and Tythsai (visibly decaying undead), to Neskartu (wraith-like sorcerer) to Myrall'mara (glowing and ethereal) to Nefrai-kesh, Nefrai-laysh, and Quiarsca (outwardly normal, but with Glowing Eyes of Doom), but all were physically transformed in some manner, and had their personalities overwritten with ones more in line with what Chytrine wanted in lieutenants; the procedure is apparently unspeakably agonizing.
• Empire of the Vampire: Every mortal killed by vampires has a chance of rising again as one of their kind. Though the highblood vampires themselves have no control over this selection, they simply reason that, if they slaughter enough people, a decent chunk will reanimate under their thrall no matter what.
• Imperial Radch: Humans are converted into "ancillary" Wetware Bodies for spaceship AIs through brain implants that let the AI pull a Grand Theft Me. The victim needs to be conscious for the installation. The AI gets immediate control of the body, but it takes weeks for Death of Personality to reach the point that the victim is no longer helpless, conscious, and terrified within.
• In The Lord of the Rings, this was the purpose of all the lesser rings (with the One made to control the resulting minions) but only the human recipients of the Nine were fully corrupted and became the Nazgûl. The Nazgûl themselves also have this ability-being stabbed by one of their Morgul Blades turns the victim into a wraith. It nearly happened to Frodo, if it hadn't been for Glorfindel's (Arwen's in the movie) timely rescue.
• Mistborn: The Original Trilogy does this interestingly. Marsh, older brother of Kelsier, infiltrated the Steel Ministry disguised as an acolyte. He attracted the attention of the Steel Inquisitors, who, owing to how good Marsh's impersonation was, had Marsh forcibly converted into an Inquisitor himself, a stomach-churning procedure Marsh certainly did not sign up for. However, the Inquisitors were not aware that Marsh was a spy, and he was able to retain his personality despite the mind-altering effects of the transformation and betrayed the Inquisitors at a crucial moment, killing their leader Kar and several other high-ups and leading directly to the overthrow of their boss, the Lord Ruler. Unfortunately, the dark god Ruin — ultimate source of the magic that powered the Inquisitors and whom the Lord Ruler had been holding at bay — now gained greater power to affect the world, so he possessed Marsh and made him into The Dragon. So poor Marsh ended up a minion after all, even if it didn't quite work out the way that those who reforged him wanted it to.
• In Prophecy Approved Companion, the Evil Emperor decapitated the hero's childhood friend and clearly intends to turn her into an evil minion. At least, that was what was supposed to happen.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, the Others raise the dead as wights. It's heavily implied that Qyburn did this to the late Gregor Clegane, turning him into Ser Robert Strong.
• In StarCraft: The Dark Templar Saga, Kerrigan infests a terran crime lord named Ethan Stewart under the belief that he is a Ghost to create a consort. He is later sent to retrieve the archeologist Jake Ramsey, culminating in his death after a three-way shootout between the Daelaam, the Dominion and the Swarm.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • New Jedi Order:
    • Yuuzhan Vong Shapers are quite skilled at turning captured enemies into living weapons and slave soldiers — early forays into captured world reveal that human prisoners were being turned into obedient, armor-plated warriors, and captured Rodians were taken apart and rebuilt at a cellular level to create fearsome Bioweapon Beasts.
    • Some Shapers try to do this to Tahiri (though their primary goal was brainwashing her into believing she was Yuuzhan Vong herself, they also intended to make physical modifications to bring her closer to a Vong physical appearance). Unfortunately for them, Tahiri was rescued, and the head Shaper was killed before the process was complete. Unfortunately for Tahiri, there were lingering effects.
  • Dark Lord—The Rise of Darth Vader: After Darth Vader's physical Emergency Transformation is complete, the story focuses on Darth Sidious' attempt to restore Vader's confidence in himself and fully indoctrinate him into the Dark Side.
• There Is No Epic Loot Here, Only Puns: Absorbing a monster generally unlocks the ability for Delta to make more monsters of that type, but there is a particularly notable example when Quee, a centaur-like hybrid of human and spider, retains memories of his predecessor.

Live-Action TV

• Dark Angel: In the second season, the formerly dead Zack returns as a cyborg. Sort of like RoboCop, only less well-intentioned.
• The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: This is how the Garthim were made, thanks to SkekTek grafting together components from the corpses of Arathim and Gruenaks.
• Inazuman: The Neo-Human Empire's Mutant Robots are mutant humans who've been remodeled into monstrous supersoldiers.
• Kamen Rider: Shocker's Kaijin are the result of humans (willingly or otherwise) being put through a combination of genetic engineering and cybernetic remodeling to transform them into plant or animal-themed superbeings. Shocker's eventual goal is to do this to all the humans they haven't killed off in their new world order, in order to create a new Master Race to populate the Earth. Several of the heroes in the early series of the franchise come out of failed attempts to do this.
• In Lexx, His Divine Shadow stabbed Kai, last of the Brunnen-G, after the latter's doomed attempt to defeat him. Believing that Kai deserved a punishment beyond death, the Divine Shadow had Kai's body "decarbonized" making him into a brainwashed undead Divine Assassin. Two thousand years later, this bit the Divine Shadow in the ass when Kai managed to regain his memories and his willpower.
• Madan Senki Ryukendo: JackMoon is a Noble Demon who is set up as The Rival to Kenji Narukami, the eponymous Ryukendo. He dies in what he sees an honorable death against Kenji... only to be rebuilt into the mindless cyborg Mekanimoon by the Evil Genius Baron Bloody. He does return to his old self after the Big Bad is destroyed and dies for real in a Post-Climax Confrontation against his rival Kenji.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Mike Peterson is seemingly killed in an explosion by Centipede in "The Bridge". However, the end of the following episode reveals that he survived, albeit captured, heavily scarred and minus a leg, as well as freshly implanted with a Centipede eye device. This is built upon two episodes later, as he's given a cybernetic leg in order to move about as The Clairvoyant's new chief enforcer, Deathlok.
  • In WandaVision, this is what Tyler Hayward and S.W.O.R.D. have been planning to do with the synthezoid Vision the entire time. The organization has Vision's body (after he was killed in Avengers: Infinity War) and wants to reanimate and reprogram him as a weapon for their own needs — a secret project dubbed "Cataract".
• In Smallville, the Monster of the Week in the episode "Prototype" turns out be Wes Keenan who Lois grew up with as a Military Brat, turned into a genetically engineered Super-Soldier for Lex Luthor. He was drafted into Afghanistan, severely injured in a battle, and LuthorCorp retrieved his body. He was officially declared KIA, though he unknowingly made a Deal with the Devil, with Luthor promising that he will properly serve his country like never before. Luthor had scientists experiment on him with DNA from several "meteor freaks" and a "Zoner" (aliens from Krypton/had contact with Kryptonians), giving him Super-Strength (enough to rival Clark), barrier projection, Invisibility and Super-Speed. More so, he was conditioned so that he doesn't remember anything about his old life, making him a perfect assassin for pesky senators attempting to shut down Luthor…
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: This temporarily happens to Captain Picard in "The Best of Both Worlds", as he's captured and assimilated by the Borg to serve as their mouthpiece Locutus.
• Super Sentai/Power Rangers:
  • Several episodes of Himitsu Sentai Gorenger had the Black Cross Army doing this. For example, Cyclops Mask kidnapped and mind-controlled children into serving the Black Cross Army. Another example is Tiger Mask from the penultimate episode, who was made from the corpse of one of Peggy's friends who died in the first episode.
  • Battle Fever J had one episode where a friend of Battle Cossack II is secretly dying of cancer and is so terrified of dying that he agrees to be turned into an Egos monster. He is turned into a combination of a vampire and Mister Hyde who also can change into an alien lizard monster and his new evil personality causes him to murder several people before Battle Fever puts him down. In the final episode, Satan Egos planned to do this to Battle Fever by luring them into his base and having the monster making capsule swallow and melt them down to create an unstoppable monster, but they are able to find the capsule's weak spot and destroy it from the inside.
  • Choudenshi Bioman had a two-part story where a Badass Normal man who wanted to become the Sixth Ranger of Bioman but was rejected when he tested negative for bio particles is tricked by the villains into becoming a test subject for their experiment in making their own evil rangers. Immediately after being transformed, he gets mind controlled and forced to attack the Biomen and is only freed after his powers are destroyed.
  • Gekisou Sentai Carranger and Power Rangers Turbo both had an episode where the Monster of the Week turned out to be a hero who had the unfortunate fate of being captured by the villains and brainwashed into being their dishwasher. He tragically dies in the Japanese version but was spared in the American version.
  • In Power Rangers Mystic Force and Mahou Sentai Magiranger, Leanbow/Isamu was The Hero of the Great Offscreen War twenty years prior, who stayed behind to make sure that the seal on the evil can worked. This naturally resulted in him being trapped in there with the evil badly wounded from fighting off an army alone, which then took his unconscious body and reforged him into Koragg/Wolzard, their new Black Knight dragon. Yes, becoming a Black Knight qualifies as being reforged, it's a transformation rather than a suit of armor, and he stayed in that form the full twenty years until the spell was broken.
  • In Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, Joe learns that Walz Gil's bodyguard Barizorg is actually his old friend Sid, whom he thought had sacrificed himself to help him escape, but was actually rebuilt into a cyborg and brainwashed.
  • In Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger: Recycle Wald has the ability to transform civilians into recycled Kudakks. The villains also created Hakaizer by turning Kaito's father into a cyborg, using the very same prototype design for Zenkaizer that Kaito's father made.
  • The High School Heroes: The villains can transform students into Mooks through an illegal gambling app that the students downloaded onto their phones.

Music

• In The Protomen's Rock Opera, after being destroyed by Dr. Wily's robots, Protoman is rebuilt by Wily and returns as the general of Wily's forces, filled with a seething hatred for the humans who simply let him die on their behalf rather than making any attempt to stand up for themselves. Protoman is an interesting case, in that he appears to have joined Wily willingly, without any coercion involved. He's just that bitter.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: When a gem dragon kills an aberration, it can reshape its corpse into a gem stalker, a loyal minion equally adept at patrolling the Underdark for other horrors or defending their creator's lair.
• Mage: The Ascension: This is a common tactic for the Technocracy, taking captured Tradition or Craft mages and brainwashing them into the service of the Union. Some particularly tough nuts are broken thoroughly and used as Wetware CPU for the powerful Atlas units.
• Magic: The Gathering:
  • In Odyssey Cycle Judgment, Kamahl's friend and mentor Balthor is brought back from the dead as a superpowered zombie minion after Cabal necromancers find his body post-Heroic Sacrifice.
  • In the Onslaught Cycle, Kamahl's sister gets hit even harder — she gets transformed into Phage the Untouchable, a veritable avatar of death.
  • This is the classic modus operandi of the Phyrexians. For example, Old Phyrexia changed Ertai, Wizard Adept into Ertai, the Corrupted and Crovax, the Cursed into Ascendant Evincar, while New Phyrexia boasts changing Glissa Sunseeker into Glissa, the Traitor and Ezuri, Renegade Leader into Ezuri, Claw of Progress. New Phyrexia later figures out how to do this to Planeswalkers.
• Pathfinder: Drow fleshwarpers are generally quite fond of turning captured foes and defeated rivals into twisted monstrosities to use as guard monsters and shock troops. Some fleshwarps are too twisted and malformed to be of any use, but others — the famous driders, the centipede-centaurs orcs turn into and the hulking, ravenous predators made from troglodytes — make popular minions.
• Warhammer 40,000: The C'tan, star gods who turned the Necrontyr into the Necrons, are in turn enslaved by the Necrons in tesseract vaults, which are then used as weapons of war.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: The effect of Goyo Guardian, which takes over monsters it defeats.

Video Games

• In The Adventures of Lomax, this is what Evil Ed does to all the lemmings except Lomax, turning them into all sorts of monsters.
• In Bendy and the Ink Machine, Boris the Wolf starts off as the only thing in Joey Drew Studios that's friendly to Henry. He gets captured by Susie Campbell at the end of Chapter 3. When Henry encounters him again in Chapter 4, he has two X-ed out eyes, some sort of ring around his head, and a bulkier body with parts (bodily and otherwise) sticking out of it. He attempts to follow a command to kill Henry as his new boss brags about how she improved him.
• In BioShock 2, the final Alpha-series Big Daddy you face is none other than Sinclair, having been captured and forcibly upgraded into one by Sophia Lamb, as part of a last-ditch attempt to stop Delta.
• BlazBlue: Mu-12's origin. More specifically, she's Noel Vermillion.^note Who it turns out was an Artificial Human who was created for the purpose. There are roughly 10 identical copies of her (who were "failures"), plus Lambda-11 and Nu-13, who were successfully completed. Terumi/Hazama mind raped her into nihilism, finished the process of turning her into a cyborg killing machine and sicced her on Ragna. All just as a brief distraction so he could kill a god. This far from the only time Relius and Hazama invoke this trope, either;
  • The ending of the second game also implies that Hazama and Relious Clover did this to Ragna and Jin's apparently dead little sister Saya to use as some sort of pupper ruler/vessel for a higher power.
  • The Extended edition also all but says that Hazama's minion "Phantom" is Konoe A. Mercury a.k.a. Nine, one of the six heroes.
  • In "Phase 1", the protagonist Kazuma Kval merges with Terumi (essentially just being a physical body for him) to create Hazama.
  • In BlazBlue: Chronophantasma, Izanami the Goddess of Death using Saya as a vessel does this to Ragna, making him her slave.
• Bulletstorm: Ishi's fate, if you stayed after the credits. Although the screen remains black, the dialogue is implies that the Big Bad not only survived, but managed to patch up Ishi after his heroic sacrifice, and cranked his soulless AI to 11.
• C-12: Final Resistance: The numerous cyborg mooks you need to battle throughout the game? They're captured civilians and resistance members, who are subjected to Unwilling Roboticisation by the alien invaders and now serve them in hunting humans.
• Crypt of the NecroDancer: One of the bosses, the Dead Ringer, is Cadence's father, Dorian, who disappeared several years prior to the game. Following his defeat, he assists Cadence in fighting the Necrodancer, who literally cannot be defeated alone.
• Destiny: The Taken are an enemy faction consisting entirely of units from other factions converted like this. The Taken King wields the power of Taking, which snatches people away to... somewhere else... and spits them back out as Living Shadows with "physically illegal" abilities, which they'll turn against their former friends and allies without hesitation by the will of the Taken King. Slave Mook, dutiful general, robotic appendage of a Hive Mind, or Sufficiently Advanced Alien, it doesn't matter — being Taken alters you on the ontological level, and as such can't be resisted or reversed (aside from a handful of special cases, at great effort). Eerily, the process doesn't seem traumatic to the victim: the power they receive is tailored to counter their deepest fears, and their undercranked shuddering is of ecstasy.
• In the Devil May Cry series:
  • The "Angelo" demons are (usually unwilling) victims bound to demonic suits of armor. One recurring boss in the first game, Nelo Angelo, is Dante's brother Vergil after being defeated by Mundus at the end of the third game and bonded to his armor. The concept makes a return in the fifth game with the Scudo and Proto Angelos, prototypes of Nelo Angelo, likely also created from helpless human victims. One of the bosses, Cavaliere Angelo, is a more advanced Angelo that uses Trish as its host.
  • The fifth game also has a non-Angelo example in the form of the boss Artemis which is the result of Lady being bonded to the demonic weapon Artemis seen in the third game.
• Divinity: Original Sin II:
  • The Magisters create Silent Monks by capturing Sourcerers — like the Player Characters — and destroying their souls, leaving them Empty Shells with no sense of self. The even more unlucky ones are upgraded with torturous mechanical grafts.
  • The Doctor's "nurses" are the bodies of demon hunters he'd previously defeated, now utterly enslaved to his will. If killed, their spirits are very grateful no longer to be trapped helplessly in their own bodies.
• Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!: The robotic KAOS has Donkey and Diddy Kong inside of it as Living Batteries.
• In Dungeon Keeper, any prisoner who dies in your dungeon will be raised as a loyal skeleton soldier.
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: The legendary Necromancer Mannimarco enjoys transforming his enemies into special Worm Thrall zombies. He opens his fight against the Player Character with a spell that would instantly kill and reanimate them, but the previous quest involves obtaining a Protective Charm that makes them immune.
• In Evil Genius, this is how you make Freaks: dipping a body bag into your Bio-Tanks induces a terrifying resurrection, and the result is peak Dumb Muscle — a Freak's maximum Attention is still too low to avoid your own traps. This is also how you permanently dispose of Dirk "Totally Not Rambo" Masters. Turns out he's hopped up on tons of illegal steroids, and the chemicals in your Bio-Tanks cause a delightful Dangerous Phlebotinum Interaction.
• The Fabulous Fear Machine: A fate of those who use the machine and receive a karmic punishment is to be masked and made a loyal agent to the machine forever.
• Fire Emblem: Awakening and the Jugdral duology (Genealogy of the Holy War and Thracia 776) both contain the Deadlords, 12 immortal warrior souls who posses the bodies of powerful fallen warriors. While little information is provided about them in Genealogy, Thracia 776 will use allies who you either failed to protect or were not recruited, while Fire Emblem: Awakening implies the Bad Future versions possessed the allies who were killed by the Big Bad.
• Half-Life 2: Anyone who resists the Combine (or happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time) who doesn't end up dead or a headcrab zombie gets turned into a Stalker: a bald, naked, amputated worker drone that mindlessly obeys the Combine and does menial tasks within the empire. It's rightfully treated in-universe as a Fate Worse than Death.
• Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory: Peashy was kidnapped and forced into amnesia by one of the villains after she ate a certain apotheosis-inducing item from another one of the villains, becoming a CPU as a result. Neptune and Plutia invoke an "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight using various items to trigger her dormant memories, (though they have to weaken her first).
• Injustice 2:
  • If the player picks the "Absolute Power" ending, Superman not only kills Brainiac and bonds with his ship, he also condemns Batman to a Fate Worse than Death by turning him into a brainwashed minion and threatens Supergirl with cyborgization if she refuses to become The Dragon to his new Regime. It's implied that he also turned Batman's allies and members of the Society into cybernetic minions in his arcade ending.
  • Gorilla Grodd does a similar thing in his Arcade ending, where he betrays Brainiac and uses his technology to not only enhance his telekinetic powers, but also turn Batman and his allies into brainwashed cyborgs just like Superman did in his ending.
  • In Darkseid's Arcade ending, not only does the tyrannical Lord of Apokolips kill Superman to avenge the death of his son Kalibak, he also turns Supergirl into a brainwashed Female Fury, complete with Evil Costume Switch that is very similar to the one she wore in Superman/Batman: Apocalypse during her stint as Darkseid's minion.
• Jade Empire: Not only is Death's Hand not the Big Bad, or even close to it, it turns out that he's the spirit of the Emperor and Sun Li's youngest brother, mortally wounded at Dirge and magically bound to Sun Li's armor.
• Kirby: Planet Robobot: After Meta Knight is defeated trying to take on the Haltmann Works Company, Susie turns him into a Cyborg branded "Mecha Knight" and sics him on Kirby. The non-canon "Meta Knightmare Returns" also features a battle against a purely-robotic copy called Stock Mecha Knight.
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: This happens to Nabooru, courtesy of Koume and Kotake. She is forced to act as an enhanced Iron Knuckle.
• Lethal League: This happens to Doombox when he gets brainwashed into becoming the Safety League's "Safety Weapon" and Final Boss of Story Mode. Granted, Doombox himself wasn't exactly a very nice guy, but still.
• In The Lord of the Rings Online, those who are stabbed by the Morgul Blades of the Nazgul eventually become the red-robed Cargul, lesser wraiths under the control of the Nine, as happens to the Ranger Amdir. Ivar the Blood-hand, one of the Gaunt-lords, is particularly fond of doing this, and does this with an evil Dwarf-lord named Skorgrim Dourhand in the finale of the Elf and Dwarf introductory quests.
• Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of the Superheroes: The Secret Character known as Shadow Lady is Chun-Li from an Alternate Universe who was forcibly turned into a brainwashed cyborg for Shadaloo. In retaliation for foiling their operations, Shadaloo kidnapped and robotized her for the sake of transforming her into M. Bison's top assassin. Unlike Shadow — a brainwashed Charlie Nash who escaped shortly after being transformed — Shadaloo added a Restraining Bolt to Shadow Lady's programming so she would remain fully loyal to them as an emotionless minion while obliterating her cheerful personality. In her ending however, Shadow Lady overcomes Shadaloo's brainwashing, regain her original memories as Chun-Li, and join forces with Shadow in taking down Shadaloo.
• Mass Effect:
  • Rare heroic example: happens to Shepard at the beginning of Mass Effect 2. Notably, the Illusive Man didn't bother installing any real Restraining Bolts, trusting instead in Shepard's gratitude and their mutual goals to ensure that they would work for him post-resurrection. Whether he's right depends on the player's choices, although he's ultimately proven wrong in the third game. Shepard can also be made to pay lip service to the idea that Cerberus is working for them instead of the other way around.
  • If Shepard fails to rescue her in time in Mass Effect 3, this will happen to Jack. It also potentially happens to Legion, but only if you sent their platform to Cerberus without ever getting to know them in the first place. Morinth will also show up as a banshee if she was alive at the end of 2.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • Mortal Kombat X: Due to most of the Earthrealm warriors dying in the previous game, Quan Chi turned them into undead and brainwashed revenants. Granted, Raiden does manage to restore Sub-Zero, Scorpion and Jax to life, but Scorpion unwittingly dooms the remaining fallen heroes by killing off Quan Chi without understanding why he was needed. During the 25-year gap, some of them even appreciate their status as revenants, with Liu Kang and Kitana willfully asserting themselves as Quan Chi and Shinnok's Co-Dragons. Liu Kang and Kitana even take control of the Netherrealm after Shinnok's downfall.
  • Series wide: Doubling as a Literal Metaphor, the Cyber Initiative sought to create powerful army of highly efficient Lin Kuei ninjas by turning them into deadly cyborgs. At first, the original Grandmaster did so on a volunteer basis, but then Sektor killed him and started forcing all Lin Kuei to convert while also making them loyal and kill-happy. In particular, Cyrax was quite unhappy with being forced to become a Cyber Ninja, thinking that being a machine meant he would lose his soul. While Sub-Zero also got converted, a way to reverse the process was found. In Mortal Kombat 11, Cyrax sacrificed his robot body to help Sub-Zero and Hanzo Hasashi escape, after which they grabbed his memory core and ran.
• Mother 3: Porky uses the body of Claus, your brother who goes missing at the end of Chapter 1, for creating his cyborg henchman.
• In Neverwinter Nights 2, after Black Garius' death, he and the priests who were helping him are resurrected by the King of Shadows as Shadow Reavers, immensely powerful undead beings who act as The King's main agents for the rest of the game.
• Overlord: While it's technically more of an Unwitting Pawn, the Player Character is really one of the heroes who defeated the previous Overlord after being recovered after a No One Could Survive That!.
• Overwatch: Amélie Lacroix was the civilian wife of Overwatch agent Gérard Lacroix, who foiled the terrorist organization Talon's plans at every turn. So she was kidnapped, tortured, brainwashed, and experimented on for the sake of killing him. When the task was completed, they turned her into a living weapon, complete with a new name: Widowmaker.
• Subverted in Quake IV. Halfway through the game, protagonist Matthew Kane is captured by the Stroggs and turned into one of them. However, Kane's fellow EDF soldiers come and rescue him before the Stroggs can indoctrinate him.
• Resident Evil:
  • In Resident Evil 5, it turns out that Wesker and Jill barely survived her attempt to tackle him off a cliff. Since Wesker has some degree of respect for his former S.T.A.R.S. subordinates, he had a body-controlling cybernetic implant grafted onto her.
  • In Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, playable character Four-Eyes has the ability to do this with her arsenal of weaponized Umbrella medical tech. She can transform enemy zombies into allied Crimson Heads, "reprogram" B.O.W enemies to fight on her side, and her "Brutal Kill" mechanic transforms the victim into an allied Crimson Head zombie.
  • In Resident Evil 3 (Remake), the Nemesis has an ability that invokes a combination of this trope and Mook Maker, being able to infect common zombies with parasites that turn them into more dangerous threats.
• Shin Megami Tensei games have this, both as a typical example and as a Rare Heroic example. As a general rule, once you've slain a boss or midboss, regardless of its previous allegiance or alignment, you can summon it as a new minion at the right level. As an example, in Nocturne, you can slay Metatron, the Voice of God... and force it into your service against God's representative in the Vortex World. Another good example is Futomimi, the Manikins' seer. Instead of reviving him as a Manikin, he returns as a demon. As an added bonus, with careful tinkering, you can slap any moves you want on them.
  • The first two games have some mechanical limitations, however; the protagonist can fuse any demon as long as they have a high enough level, but the alignment system prevents lawful protagonists from summoning chaotic demons and vice versa. All bets are off on the Neutral alignment, however; Neutral protagonists can summon any demon.
  • Poor Flynn. In Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, there exists a route where the protagonist Nanashi has to kill him because the Big Bad is possessing his body. Fair enough. But after killing him, your only remaining ally resurrects him as a mindless puppet devoted to only Nanashi. If that's not bad enough, it's possible (but not mandatory, due to the game mechanics) to use him to slaughter the people of Tokyo, whom he vowed to protect.
  • Defied, but eventually double subverted in Shin Megami Tensei V, regarding Michael and Belial. On the Law route, Archangel Michael asks the protagonist to slay Belial and promises to join in return, and vice versa on the Chaos route. Right before the protagonist can deal the final blow, an ally of the targeted demon intervenes, urging them to run so that their power does not fall into the protagonist's hands. Although, one can pursue the other route in a New Game Plus.
• Sonic Lost World: Attempted on Tails by the Zeti. Fortunately, due to them not bothering to stick around to observe the process and a handy toothpick, Tails was able to turn the tables on them.
• Soul Calibur VI: Alluded to in the beginning of Hwang's story, when he tries to infiltrate the Sword of Salvation and gets captured. Being told by Gabok that his body will be turned into a controlled assassin which will kill many people starting with Mi-na, Hwang performs a Heroic Suicide to avoid this fate. Cue his rescue and resurrection by a Taoist sage and his subsequent transformation into an Empowered Badass Normal Magic Knight.
• In Soul Nomad & the World Eaters, Gig used to be the benevolent Master of Death of Haephnes Vigilance. He was slain by Median and had his soul reforged by Drazil into its current Omnicidal Maniac form. Ironically, the protagonist, even on the heroic path, is perfectly capable of beating up and press-ganging people in the street should they want to; and three secret characters can be challenged, defeated, and dominated into your army, despite their protests.
• StarCraft: The Zerg Swarm uses a hyper-evolutionary virus to convert terrans into new soldiers for their war against the Protoss. Several of their leaders were also created this way, with their infestation meant to let them retain a greater degree of free will than the usual shambling zombie that results of a typical infested terran.
  • Kerrigan was captured by the Zerg after she was abandoned on Tarsonis. The Overmind, desiring a new leader that would replace him and free the Swarm from Amon's control, infested her and turned her into the Person of Mass Destruction known as the Queen of Blades.
  • Alexei Stukov was infested when a surviving cerebrate acquired his body after he was killed by a shapeshifter and given a Burial in Space. The cerebrate intended to have him lead the remnants of its brood in its stead as cerebrates cannot survive for long without the Overmind, which ends up being for naught as Raynor deinfested him with an experimental cure, and the brood remnants were purified by Artanis' fleet. He later returns in Heart of the Swarm as an independent entity leading the infested terrans of Kerrigan's Swarm.
  • Izsha, the Mission Control of StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, was originally a terran medic named Amanda Haley before she was infested as part of Kerrigan's experiment to create more intelligent infested terrans. Her transformation is depicted in the short story "Hybrid".
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: The Dark Side ending has the mortally wounded Starkiller turned into something even worse than Vader and sent out as an assassin, with Palpatine making it clear that as soon as he has outlived his usefulness, then he will die... but not before.
• Trials of Mana eventually reveals that this happened in the Darkshine Knight's backstory (assuming you picked Duran as your main character or as an ally for Angela, anyways) — namely, the Dragon Emperor used his magic to revive the Golden Knight Loki (no, not that one) after the two of them dropped into a bottomless pit during a struggle, and neither was ever found.
• Warcraft:
  • Death knights in World of Warcraft are a borderline example — they are Elite Mooks but the people to be transformed are hand-picked to ensure quality.
  • They were this exactly in Warcraft II: slain Azerothian paladins reanimated into undead Squishy Wizards for the then-evil Horde (albeit possessed by orc warlocks). Warcraft III's liches are those same death knights retransformed into frost magic users (though they kept the Death and Decay spell), and the new generation of death knights are human nobles reanimated as melee heroes with a much better survival rate.
  • Arthas' transformation from paladin to death knight isn't shown, but it definitely involves this.
• In Wild ARMs, this turns out to be the case for Lady Harken. She used to be a knight of Arctica but was captured and transformed into a demon after the demons attacked because Alhazad had a fondness for her.
• In WildStar, the Eldan security systems of Nexus are fond of using Augmentation to turn would-be hostiles to their side.
• In WitchSpring R, the true identity of the blindfolded Hunt Executor is Livya, who mysteriously disappeared after detaining Kate and being summoned to the Pope's Castle. It is revealed from Kate herself that the Pope held suspicions over her arrest and had her as well as the warriors involved tortured for information. After finding out Pieberry helped defeat Kate and had both Kate and Livya turned into the Curse and Hunt Executors. The knowledge of Livya's fate was what sealed Justice's Heel–Face Turn.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles 1, all of the Faces are examples of this trope, most notably Mumkhar, Fiora, and Gadolt. They're cybernetically altered Homs who pilot giant robots, rather than autonomous Mechon. This renders them immune to the Monado, but susceptible to any and all Brainwashed and Crazy-related tropes, though the brainwashing doesn’t really start until Mumkhar’s defeat at Sword Valley due to his memories remaining intact after he was made a Faced Mechon.

Web Animation

• gen:LOCK: The Nemesis is, as revealed in "The Only Me I Know", the "real" Julian Chase, technically speaking. His Holon was captured in a Union ambush back when the gen:LOCK program was still in development, only to be replaced by a back-up copy of Chase's mind that Dr. Weller had created in secret. The "copy" never even knew until the Nemesis appeared determined to "Kill the copy. "Identity Crisis" turns Nemesis into a really odd version of this trope when, upon being defeated and destroyed by the team, it reveals to Chase that the Union made multiple copies of his captured mind, including itself. So effectively the original Chase got reformed into multiple minions.
• RWBY: "Dark" reveals that the mysterious Hound Grimm that had been terorrizing the heroes for all of Volume 8 was, in fact, a faunus — and more than that, a Silver-Eyed Warrior, just like Ruby. Ruby speculates that the same thing is probably what happened to her Missing Mom, Summer Rose, and what Salem wants to do to her if she ever captures her alive.

Webcomics

• In Dominic Deegan, when Karnak takes over in hell, he transforms the damned knight Sigfried to serve him as The Dragon. This bites him in the ass when his new servant regains his free will through a freak magical accident and goes on to overthrow him.
• Girl Genius: The Platonic Solid, a Spark-modified mace, is able to do this horrifyingly and devastatingly quickly. It turns a group of attacking knights into skeletal forms with glowing eyes that serve the Storm King and show no signs of their maintaining their previous identities and loyalties.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • Subverted when Tsukiko rants about turning Miko Miyazaki into a Death Knight, but quickly changes her mind on seeing the condition of the corpse. This is partly a Take That! at fan speculation that something like this would happen.
  • Played straight when Malack kills Durkon and raises him as an enslaved vampire, who is kept in thrall until Malack's death. Though Malack mentions freeing him when circumstances are better, this only gives mental autonomy to the evil spirit possessing Durkon's soul and corpse, but leaves Durkon's spirit trapped.
• Shortpacked!: Evan, Ethan's McAwesome's counterpart, was killed by a bomb planted by Sydney Yus and thrown out of the store by Ultra-Car, then brought back as a cyborg by Sydney to get revenge on U.C. (It makes as much sense as anything Sydney does.)
• The Wotch: Xaos's sword does this instead of killing what it stabs.

Western Animation

• Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers: The Psychocrypt. The victim has his Life Energy removed, placed in a Soul Jar, and the "jar" used to power a high-level Mook through which Her Travesty has a Psychic Link. Anything the poor bastard might have known is free for her to rummage through and use as a weapon, while they're conscious and unable to do anything about it.
• In Aladdin: The Series, Mozenrath turned the evil wizard who trained him into one of his Mamluk minions.
• Archer: Sterling's rival Barry, rebuilt as a cyborg by Soviet Superscience. Subverted in that he betrays his superior and usurps the position as head of the KGB (only to be replaced himself in his absence).
• Castlevania (2017) takes this trope's name almost literally, with Season 2 introducing Dracula's "Forgemasters" Isaac and Hector, but especially Hector. The two are tasked with bringing the corpses of those who have died (either by the Night Creatures' hands or some other causes) back to life into more night creatures, thus increasing the ranks and size of Dracula's army. While Isaac uses a dark magical dagger, Hector on the other hand literally uses a hammer (a war hammer mind you but still) when creating forging night creatures.
• Darkwing Duck: F.O.W.L. tries to do this to Taurus Bulba while keeping his personality and all the memories of his previous life intact. He's... not exactly happy about it.
• Godzilla: The Series: The body of the original Godzilla is recovered by the Leviathan Aliens and made into a reanimated kaiju cyborg functioning as The Dragon for their invasion. The second Godzilla, his biological son, is notably conflicted over having to side with his adoptive human parent or his original father, even if he is an undead robo-husk being controlled by aliens.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: In season three, after Uncle imprisons his original dark chi warriors, Daolon Wong turns Chow, Finn, and Ratso into his new dark chi warriors to replace them, later doing the same to Hak Foo as well. They remain this way until Uncle finally defeats Wong in a chi battle at the end of the season and strips him of his magic.
• My Little Pony TV Specials: In Rescue at Midnight Castle, Tirac is evidently very proficient at and fond of doing this; all of his servants are other creatures he transformed into their present selves, with Spike as a sole exception. Scorpan was the human prince of a kingdom that Tirac conquered, he turns ponies into monstrous dragons with which to pull his chariot, and when he's defeated it's revealed that his guards are transformed butterflies and his stratadons transformed songbirds.
• Phantom 2040: Graft, rebuilt as a Cyborg by the series' Corrupt Corporate Executive Big Bad.
• Rick and Morty: Following his death, this happens to Birdperson by Tammy and the Galactic Federation. He is resurrected and rebuilt into a cyborg called Phoenixperson. Rick is eventually able to re-reforge him back into himself, with a lot of effort.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), the robotized Mobians are this.
• Transformers:
  • The Transformers:
    • Galvatron is a literal example. Interestingly, the reforging completely failed to make him loyal, or even more evil; all it did was change his appearance and abilities, and make him significantly more Ax-Crazy. The Big Bad had to resort to repeated psychic torture to get anything resembling obedience.
    • Two scientists who hate all Transformers due to an attack from the Decepticons leaving one's daughter crippled attempt to do this when they recover the body of Optimus Prime, by keeping him powered by some experimental spores containing a Hate Plague that would leave him insane and murderous. When their attempt to repair him fails, they decide to do the next best thing and lure the Autobots to their lab to recover his body, so they can expose them to the spores directly.
  • Beast Wars: The Vok pull this by capturing Tigertron and Airrazor and merging them into a new overwhelmingly powerful machine called Tigerhawk. At first, he's controlled directly by a pair of Vok, but after they're drawn out of his body, the fused Spark of his two former selves takes over the body.
  • Beast Machines: Megatron has turned tons of garden-variety transformers into mindless mooks, and two out of the three members of his Quirky Miniboss Squad are team members of Optimus Primal's Maximals who have been reforged into new bodies with new personalities.
• TRON: Uprising: Repurposing takes programs and changes their directive, not necessarily their personality, and makes them loyal to Clu. The victims get their Tron Lines changed to red and their ailments removed. It was done to Tron's security team, among thousands of other programs, as well as Cutler. It was almost done to Tron, and may have been done to Dyson, though by all accounts he probably volunteered.

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