They Would Cut You Up

A downside to immortality.

"Ever since I was a kid, I'd have this dream where somebody would find out what I could do. It starts off with lots of ice cream and balloons, and ends in a small white room where little bits are cut out of me until there's nothing left to cut."

— Ned, Pushing Daisies

A standard justification for any unusual character to maintain a Masquerade, because The Government is Evil and Science Is Bad and if the authorities got their hands on them, they'd stick them in a concrete box and perform all sorts of cruel experiments to find out what makes them and/or their special powers tick, either destroying their quality of life, or killing them outright in hopes of getting all sorts of goodies.

Scientists will usually be portrayed as too obsessed to care for anyone or anything who might be used to further our knowledge of the universe or make a cool new weapon, caring only about the fame or payment they'll receive from their higher-ups. Only one bad scientist is enough to spoil your day, but in settings that use this trope the majority of encountered research workers are likely to be like this.

The oddest part of this trope is that the danger may never even materialize within the story — but the certainty of it happening will never be questioned by anyone concerned. Humans Are Bastards after all, Inhumanable Alien Rights be damned. All the more reason to keep up their disguise and lay low, or else they may get captured and taken away.

Sadly, there is a lot of Truth in Television to this trope. There is a long and dark history of human subject research and the early days of biological science didn't have the advantages of modern noninvasive tests or imaging. Often, the only way to make advances that would potentially save uncounted lives was to experiment, a dilemma that science has struggled with for centuries. Protections such as ethics committees and anti-cruelty standards were created by scientists specifically to prevent the bad apples from carrying out these abuses, but it has been a long evolution, much like abolition or emancipation.

Modern research works a lot less intrusively as sonography, MRIs, and other medical imaging techniques have made hands-on vivisection less necessary for the internal examination of research subjects, and laparoscopy and microscopic biopsy give both more useful and more humane methods of seeing how things work in living subjects. Given sufficient funding and resources, there should be no reason for slicing off a limb just to see how it looks on the inside. The Playing with Syringes mentality of fictional "research" also happily ignores the fact that when you only have one specimen, it is a good idea to take care of it because once it stops working it'll be much harder to figure out how it used to. Of course, being locked up is cold comfort to the specimen — it just means the torture will be of a greater duration, and would still result in them being locked away somewhere against their will. Just because they aren't cutting you up doesn't mean they ever intend to let you wander off (or that you won't wish they were). However, the Only Sane Man might point out that, if the subject is intelligent and capable of speech, they can save a lot of time and effort by getting his compliance, or even simply asking him questions about their powers/anatomy/biology (allowing them to get more clear answers and not have to go through the trouble of restraints or a manhunt).

Then there's the question of medical ethics. In Real Life, medical researchers have to follow very strict testing standards to be able to publish their results. Getting caught violating them can easily end their careers and leave them facing civil or even criminal charges. Of course, these considerations only apply to scientists who intend their results to be publicly documented. It can be expected that various black ops organizations that either suspect or already know about the Masquerade won't care at all about any of this. (And crime is only punishable if one is caught.) Further, who knows what organizations like these would do with the knowledge they gain. So, you'll probably want to do your best not to get caught by them just the same.

For obvious reasons, this trope is often Played for Horror. If the scientists get what they want, Body Horror may follow. Expect to see Mad Scientist, Evilutionary Biologist, and possibly Men In Black as well.

Compare Alien Autopsy, in which the fantastic creature being studied is usually dead when human scientists find it in the first place, which would make such an up close and personal study sound significantly less unethical; Medicate the Medium, in which the special ability would be dismissed as psychosis and treated as such; Playing with Syringes, in which unusual characters are the result of experiments, rather than being experimented on for being unusual; and Superhuman Trafficking, which is a general trope for the exploitation of unusual individuals. Organ Theft may occur as a result of this trope.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• After God: Waka is assigned specifically to the biotechnology and weapon development branch of the Institute and is reminded that if she's not willing to cooperate, she'll be studied for IPO weaknesses regardless.
• Ajin: Getting caught by the government is basically a fate worse than death for any Ajin, as Kei finds out during his short stay. The scientists conduct all sorts of horrible tests, from slowly cutting off all their limbs to crushing them in a trash compactor, et cetera. Companies will pay to use Ajin to test the safety functions of their products. And as Ajin simply revive fully healthy whenever they "die", it's basically eternal hell for them. Luckily for Kei, he managed to escape after only a few days of torture.
• Between this and drowning at the bottom of the Hudson River for half a century, Eve Genoard of Baccano! chooses this fate for her missing brother. She needn't worry though, because it turns out her brother wasn't there — the Lemures fished him out to use as a bargaining chip.
• Mayuri Kurotsuchi in Bleach wants to cut up and experiment on anybody who demonstrates abilities he's unfamiliar with. He's equal-opportunity, though; he also cuts up and experiments on himself.
• Ryouta attests that this is why the escaped Magic Users in Brynhildr in the Darkness (who received their powers through Playing with Syringes in the first place) can't simply go public. They'd just end up back in the lab again. Which is odd considering the efforts the antagonists themselves go to to make sure that ordinary people don't find out about the existence of the Magic Users.
  • When confronted about this particular paradox, Ryouta rightly points out that Vingulf would simply set up another lab somewhere else under new management, which is sadly Truth in Television.
• Referenced in Chrono Crusade, when the Magdalan Order approaches Joshua about joining them so they can help him learn to use his powers better, his sister Rosette tries to convince him not to by telling him they'll perform experiments on him and "pickle you in formaldehyde!" Joshua's response is just to laugh and tell her that she reads too many books. (And she doesn't seem to believe it anyway, she just doesn't want them to take Joshua away from her.)
• Darker than Black has references to PANDORA practicing experimentation on Contractors. It's mentioned that initially, various countries did this until a U.N. treaty intervened — not to stop this, but to demand that countries would share their research. The manga provided some glimpses into one of such research facilities.
  • One has to wonder at the sanity of these scientists as well, because running human testing of an... unethical persuasion on a test subject whose only priority is their own survival, and is quite willing to go to any extreme to stay alive and is superpowered, doesn't seem like the best idea. The only reason any Contractor would have (willingly) stayed in those facilities was because they thought that their chance of survival was better if they did, but that doesn't necessarily mean they enjoy what goes on there. The instant they felt that staying in the testing was more likely to end up with them dead than escaping, they would have put their all into leaving. And we are talking about a group of people who could do anything from literally just teleporting out on a whim, to creating a firestorm to escape, to causing a flood, to crushing the walls with gravity, et cetera. That said, any testing facility that treated its Contractors well could very easily have a Badass Army on demand if there was ever a threat to the facility.
• In Digimon Tamers, the local Men In Black's leader Yamaki has an all-consuming hatred for Digimon, and really would cut them up. At one point, he orders an analysis of a captured Digimon, which painfully breaks them down on-screen while they plead for mercy. When a scientist asks what to do with one such Digimon's data, Yamaki tells him to delete it. Takato is rightfully worried for Guilmon, and at one point imagines the army brutally gunning down his dinosaur buddy. Yamaki eventually sees the error of his ways, at which point the Tamers stop caring about keeping their Digimon hidden.
• Doraemon: Nobita's Dinosaur have Nobita finding a fossilized egg, which later hatches into a futubasaurus suzukii which Nobita names Piisuke. After developing a bond with his new pet, Nobita states his intentions of showing off Piisuke to his friends, only for Doraemon to remind him when news of Piisuke, a living Dinosaur in modern times, reaches the public, scientists and researchers will inflict this trope on him, leading to Nobita quickly changing his mind and deciding to keep news of Piisuke's existence a secret.
• Durarara!! has an interesting variation on this: instead of capturing Celty and performing a forced vivisection, a doctor approaches the supernatural entity in question and asks her if she would be willing to undergo such a procedure in exchange for a permanent place to stay — and she agrees. The results are still rather traumatic for her though, as it turns out that The Fair Folk are resistant to drugs and anesthesia. She nonetheless falls in love with one of the scientists who did the work, and it's implied that she even works for the organization even after she learns they're holding her head.
• In the Excel♡Saga manga, this happening to Hyatt is one of many reasons Excel is nervous about health care providers.
• A variant is Alphonse Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist. Mustang advises Al not to continue with the State Alchemy exam because there is often a physical examination involved, at which point they would discover that his armor is empty and cart him off to a laboratory for study. However, Al doesn't actively hide his true nature; people who don't know the truth simply assume he likes armor/feels safe inside it.
  • Later on in the 2003 anime version, at least, it's implied that most people know he's a living suit of armor, but since the government already knows how to create those, nobody really gives a damn. At the time of the exam, Colonel Mustang wasn't quite high enough in the chain of command to realize this.
• Subverted in Heroman. When Special Agent Axel Hughes finds out that Joey is the Kid With The Remote Control for Heroman, Joey asks him what's going to happen to him. "The U.S. Government is going to lock you away and do experiments on you for the rest of your life." Upon the look of horror on Joey's face, Axel laughs and tells him, that no; a friendly alliance is more beneficial for everyone. "You really thought we were going to do that?"
• In Higurashi: When They Cry, there are three variations. The first one is what Takano wants to do with Rika so that she can jump-start the Hinamizawa disease and have everyone kill one another. The second variation involves Satako Houjo who is at a higher level of the disease and needs to take injections to quell it. Again Takano wants to dissect her, only in her case, so that she can study her. The third is the people of Hinamizawa, back when they were called Onigafuchi Village. They killed, dissected, and cannibalized the higher diseased members so they could develop a stronger immunity to the disease.
• Agito, the short-tempered fire fairy from Lyrical Nanoha, can only remember being confined in a lab, which had left her almost completely broken, physically and mentally. According to her, she was only days away from death by exhaustion before being rescued.
• The protagonist in Made in Abyss, Riko, initially hides Reg from staff at the Belchero Orphanage because she fears this happening to him. Since he's a robot who apparently came from the Abyss, and since relics are frequently objects of study, this fear isn't unreasonable. Later, when Reg and Riko meet Nanachi, they explain that they normally hide from Delvers because they fear this happening to them, as well, since they are the only person known to have returned from the Sixth Layer of the Abyss with most of their humanity intact.
• Dr. K-ko's antagonist status in Magical Pokaan comes from her intent to fool around with the girls in a lab.
• Midori Days manifests the danger in the form of a Mad Scientist who, of course, wants to dissect Midori For Science!.
• Besides the fact that she will eventually die from drug withdrawal, this is also why Shinn wants to send Stella back to Earth Alliance Forces in Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny.
• Nezu from My Hero Academia is a very rare example of a non-human animal with a Quirk, which led to him being experimented on when he was first discovered. Eventually he was freed, though, and despite the abuse he suffered, he decided to become a hero with his Super-Intelligence, eventually becoming the principal of U.A. High. However, his glee when given a socially acceptable opportunity to make humans squirm serves as a sign of how traumatic the experiments were for him.
• Nasuverse:
  • Tsukihime: In her backstory, Ciel was subjected to a very thorough "examination" after The Church discovered her bizarre ability to automatically, completely regenerate from any injury. No matter what they did, she just wouldn't die, but that didn't stop them from trying over and over again. In her route in the game, she attempts to kill Shiki after he is possessed by Roa to keep him from suffering the same fate.
  • In the Fate Series, the Magi Association "awards" Magi with inimitable abilities with the Sealing Designation, which means they are to be vivisected and taken apart for study. One of the known Magi "awarded" with such an honor is Kiritsugu's father. For that reason, Tokiomi feared that keeping Rin and Sakura, two children born with rare magical powers, would've gotten them on this list.
• In Nichijou, Ms. Nakamura wishes to do this to the robotic Nano, so she can take credit for inventing her. If Nakamura weren't so inept at her repeated attempts to kidnap Nano, this would be quite dark for such an upbeat show.
• In Rebuild World, Alpha mentions that individuals whose brains have the ability to interact with the Old World domain are highly valuable to the government. As a result, Akira might get dissected and be reduced to a Brain in a Jar if anyone finds out about it.
• Dr. Ni has expressed his interest in researching the slightly odd characteristics of the youkai-ness of most of the sanzo party in Saiyuki. Given who this is, it's safe to assume this research wouldn't be pleasant.
• In the early episodes of Sgt. Frog, this is part of the reason (along with imprisonment and potential traffic accidents) why the alien frogs are not allowed to go out on their own, at least before they develop their Mobile Suit Humans.
• Shadow Star plays with this; Akira is really worried that something along these lines will happen if people find out about the "shadow dragons" because "that's how it always happens in manga..." Given the series' tone and setting, this is probably 100% accurate (or worse).
• Subverted in Sonic X. While the local authorities do take the giant humanoid bunny and her strange companion to a laboratory, at no point is it even implied that Cream and Cheese are in any actual danger.
• Tenchi Muyo!'s Mad Scientist Washuu loves doing this with/to Tenchi, in order to find out just what makes him so darn special (such as being able to generate the Light Hawk Wings). Her experiments are on the comedic side, though, so they don't usually hurt... they're merely implied to be rather Squicky, uncomfortable, and very, very embarrassing. Just remember, when Washuu puts on a nurse's outfit, straps you half-naked to a table, and goes "I've got magic fingers!" it's time to RUN, not give in.
• Before the twins Vash and Knives were born in Trigun, there was Tesla. Her short life and painful death make up Vash and Knives's tragic Backstory. Independent Plants were unprecedented and almost nothing was known about them, so the scientists couldn't resist examining this one so intensively she fell to pieces before she was even a year old. The twins stumbled across her remains accompanied by the notes regarding the experiments. Neither of them handled the discovery well.
• In Utawarerumono, Hakurou takes his girlfriend and runs, not wanting this to happen to her. He fails.
• In Witchblade, at some point Masane is captured and examined, but it turns out that while she is kept sedated, they don't dare do anything that the Witchblade could consider an attempt to harm or remove its host (it can mince heavy machinery in an eyewink even against her will) before killing her outright. The manga, on the other hand, contains flashbacks about genetic experimentation with demon remnants as a source for the creation of Super Soldiers (this didn't end well).

Comic Books

• Paul Chadwick's Concrete plays with this trope extensively. For one thing, the title character is just as eager to understand his transformation as the scientists are, and therefore he cooperates with them. For another, he is a world-famous celebrity, and it would be quickly noticed if he vanished mysteriously, or if some overzealous scientist got carried away with his studies. Furthermore, scientists in Concrete tend to be sympathetic characters who want to stay on the right side of the law. In fact, Concrete cooperates with the government and the military to create his cover story.
• A different example has the Deadpool supporting character Montgomery at the mercy of a corporation that keeps him hooked up to machines, the better to utilize his precognition to their advantage.
• Sadly proved right in Elseworld's Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl, when Supergirl discovers that Lex Luthor found and dissected her baby cousin many years ago.
• In G.I. Joe vs. the Transformers, the Joes are ordered to do this to Bumblebee and Wheeljack by their superiors, who only see them as machines. They almost carry them out, until a stunned Wheeljack reveals that the army's plans of nuking Cobra Island will have disastrous consequences...
• Hellblazer #142, "Setting Sun" by Warren Ellis, has John Constantine dealing with the ghost of a recently deceased Unit 731 scientist who participated in these kinds of experiments. In contrast to the experiments described below under Real Life that at least had some purpose, the ghost relates all manner of For the Evulz stories about the pointless 'experiments' he and his colleagues had done. He even preempts the question of "why?" or "How would this help you win the war?" by explaining "You have to understand; we were insane." He compares it to falling in love with a beautiful girl; eager to indulge all his impulses, his orders effectively permission to do as he pleased. His Ghostly Goals are to be vivisected himself before moving on. He makes it clear that this is not "absolution" but "closure" — he simply feels it would be appropriate to truly "touch" the "girl" he met during the war. John quickly retrieves the ghost's rusty wartime surgical implements and goes to work...
• In Marv Wolfman's Man and Superman, Clark (who hasn't yet donned his costume) listens in on Lois Lane and Perry White discussing the city's mysterious super-powered vigilante. Lois points out that if she could fly, she'd be worried about people wanting to cut her open and find out how. Clark reflects that that's exactly what his mother used to warn him about.
• Nikolai Dante refuses to report back to the Makarov Dynasty after the Romanov Dynasty Weapon Crest fuses with his body for fear that the Makarovs would cut him up to learn how to design a similar Weapon Crest for themselves.
• The Planetary/JLA crossover oneshot is set in an alternate reality where the Planetary organization controls the advancement of science and technology the world over. By the time of the story, they've already cut up Barry Allen and Ray Palmer in order to create super-fast couriers and shrinking technology for Fantastic Voyage-style medical procedures.
• PS238:
  • The original Rainmaker program was centered on studying superpowers by kidnapping the titular Rainmaker, a boy with no power except to control whether or not it rained. He couldn't even make dangerous lightning storms until his powers got enhanced by a Mad Scientist. They thought that they could figure out the source of all powers, but couldn't contain any of the actually dangerous supers, so they were forced to use him. Doctor Irons helped/forced him to escape, and the program ground to a halt.
  • By the time of the story proper, the government has backed off on this stance, not least because of the failure of that original Rainmaker program. There's also the fact that supers have mostly proven very cooperative if treated with respect.
  • When an alien child (later named Prospero) lands at the school, the faculty is worried that the government is going to take him away and perform experiments on him, but the general who shows up points out that the last alien who showed up became the world's most valiant defender when he could have made a pretty good bid to conquer it instead, so they're willing to treat any aliens with respect and courtesy unless given a reason not to.
• The Sandman (1989): This is one of the reasons that Hob keeps his immortality a secret from most people he knows, including the mortals he falls in love with. It's too easy for him to imagine a bunch of "Nobel-prize wannabes examining slices of my pancreas."
• This is exactly what pissed off the Xorda in Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), as Ivan Kintobor ordered soldiers to capture the Xorda representative and he dissected him. The Xorda responded by obliterating most of humanity.
• In the Spider-Man Beyond storyline, the Beyond Corporation captures Morbius and the Lizard, experimenting on them as part of their supervillain research program.
• Supergirl:
  • Bizarrogirl: After helping defeat Bizarrogirl, Dr. Light wants to run tests on her. Supergirl quickly knocks Dr. Light out, picks up her doppelganger, and makes off with her because she doesn't want Bizarrogirl to become a guinea pig.
    Supergirl: Dr. Light was going to keep you. Run tests on you indefinitely. I couldn't let that happen.
  • In the 2011 story Good-Looking Corpse, Kara Zor-El investigates an abandoned clandestine research facility and finds the bodies of several Kryptonians who have been experimented on.
• Superman: Secret Identity: Clark Kent is captured and experimented on by shady military types, and only narrowly escapes. On his way out, he finds the bodies of other superhumans who weren't so lucky, some of them children. When he learns he's going to have kids of his own, he makes it clear that he could have taken the entire government apart a long time ago if he wanted to and is prepared to help them out on his own terms.
• A subplot in the "Camelot Falls" arc of Superman is about a Shadow Archetype of the man himself that's practically everything that could have gone wrong in Clark's origin story. An alien whose parents crash l-landed, his father already dead and mother died from childbirth right after, he was vivisected since birth and studied for fifty years in attempts to make a living weapon. Deemed Subjekt-17, this superbeing that's only ever known abject pain and cruelty wants to Kill All Humans. The only thing he wants more is Clark to choose between joining him or stopping him. His last words to Clark before disappearing, clearly heartbroken Superman chose humans over him, is denying medical aid for his injuries, because he doesn't want to be studied by scientists anymore.
• Transformers: In the Generation 1 comics, Circuit Breaker once manages to overpower about a dozen Autobots and has her engineers take them apart... thankfully not fatally, but she does experiment with their brain-counterparts. And has their heads mounted on a wall. And cobbles together the parts into a Frankensteinian variant of combining, in order to fight a pair of Decepticons. She lets them go free after the jury-rigged Autobot saves her of its own will, proving that it is sapient and moral.
• Subverted in Ultimate Spider-Man. Nick Fury explains to Peter Parker that since he is technically an illegal genetic experiment, he will become government property when he turns eighteen. Peter freaks out and assumes this trope is in effect, but Fury later clarifies that Spider-Man will simply become a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and a government-sanctioned superhero.
• This is the motivation behind the mutated child Batwing's rampage in Untold Tales of Spider-Man. When Spider-Man discovers him and promises to get him help, he freaks out completely because, as he puts it, "Not going... get cut up by scientists... like mom said!"
• In Vögelein, this is one of the arguments the Duskie gives for why Humans Are the Real Monsters, saying that they'll take the title character, lock her up, and take her to pieces to see how she works. Considering that she's a clockwork Faerie...
• Wonder Woman (1987): During "The Witch and the Warrior", Dr. Poison lays claim to Icicle, for the explicit purpose of cutting open his partially transformed body.

Fan Works

• In The Bridge, the prospect of this and increasingly inhumane experimentation on Godzilla Junior, whom at the time was couch sized and under her care, is why Dr. Azusa Gojo was so protective of him. After finding out he was completely sapient and saw her as his mother, she knew she couldn't shield him forever and had to let her adoptive son go to live with the adult Godzilla away from human hands.
• In Emergence, the students who meet and befriend Team RWBY ask them to keep their abilities secret, out of fear of this happening. However, when the government finds out, they instead hope to befriend and recruit the girls.
• Defied in The Finger Trap. Adrian Parker jokingly (or not so jokingly) asks if this will be the case with Twilight Sparkle, who knocked on Adrian's door. The army official replies that there are laws against that since doing so could invite possible retaliation by the alien's civilization, citing a deleted scene from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
• In the Turning Red fanfic The Great Red Panda Rescue, Mei is kidnapped and sold for this purpose due to her ability to turn into a giant red panda.
• Healing for a Spell (a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and M*A*S*H crossover): Shortly after Twilight Sparkle (who landed in Korea as a result of a magical mishap) is found and brought back to the unit, the surgeons at the 4077 (who are concerned for her safety) tell her that I Corps would demand her for scientific observation if they found out she was there, which is why they have to keep her a secret. Fortunately, they're successful - even the soldiers she helps treat agree to keep quiet.
• This has happened a couple of times in Hetalia: Axis Powers fanfic showing the nations' Fanon Healing Factor.
• If Wishes Were Ponies: Once Harry becomes Twilight's ward, she conducts a few tests on him to learn about his magic. Averted in that all of the tests are meant to be painless and non-invasive. The one time one of them caused him pain, she freaked out and apologized a dozen times.
• This is one of the many reasons Shirou wants to keep the Magic Association away from the Sekirei in In Flight.
  If you are defeated, the best you can hope for is death, and your corpse will most likely be violated and experimented on.
• In the Homestuck fanfic Interview, the trolls (who ended up on Earth in this fic) defy this outright:
  First, blanket statement: we're not going with your ridiculous military scientists. No poking, no prodding, no examinations, no experiments. If you're that curious you can ask nicely, but we reserve the right to say no. And especially don't do the cliché kidnap-them-in-the-middle-of-the-night-when-they're-off-guard thing.
• Lab Rat: The Fenton parents successfully kidnap a ghost, and attempt this trope... before realizing in horror that the ghost is their son, Danny.
• Last Child of Krypton: In the first episode of the second version, Kal-El warned Shinji about this possibility if it was discovered that his DNA was partially alien.
• The Last Seidr: Zig-zagged; the SHIELD agents willingly return Kevin (a snake Harry summoned during his fight with Loki) to Harry, but Kevin (via a Parseltongue conversation with Harry and Thor) reveals that they performed numerous tests on him, and were not gentle. He goes so far as to declare the SHIELD scientists as enemies of serpent kind. Tony also says (somewhat jokingly) that SHIELD will want to do the same to Harry (which is why the Avengers become so protective of the kid).
• In Masks Within Masks, Seven has frequent nightmares of being experimented on, especially given her past history and the fact that she's unable to control her illusions when asleep.
• In Mass Effect: Murphy's Law, during a raid on the rebuilt Telten facility on Pragia, Sean discovers, much to his horror, that Cerberus won't hesitate to do this to human children in the name of unethical biotics research. The mortician found hiding in the room is brutally beaten then stabbed by Sean after pushing him past his limit.
• Brought up in A Mighty Demon Slayer Grooms Some Ponies, where the main character has nightmares that the moment the ponies reveal themselves to humans, they'll get kidnapped and experimented on by a stereotypical Mad Doctor.
• After he agrees to join SHIELD in The New Recruit, Matt Garretty says that he wants SHIELD's help in figuring out how he and his friends got their powers, but that he doesn't want to be dissected or anything. This trope is averted when Coulson promises that won't happen; SHIELD scientists can be enthusiastic, but they aren't crazy enough to dissect a teenager.
• This is Isabella's concern if she's captured by Central in Second American Civil War - as the last Dewdrop-enhanced soldier, she'd become a research subject as Central attempted to reproduce her implants. She's not wrong; Ferb is making plans to do exactly that.
• In Superwomen of Eva 2: Lone Heir of Krypton, Asuka (Supergirl) keeps quiet about her powers and her alien DNA because she is afraid of becoming a guinea pig.
• Spider-Ninja: Zig-zagged:
  • After the robot that attacked Avengers Tower is defeated, it's taken to the SHIELD Helicarrier where Doctor Connors disassembles it for study.
  • Averted, thankfully, with the Turtles, as Connors realizes that they're sentient beings (not to mention teenagers) and doesn't even consider experimenting on them (although he later steals some of Raph's blood).
  • In Chapter 26, Doctor Octopus of all people points out why this trope is a bad idea:
  Doc Ock (to Donatello): Please, there are nonlethal methods of experimentation. I thought you were smarter than that. As far as I know only four of your kind exist; killing one of you for study would be foolish.
• An interesting variation in Stardust. Funnily enough, Twilight Sparkle is already in the captivity of XCOM, an organization where this trope is their typical MO. However, the Council has also recommended sending Twilight to another base where only painful experimentation awaits her, which many XCOM personnel recognize as a horrible possibility and seek to prevent it.
• In Street Sharks Redux, the protagonists are mindful of this trope as one of many reasons why they want to avoid being re-captured by Dr. Paradigm. Among other things, he makes no secret of the fact that he wants to brainwash them into being his flunkies. One story arc has him capture Slammu, drugging him, and keeping him Strapped to an Operating Table to perform countless tests to determine what physical changes took place. Because Dr. Paradigm's into Pragmatic Villainy though, he doesn't actually cut Slammu up. He plans to hold off on that until he's more sure of the potential Healing Factor or else has more test subjects...
• In Supergirl (2015) fic Survivors, a secondary character warns the Danvers that Kara is being searched by a group that kills and/or experiments on aliens.
  Jeremiah: Apparently this DEO is in the business of killing aliens or... experimenting on them. They have all been racing to find you but the DEO has given up, he believes.
• In The Trickster and the Grand Order, Olga Marie insists that Ren and Mona cannot tell anyone they managed to gain Magic Circuits, or the Clock Tower would deem them worthy of a Sealing Designation, making them a target for abduction and vivisection. Them having the ability to summon Personas only rises the threat higher, and they are very distressed by the possibility.
• In The Web of The Spider-Man, Peter refuses to go to the hospital out of fear of what the doctors would find if they started treating him in his current state, begging Ned to take him home instead.
• In With Strings Attached, Shag points out that John can't go home with wings because he'd be dissected; Paul unknowingly echoes this when he tries to talk John into finding a way to change back. Much later, after he really is facing the return home, John sourly reflects that at least the scientists won't be able to hang onto him.
  • Also, Jeft refers to extremely powerful psionics as suffering this fate while Shag is yelling at him for apparently inducing psionic powers in Ringo.
• In Lost Nations, Alfred and Matthew are constantly moving around the United States and Canada because they are worried about someone noticing their regenerative abilities and lack of aging and calling the government down on their heads. When Francis, Arthur and Ivan finally corner the twins, Alfred has a minor Freak Out and screams nobody is going to lock him and his brother in a lab to be studied.

Film — Animated

• Referenced and averted in Hop. Fred says that this would happen to E.B. if he just went around talking in public. This is immediately followed by E.B. complaining to their waitress about his order, and her acting as if this is perfectly normal.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem: Splinter warns the turtles never to interact with humans because they will get captured and milked for their mutagenic blood. The turtles (and later, April) think that's ridiculous because they don't even have nipples. The turtles get captured by the TCRI and, yup, they get hooked up to a giant milking machine to siphon their mutagenic blood (a process which turns out to be quite painful). After Splinter rescues the four, he has an "I Warned You" moment when he notices the machine.

Film — Live-Action

• The Age of Adaline: After being discovered by a police officer, Adaline narrowly escaped being sent somewhere presumably for "study". She clearly fears a repeat of this and what that might include, staying under the radar over the subsequent decades.
• Battle: Los Angeles: A pragmatic variant. Staff Sergeant Nantz, Navy Hospital Corpsman Adukwu, and Michele (a veterinarian) cut open a wounded alien, not to save its life, but to figure out how to kill it efficiently so the Marines don't waste their ammo. They discover that the aliens' heads are purely sensory organs, and their brains are behind their "hearts".
  Adukwu: No frontal lobe, no temporal lobe, no parietal lobe. The cranial vault is unlike anything I have ever seen.
• In Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Cornelius warns the fugitive astronaut Brent against speaking if captured by the apes — "If they catch you speaking, they will dissect you. And they will kill you. ...In That Order."
• Blade Runner 2049: Deckard and Rachel had a baby after they escaped at the end of Blade Runner. This was supposed to be impossible since Rachel was a replicant, which can't have children. Deckard tells Officer K (a.k.a. Joe) that he hid the child because he knew that it would be dissected in order to find out how it was conceived.
• Averted in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Both humans and aliens always planned to return everyone unharmed at the end, except for volunteers who agree to be taken to the aliens' planet.
• Literal example: in Creepshow, Jordy Verrill decides not to call a doctor about the alien green growth on his hand because he imagines the "cure" will be to chop off his afflicted fingers. Without anesthetic.
• In District 9, Wikus is nearly vivisected (without anesthesia and fully aware) when it turns out that his mutation into a Prawn makes him capable of operating the aliens' weapons. It turns out his employers secretly have been dissecting and experimenting on the aliens for years for this same purpose.
• In Earth Girls Are Easy, this fate befallin Mac, Wiploc and Zeebo is the main reason Valerie tries to keep them a secret.
• Edge of Tomorrow: Major Cage asks Rita Vrataski, the only other soldier who's been stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop like he is, why they don't just tell General Bingham what's happening. Rita says that she's already tried it countless times and was usually thrown in the psych ward, except for the one time they believed her and she was vivisected.
• Notably averted in Escape to Witch Mountain and Return from Witch Mountain, which revolve around the Human Alien kids being more in danger of exploitation by greedy individuals than of dissection by The Men in Black. However, it's played straight in the 2008 Race to Witch Mountain.
• Eternal: When Elizabeth—who is a vampire—is attempting to persuade Pope to break her out of the cell Inspector Thurzo is holding her in, she claims that the authorities are planning to vivisect her after she is transferred to the secure facility in Switzerland.
• Subverted in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: Despite their initially sinister appearance, the scientists pursuing E.T. show no sign of wanting to cut him up, and even try to save his life when he's dying. They do want to cart him off and lock him up in a secret location while they study him, though. However, Elliot SUSPECTS they will dissect the corpse and tells Keys "They're just gonna cut him all up."
• Family Swap: A dysfunctional family is hit with a "Freaky Friday" Flip. The mother (who's in her 7-year-old daughter's body) says they shouldn't go to the doctors about it because they would want to dissect them. She is proven correct late in the movie when she gets desperate enough to go to the hospital; while some of the doctors are for finding a cure, one convinces them to go the dissection route for the sake of scientific research. She gets strapped to a chair, but the rest of the family busts her out.
• Fast Color: Ruth, Bo, and their female ancestors have kept their powers hidden due to fearing that they'd be held captive by the government to experiment on. Other women with abilities are also revealed to live hidden from the world, in Rome and probably elsewhere.
• In Flora and Ulysses the titular superpowered squirrel Ulysses has to go on the run from animal control to avoid having his brain dissected (nominally to check for rabies though there's no reason to believe he has it).
• Gamera the Brave: Subverted. While the governmental Monster Task Force does take the injured juvenile Gamera, Toto, into custody they have only benign intent. They know full well that Gamera are benevolent kaiju and work to patch him up from his fight with Zedus and try to speed up his growth because they know Zedus will be back and an adult Gamera would be their best defense.
• In Gremlins 2: The New Batch, one of the cloned scientists tells Gizmo they'll "just have to cut you open" for their tests.
• In The Incredible Hulk (2008), knowledge of what General Ross wants to do with the gamma power is why Bruce keeps running, because he knows that they'll dissect him and try to weaponize the gamma power.
• Jack Frost (1998): Jack Frost's son is afraid that Jack will be experimented on by the government if he'd ever been discovered. Jack says he doesn't care, as long as he gets to spend some time with his son.
• In The Man Who Fell to Earth, this issue comes up when Thomas (an alien) is captured by the U.S. government and experimented upon for years, no matter how much he begs. Oh, the prison is a nice hotel suite, he never wants for food, etc. and he even has a final tryst with his Earth mistress... but his imprisonment seals the fate of his dying race back home, and he is finally released a broken, stranded soul.
• This trope is the basic plot conflict of The Old Guard, as a team of superhumans are captured by, and escape from, a scientist who wants to cut them up.
• Painkiller Jane: Jane clearly fears, if not vivisection, then that she'll be held by the military indefinitely with endless tests when they transfer her to Alaska. Instead, she escapes and goes on the run.
• The plot of Paul kicks off when the government decides that he's Outlived His Usefulness and are going to dissect him, so Paul escapes from Area 51 to reunite with his mothership.
• In Phenomenon the government is almost totally upfront about wanting to do this to George. Because George's mind is working at near 100% efficiency, it takes him no time at all to realize that what they're not saying is that the exploratory surgery they want to do would kill him, and that they think they'd get less data doing the same surgery after his death.
• A kid-friendly version appears in the Swedish children's movie "Pirret" (approximately "That Bubbly Feeling"). The movie is about a little girl who can fly when she's particularly happy and has "that bubbly feeling". Her mother asks the family physician if there's anything wrong with the girl, and the girl is whisked off to the hospital where a very unsympathetic doctor tries to find out what makes her fly. No actual cutting up, just MRI scans and stuff. Of course, since the doctor is constantly scaring her, she doesn't get "that bubbly feeling" in the doctor's presence, and in the end, she's released.
• This is what Ian plans to do to Shandra in Shandra: The Jungle Girl. He wants to vivisect her so that he can learn the secret of her sexually based Life Energy draining and can give it to other women under his control. He is about to start the process when he falls victim to Shandra's power.
• "Disassemble" is an arc word in Short Circuit. Except that NOVA has little interest in Number-5's sentience; they see it as a bug that needed fixing at best and a potential threat to innocent civilians at worst. At no point in either movie does any organization have any deliberate intention of conducting any unpleasant experimentation on him — the movie was inspired by the idea that if a high-tech military robot really did come to life, nobody would believe it was alive in the first place.
• In Splash, an "internal examination" is the next thing on the to-do list of mermaid Madison's scientist captor.
• Starman: Jenny and Shermin are concerned about this awaiting Starman if Fox catches him. Seeing as the military have an autopsy table with restraining straps waiting, their fear is justified.
  Shirmin: [disgusted] Welcome to planet Earth.
• In Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation, former Jerkass Lieutenant Pavlov Dill uses these exact words when he finds that the rest of the soldiers (all infected by mind-control Control Bugs) have infected Gen. Shepherd with the Arachnids' plan being to send him back to the Federation so he can infect other Federation Leaders and take over the world. His threats are cut short when another infected soldier slowly walks behind him and slits his throat, making it Redemption Equals Death:
  Pavlov: You bastards... you are all under arrest for murder, sedition, for treason against the Federation. Oh! You're going to pay... because we're not going to kill you... oh no... you see, we got special places for things like you... where they cut you up, but they keep you alive when they cut you up... so they can see what makes you tick, and then what makes you sick! And I will be there, oh yeah! I'm going to be there when they see— [threat cut short by infected soldier cutting his throat].
  • Arachnid dissection and vivisection occur in the first film as well — particularly pay attention to the captured brain bug in the epilogue.
• Transformers: They're actually shown experimenting on Bumblebee. And by "experimenting", we mean basically torturing him.
  • In the Bumblebee prequel, Charlie tells him this will happen if he's caught outside of his car form. Luckily, this is a Broad Strokes prequel where the Sector 7 agent lets Bumblebee go for saving his life.

Literature

By Author:

• Isaac Asimov:
  • Explicitly averted in the short story "Belief". The protagonist is a physics professor who discovers that he can fly; the entire story is about his attempts to get the scientific establishment to take him seriously. (His claims of antigravity get written off as a hoax, even on at least one physical demonstration.)
  • Another of his short stories, "Pâté de Foie Gras", is a Science Fiction version of the Golden Goose fable, but the scientists have learned from the original story and only attempt non-invasive methods of investigation. Even though it's just a goose, the government scientists are extremely careful not to harm it, and are terrified when it develops a fever. They aren't interested in the goose so much for the traditional reason ("Gold! Gold! We're RICH!!!") so much as they are interested in how a goose is accomplishing nuclear transmutation of the elements inside its reproductive system.
• In Mercedes Lackey's urban fantasies, this trope is out in full force. The secret government facility or evil corporations are more than happy to track down people with psychic or magic talents and do nasty things to them in the name of controlling them and/or using their powers.
• Stephen King writes "The Shop", a government organization which conducts paranormal research, into a lot of his stories. Charlie from Firestarter is on the run from them because of their desire to use Charlie as a weapon. This is mainly because her powers are entirely due to their Playing with Syringes with her parents, and they want to see the only really militarily useful result of the experiment. And by "militarily useful", we mean "potentially able to crack the planet in half".

By Title:

• Area 51: After being made immortal, Lisa Duncan is kidnapped by the new Majestic-12. She's experimented on, including by being shot dead and observed while she resurrects, healed, for discovering just how far this extends.
• In The Coming Race, the protagonist is an ordinary man who finds himself living in an underground Lost World of people who branched off from humanity many thousands of years ago, and who are physically and mentally different from surface-dwellers in a number of ways. His host warns him not to go out alone because the others would quickly realise he wasn't like them, and he would soon attract the attention of the College of Sages, who might dissect him for scientific purposes.
• In Correspondence From the Goddess, after Lydia starts developing superpowers and Albert Pharmaceuticals expresses interest in studying her, Elana rejects the idea entirely, citing this trope. Lydia then goes to see them secretly, and it doesn't seem to go badly at all.
• A scene in The Dream Merchant has the twins narrowly escaping being cut up so that a savage tribe can harvest their blood for a plague cure.
• The reason that Nancy, heroine of Lois Duncan's A Gift of Magic, gives for wanting to keep her psychic powers a secret. She isn't afraid of being dissected, but she is afraid of being dragged off by the government and being turned into a lab rat. The government already knows about her powers and respects her right to keep them to herself if that's what she wants.
• The Golden Hamster Saga: In I, Freddy, the titular hamster's owner Mr. John warns him not to tell anyone that he can read and write. (Mr. John's fears come true in Freddy in Peril, when Freddy is kidnapped by a Mad Scientist.)
  Mr. John: It wouldn't be long before some smart showman came along, eager to make a fortune out of Fantastic Freddy, the hamster that can read and write. Either that or you'd wind up in the hands of scientists eager to dissect your brain for research purposes. Does either of those prospects appeal to you?
• This is why Cris from the Philip K. Dick short story The Golden Man never stays in one place too long. In the case of the movie, however, the threat wasn't scientific experimentation but rather the possibility that the FBI would imprison Cris for life and force him to use his predictions to their advantage. He willingly goes with them in the end to prevent a nuclear attack that would kill his love interest.
• The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs. Its owner killed it to know how it worked, didn't learn anything, and now no longer gets golden eggs. Poor sucker.
  • Used as a proverb when it looks like somebody might end up cutting off a vital source of long-term gain (be it information or money) in their greed for short-term gain: "Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs".
  • Subverted in Singularity Sky when an ignorant citizen of a backwater world asks a Sufficiently Advanced Alien for a goose that lays golden eggs. No one thinks about how it works until they start suffering radiation sickness... transmutation in real life is a nuclear process, after all.
• In "The Gypsies in the Wood", Charles Beauregard helps a fairy changeling evade The Men in Black in trade for the safe return of the child she's impersonating. To persuade her that this is her best course, he tells her about the MIBs' intentions:
  [They] might tire of asking questions. It can be boring, not getting answers. In the end, the Undertaking might just cut you up in the name of science. To find wings folded inside your shoulder-bones, then spread them on a board and pin you like a butterfly. There's a secret museum for creatures like you.
• In Halo: First Strike, this is the reason given by Doctor Halsey for why the data on how Sergeant Johnson survived contact with the Flood can never be told to anyone (even Johnson himself, who would likely turn himself in). Ironically, she tells this to the Master Chief^note himself the result of an invasive experiment... who later crushes the data crystal containing the aforementioned information.
• The six psychic boys in Hidden Talents swear a blood oath never to tell anyone else about their abilities, for fear of this trope. However, readers find out in the sequel that this doesn't exactly work out.
• William Gibson's short story "Hinterlands" depicts what it would be like to be on the receiving end of a Cargo Cult — the first human to experience it does not end well, dissected in a Soviet laboratory. Also Foreshadowing, as an insane victim of the cargo cult reprograms her spaceship's surgical bay to dissect herself, committing suicide.
• In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy the pan-dimensional beings also known as mice try to obtain Arthur Dent's brain to perform experiments on ("Diced.") to find out the ultimate question of Life, the Universe and Everything.
• Flinx of the Humanx Commonwealth series was genetically manipulated by the Meliorare Society as part of their secret program to produce supermen. When their more spectacular failures came to light, they were outlawed and hunted down along with all their experimental subjects. Those that could be "made normal" were corrected; those that could not were destroyed. Despite being superficially normal, Flinx is possessed of strong Psychic Powers, which alone would be enough to get him put in a fishbowl and studied for the rest of his life, but that plus his affiliation with the Meliorares means he is exceedingly careful to reveal his talents only to people he absolutely trusts. Even then, he runs afoul of this trope on several occasions, most specifically in Flinx in Flux, where not just one but two separate antagonists join the hunt — one to "fix him" and the other to "study him". On several occasions, he also runs afoul of surviving members of the Meliorares who see him as an opportunity for vindication of their cause.
• Invoked in Illegal Aliens when the humans capture an alien engineer. The United Nations tells the other aliens he's been dissected and liquefied for experimentation, whereas he's actually helping them develop advanced technology.
• In Immortal Guardians, this is a continual concern. The first thought the military has when they discover the existence of preternaturally strong vampires and Immortal Guardians was a) how can this be weaponized for our benefit and b) how can we destroy them if we can't weaponize them for our own benefit. In later books, the immortal Guardians discover that the military has captured an alien specifically because all of a sudden the military has tranquilizers that work on the previously impervious Guardians. In the spin-off, the Aldebarian Alliance, the story is actually told from the viewpoint of Taelon, a captured alien who suffers through repeated amputations, vivisections, and poisonings as the doctors and scientists work to see what makes him tick.
• Larklight has an interesting version with the backstory of its space pirate captain, who was sent to an institute for studying strange life forms after surviving a deadly and mysterious plague. When he overheard the doctors' plans to dissect him, he gathered the other test subjects and ran for it. In a universe full of colorful and bizarre aliens of every possible shape and peculiarity, his crew is the weirdest thing most people have ever seen.
• In Maddy's Dolphin, Maddy's brother CJ is the only other human who knows she can talk to the dolphin Indigo. They don't tell any adults for fear that Maddy or Indigo would be experimented on.
• Used in the Maximum Ride series, where the main characters are running away from one of these types of labs. They were created with bird genes and have wings. The lab wants them back and they just want to be left alone.
• Men, Martians and Machines. The crew are captured by Mechanical Lifeforms who start dissecting them and other forms of organic life, as they're a Hive Mind and find individuality fascinating. The Captain points out that they're not that different; if they'd captured one of the robots, they'd pull it apart to see what makes it tick as well.
• In The Mer, humans who are transformed into Mer are strictly forbidden from contacting anyone in their former lives, partly because it puts them at risk of being dissected, experimented on, or subject to Superhuman Trafficking.
• Michael Crichton's Next revolves around the Real Life legal precedents that could be interpreted as this. Yeah, that's right; current biotech laws are vague enough that if a doctor harvests cells from you, not only can they sell them to researchers without compensating you, whoever buys those cells might own your "cell line", a.k.a. you and your children — at least if they have a skilled Amoral Attorney.
• According to the Mi-go of the Cthulhu Mythos, the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign hunts down and torments them for knowledge.
• Isaac Asimov and Janet Asimov's Norby's Other Secret: Mentioned briefly in the previous book, Norby is concerned that if his unusual abilities became public knowledge, he'd be taken apart and inadvertently killed. Admiral Yobo coming to the Wells household, announcing that the Inventors Union wants to do just that, kicks off the plot of this book, which ends with the admiral convinced that Norby is too unreliable to be studied productively, as well as getting an miniaturized antigrav belt for them to study instead.
• The Otherworld: The second book of the series, Stolen, features a group of scientists, at least some of whom want to do just this, so they can find a way to share supernatural powers with the rest of humanity and "better them".
• The first humans to encounter the aliens in Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton are dissected. The sequence, told from the alien's point of view, is pure horror even with death being (usually) a minor inconvenience in the Commonwealth.
• In China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, Isaac visits the garuda (eagle people) ghetto and tries to bribe some of them to come to his lab so he can study them. The garuda leader loudly informs his flock that "they'll take your wings away, kill you dead!" even though Isaac protests that's not his plan. To be fair, this is such a Crapsack World that this is a reasonable assumption.
• Presumed Dead by Rick Kennett, has a child soldier watching an instructor dissect the corpse of their Starfish Alien opponents. Her classmate cynically notes that right now on another planet, an alien instructor is likely doing the same to a human.
• In Real Mermaids, Jade's dad warns her not to tell anyone that she's a mermaid because she might be experimented on.
• In Song of the Dolphin Boy, the half-selkie Finn's human father tells him, 'You be careful, son. A scientist gets hold of you, and there'll be experiments and examinations and nosy parkers and journalists from all over. Let's keep all this to ourselves, eh? Our secret.'
• Invoked in Robert A. Heinlein's The Star Beast by John's ancestor when he acquires a native pet (or rather, inadvertently kidnaps a native princess) while exploring an alien planet.
• The backstory in The Stars My Destination has shades of this with the first man, a scientist, to learn to Jaunt, or teleport. The first time it happens is under the stress of a fatal situation, and the scientist knows that, to replicate the phenomenon, his colleagues are going to do their best to kill him. Subverted because he actually goes along with this, and after saying his goodbyes, does replicate it. The result is, by the time the novel takes place, all of mankind can teleport at will.
• These Broken Stars: After her and Tarver's rescue, Lilac is subjected to serious medical tests when it becomes apparent that she's a whisper-made replica. Thankfully, her father arrives and puts a stop to things.
• This threat has been made several times to Philuffy in Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle, the only human to have been implanted with Abyss tissue and survive.
• Unidentified Suburban Object: Chloe's parents, who are among the last survivors of a race of Human Aliens from Tau Ceti Four, hide their heritage for fear that they would be the targets of constant harassment at best, or captured and imprisoned at worst.
• This is why Greg doesn't tell his family about his condition in the last third of A Wolf in the Soul.

Live-Action TV

• The aliens of 3rd Rock from the Sun live in constant fear of this and it's brought up whenever they think that they might be found out. Subverted in that, despite their fears, the idea of them being aliens never occurs to anyone other than Kathy Bates, and her character is portrayed as insane. This is despite their occasional Suspiciously Specific Denial to being aliens.
• 4400: It turns out that the government has a secret lab in a hospital where they illegally hold and study 4400 "patients". Mildred is about to go into the operating room for some probably nefarious purpose when she's rescued, validating their distrust for the government.
• In the second season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the Inhumans are in hiding because they fear this sort of response to their differences. Their leader Jiaying was vivisected by HYDRA and only survived due to her powers.
• In the pilot episode of ALF, what finally convinces the family to hide the titular alien is being told by the researchers themselves what they plan to do to him.
  • Subverted in the later TV movie, where it's shown that Alf's doing all right after turning himself in when he is not shooting his mouth off at least.
• This is what Wolfram & Hart want to do with Connor in Angel. Given that the main thing that separates him from the many people with superpowers in the world is that he's a focus of prophecy (presumably ones that will be defunct if they kill him), it seems a bit of a waste.
• In Babylon 5, Talia's telepathic abilities have been enhanced to an unknown degree by her ex-boyfriend, Jason Ironheart. A while after she leaves the show due to being revealed to have a sleeper personality, Bester mentions that the Psi Corps have learned a lot when they "dissect — that is, examined" her. This is probably Bester trying to put people off their guard and/or just being a Jerkass, as the sleeper agent program was initiated by the Shadow-allied faction of the Corps, and he's not part of that, nor was he aware of Talia's sleeper personality before it was exposed.
  • Much later in the series, Bester offers to help Lyta Alexander find employment by providing fake Psi Corps credentials... in return for her body. After she's done using it, of course, and the contract would be void if she died of anything other than natural causes.
  • In the episode where Talia gets her upgrade, Bester and his partner are trying to apprehend Jason Ironheart for just this purpose, and Ironheart is trying to prevent it from happening because he doesn't want Psi Corps to learn the secrets he carries. When they finally do find him, he's become so powerful that he kills one of them and then turns into a god.
• In Being Human (UK), the group encounters a zombified girl (who is in total denial of her status and appearance as a rotting corpse). When they go looking into her origins at the hospital, they find evidence of several other living dead individuals who met this fate at the hands of doctors and scientists trying to discover what made them tick. The video they find even includes the final disposal of the still-aware remains of these individuals (by cremation).
• The Initiative in Buffy the Vampire Slayer does this with any species they deem Hostile Sub-Terrestials (non-humans) to create Super Soldiers. It goes horribly wrong, of course. Riley thinks this is what would happen to him if the Initiative gets hold of him again. Of course, the real reason they're trying to bring him in is to remove his modifications, which are causing severe mental and physical breakdown, so he's not exactly being rational. Then again, Riley witnessed first-hand that his former employers have no trouble experimenting on beings that are human most of the time, so his fears might not be ungrounded.
• Charmed (1998): In the third season finale, a news crew catch Prue and Piper using their powers on camera and expose their magic to the world. Piper worries that this will be one of the consequences of being exposed. This doesn't end up happening, but the actual consequences aren't much better.
  Piper: We're gonna do talk shows and book signings and movie deals, and then taken by the CIA and dissected.
  Prue: How can you joke be joking about this, Piper?
  Piper: Who's joking?
• The Daily Show spoofs this with a John Oliver story about two politicians who decided to campaign together while running against each other to send a message of civility. John concludes that if the world were to learn of their existence, "they would be poked and prodded until there was nothing left." The story ends on an homage to E.T., with Jon Stewart playing the part of the evil scientist.
• Doctor Who:
  • "Dalek": When Henry van Statten realizes that the Doctor is an alien, he captures him and subjects him to painful scanning using some kind of device. The Doctor gets out of it after the titular alien gets loose and begins slaughtering its way through the facility.
  • "The Long Game": When short-lived companion Adam has future technology installed in his head in an attempt to set up a Timeline-Altering MacGuffin situation, the Doctor drops his troublemaking ass back on Earth and tells him that now he has to live quietly, lest this happen to him. Which isn't going to be easy, since now his skull opens up every time someone snaps their fingers in his vicinity.
  • "The Christmas Invasion": This trope is why Rose doesn't call a doctor for the Doctor, pointing out that "one bottle of his blood could change the future of the human race".
  • "Army of Ghosts" has Torchwood get their hands on the Doctor. And promptly avert this trope; the squad with trained guns lower them and applaud, and while he's captive he's told he'd be kept comfortable, and is in no way actually restricted. The Doctor proceeds to... act civilized (aside from breaking a window to make a point).
  • This happens to a human captured by Silurians in "The Hungry Earth"/"Cold Blood". Alive, and without anesthetics.
• Farscape
  • In the pilot episode when John Crichton explains that he's not Sebacean but human, Captain Crais threatens to pull him apart to see what he's made of, though it's unclear if he means autopsy-wise or just lots of Cold-Blooded Torture. However, Crais has personal reasons for wanting John dead, given that he accidentally killed Crais's brother moments after he arrived. In the following episode it's played straight—the crew of Moya land on an alien planet that hasn't made first contact, and one of the locals helps Crichton because she's worried her military employers will put him on an autopsy slab if captured.
  • In a later episode Crichton thinks he's returned to Earth. It's a world constructed from his memories, and when the aliens running the show introduce a copy/clone of Rygel dead on a dissection table, it's implied that this is what Crichton subconsciously expects to happen. And he's a military scientist! Crichton angrily points out the hypocrisy of sending out an invitation to alien life to come and visit, only to murder and vivisect them when they do. Of course, he fails to realize that people who send out these invitations are different from the people who will be dealing with hypothetical alien visitors, who will likely have a "kill them before they kill us" mentality.
  • Ironically, when the crew of Moya actually does arrive on Earth, they're all treated as honored dignitaries and celebrities. Moya arrived at Earth several weeks before Crichton did (note that Crichton's father and several other humans were already aboard when Crichton steps out), so the aliens actually managed to do fine by themselves.
• In an unusual twist, the Tam family in Firefly presumably laughed off this possibility, if it even occurred to them at all, when the government expressed interest in their 'gifted' daughter, River. Disaster ensued, and her brother Simon had to sacrifice his medical career to get her away from the scientists post-cutting up and take her on the lam to prevent it from happening again.
• This is one of the main reasons why Henry keeps his Resurrective Immortality a secret in Forever:
  • When Henry gets an anonymous phone call from someone who knows his secret in the first episode, he's ready to flee the country immediately, reminding his son Abe, "This has happened before! I've had every ounce of my blood drained, my organs dissected in the name of science!"
  • As revealed in "Hitler On the Half-Shell", Adam, another immortal who's 2000 years old, experienced this firsthand during World War II at the hands of Josef Mengele, who kept trying to figure out the secret to Adam's immortality through numerous torturous experiments.
• H₂O: Just Add Water: The mermaids fear this will happen to them if their secret is known, but they hide the secret even from their families, who presumably wouldn't cut them up. On one occasion, a scientist does find out and try to experiment on them against their will.
• In Heroes, Noah tells Claire that this is what the company would do to her if they found her, presumably in order to test her regenerative properties.
  • In other words, it'd be no different from her day-to-day life, and at least it'd be For Science! rather than for kicks as is usually the case with the poster child for masochistic self-mutilation.
  • Also, while not exactly cut up, Elle was treated to some rather unpleasant tests to figure out how powerful she was as part of her Backstory.
• Although it’s not the main reason Immortals in Highlander keep a low profile, it’s likely on their minds. Duncan gets captured and experimented on by a doctor who sees him heal and leave the hospital after being hit by a car. Sometimes, such witnesses are recruited to become Watchers, but this guy was crazy and Duncan had to kill him to escape.
• The Invisible Man: One of the episodes features a plot by the Chinese to get the quicksilver gland. Darien ends up getting his head drilled so they can drain the quicksilver.
• In a less extreme example, the main character of Kyle XY keeps his abilities a secret because he wants to live a normal life, rather than spending all his days being tested by scientists.
• Misfits averts this entirely; revealing their powers to the general public seems only to result in mass media fame, with a notable lack of scary scientist dissections.
• My Dead Ex: This is one reason Ben didn't tell the world of his being undead at first. He was afraid he'd end up in a secret lab somewhere as an experimental subject. After it gets out, a doctor who tests Ben quite openly admits this would indeed be what they'd do back in the 80's, but human rights groups won't allow it now, exclaiming how those days were so much better.
• Ocean Girl: Jason's worst fear, and the primary source of his conflicts with Neri, is that Neri could be captured and experimented on by human scientists. He even brings this up regarding his own mother, who is shocked that Jason would think she'd try to cut Neri up, though she is noticeably conflicted when she realizes just how much scientific knowledge she could get out of her. The worst nearly passes during the final season where Neri is kidnapped by PRAXIS, locked in an observation laboratory, and nearly dies from being away from water for too long. A High-Heel–Face Turn from PRAXIS's only named female staff is what saves her from being dissected.
• Once Upon a Time: After the curse is broken, Grumpy raises this concern when he argues for finding a way back to the Enchanted Forest.
• The Outer Limits (1995): In the episode "Last Supper", an immortal woman finds this out the hard way when she's discovered by the US government and experimented on. Thankfully, she's rescued by a military guard who can't stand to see it happen, but the scientist who conducted the experiment finds out years later that she's still alive and wants to finish his work, as he's convinced that her blood will make him immortal too...
• This is the reason the Diffy family in Phil of the Future try to hide the fact that they come from the year 2121. Mind you, they're bog-standard Homo sapiens, so this is a flimsy excuse. This is pointed out in-universe by Mrs. Diffy, who reminds her husband that one of two tests would be performed on aliens, "and one of them was a personality quiz". In fact, in a speculative episode where the secret does get out, it doesn't happen.
• At the beginning of Power Rangers: Dino Thunder, Kira suggests they go to the authorities about their new superpowers and the Mooks that attacked them. Ethan argues that in movies, people with powers tend to end up in a lab with wires in their head, and Jerk Jock Conner agrees that even he's Genre Savvy about that part.
• In Pushing Daisies, this is why Ned doesn't want anybody to know that he can bring people Back from the Dead. Given Ned's neurotic personality, it's not really surprising that he would think this.
  • Besides which, if anybody found out how his powers worked, he'd be arrested for murder for reviving Chuck when he knew that it would result in an innocent person dying.
  • This show is a good example of this trope done right. For Ned, who really has no idea why he can do what he can do and who's had no guidance whatsoever on how to deal with it (meaning for most of his life he had no outside feedback to help keep him grounded), and who has numerous issues with abandonment, emotional intimacy, and social anxiety on top of that, this fear is a logical extension of his character and life story, rather than merely being a nebulous threat meant to justify the Masquerade.
• This is sort of the catalyst for the whole series in Red Dwarf. In the first episode, the Captain tells Lister his cat will be cut up and have tests run on it, prompting the response, "Would you put it back together when you were done?"
  Hollister: Lister, the cat would be dead.
  Lister: Well, with respect, sir, what's in it for the cat?
• In the first season of Roswell, the FBI is pursuing the aliens, presumably to do sinister experiments on them. In the episode "The White Room", Max is captured, and narrowly escapes vivisection after being tortured. However, Pierce, the head of the Special Unit, was after information, not scientific knowledge.
• Henry from Sanctuary is captured by the Cabal, who attempt to turn him into a werewolf permanently, kill him and study him — all in the name of science, of course. He's even promised it'll be a noble end for him.
• The Sarah Jane Adventures: Sarah thinks that if UNIT ever found out about Luke, they'd consider him a threat and lock him up. She's not keen on them knowing about the alien supercomputer Mr. Smith, either.
• In The Secret World of Alex Mack, this is one reason that Alex keeps her powers secret. Since the chemical plant really does want to cut her up and/or kill her lest the knowledge of the chemical's danger get out, her fears are somewhat justified. In the last episode, they do finally catch her, but rather than cut her up, they leave her to die in an exploding chemical plant. Danielle Atron also rubs this trope in Alex's face in the last episode.
  • This is somewhat subverted in regards to her parents. When they discover her powers in the same episode (due to her confessing after said parents are left for dead in the exploding plant as well), they are quite understandably offended by Alex's belief that they would turn her in.
• Siren (2018): Donna, Ryn's older sister (a mermaid like her), gets captured and experimented on by the military until she breaks free of them, escaping along with Chris. Mermaids had been cruelly slaughtered by humans who encountered them in the past too, which is why they largely stayed hidden until that point.
• Clark's secret is kept for this reason in Smallville and it's also mentioned in Lois & Clark. How would they cut him up? Kryptonite knives.
  • In a Lois & Clark episode, Lois travels to an Alternate Universe where Clark never became Superman due to his adoptive parents dying when he was little. His fiancée keeps berating him using this trope as a warning whenever he covertly uses his powers to save people. This world has also gone to hell after the arrival of Tempus, who gets himself elected President and removes all gun regulations. Cue the chaos. Fortunately, Lois fixes the situation by making Clark a suit identical to her Clark's.
  • In the Smallville episode "Memoria", Clark is captured and experimented on because the scientists have the blind luck of messing with kryptonite liquid at the time. In "Ryan", Ryan is also sent to the same research facility. In "Freak", Lex captures Chloe and has his team experiment on her in his secret lab.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: In the episode "The Measure of a Man", a Federation cyberneticist, Bruce Maddox, wants to disassemble the android Data for study, and Captain Picard has to legally establish that he has the right to refuse to undergo the procedure.
  • Which brings up some nasty Fridge Logic about the fact that Data had already been admitted to Starfleet Academy, been granted a commission and rank as an officer, and even decorated with medals for valor in the line of duty; none of which would or could apply to a piece of property rather than a legally recognized individual. The scientist's argument is essentially just "ignore that stuff because it would be cool if I could figure out how to make lots of new androids that we can treat like disposable slaves".
  • Given that Data is called to testify in his own trial, the whole thing seems moot. After all, if he wasn't an individual, he'd have been "submitted into evidence" (like a video recorder) instead.
    • Well, if the trial had been following typical rules, the parties would have been represented by someone other than Data's two commanding officers, one of whom had been in a relationship with the judge, so we maybe shouldn't look too deeply into that in any event.
  • The truly interesting twist on this one is that even Data himself is intrigued by Maddox's theories and ideas — he is mainly concerned that Maddox wouldn't be able to put him back together when he was done and is open to the idea if the risk can be reduced sufficiently. He actually makes an overture of friendship toward Maddox at the end of the episode; the later episode "Data's Day" is all about a day in Data's life in which he masters tap dancing, learns the basics of ballroom dancing, and tries to comprehend the dynamics behind the events of Miles O'Brien's marriage to Keiko, narrated in a letter to... Maddox, in order to support him with his research.
    • Star Trek: Picard indicates that Maddox was ultimately somewhat successful (without having to dismantle Data).
    • Star Trek: Picard in a later episode, a paraphrase of the title of this trope is even thrown out as a threat.
  • Given that Picard went to the lengths he did to establish that Data is a sapient life form with rights, there is subsequently some weirdness in the episode "Clues" where Data is found to be continually lying to the crew about what has been happening to the ship. In explaining that Data could be court-martialed, Picard tells him, "Do you also realize that you would most likely be stripped down to your wires to find out what the hell has gone wrong?" It's not clear who would have the authority to do that, considering the legal precedent that Picard himself established.
• In The Suite Life on Deck, Zack invokes this trope after convincing Woody that a rat bite has mutated him.
• Torchwood: Miracle Day: An extremely disturbing example occurs when Jack's immortality is discovered by a family of butchers in the 1920s. They repeatedly stab him to death in front of ever-growing crowds. Eventually, the whole crowd starts hacking away at him.
• Cole and Mel had this concern in Tracker (2001). The government knew aliens were on Earth and captured one of the fugitives. Cole was captured trying to get to him but got loose because they didn’t know Cole’s species wasn’t weak to heat like the other guy. When they used cold gas, it did weaken him, and he only survived thanks to the fugitive helping him. The concern remained with Cole and Mel after that and worried Mel when Cole had to go back to the facility to see how Zin learned to reuse host bodies later on.
• The Twilight Zone (1985): In "The Toys of Caliban", Miss Kemp suggests that Ernest Ross allow his son Toby to be examined by experts after discovering that he can manifest anything after seeing its picture. Ernest angrily tells her that Toby would be subjected to countless tests and experiments to determine how his power works and then would most likely be killed.
• A recurring concern of various aliens, monsters, and mutants on The X-Files; The Conspiracy isn't exactly hesitant to vivisect or experiment on anyone even remotely out of the ordinary.

Tabletop Games

• CthulhuTech: This is the fear of para-psychics — completely justified since the government of their Bad Future doesn't even keep the fact that they sometimes do this a secret. Considering how dangerous uncontrolled para-psychics are, the general public doesn't have a problem with this either.
• GURPS Monster Hunters: Demons have no human rights. If one is found out, their captors are free to torture, experiment on, or do whatever else they want to said demon.
• New World of Darkness:
  • Hunter: The Vigil:
    • The Cheiron Group is a MegaCorp that does just this — it captures supernatural creatures, figures out how their powers work, and then cuts out bits and implants them into field agents so they can use those powers. Its main source of revenue is processing other monster parts into pharmaceuticals to sell to the general public. This is one of the few times where the player is doing the cutting-and-utilizing.
    • Merrick's Institute, from the Second Edition book Tooth and Nail, is the inverse of the Cheiron Group: originally a government funded intitute to study psychically gifted youth, the scientists inadvertantly stumbled onto the Nightmare realm of Beasts; after that, they're goal was to weaponize the Beasts' powers, using the psychic kids as their doorway in... until those kids rose up and massacred them. After that, the kids took control of the organization's resources and repurposed them into a Hunter Conspiracy focused on hunting down Beasts.
    • Utopia Now is a group of tech workers and venture capitalists who have decided to advance mankind and create perfected cities using reclaimed parts of the God-Machine... including, if need be, parts of demons.
  • Mummy: The Curse: Last Dynasty Inc., a MegaCorp that got itself set up after the very fortuitous discovery of an Arisen's tomb. They've found ways to measure Sekhem with scientific equipment, and are using it to generate cures for cancer, more healthy steroids, and probative attempts at an AIDS vaccine. However, the only real sources of Sekhem are the Relics guarded and treasured by the Arisen, and the Arisen themselves, which means they're always on the lookout for new resources...
  • Promethean: The Created:
    • Several of the antagonist monsters demonstrate why you don't want an alchemically-reanimated corpse with incredible power and an inborn Uncanny Valley effect getting anywhere near a Morally Ambiguous Doctorate. The reasons range from a Galateid whose tissue was broken down and utilized to create living sex dolls to a cloning program that practically turns Prometheans into genetic soup.
    • 2nd Ed introduces Insatiate Alchemists, humans who have learned of the Prometheans' status as walking alchemical reactors and decided to hunt them down in the name of working wonders. Mind you, the miracle ingredient for the Alchemists' works is the substance that naturally accrues as Prometheans take steps towards completing their Pilgrimage... but they don't really seem to care. One anecdote describes an Alchemist who's made a killing on the "cash for gold" market — namely because he always seems to have a store of strangely organ-shaped ore...
• Shadowrun: Technomancers are advised to keep their powers secret, as they are rare and not well understood. Thus they are both valuable and threatening; most mega-corps have large standing rewards for anyone who brings in a technomancer. Shifters (Awakened animals that can turn into metahumans) and Drakes face an even greater threat of this occurring to them, should they be discovered.

Theatre

• In Bat Boy: The Musical, this is one of the reasons the sheriff gives for bringing the recently discovered "bat boy" to the local vet, rather than somewhere else.

Video Games

• BlazBlue: Sector Seven has the recurring issue of hiring lunatics to deal with scientific discoveries. In fact, everyone that was officially hired by Sector Seven that's major to the story has this at some point. Lambda-11 comes to mind, but Relius gets a prize for using his own daughter and wife as experiments.
• In City of Heroes, Crey Industries does this so often, it's a pretty legitimate fear for the meta-humans in that universe.
  • According to the backstory, at least — Crey never actually tries to do it to the player. The most they ever do is attempt to ruin your public image for getting too close to their CEO's big dark secret.
• In Digital Devil Saga 2, this trope is defended by Serph Sheffield.
  "Since when did people start expecting science to be humane? To study the body, you cut it open. To study the mind, you isolate it by crushing the heart. Historically, that's how science has advanced."
• Fallout: New Vegas: The resident Mad Scientists of the Big Mountain Research Facility are fond of this, needing no real excuse other than to do Science. Vivisection can get boring!
• Toyed with in Harvest Moon DS. Local Mad Scientist Daryl has been chasing the strange creature Mukumuku for years in an attempt to figure out how it works, and given the long and fantastic family history of genetic experimentation he brags of, it seems It Runs in the Family. So what happens when chance favors him, and he happens upon an injured mermaid girl? He takes her home to his basement, and... diligently cares for her until she recovers. And if you befriend said mermaid, she openly chastises you for daring to think Daryl would experiment on her.
• In inFAMOUS, Cole receives several warnings that the government wouldn't treat him kindly if they got their hands on him. It turns out to be a subversion: they already know how to endow someone with superpowers, they just want to control Cole and choose what direction he's pointed in since his powers are already very offensively oriented. Between the games, every government agent who has this goal for him is killed anyway. The mentalist Alden Tate, however, is vivisected.
• The Last of Us: The only chance of a cure being reverse-engineered from Ellie's immunity requires her death so her brain can be studied. Joel will not stand for it.
• In one of the bad endings of H-Game Madou Souhei Kleinhasa, Roze is experimented on by enemy scientists to find out how her magic works. It's implied that she doesn't survive their experiments.
• In Pokémon Sun and Moon, the player is given missions from the International Police to capture the Ultra Beasts (Pokémon from another dimension). Anabel and Looker believe that the UBs would be better off in the hands of a Pokémon trainer than sealed away in some laboratory.
• In [PROTOTYPE], if the Web Of Intrigue videos are anything to go by, this is one of GENTEK's goals regarding Alex Mercer. The problem with this, of course, is Mercer's Person of Mass Destruction status, his Healing Factor, and his propensity for playing dead/unconscious when he's finally cornered. Less than five seconds after the morgue security camera confirms that he's still there, his ex-boss turns around to find that Mercer is right behind him. Somehow.
• Resident doctor/nuttybar Shiro in Siren 1 does this to the Shibitofied Onda twins, experimenting on what, exactly, it would take to kill them. The answer is: nothing. Made especially Squicky when he tugs an unborn fetus out of Mina, the girl he had KILLED earlier in the plot, and proceeds to stamp on it. Lovely.
• "For Science!" is why Marquis DeSinge wants to capture the pox-infected Guybrush Threepwood (who has gained a prodigious Healing Factor) in Tales of Monkey Island.
• Raine has a tendency to want to do this with Noishe and Corrine in Tales of Symphonia.
• In Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, one quest sees a resourceful human capturing you and performing sick survivability experiments that you have to survive in order to get back at him.
• In the X-COM series, this is the standard procedure when dealing with captive aliens, but only the dead ones. Live ones are interrogated and then disposed of^note You actually get a corpse added to your base stores after an interrogation.
  • In the Firaxis remake, after the first interrogation (apparently, very painful), Dr. Vahlen tells your Number Two that the alien didn't survive the procedure. Indeed, none of the interrogated aliens do.
  • In The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, a different example in the form of using captured aliens for target practice.

Webcomics

• Charby the Vampirate: Charby figures that it's good to keep Zeno away from the lab in the cabin's basement since the poor kid has already had a run-in with a scientist who vivisected him alive. When Zeno does react to the lab, Charby is pleasantly surprised, though Tony seems to realize it's still bad that Zeno's freaking out, regardless of which emotion he's showing.
• In Dela the Hooda, the extradimensional fox hybrid Dela is warned against contacting Earth authorities because rumor has it that they dissect aliens. This potential problem is later resolved when the Men In Plaid (the Canadian division of the Men in Black, who wears plaid suits because the Canadian government can't afford fancy, black Italian suits) has a talk with her and decides let her go free.
• Girl Genius: This is one of the things sparks need to worry about. Especially from the Baron himself, in Othar's case.
  • However, Agatha once acknowledges that it's sometimes better than some alternatives.
• Parodied in Grrl Power here.
• In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, this trope is the reason Jean hasn't published any research papers about her Cute Monster Girl synthetic daughter, Molly, as depicted here.
• Jix: When Jix, Caligos, and Heleatra are captured by Area 51, the scientists attempt to vivisect Atra (despite one of them pointing out they could use an MRI), but her Healing Factor keeps closing up the incisions. Then it turns out the scientist who wanted to do the vivisection has a grudge against Jix stemming from the time they captured her android and attempted to take him apart.
• In Maggot Boy, the resident Mad Doctor Sutton vivisects the rare sapient zombies to study how they work. Since they're undead, it causes no lasting physical harm, but it's still pretty traumatic.
  "I'm not going to hurt you. Extensive testing has shown that's a physical impossibility!"
• This is why Roland has to keep Sadachbia's presence on the down-low in Not So Distant since Sadachbia is a large alien, who'd probably look great cut up on a table to Earth scientists.
• The talking raccoon, Woo, of Sandra and Woo mentions this when he first reveals this gift to Sandra, saying that he's kinda attached to his vocal cords, and asking her to keep it quiet. The danger is never mentioned again.
• This is the objective of the Coroner in Sidekick Girl. He's already killed one superhero by vivisection that we know of. The one he's most interested in (and has already captured once) is the title character, whose Healing Factor means that he can dissect her infinitely without her dying, allowing him more time to figure out how her powers work.
• Though she's a little confused about it on their first encounter with the FBI, this is later a thing Aylee in Sluggy Freelance fears. The humans she's living with assume the government would automatically perform a secret alien autopsy on her if they ever found out about her.
• When Vexxarr is first captured, the lab geeks started running tests on Minionbot, mostly consisting of finding out that none of their tools can affect his casing. They get as far as hammers before Minionbot gets mad.
  Minionbot: Ow! Right, enough! (grabs hammer) While subject does not appear to have any obvious connection points, I am sure that with correctly applied force it will disassemble nicely. I begin now with the elbow...

Web Original

• In the backstory to Red vs. Blue, this was the fate of the Alpha AI. The entire series plot thus far is (sometimes loosely) based around dealing with the repercussions of cutting it into pieces.
• Averted twice in The Salvation War. Once, the National Security Advisor attempts to get a succubus so that he can vivisect her, but George W. Bush prevents this — the succubus had already been offered sanctuary for defecting — so the advisor has to "make do" with dissecting corpses of daemons killed in war. Later, Abigor offers some of his soldiers so that they can be vivisected and humans can understand how demons are on the inside, but the general he is talking to tells him that it would be against their laws and doesn't follow the offer.
• Largely averted or subverted by the SCP Foundation, who largely take the place those traditionally experimenting on the Monster of the Week's corpse would. The Foundation tends to be interested in observing and containing subjects, destroying those too dangerous. It helps that they really don't want more of most SCPs, but the rare helpful ones avoid vivisection simply because there's no way to be sure it'd provide useful information, and there's usually only one. Of course, when that's not the case...
• Phase doesn't believe that this is a prevalent problem in the Whateley Universe. Even after his own family lets a Mad Scientist trank him and slap him on an operating table. Part of the backstory of The 'Verse is that Phase is wrong about this. Really wrong.

Western Animation

• This is the main reason Roger in American Dad! hides from the CIA. In one episode, he actually does get captured and is about to be cut up, but Stan saves him.
• American Dragon: Jake Long: Fu Dog tells Jake that humanity must never learn that magical creatures are real, saying that this would be the end result.
• Danny Phantom:
  • Danny's ghost-obsessed parents aren't getting ethics approval for their research and have explicitly said they'd like to dissect or kill any ghost they find "molecule by molecule". With Jack constantly shouting that when he catches the ghost kid, he will rip him apart, molecule by molecule, it's reasonably understandable. Then one episode has them find out and accept him, only for him to wipe their minds and causing them to go back to hunting him.
  • Also the Guys in White, and their famous quote from Reality Trip:
    "You're coming in for questioning—"
    "—and experiments. Lots and lots of really painful experiments."
• Four Eyes!: Emma has this specific fear if she is ever revealed as an alien among humans.
• This happens to Zoidberg in Futurama during the events of "Roswell That Ends Well". Fortunately, he has enough spare organs that he's not too bothered about it. He's also apparently conscious throughout this entire procedure.
  Surgeon: Contents of stomach: one deviled egg...
  Zoidberg: Deviled egg?! (gobbles the egg right out of the surgeon's hand)
  Surgeon: The same deviled egg...
• This is one of the justifications for the Gargoyles masquerade. Given that several of their bitterest enemies have discussed (or done) nasty things involving Gargoyle genes, it's quite justified.
  Goliath: Look at me, human! I would spend the rest of my life in a testing facility. Was my crime against you so horrible as to make that an equitable punishment?
• This is what Dib wants to do to Zim on Invader Zim. Unlike most of these examples, this is not entirely unjustified, especially since we see Zim conducting experiments on humans himself.
• Subverted in Johnny Test. Johnny doesn't want anyone to know that his dog Dukey can talk, because if they did they would make him a reality TV show! It makes sense, as there is no usual scientific data that could be gained from it that couldn't also be gained by, you know, just asking Susan and Mary, since they gave him all of those abilities. In one episode, the Network Executives are shown to scare even the Ax-Crazy Repto-Slicer.
• The Littles: In "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling", Mr. Finnigan catches Binky and mistakes him for a leprechaun. Mr. Finnigan wants to keep Binky in a Gilded Cage, but a scientist wants to take Binky and dissect him.
• Dr. XXX in the Mickey Mouse short The Mad Doctor actually sings a song about how he's a master at cutting bodies up and grafting parts to each other. He's first introduced as having planned to cut Pluto's freaking head off and graft it onto a chicken's body, just to see what sort of noise it would make. And he nearly cuts Mickey's stomach open with a HUGE buzz saw.
  • Specifically, Dr. XXX wants to graft Pluto's head onto a hen's body and then breed the result with a normal rooster to see if whatever hatches from the egg will cackle, crow, or bark.
• Very nearly carried out in the pilot episode of Street Sharks, to the point that the doctor has Slammu tied down to an operating table and heavily sedated before the others escape and save him. They then try to perform the same "explorative surgery" on the doctor with what is essentially a chainsaw before they have to escape.
• Averted in Superman: The Animated Series. Superman actually forms a public research pact with S.T.A.R. Labs so that everyone benefits from Kryptonian science. It later gets played straight when the authorities lose trust in Superman and covertly harvest DNA from Supergirl to create a government-loyal Super-Soldier.
• The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles take this trope to heart. Given that in the 2003 cartoon, the first thing that the government agent Bishop does when he captures them is to take their genetic material and try to dissect them, their fears are more than simple paranoia.
• In a very meta episode of The Transformers, several of the characters wind up on a planet inhabited by giant humanoids, to whom the Autobots are the size of toys. When a scientist gets hold of them, they do indeed try to dissect them. One might wonder how being tiny and mechanical plays into the decision.
• Blackarachnia left the Autobots in Transformers: Animated because she was afraid this would happen to her after she became techno-organic. Given the xenophobic nature of the High Command, she might not be too far off the mark.
• Referenced in Watch My Chops, when Corneil says to Bernie that he does not want anyone to know his secret for fear of being a laboratory specimen because he can talk.
  Bernie: Surprise! And I'm gonna play the cassette to John and Beth and then, hello, evening news!
  Corneil: Ah! And then, hello, animal research lab! Oh, Bernie! You can't!

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