Basic Trope: A Face–Heel Turn caused by torture.
- Straight: Bob is tortured by Alice, which eventually makes him turn to her side.
- Exaggerated:
- It takes the space of five minutes to make Bob switch.
- Alice got all her allies this way.
- Downplayed:
- Defeat Means Friendship
- Bob becomes a broken man and does not quite join Alice, but doesn’t have any will to oppose her ether.
- Bob becomes an Anti-Hero or Anti-Villain rather than full evil.
- Bob doesn't become a villain specifically through the torture, but it does make him cynical and begins his Start of Darkness towards it.
- Bob becomes a villain, but he still hates Alice and is working to bring her down.
- Justified:
- Bob was already considering leaving the group, but the stress of torture, along with the fact he was abandoned by his supposed friends, is enough to push him over the edge.
- Alice is trying to Put Them All Out of My Misery, and is trying to inflict the same tortures on Bob that she regularly experiences so he will understand why she is going to such lengths.
- The torture also involves a form of brainwashing.
- Bob becomes evil because he wants revenge on whoever tortured him. (He may or may not be misguided as to who he's giving this revenge to.)
- Bob is a Dirty Coward and when being asked whether to be tortured or join the other side, he picks the latter.
- Inverted:
- Alice is tortured, and then seeks redemption for her previous crimes.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal.
- Subverted: It seems like Bob’s torture made him join Alice’s side, but when the rest of the heroes arrive he soon betrays her as they always planned.
- Double Subverted: However, a rant-inducing slight by one of his allies makes him turn evil for real and kill him in a fit of rage…just like Alice planned.
- Parodied:Bob: I’ll never join you! Never!
Alice: Not even after listening to 10 hours of Celine Dion?
Bob: …So, when do I start?- In a Crapsack World it is played for Black Comedy from tautologies. King Bob decries people who are tortured are evil therefore it is wrong to release them and right to keep on torturing them. It is no wonder that anyone subjected to snaps and decides that killing everyone is the best option.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: No torture is performed.
- Enforced: The author wants to send a message about how torture is inhumane.
- Lampshaded:
- “Why are you fighting me? I’m not the one who tormented you!”
- “I will share my pain with the WORLD!”
- Invoked: Alice thinks that she and Bob can rule together, and decides to show it the only way she knows how.
- Exploited: Bob is The Mole, and fakes cracking under torture to integrate himself to Alice.
- Defied: Bob tells Alice to her face that that’s not how torture works, and the second he’s rescued he returns to fighting her.
- Discussed: "The tortured often become dependent on their captors…if only to make the pain stop."
- Conversed: “On one hand I don’t think that’s really a realistic reaction to torture, but at the same time I don’t think I could hold out, if I was in Bob’s shoes.”
- Implied: Bob is covered in scars and bondage gear, seems to have a manic fear of Alice despite being her loyal underling, and Alice is a well-known Torture Technician.
- Deconstructed: Bob may have turned evil…But that doesn’t make him loyal. As soon as he has the power and the opportunity, he turns against his master, and starts rampaging on his own.
- Reconstructed:
- This is what Alice wanted all along; A Wild Card, that unwillingly runs inference for her actual plans and makes it seem like she’s on the back foot.
- It’s still one less ally to the heroes, and Bob damages their psychological wellbeing just by existing: he’s a physical embodiment of their greatest failure.
Back to Being Tortured Makes You Evil
