Basic Trope: A cyborg becomes more and more inhuman as more stuff gets replaced.
- Straight: Dan increasingly loses his sense of self as more of him gets replaced with mechanical parts.
- Exaggerated: Dan gets a pacemaker and decides because of that the human race needs to die.
- Downplayed:
- Dan has much of his body replaced. He doesn't empathize easily with people afterwards.
- Dan jokingly refers to his friends as meatbags after getting a bionic implant.
- Dan already had serious psychological problems lurking under the surface. The replacement of most of his body with machinery brought those issues into the open.
- Implants are mostly neutral to positive in effect on people if it resolves a disability. However there are some negative psychological effects caused by discomfort with the concept of the implants, the somewhat disturbing need to take disassemble parts of oneself to do maintenance occasionally, or as a reminder of the traumatic events that lead to the transformation. It is treated as just another thing that psychologists need to keep an eye on.
- Properly applied cybernetic implants have no negative mental effects. In this cyberpunk world, most people who'd want or need to get cybered up can't afford the "properly applied" part, and of course there's side effects to letting a Back-Alley Doctor stick cables in your skull.
- In an Urban Fantasy work, getting chromed up screws with a mage's spell-casting abilities, and the feeling of their magical senses being "dulled" is very unpleasant. Muggles undergoing such procedures notice no negative side-effects.
- Justified:
- The psychological impact of being a cyborg distances Dan from humans.
- Dan's cyberware brought him Back from the Dead. He Came Back Wrong.
- Only people who are already comfortable with non-human existence are considered for cybernetic implants.
- The cybernetics damage adjacent tissues due to a Foreign body reaction, this leads to parts of Dan's organic body gradually failing and needing to be replaced with more cybernetic implants that along with causing more tissue damage are imperfect for emulating the function of the organs they replace, This causes a large amount of cumulative damage to his brain that results in violent dementia.
- Dan's implants are hideous and painful. Constant pain and rejection cause him to lash out, and the extra strength imparted by his implants makes him exceedingly dangerous.
- One or more hormone-secreting gland was removed during Dan's cyber-augmentation surgery. The loss of that hormone equals the loss of the emotion associated with it. Cue Sense Loss Sadness.
- Cyber-augmentation is mindbreakingly traumatic, and is likened to rape or a similar crime.
- The accident that forced Dan to become a cyborg damaged parts of his brain. Turns out just a microprocessor isn't a proper replacement for an amygdala.
- All machines can malfunction, especially highly experimental ones. Joints locking up, mechanical parts failing to fall asleep with what's left of his organic self, and constantly losing the signal from the camera that replaced his left eye are just a few of the many ways that being a walking prototype is hazardous to his mental health.
- Brain surgery is a very delicate procedure, and even the slightest misplacement can result in a neural implant affecting regions of the brain that it's not normally supposed to.
- The interactions between the implanted cyberware and Dan's brain neurons for whatever reasons (different voltages, current surges, electrical arcs caused by misconnections, messing ups with neurotransmitters...) mess up the latter causing him to lose empathy. The more cyberimplants he gets, the more this happens as it's very difficult to integrate silicon with wetware.
- The technology behind the implants is specifically designed to alter and subvert the wearer's consciousness.
- Even if neurons are OK with cybernetics, the latter and support cells of the nervous system
have a stormy relationship at best which messes with Dan's personality, despite all efforts to prevent it. - Dan is weak willed and develops Acquired Situational Narcissism from his augmentations.
- Inverted:
- Dan was a sociopath until he got an Emotion Chip.
- The living robot Steelidan becomes increasingly savage and animalistic as he upgrades himself with Organic Technology.
- A character was already crazy, and they become a cyborg for other reasons (getting more power is a common motivation).
- Same as above but said character's aggressive personality actually causes his cybernetics to go haywire and become more apparent, while the same tech would be seamless in a sane individual.
- Becoming more 'human' in personality is bad for cybernetics. Robots who develop a personality or attempt to Become a Real Boy will start falling apart despite any repair efforts that don't erase their personality.
- Cybernetics are required to become 'more-souled' - showing a greater degree of passion, vision, awareness, sanity, and rationality. Moral Myopia and A Million Is a Statistic doesn't apply to them.
- For whatever reason, Dan actually feels like he's closer to humanity after getting cybernetic implants - maybe because they enhance abilities he already had.
- Cybernetics improve Dan's mental health because they regulate his emotions, as opposed to removing them outright.
- Subverted:
- Dan is a sociopath after getting his implants. His psych profile from before he was implanted show he was a sociopath before, the added abilities from cybernetics just made him feel like he could take the mask off.
- Cyborg Dan becomes a Tin Man.
- Alternatively, people expect Cyborg Dan to become inhuman because of prevailing attitudes towards cybernetics, but he doesn't.
- After Dan's augmentation is complete, he rises from the operating table with a blank expression and mutters in Machine Monotone "I am operational." He then laughs and says he's always wanted to do that.
- The inhumanity is because Dan's body is effectively a corpse being remoted piloted by hacked cyberware. Alive cyborgs are just as human as anybody else.
- Dan acts colder and harsher after he receives his cybernetics, but it turns out this is due to PTSD and/or brain damage from the accident that made him need rebuilding. Further implantation offsets or cures his mental trauma.
- Cyborg Dan has trouble expressing emotions because his face and vocal cords were replaced, but he's just as capable of feeling as anyone else.
- Double Subverted: Cyborg Dan has very convincing software to emulate emotions in a Tin Man like way, but it's just to enforce his role as a Manchurian Agent.
- Parodied:
- "I mean, being a cyborg's great, but we don't have emotions anymore, and sometimes that makes me very sad."
- A group of pirates have a discussion about how getting too many hook hands, peg legs, and eyepatches eats your soul.
- Dan mistreats and openly berates amputees with prosthetic limbs, people with pacemakers, or cochlear implants as abominations. Everybody else looks at him with disgust and asks what the hell is wrong with him.
- Zig Zagged:
- Cyborg Dan's a fake Tin Man Manchurian Agent who develops real emotions because of the software meant to fake it, but then turns out that he likes his sociopathic personality.
- Cyborg Dan spends most of the first half of the movie doing his best to stay 'cultured' even with his robotic enhancements, from attending festivals to volunteering in Soup Kitchens to even babysitting a group of young girls, trying his hardest to appear soulful to others. Until his main Morality Pet undergoes a Disney Death, and he goes crazy evil in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, only for the Morality Pet to wake up from the Disney Death and snap him out of it, turning into a Tear Jerker scene where he hugs his pet tightly crying his eyes out, saying he 'doesn't want to be evil'. But then the main villain who created Dan in the first place shows up and takes matters into his own hands, forcing Dan to destroy things against his will and with him at full consciousness.
- Getting a replacement prosthesis (which might even work better than the original) is ok, Smug Super notwithstanding, but getting heavy machinery and guns implanted makes Dan go crazy, because natural-as-possible prosthetics are instinctively understood, while the programming for cranes and guns need to be downloaded into the brain, where they gradually over-write his personality. But even once that's fixed, just having the guns there in the first place makes it it really, really tempting to use them.
- The reason Cyborg Dan is dissociated with his emotions is because of the long history of violence and nearly getting killed turning him into a Shell-Shocked Veteran. It is specifically noted as a side effect of the military only paying attention to combat capability and lack of mental health. Cybernetics did allow it as he would have died several times already without it but so would regeneration and staying pure flesh.
- Averted: Cyborg Dan is not any more inhuman in personality as when he was a full human.
- Enforced:
- The show's premise is that everyone has a light side, but a darker character is also needed. So they made him a cyborg to justify negative feelings and others' prejudices.
- Sanity damage is a way of keeping cyborg characters from becoming Game Breakers.
- Lampshaded: "Ever notice how Dan's been acting more and more distant since his implants?"
- Invoked:
- "We will remove all those pesky emotions and replace them with emotionless computers."
- Dan hates his emotions and uses cybernetics to make them as weak as possible, turning him into a being of "perfect logic."
- Exploited:
- Dan uses his cybernetic implants to justify his Lack of Empathy. However, the truth is that he was a massive Jerkass long before they were installed, they haven't altered his personality at all!
- The Big Bad gives all his mooks cybernetic upgrades at least partially for the purpose of making them more willing to do evil in his name.
- In the face of the threat caused by EldritchAbominations that can cause people to lose sanity just by looking at them The Hidden Shield decides to augment their operatives. While previously disused after its effect on mental health it not only augments them to keep up but most importantly helps stay sane in face of the threat. Their agents know the hazard and take it willingly to protect humanity.
- Defied:
- "No, just because I got a prosthetic arm does not mean I will go nuts."
- Dan sees to it that he at least has his human brain.
- Dan gets bionic replacements for the parts of his endocrine system that were removed, or an emotion chip, and he goes back to acting as pleasant as he used to be.
- Dan finds a painkiller/antirejection drug that makes his bionics more tolerable, and a girlfriend (or boyfriend) who thinks cyberware is sexy.
- Discussed: "Oh, man, Dan's lost an arm! We need to find his real one and reattach it or else he'll need a cybernetic replacement and then he'll go crazy!" "... his arm will make him go crazy?"
- "Am I any lesser because I replaced what I lost?" "No, Dan. You're still you. You'll always be the Dan I know."
- Conversed:
- "Why is it that every time someone becomes a cyborg in shows like this, they always go nuts? Did Transhumanists steal the writer's lunch money or something?"
- A disability advocacy group talks about how this trope can contribute to stereotyping.
- Implied:
- A hacker accesses the military's psychological profiles sorted by augmented and unaugmented soldiers. Despite there being far fewer augmented ones, their profiles take up far more memory.
- Cyborg enemies appear far angrier than organic soldiers but at that point the protagonist will have also done far more against their foes as well.
- A criminal database contains profiles of both plain humans and cyborgs. The cyborgs are shown to have much larger, more detailed rap sheets than the rest.
- Deconstructed:
- Characters who get cyborg parts justify their own coldness to themselves, blaming the parts, and so grow more cold; other characters assume in advance that they will be cold and treat them accordingly, giving them little motive to act different.
- The ugly implications are brought to the forefront as it effectively becomes a narcissistic form of ableism and classism as opponents to cybernetics callously tell them to remain "pure" instead of repairing problems from disability, possibly caused by their job to spare them from feeling uncomfortable by looking at their miracle cure. The alienating prejudice makes it next to impossible to tell if violent cyborgs snapped from the implants themselves, a sense of power, or from being treated as not even human for so long.
- Combined with defied: Dan the cyborg asks what makes him any different from an amputee with a plastic prosthetic leg.
- Reconstructed:
- Characters who get cyborg parts believe the idea is nonsense, but gradually grow apart from the rest of humanity as they forget the limitations they had before their upgrades.
- Obsessive augmentation is similar to plastic surgery addiction, and is more of a behavior disorder stemming from the person rather than from the implants themselves.
- Cybernetics destroying your soul only applies if the brain is changed in any way, due to the brain being a very delicate organ in command of the entire body. Any other body parts can have lesser effects that can be overcome with therapy, healing, and time, but adding cybernetics to brain matter is far more damaging and possibly permanent. Therefore, the majority of cyborgs in the setting are basically just normal people with metal bits on them. It's the ones that had brain-altering augments that are dangerous because their brains have been messed with.
- Played For Laughs:
- Dan believes he got a robotic arm, and suddenly starts drinking motor oil and plotting the Robot War. Dan attends meetings by robots and makes out with his computer. At the end, someone points out to Dan that his arm was never actually replaced, and he sheepishly reverts to normal.
- Alternately, Dan gets a robotic arm and it doesn't affect his personality, but he uses this trope to play a joke on everyone who thought it would. The "motor oil" turns out to be just really strong coffee, and the rest was just an act.
- Dan indulges into Breaking In Old Habits, and awkwardness ensues as a "certain piece of equipment" has been replaced with a cybernetic equivalent. The revelation makes him extremely wangsty as he starts questioning his humanity.
- Played For Drama: Dan gets a robot arm and comes home from the hospital. His wife acts strangely toward him, despite his insistence that nothing is different. Dan goes out drinking with his friends, but they find he's not as much fun to hang out with now. In reality, Dan's behavior is quite a bit colder than usual, and he seems to be incapable of relating to others, all without realizing it. Dan's steadily changing behavior eventually drives everyone close to him away, and Dan rips his robotic arm off in a fit of despair. Even this isn't enough to return him to normal, and Dan is Driven to Suicide. Dan's friends and family lament at his funeral that he would have been far better off with no arm at all.
- Plotted A Good Waste: This is used to explore whether humans would be better or worse off with cyberware specifically designed to suppress emotions.
Back to Cybernetics Eat Your Soul, worthless human.
