Basic Trope: Psychic or mental torture.
- Straight: Dr. Evulz uses his psychic powers to let Alice relive her most painful memories.
- Exaggerated:
- Dr. Evulz's psychic powers cause every living being on earth to live in a state of constant mental pain.
- Dr. Evulz unleashes his psychic powers into the entire multiverse, causing everyone, except Dr. Evulz, to relive the most traumatic experience they've ever had.
- Downplayed: Dr. Evulz's powers make Alice feel slightly grumpy and annoyed.
- Justified:
- Evulz is an Eldritch Abomination.
- Evulz is attempting to break Alice's will so he can mold her into his personal enforcer.
- Evulz just feels like breaking Alice's mind.
- Inverted:
- Evulz uses his power to make Alice live in a state of constant bliss.
- Evulz cures Alice of all her mental trauma.
- Subverted: Evulz uses his Telepathy on Alice and she ends up screaming in pain- Because undoing all her psychological trauma is rather painful.
- Double Subverted: ...Though he only did so in order to make the psychological torture he's about to inflict so much worse on Alice's newly trauma-free end.
- Parodied: Dr. Evulz uses his psychic powers to make everyone in the town of Tropesville constantly feel that they have a piece of hair in their tongue. Everyone treats this like their limbs have been pulled out.
- Zig-Zagged: Dr. Evulz uses his Telepathy on Alice to painfully undo her psychological trauma, only to inflict his own psychological torture... which is actually meant to make her mind stronger.
- Averted: No one uses any kind of psychological torture on anyone.
- Enforced: "We can't spend our entire special effects budget on fancy battles- So let's have Evulz just give people trauma until the two-part finale."
- Lampshaded: "Holy crap, what kind of messed up mind is even able to break others so!?"
- Invoked: Evulz, having no time to waste on superpowered brawls, simply psychically tortures all his foes into submission.
- Exploited: Alice, knowing she's a latent Neo-Human, goads Evulz into psychically torturing her so she'll experience a Traumatic Superpower Awakening.
- Defied: Evulz refuses to use psychological torture because he sees it as a horrible and disgusting thing.
- Discussed: "You'd think that if you were to use mental torture to make someone surrender to you, you'd be pretty messed-up.
- Conversed: "Dr. Evulz may not be strong, but he can plant things in your mind that will really hurt.
- Implied: Alice confronts Evulz, who boasts that he can break her in an instant. Cut to a scene of Alice, having retreated from battle with no sign of injury, but looking absolutely traumatised regardless.
- Deconstructed:
- To be a successful mental torturer Evulz needs to understand what's so torturous, meaning he's highly familiar with all of humanity's depravity and crimes- Though the fact he's willing to inflict that kind of madness on others proves his own disregard and insanity.
- Evulz's mental torture may damage any sane people's minds, but it proves ineffective to those who already are insane, and the ones who have long risen above their inner demons. This combined with no physical combat skills, forces him to run away and abandon his evil plans.
- Evulz' attempts to mental torture others naturally goes awry when dealing with someone with Blue-and-Orange Morality, since their entire concept of what's Good & Bad is radically different from Evulz and conventional morality. Thus, he's unable to do much more than distract them.
- Reconstructed:
- Though Evulz needs to understand the mind in order to torture others, studying neurology and psychology is a perfect angle- Thus allowing him to simply turn the mind's own processes against it, and while he may come off as terrifying, he isn't considered especially deranged or "inhuman".
- Though torturing one's morality is one avenue, Evulz instead makes do with overwhelming their minds.
- Played for Laughs:
- Dr. Evulz makes Alice relive that one time she was really naughty and stole from her parents. Alice is super embarrassed.
- Dr. Evulz uses his powers to make Alice live through the most painful experience known to man... biting into a raisin muffin when expecting chocolate chips.
- Played for Drama: Dr. Evulz breaks Alice with psychological torture. Her teammates then have to save Alice from her trauma.
- Player for Horror: Dr. Evulz takes the psychological torture too far, causing Alice to flip out, turn into a monster and destroy everything, from Evulz himself to her own teammates.
Go back to Mind Rape before I make you see things in your mind that are so bad you'll go there anyway.
