Basic Trope: A character is rebuilt as one of the Big Bad's mooks.
- Straight: Rick is gravely injured in a fight against Dr. Death. He is then brainwashed and rebuilt as a cyborg mook.
- Exaggerated: Rick is completely annihilated in a battle, but Dr. Death captures and corrupts his soul over several years. He merges Rick's soul with his old master’s soul to create an unfathomably evil threat to the world.
- Downplayed: Dr. Death patches up a wounded Rick after a minor fight and then appeals to his already existing jealousy of Alex.
- Justified: Dr. Death specializes in creating cyborgs. He held a particular grudge against Rick and knows that being a mook would be a Fate Worse than Death.
- Inverted: Rick reforges a dying Dr. Death, and forces him to do a Heel–Face Turn.
- Subverted: Dr. Death’s brainwashing fails. Now Rick becomes the Lightning Bruiser cyborg for the heroes and hence a major thorn on Dr. Death's side.
- Double Subverted: …but it turns out Dr.Death’s brainwashing was more effective than we thought.
- Parodied: Rick is reforged into Dr. Death’s evil Roomba that just annoys the heroes.
- Zig-Zagged: Rick is reforged as a minion early on, but is quickly caught in the Heel–Face Revolving Door. His sanity, morality, and allegiance are constantly in question as he bounces between factions, eventually landing on Anti-Hero Outlaw.
- Averted: Rick never falls into Dr. Death’s clutches.
- Enforced: The creators wanted to add some drama, so they made a protagonist become an antagonist.
- Lampshaded: “Dr. Death turned Rick into one of his little freaky robot mooks! He must be so pissed off under his reprogramming.
- Invoked: Fighting your brainwashed former friend to the death is great psychological warfare, that's why Dr. Death openly prefers taking his enemies prisoner to wiping them out when he has the chance.
- Exploited: The heroes deliberately leave Rick (or a clone of him) to get reprogrammed by Dr Death, knowing that Dr Death will be so distracted that they can storm his fortress and get what they need from him.
- The heroes all plan to set a device that will destroy all of Dr Death's Mecha-Mooks. Rick volunteers to be sacrificed so that when he's been reforged, he'll be in close proximity to them to activate the device.
- Defied: Rick has seen what Dr. Death does to prisoners and would rather die than fall into his hands.
- Discussed: "I'm not leaving you behind just for Dr. Death to turn you into some mindless robo-soldier in his army."
- Conversed: "Rick's back, but he's half-lizard now and he's working for Dr. Death. Probably only going to last the rest of the season before he's back to normal."
- Implied: Cyborg Admiral Drake has a suspiciously similar costume and build to the missing Captain Nova. Though nothing is confirmed.
- Deconstructed: Brainwashing can only be so effective. Rick still bitterly hates Dr. Death but follows his command to keep up appearances as he plots his downfall. Yet, he is no ally to our heroes. They left him to die and he will have his vengeance. Eventually, Dr.Death may find out about Rick’s plotting and it won’t be pretty.
- Rick is Forced to Watch as his body acts against him and is unable to do anything about it. During his fight with the heroes, the stress of his newfound cognitive dissonance ends up making him less effective, causing him to get trounced during the fight.
- Reconstructed: Rick's second reprogramming is far more effective, creating a perfect, mindless killing machine that can be ordered about at Dr. Death's will.
- Played for Laughs: Rick is a laughably poor mook. He rarely follows orders, remains on remarkably good terms with his former allies, and only uses his new super powers to slack off.
- Played for Horror: All of Rick’s personality, values, and characteristics have been wiped away and replaced by a cold and unfeeling bionic stare.
Back to [Reforged into a Minion]
