Quotes / Dark Lord on Life Support

Audio Plays

"Understand this. I have been given clarity. I see the world as it truly is, not filtered through the limits of flesh. I know that I will live only as long as my life support chariot continues to function. For the first time in my life, I understand what it is to live without fear, and I know now that for the sake of our people, I must always feel like this, never knowing any limits! I know! It is time! For me! To fulfill! My destiny!"

— Davros, Big Finish Doctor Who: I, Davros — Corruption

Comic Books

Inspector McNab: That's Harry Cooper?
Norman Cooper: Cryin' fuckin' shame.
McNab: Well... well what in god's name happened to him?
Cooper: He's not well.

— Hellblazer: Son of Man

"I never considered myself a lucky man. Never won a raffle, never made a dime on the ponies... but then the doctors that told me I had developed a rare disease. Eisenstein Syndrome. Affects one in two point five million people. It eats you from the inside... starting from the nervous system... ending with the brain. How's that for lucky? They smiled and gave me two months. Told me to live life to the fullest... but to come back for a visit... which I did... but not before I built this little wonder. It eats matter and converts it into energy, energy that feeds the disease... keeps me alive. It borrows time... but it gets so hungry. Which I apologize for... but little girls just taste better than doctors."

— Dr. Terminal, The Umbrella Academy

Film — Live-Action

"See what I've become? See what I must do to survive? Live off another! A mere parasite!"

— Voldemort on himself, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

CIA Agent: If I pull that off, will you die?
Bane: It would be extremely painful...
Agent: You're a big guy.
Bane: ...for you.

— The Dark Knight Rises

"The cosmic irony, L-Ron — I who have destroyed a world am now forced to subsist like a parasite. Once, infinite power was my manifest. Now look at the pride of Colu — feeble attempts to maintain even this meager anthropomorphic form!"

— Brainiac, unproduced Superman Lives script by Kevin Smith

"He's more machine now than man. Twisted and evil."

— Obi-Wan Kenobi on Darth Vader, Return of the Jedi

Literature

Up close, the Man was discernible by dozens of tiny tell-tales. Feet naturally picked up dirt, and so outlines that looked like grubby ankle-socks stamped up and down against the cold. Ten black crescents — dirt under fingernails. A shell-like spiral of clotted blood lining an infected invisible ear. A wrinkled mottled sleeve of grey, dead skin. Irregular black discs that floated — breaks in bones set but not healed, suggesting a body bent and crooked by age and abuse. A squeezed tube of digested food, palely transparent in the twisted bulb of the stomach, blackening in the wrap of the lower bowel to form what looked like a nasty obstruction. And the dark tendrils winding around bone and through the meat, making unhealthy balloons of the weakly pulsing lung-sacs. He'd seen enough friends pass to recognize the symptoms. The crab. He knew the Man was a heavy smoker, liked to take the smoke in and fill out the shape of his gullet and lungs as a party piece. Now he was paying for it.

— The Chill Clutch of The Unknown, by Kim Newman

On the table was strapped the very first patient of the EmPalSurRecon Center. To some eyes, it might have been a pieced-together hybrid of droid and human, encased in a life-support shell of gleaming black, managed by a thoracic processor that winked pale color against the shadow's cloak. To some eyes, its jointed limbs might have looked ungainly, clumsy, even monstrous; the featureless curves of black that served at its eyes might have appeared inhuman, and the underthrust grillwork of its vocabulator might have suggested the jaws of a saurian predator built of polished blast armor, but to the shadow—
It was glorious.
A magnificent jewel box, created both to protect and to exhibit the greatest treasure of the Sith.
Terrifying.
Mesmerizing.
Perfect.

— Revenge of the Sith

Live-Action TV

"What Genoa is to salami, Scalisi is to organized crime. Statesman, politician, field marshal. Space-age Garibaldi. He's bedridden now, but that old barracuda does more business from a brass four-poster than a houseful of hookers."

— Sgt. Geno Polucci, Kojak, "The Chinatown Murders"

The Doctor: To find enough energy to fuel those dams, you'd need to ransack entire planets.
Kimus: So whole other worlds have been destroyed with the sole purpose of keeping that alive?

— Doctor Who, "The Pirate Planet"

"A life support system. In a society that despises cyborgs. I've had to hide away for years, running the company by hologram!"

— Max Capricorn, Doctor Who, "Voyage of the Damned"

"Thermal regulator suit. Cooling rods inserted directly into his brain. Tell me the rumors are true. Please tell me your search for thermic constancy is tormentful!"

— Saskaretski Cargn to Scorpius, Farscape, "Look at the Princess, Pt. 3"

Tabletop Games

Confined to a hospital bed and in constant, tearing agony from his lung condition, Dexter still clings to his full faculties through a combination of sheer stubbornness and his son's sadism. Jeremy has taken great pains to make sure that his father's body disintegrates first, and then his mind, so that he can savor the old man's awareness of his own disintegration. That just might be Jeremy's undoing...

— Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Subsidiaries: A Guide to Pentex

Here lies Tremere, who rarely emerges from torpor - one with symptoms that, to the consternation of his clan, seem unlike anything else in their study of Cainite lore. Although unconscious and insensate, he thrashes about on his elaborately carved oaken bed; he is always attended to by at least two Cainite apprentices, who see to it that he does not injure himself in his tremors.... The apprentices are not permitted to speak of Tremere's condition: over the years, Therimna has killed several for breaking this admonition. Thus, no one save Etrius knows that Tremere frequently breaks from his torpor to speak, that he does so in two distinct voices, and that one of the voices speaks in a tongue none of them recognize. Nor are they anxious to describe his periodic changes in appearance: sometimes his arms recede into his torso and his legs fuse together; his already-pale skin sometimes becomes glossy and grub-white. New eyes bubble up like buboes on his forehead, only to pop in an eruption of pus and caustic vapors.

— Vampire: The Dark Ages — House of Tremere

Although his body had been all but broken, the prince of Nagarythe had clung to life. Bitterness and anger had fuelled Malekith's will, sustaining him through the long years of agony that he had endured. The burning would never stop, and so Hotek fused his newly-forged armour directly to Malekith's body. Clad in a rune-etched skin of black steel, Malekith could once again lead his armies. Swearing oaths of revenge and bargaining his soul to forbidden gods, Malekith grew in sorcerous power. He was no longer the prince of Nagarythe: he would forever more be known as the Witch King.

— Warhammer: Dark Elves Army Book (7th Edition)

Video Games

"This is Billy Hope's lungs. His liver. His life support. A machine the size of a football stadium to keep one lunatic alive. Fuck it all. Break it all. He has to die."

— Miles Upshur, Outlast

"The bean counters told me we literally could not afford to buy seven dollars worth of moon rocks, much less seventy million. Bought 'em anyway. Ground 'em up, mixed 'em into a gel. And guess what? Ground up moon rocks are pure poison. I am deathly ill. Still, it turns out they're a great portal conductor. So now, we're gonna see if jumping in and out of these new portals can somehow leech the lunar poison out of a man's bloodstream. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Let's all stay positive and do some science! That said, I would really appreciate it if you could test as fast as possible. Caroline, please bring me more pain pills..."

— Cave Johnson, Portal 2

Loyalist Assassin: You dare approach Ra's Al Ghul?
Batman: You've brought him back too many times. The Lazarus stream's all that's keeping him alive.

— Batman: Arkham Knight

"My body has been seated in the same chair for two hundred years. It's sustained by machines. Were I to so much as stand up, my body would crumble to dust. But here, I've moved beyond that frail physical form: I am so much more here..."

— Stanislaus Braun, Fallout 3

The Courier: How have you stayed alive all this time?
Mr. House: Let's just say it was very... costly. But I was willing to make the sacrifices longevity entailed, financial and otherwise.

— Fallout: New Vegas

"My primary patient is no longer mobile. A loss of bone density coupled with the amount of organ maintenance that I have to perform on a daily basis means that he will be bound to a chair or bed for the foreseeable future. While this greatly agitated the subject at first, he quickly grew too fatigued to offer further protest. I cleared a room close to my lab, but with access to the mill so he could continue to give orders..."

— Nurse Trimble on the treatment of "The Geezer", Dishonored: The Brigmore Witches

Web Original

The man known as "Mr. Carter" gazed at the assembled members of his organization. They stared back, impassively. On the back of Carter's wheelchair, Franklin gazed sightlessly through milky eyes, his body twitching spasmodically every few seconds. Blood ran through clear tubes that extended from his back into Carter. His heart, fatigued though it was through working for two bodies, pumped steadily. The iron rings that suspended him to the chair squeaked slightly, as an involuntary muscle spasm twitched the stump of the limb it was attached to. Perspiration gleamed on the scar from his lobotomy.

— SCP Foundation, "Taking Stock"

Western Animation

Batman: Bane...! [cue panned look over the former villain's broken body and Batman's horrified look before turning towards a nurse] What happened to him?
Nurse: Too many years on Venom. That's what the stuff'll do to ya.

— Batman Beyond, "The Winning Edge"

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