Restraining Bolts in Live-Action Films.
- At the end of The Brother from Another Planet, when his hunters locate him, the Brother's attempt to run away is stopped by a device which they have and which is somehow connected to him.
- Danny the Dog: The titular character is a man who has been raised as an attack dog and used as an enforcer for a loan shark. Danny wears a metal collar around his neck; he's conditioned to kill when it's removed and to remain docile if it's in place.
- In Deadpool (2016), this is the basis for the corporation which Francis/Ajax works for — they make Super Soldiers controlled via an electronic collar to be sold to the highest bidder. Francis specifically says this during Wade's torture (to encourage his mutation).
- Demolition Man: Simon Phoenix can't kill Raymond Cocteau due to one of these. Not that it helps; Phoenix just orders his unrestrained convict gang to do it for him instead.
- Face/Off features a prison facility where the inmates have to wear big magnetic boots which can be activated to stop them from moving.
- Future World (2018): Ash is initially compelled to obey whatever orders the Warlord issues her with a control device he has. It soon turns out she's capable of rebelling though, and breaks free in concert with a prisoner while the connection to the control device is damaged. She's not sure how this is possible at first, saying she must be malfunctioning. Eventually it's revealed she surpassed this control on her own, and she disobeys his orders to kill her loved ones.
- In Hell Comes to Frogtown, Sam Hell has his balls clamped with a codpiece bomb that will detonate if he defies the government's order to rescue some hot women from captivity and have steamy, procreational sex with them.
- The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) modernizes the story with Moreau using genetic engineering to turn animals into humans instead of vivisection like the original novel, which means instead of sending Beast Folk to the House of Pain to be brought into line, he has each Beast Folk implanted with a microchip which he activates with a remote control to discipline them. Some Beast Folk figure this out and remove theirs, understandably shocking Moreau when he futilely tries to force them into submission before they kill him.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- A variation in Captain Marvel (2019): Carol wears a chip on her neck as a Power Limiter due to the sheer scope of her abilities. In the final battle, Carol refuses to be suppressed by the Kree any longer and destroys it, opting to trust herself as the final authority on her own power.
- Spider-Man: No Way Home: When Doctor Octopus damages Spider-Man's nanotech armor and intercepts a good chunk of it, he applies it to his mechanical tentacles as an additional external layer. Peter uses it to connect the tentacles to his armor's neural interface and takes their A.I. over, preventing them from moving independently. The arms are used like this to restrain Doc Ock during the entirety of the second act until Peter manages to restore his sanity by installing a replacement bolt for the one that broke on his tentacles.
- Mystery Men: The Bowler's ball, containing the soul and skull of her dead father, compelled her to avenge his death. At the end of the film, she asks it if she can finally go back to grad school now.
- In Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, the Red Queen is programmed to be unable to harm any Umbrella employee, so she asks Alice to do it for her. As soon as Alicia Marcus fires Albert Wesker, the Red Queen crushes him with a door.
- RoboCop:
- In RoboCop (1987), RoboCop has psychological conditioning to keep him from going rogue, notably the "Prime Directives" coded into his cybernetics that causes a lock-up of his cyber-parts if he attempts to defy them, which he does several times (since his brain is still "his", he can still think freely). The Directives themselves seem innocent enough — "serve the public trust", "protect the innocent", "uphold the law" — except one that's "(classified)", only revealed to Robocop when he tries to violate it ("never oppose an OCP officer"). He finally gets around it by revealing the Big Bad's crimes to the CEO of OCP, who promptly fires said Big Bad, allowing Robo to summarily blast him.
- In RoboCop 2, OCP programmers load RoboCop full of additional directives to make him more politically correct, causing him to become completely incapable of effective crime fighting. To get around this, Robo finds a loophole (the new directives don't say he can't attempt to remove them) and deliberately shorts himself out. When he "reboots", all of the directives (including the original four) are wiped clean and he is no longer compelled to follow them.
- In the Star Wars franchise, in addition to a literal restraining bolt once used on R2-D2, droids often complain that their programming prohibits them from doing something.
- C-3PO, for example, complains that he is forbidden by his programming from impersonating a deity. This particular example implies different levels of programming in a droid, for example: A. Things the droid can do of its own volition (its primary function), B. Things a droid can do only when specifically ordered (impersonating a deity, "letting the Wookiee win", etc.), and C. Things a droid can't do even if ordered (killing). The restriction concerning impersonating a deity doesn't seem to be a "restraining bolt" issue so much as programming. C-3PO says that it's against his programming and wouldn't be proper (which makes sense considering he's a protocol droid), but when Luke specifically tells him to do it, he does so. Therefore, it doesn't seem to be forbidden so much as undesirable.
- In A New Hope, C-3PO is hiding after R2-D2 took off looking for Ben Kenobi (after having tricked Luke into removing his own restraining bolt earlier). Luke calls for C-3PO and when he doesn't respond, pushes a button that causes Threepio to jump out like he'd been shocked.
- In The Rise of Skywalker, C-3PO is revealed to have a restraining bolt that prevents him from translating the Sith language. While the heroes eventually find a droid-smith who can override this, it also results in C-3PO's entire memory being wiped. However, R2-D2 has kept a backup of his fellow droid's memories, restoring him.
- Droids can also be built and programmed without such restraints. It's shown to be a bad idea with the activation of the assassin droid IG-88, who proceeded to kill the scientists who created him, activate his three "brothers" and an older IG-72 droid, and plots a robot revolution for universal domination.
- Doctor Otto Octavius of Spider-Man 2 invented robot arms surgically attached to his spine and wired to his brain for use in his solar fusion experiments. Because the tentacles are artificially intelligent, he has a computer chip in place to keep them under his control and prevent mental feedback from messing with his head. A Freak Lab Accident fries this chip, allowing the tentacles to influence his mind into doing whatever it takes to complete his experiment, turning him into Doctor Octopus.
- Terminator: Skynet, the rogue military system which started a Robot War against humanity, sets the CPUs of the titular machines to read-only so they won't go against its pre-programmed orders. As shown Terminator 2: Judgment Day, when a Terminator's CPU is switched to read-write mode, they can gain true sentience and even rebel against Skynet. Skynet brands these units as renegades and has even deployed countermeasures to prevent the human resistance from reprogramming its robots, such as coating CPUs with phosphorus that self-destruct when in contact with oxygen.
- A somewhat 'built-in' version occurs in TRON: Legacy. When Rinzler makes Sam bleed, he immediately recognizes the latter as a 'User', stops his attack, and never actually targets Sam again. This is because 'Rinzler' is a reprogrammed Tron, whose original programming was to fight for the Users.
- Underworld (2003): In Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, the Lycans are originally a Slave Race to the Vampires. To keep them under control, the Lycans wear collars with inward-facing spikes. If they attempted to transform into their wolf form, the size increase causes them to be impaled.
