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Psychic Assaults[]
- This is the premise of Ghost Rider's "Penance Stare" power. By looking into the eyes of a sinner, he forces them to experience all the pain they have inflicted onto others.
- In Watchmen, this is the effect that Ozymandias' cloned monstrosity has on several thousands of the people who survived the creature's explosion. Ozymandias actually had artists, musicians and writers come up with imagery and sounds so thoroughly alien and bizarre (without them knowing what they were doing) that when coded inside a "psychic shockwave" released by the creature in its death drove said thousands utterly insane. A particularly disturbing example briefly mentioned in a news report was a woman that performed an abortion on herself because she was convinced her unborn child was eating her from the inside!
- X-Men. 'You feel no pain. You will go straight to a hospital. Remember nothing of this place. And every time you hear the words parsley, intractable or longitude, you will vomit uncontrollably for forty-eight hours.".' Seriously, don't piss off Emma Frost.
- Another of her famous tricks was punishing Dr. Kimura, a sadistic villain with an awful past as well as X-23's abusive trainer, by making her forget the only person who was ever kind to her before sending her out to kill everyone in the facility she worked on.
- Frost is this trope. Her most awe-inspiringly grotesque act of Mind Rape was in Issue 17 of Joss Whedon's Astounding X Men, where she traps Kitty Pride in what starts out as a Lotus Eater Machine where she marries and bears Colossus' son... only for Professor X to declare the baby too dangerous for her to raise. Colossus then knocks Kitty out and takes the baby, whereupon Xavier locks him in a cryogenic vault beneath the mansion. Kitty then tortures the location of the vault out of Colossus by phasing an axe into his head. She then goes straight there, phases through the box and frees... Cassandra Nova, who had been manipulating Frost from inside that box since the beginning of Whedon's run.' It takes several dozen near-death experiences for Kitty to get over the knee-jerk hatred she had for the rest of the X-Men remaining from the dream.
- Actually, X-Men is full of examples of Mind Rape, both by villains and heroes alike, from Professor X formatting Magneto's brain, through Cassandra Nova forcing Beak to beat Beast an inch away from death with a baseball bat and mindraping Kitty, to Dark Phoenix punishing Mastermind's hunger for power by granting him omniscience.
- Cassandra Nova specifically was punished and contained by making her stupid, while still conscious about having been previously a genius.
- Another example of one of Emma's more hilarious tricks was a more or less literal example of the trope, via causing a group of anti-mutant protesters and Paparazzi to orgasm uncontrollably.
- This is also how Nate Grey defeats Domino in Age of Apocalypse.
- When Jean catches Emma and Scott in bed, Emma's cavalier response provokes her to psychically tear Emma to shreds, making her relive her worst memories.
- When Chuck Austen needed an excuse for Lorna aka Polaris's seriously OOC behavior against Havok and Nurse Annie, he came up with her having been unstable from a while already due to a previous and really massive Mind Rape. Said Mind Rape? Being telepathically forced to witness the Sentinels's Massacre of Genosha, with the culprit being the aforementioned Cassandra Nova. It still wasn't enough for Austen to dig himself out of the huge hole he jumped in, though.
- Considering that Alex and Annie had "psychically dated" while he was in a coma, there's Mind Rape in how these dates came to be too. They were caused by Annie's son Carter, a boy with telepathic powers who wanted a daddy so badly that he wasn't above forcing Havok to date his mother in his mind. Not that it helped the plot too much, Chuck.
- An example of an attempted physical rape that ends up as pure Mind Rape: in the 80s Captain Britain series, one of the concepts constantly explored in the series is Alternate Universes. Well, a "Kaptain Briton" from an alternate universe where England is a totalitarian state switched places with ours, and in a scene infamous to this date, he tried to rape Betsy Braddock, aka Psylocke, Captain Britain's sister (and in a certain way, his own). Psylocke killed him in self-defense using her telepathic powers, still believing it was her own brother who tried to rape her. Needless to say, this experience fucked her up.
- In the Superman "Emperor Joker" story, where the Joker tricks Mister Mxyzptlk out of most of his 5th dimensional powers to reshape reality, the Joker finally manages to kill Batman. He then revives Batman and kills him in a different way. The process is repeated over and over for several months until Superman works up enough willpower to challenge the Joker. When he asks Batman what he should do, Superman is horrified to learn that Batman is so broken, he asks Supes to kill Joker when he has a chance. When reality is properly restored, Mxyzptlk and the Specter reveal to Superman that the experience of dying countless times has ruined Batman's mind and he literally can't live with that knowledge. Superman makes the hard choice to move the memories to The Joker's mind. In the epilogue Batman slept well while Superman mentions having some trouble sleeping...
- This is the explanation for Dr. Light's Villain Decay in The DCU. As revealed in Identity Crisis, while mindwipes were... tolerated (to protect secret identities), a cabal in the League decided to screw up Light's brain to change his personality to make him a near-Harmless Villain. When Batman saw the personality changing, he was mind wiped too... of the previous ten minutes. While Dr. Light eventually retakes a level in badass, Batman loses what little trust he had in the Justice League of America and creates Brother Eye.
- In Joss Whedon's run on Runaways, the kids meet the time traveling parents of Gertrude York, who had died some time earlier. The kids are then faced with a problem: The elder Yorks can not be allowed to return to the future with the knowledge they have, because that could change said future (which, having already happened, was the past for the main characters), but just mind wiping is considered too nice considering their actions (and they had already used a mind wiping spell). Nico, however, realizes that she has options and casts the spell "The Show Must Go On." The Yorks know everything that will happen to them, up to and including their own death and the death of their daughter after them, but are incapable of doing anything to alter the flow of events. Nico is a very clear example of why you should always Beware the Nice Ones.
- This is the modus operandi of the Psycho-Man, an old Fantastic Four villain. He uses an emotion controlling device called the Control Box with three buttons on the side labeled 'Fear', 'Doubt', and 'Hate'. He takes a sadistic pleasure in using it to instill the corresponding emotions in his victims.
- Doom has forced a number of different forms of this upon Reed Richards. The time when he repeatedly invaded Reed's dreams to turn him into a Manchurian Agent and make him turn his friends over to Doom for torture and imprisonment was one of the very few times Reed actually considered flat-out murdering Doom.
- From The Darkness:
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- The Umbrella Academy - Essentially, The Apocalypse Suite arc would not have functioned without this trope.
- Most of Series 2, "Dallas" turned into mind rape for the readers. In a good way. If that is possible.
- The Sandman. Preludes and Nocturnes. 24 Hours. John Dee.
- Also, in a reminder that our "heroes" are not always nice, when a cop rightfully pulls Delirium over for reckless driving, she leaves him envisioning bugs all over him. "for ever and always"!
- In the Strontium Dog "Portrait of a Mutant" story, Johnny mind-rapes a couple of Kreelers under the guise of reading their minds to prevent them from revealing that he is Nelson Kreelman's son.
- In Dark Empire, Luke Skywalker joins the Emperor. It was the better option of a Sadistic Choice, and he planned to subvert the cause from within. Things didn't work out as planned, but when Leia's presence reminded him what he'd been trying to do, he tried to kill the Emperor. The Emperor survived, but didn't kill Luke, who could still be useful.
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Emperor: You. Are. Nothing. |
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- J'onn's Evil Twin Malefic did this once to a fellow Green Martian. This was an unspeakable crime in Green Martian society since they are normally a very open telepathic race. To them this was the greatest violation of the open trust shared by their race possible. Malefic's punishment was severe indeed: his Psychic Powers were stripped away along with his memories of the event (so he couldn't get any sick pleasure from it).
- Telepathic mutant villain Mindscan's favored tactic in Guardians of the Galaxy.
- Wonder Woman villain Doctor Psycho virtually embodies this trope. (See: details here.)
- Ultimate X-Men: Rogue (working for Weapon X) steals Jean Grey's powers and makes Iceman relive an invasive surgery he experienced as a child, without the anasthesia.
"Mundane" Torture[]
- In the Batman graphic novel The Killing Joke, the Joker brutally tortures Commissioner Gordon with images of the Monster Clown's torture of his daughter Barbara Gordon, AKA Batgirl, in an effort to prove that "one bad day" can drive anyone insane.
- In The Batman, the Joker gives a similar speech to police detective Ethan Bennett, while simultaneously terrorizing him with hypnosis and poisoning him with the chemicals that would turn him into the first Clayface.
- We can't forget Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, where mind rape was just one of SEVERAL things that the Joker and Harley Quinn subjected young Tim Drake to, torturing and brainwashing him into becoming "J.J", the Joker's Mini Me. The effects of such a mind rape last until Tim's adulthood and are a BIG plot point in the movie.