History Main / TestedOnHumans

* ''Manga/SamuraiGun''. The evil Shogunate test their SteamPunk [[GatlingGood gatling gun]] on a bound woman with [[{{Fanservice}} large breasts]].

* In ''Manga/GunslingerGirl'' after Raballo dies, Claes becomes unsuited for field work, so she's relegated to being the test bed for each new iteration of cyborg technology.

* ''Manga/{{Golgo 13}}''. In the anime episode "The Masterpiece Assault Rifle" a MadScientist develops the next generation of assault rifle. To establish its reputation he hires two mercenaries to use it against Duke with his [[WeaponOfChoice trademark M-16]]. Needless to say, this is not a good idea.
* In ''Manga/TokyoGhoul'':Re, CCG has begun to develop their own HalfHumanHybrid soldiers as the answer to increasing Ghoul threats. The Quinx are advertised as "humans with an installed Quinque", but are essentially modified half-Ghouls just barely clinging to their humanity. As the story progresses, the unethical nature of the project has become more clear. The organization is not only using minors for their experiments, but it's revealed that Saiko's mother ''sold'' her daughter to the project in exchange for financial compensation. Several characters comment on how this shows that CCG really isn't any better than the [[AntiHumanAlliance enemy]] they fight.
* In ''Manga/TheKurosagiCorpseDeliveryService'', one case involves the group investigating a company in China that produces artistic mannequins made from actual human bodies. As it turns out, [[spoiler:the company is a front for the descendants of Unit 731 (mentioned in the Real Life section below), who continue to perform experiments on humans. After capturing the protagonists, it's revealed they plan to keep most of them to test a deadly virus on.]]

* ''Comicbook/{{Wanted}}'' had the supervillains abducting people for target practice.
* Subverted in [[http://www.wunderland.com/WTS/Rash/misc/addams.htm this]] Creator/CharlesAddams cartoon.
-->''Death ray, fiddlesticks! Why, it doesn't even slow them up.''
* ''ComicBook/ALoveLikeBlood'': Vampire scientists develop new diseases in secret laboratoria to ease the process of feeding, such as a hemorrhaegic fever that causes humans to bleed out within minutes.
* ''ComicBook/{{Supergod}}''. The Chinese government creates Maitreya, a GodOfHumanOrigin, and assembles a warehouse of political prisoners under guard so he can demonstrate his power over [[SpaceMaster spacetime]] and [[{{Biomanipulation}} matter]]. Instead Maitreya opens the door to [[PetTheDog let the prisoners escape]], while simultaneously demonstrating to their captors that EvilIsNotAToy.
-->'''Reddin:''' He instead fashioned the guards into a vast musical instrument of entrancingly beautiful tone, then configured all the officers and scientists into a self-supporting worm-like structure and fired them into space using the musical instrument, where they journeyed as a biological probe of brains linked in a parallel that reported information about the solar system to Maitreya via quantum entanglement - until the structure, starting to break up, was identified as Comet Shoemaker-Levy and eventually smacked into the surface of Jupiter. [[CruelAndUnusualDeath Terrible, really]].

* ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles'': Syndrome pays "retired" superheroes to come to his IslandBase, supposedly to stop a [[AIIsACrapshoot rogue robot]]. [[spoiler:Actually he's using them to test the robot's abilities, constantly upgrading it with each defeat until the superhero is killed.]]

** In ''Film/ANewHope'', Grand Moff Tarkin threatens to test the Death Star's planet-destroying superweapon on Princess Leia's homeworld of Alderaan, [[SadisticChoice unless she surrenders the location of the rebel headquarters to be blown up instead.]] However, Tarkin decides to obliterate Alderaan anyway, reasoning that the location Leia gave (Dantooine) is far too remote to serve as [[MakeAnExampleOfThem an effective demonstration for the rest of the galaxy]].

* ''Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit''. Judge Doom tests The Dip on a poor, innocent Toon shoe.
** Except he already ''knows'' it works (and so does the guy who explains it to Eddie), it's really just a [[KickTheDog gratuitous demonstration]].
* ''Film/TheAdventuresOfRockyAndBullwinkle''. An ArmsDealer sells Fearless Leader a laser that kills Toons and [[AndIMustScream imprisons their essence on the internet]]. The said laser is demonstrated on a toon weasel while he [[PleaseIWillDoAnything begs for mercy.]] He even leaves behind toon blood! Suddenly makes the shoe scene from Roger Rabbit seem tame doesn't it?
* ''Film/{{District 9}}''. An off-hand comment made by the CorruptCorporateExecutive is that the protagonist is the first person to survive being incorporated with alien DNA. A more direct example (though it's a case of Tested On Aliens) is when one of the 'prawns' (with a target on his chest) is herded in front of a weapon, and the protagonist is forced (by having his arm shocked with a taser) to squeeze the trigger.
* In ''Film/LordOfWar'', an ArmsDealer sells a dictator a cache of firearms. The dictator tests one out by shooting one of his own aides. The arms dealer is horrified, but plays his reaction off as a joke "Why did you do that? Now you have to buy it. I can't sell a ''used'' gun."
* ''Film/TheLastKingOfScotland''. Amin's bodyguard forces a ChildSoldier to swallow one of the poisoned headache pills Garrigan had prepared for Amin, causing Garrigan to give himself away.

* ''Film/TheEvilThatMenDo'' (1984) opens with the TortureTechnician demonstrating the use of ElectricTorture on a dissident journalist for a roomful of army officers.
* ''Film/TheKillingRoom'' (2009). Several volunteers are locked in a room for a psychological experiment, only to be killed off one-by-one. [[spoiler:Turns out it's an evaluation program to identify people who can be brainwashed into becoming US government suicide bombers.]]

** ''Film/{{Wonder Woman|2017}}'': General Ludendorff and Dr. Poison test their new DeadlyGas on unfortunate human guinea pigs.
* ''Film/TurkeyShoot''. Jennifer brings along a tranquilizer pistol of her own design that she says is going to be used by the SecretPolice after they've tested it HuntingTheMostDangerousGame. Secretary Mallory decides to try it out on one of Thatcher's prisoners.
-->'''Mallory:''' May I?
-->'''Thatcher:''' Yes, of course. Anyone you like.
-->''(Mallory shoots a prisoner in the leg. He takes a few hops before keeling over).''
-->'''Mallory:''' Ah, quite...[[InstantSedation instant]], hmm?
-->'''Thatcher:''' Leaves them alive but not kicking.
* ''Film/TheJackal''. The eponymous assassin hires Lamont to build a remote-controlled mounting for his [[BfG 14.5mm autocannon]]. Lamont [[TooDumbToLive makes the mistake]] of trying to blackmail him for more money, so the assassin tells him to run for his life to test the pan-and-tracking mechanism, then [[MultipleGunshotDeath uses the cannon itself]].

%%Which moive?* Considering that it was [[BasedOnATrueStory based on true events that transpired within Unit-731]] [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII in occupied Manchuria,]] the film demonstrates how [[MadScientist the Japanese researchers]] gleefully experimented on their captives. [[NauseaFuel Not for the faint of heart.]]

* ''The Amtrak Wars'' by Patrick Tilley. The Iron Masters demonstrate the new firearms they're selling to the Plainfolk by shooting dead several condemned prisoners. When one samurai misses the target, he's used in the demonstration as well. Afterwards the protagonist Steve Brickman comments on how brave the men were in facing death. One of the Plainfolk replies dryly that [[ColdBloodedTorture considering the alternative]], it was the best fate they could have hoped for.

* ''Literature/KingSolomonsMines'' by Creator/HRiderHaggard. The king of the Kukuana people asks Allan Quartermain to show the effects of his rifle upon his assembled warriors. Quatermain replies by telling the king he would be glad to do so if the king volunteers to be the subject of the experiment. At which point it is decided to use an ox instead.

* ''The Master Sniper'' by Stephen Hunter. German sharpshooter Lt. Colonel Repp tests his [=StG44=] rifle with newly-developed infra-red scope -- first on some Jewish prisoners, then on an American patrol at the front lines -- before carrying out the assassination he'd been tasked with.
* The main character's father of ''Literature/TheSwitch'' is the CEO of a major pharmaceutical company, popular because none of his products are tested on animals. [[spoiler: They're not just tested on humans, though; they're tested on homeless children that nobody will miss.]]
* In ''Literature/GalaxyOfFear: City of the Dead'', a MadScientist tries to [[NightOfTheLivingMooks make zombie soldiers]], which of course means cemetery robbing. But his zombies are smarter and more useful the fresher they are, so he murders a twelve-year-old boy wandering through the graveyard and then [[UndeadChild tries it on him]].
* Which is also the punchline of Creator/HPLovecraft's ''Literature/HerbertWestReanimator'' chapter "The Scream of the Dead".
* In ''Literature/{{Firestarter}}'' a government organization called The Shop tests an incredibly dangerous PsychoSerum called Lot Six on volunteering college students, who are told that half of them will be injected with a small dose of harmless hallucinogenic drug and the other half will be injected with water.
* In the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novels, Unseen University routinely tests things on student volunteers, whether they volunteer or not. It's considered that this isn't unethical as long as the students don't know, and since it's the only way in which having students around benefits the faculty, [[ItsAllAboutMe it's probably what they're there for]].
* In the ''Literature/{{Gatling}}'' series, Gatling is paid to test weapons under battlefield conditions. This includes using them on human targets; although he prefers to ensure his targets are people who deserve it.

* ''Old Virginia'' by Laird Barron. A team of CIA black ops are assigned to guard scientists studying a HumanoidAbomination, but it turns out to be a field test to see if 'Virginia' can defeat {{Professional Killer}}s like themselves. [[spoiler:Though even that's a subversion, as both scientists and the black ops team are being offered as a HumanSacrifice to the EldritchAbomination that Virginia serves.]]
* This is TheReveal in ''Terminal'' by Colin Forbes. [[spoiler:A Swiss clinic is testing a DeadlyGas to be used against a Soviet invasion. They force terminally-ill patients at the clinic to wear a Soviet gas mask and run downhill while they shoot mortar bombs filled with nerve gas at them. When the hero is captured and used in a similar matter, he runs ''uphill'' towards the mortar, so they can't take the risk of firing for fear of their own gas.]]

* ''Series/TheProfessionals''. In "Killer With A Long Arm" the ColdSniper guns down someone on a golf course to check his weapon was properly zeroed for the assassination he's been hired to carry out. If there was a reason for him to use a live target other than [[ForTheEvulz just to be a dick]] it was not adequately explained, especially since he'd used a scarecrow for an earlier test.

* The basic idea behind the Mads' experiments on Joel and Mike in ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000''. Find the perfect movie to crack the test subject's resistance, then release the movie on an unwitting populace.
* An example of the good guys using this is in ''[[Series/{{V 1983}} V: The Final Battle]]''. The dust used to kill the Visitors is tested on an alien prisoner. Then while the others are busy arguing about whether they should find a human collaborator to test it on, one of the [[ProfessorGuineaPig human scientists]] willingly steps into the chamber instead.
* ''Series/TheSixMillionDollarMan'' ("Population Zero"). The villains try out their sonic device on a small town. The initial test just renders the population unconscious - the final test will kill them.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': Davros tests his multiverse-destroying, matter-vaporizer gun on people collected from the streets of London. (The Daleks don't even have to hit anything, just turn it on and bye-bye multiverse)

* ''Series/GameOfThrones''. Just to remind the audience that Ser Gregor Clegane is a huge brutish killing machine when he reappears in Season 4, he's introduced using lowborn prisoners as living practice dummies. The prisoners are given weapons, but half-starved men with no training in swordfighting have no chance against the [[TheDreaded dreaded]] [[GiantMook Mountain That Rides]]. So it's LaserGuidedKarma when [[spoiler:a dying Clegane ends up under the 'care' of [[MadDoctor Qyburn]], a disgraced former maester, expelled from their order for doing experiments on living subjects, and eager to test out his theories.]]
* ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise''. Our introduction to the evil MirrorUniverse characters has them watching a demonstration of the newly-invented Agony Booth on a Tellarite crewman. When asked what the crewman did wrong, Mirror!Reed admits he doesn't really know. "Late for his duty shift I expect. [[FantasticRacism Aren't all Tellarites guilty of something?]]"
* On ''Series/{{Gotham}}'', Victor Fries tests his cryogenic techniques on humans, such as the pharmacist who'd refused to give him medicine for his wife without a prescription. He tells his ailing wife it's mice that he's freezing.
* ''Series/MurderRooms''. A quack doctor has a bullet-deflecting device he's trying to patent, and volunteers one of his servants for a demonstration. To the relief of the terrified woman, Dr Bell and Mr Doyle convince him a demonstration is unnecessary.

* In one episode of ''Series/{{Freaky}}'', a girl objects to the 'cruelty' that comes from running rats in a maze. Her science teacher and the other male student scoff at this and begin to ''eat'' the rats in the maze. Mortified, the girl runs for her life, only to find that [[spoiler: the doors are not real and she cannot open them.]] When the girl is cornered by the teacher and student, she is [[spoiler: lifted into the air by a giant green hand. It turns out that the school is actually a maze, with 3 aliens studying the students... [[HereWeGoAgain including a female one that objects to the cruelty of running humans through the maze]].]]

* ''Series/{{Roar}}''. Longinus invents a gunpowder bomb and orders his servants ([[OutsideContextProblem who have no idea what it is]]) to stand in a circle around the bomb until it explodes, to demonstrate to Queen Diana the weapon's ability to kill in all directions.
* ''Series/TheBoys2019''. It's gradually revealed that not only are superheroes created by being injected with Compound V as infants (with the secret consent of their parents) but that experiments are being conducted on adults to create {{Super Soldier}}s. This is shown to have a high fatality rate even under controlled conditions (which many of the experiments aren't, as [[LensmanArmsRace they're being done by criminals and terrorists]]).

* Occurs in ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert3: Uprising'', when [[MegaCorp FutureTech Corporation]], the Allies' main PrivateMilitaryContractor, uses Soviet Prisoners for this purpose. The act is enough to push Dasha's BerserkButton, resulting in her calling up what few Kirovs the Soviets have left.
* This was done many times in the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' [[AlternateUniverse Universe]], by the pre-War United States. Even something innocuous like the new soda flavor Nuka-Cola Quantum ended up killing most taste testers.
** When America was working on the [[ViralTransformation Forced Evolutionary Virus]] (eventually repurposed to create SuperSoldiers for the war against China), they tested it out on political dissidents and military prisoners. Most died due to [[BodyHorror terrible mutations]] or becoming [[TooDumbToLive so stupid they forgot to breathe]], but the most stable results were [[DumbMuscle hulking brutes with a caveman's intellect]]. When the military force guarding the base running these tests found out about them, the soldiers mutinied and executed the scientists.
** During the Sino-American War, Chinese-Americans were rounded up in concentration camps occasionally used for such a purpose. In the ''Old World Blues'' expansion for ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' you can explore the "Little Yangtze" camp, whose [[ExplosiveLeash bomb-collared]] prisoners have lingered on for two hundred years as [[OurGhoulsAreDifferent ghouls]].
** Perhaps the most egregious example would be the Vaults themselves. Though marketed as the ultimate bomb shelters, most Vaults were secretly the testing grounds for sadistic social experiments, to see if humans could survive prolonged space travel to another planet, which was the American government's real plan for surviving nuclear war. Some experiments make a twisted sort of sense - an all-powerful Overseer, infrastructure requiring constant and inconvenient repairs, low-light conditions - but what about the Vaults with grossly imbalanced gender ratios? Or the Vault without clothing dispensers? [[{{Webcomic/PennyArcade}} Or the Vault assigned one man and a box of puppets?]]

* In ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' Mordin's former assistant uses humans as test subjects to develop a cure for the genophage. It's also what they initially think the Collectors are doing with the colonies they abduct. [[spoiler: Actually they're being used to make a new Reaper]].

* In ''Videogame/WorldOfWarcraft'' The Forsaken are notorious for their signature plague. Initially designed to destroy the Scourge, the plague was prepared from fungal extracts, and of course, tested in Undercity on captured Alliance and Scarlet Crusade personnel in cages. Sylvanas Windrunner, Queen of the Forsaken, has personally tested it on two victims, a human woman captured from Alliance ranks and a Forsaken criminal.

* {{Implied}} in Season 1 of ''Podcast/WithinTheWires.'' People are sent to the Institute's "Extensive Studies Lab," but TheNarrator of the Institute's "Relaxation Cassettes" tells a patient not to think about what's happening there.
* ''WebOriginal/SCPFoundation'' ''loves'' this trope; they transfer Death Row inmates to their facilities as D[[note]]isposable[[/note]]-Class test subjects, who take the brunt of the casualties from constantly handling supernatural phenomena. Since standard procedure is to continue their death sentences at the end of each month, scientists constantly use them to test properties of supernatural objects, recording their typical death throes. Occasionally, a D-class inmate will become indispensable and will spend the rest of their life containing specific supernatural objects. The downside is, some D-Class are actually innocent, or are illegally abducted against their will because they meet specific criteria or are vagrants with no real ties to the world.

* ''WesternAnimation/ExoSquad''. J.T. Marsh (a military officer and good fighter) is captured by Neo Megas near the [[MysteriousAntarctica Antarctic Neo Lord breeding facility]] and pitted against a Neo Lord to test the latter's combat abilities. It is clear that Marsh was never meant to survive.
* In ''WesternAnimation/StreetSharks'', [[MadScientist Dr. Paradigm]] figures out that using his [[PlayingWithSyringes gene-slamming technique]] on humans would let him eliminate some steps, so he he tests it on the first person available - [[TooDumbToLive Dr. Bolton]]. He also tests it on Bolton's sons and a few other people, before figuring out that gene-slammed humans can't be controlled. He's working on it, though.
* In ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'', Derek Powers developed a chemical weapon. When the potential buyer asked about its effect on humans, Powers told him that local human testing laws weren't so "liberal" as those of the buyer's home nation, but Powers had footage of an "accident."
* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Archer}}'', a flashback shows Dr. Kreiger testing a new bulletproof vest on an ISIS intern. Unfortunately, as it turns out, said ArmorIsUseless.

* ''Series/TheBoys2019''. It's gradually revealed that not only are superheroes created by being injected with Compound V as infants (with the secret consent of their parents) but that experiments are being conducted on adults to create {{Super Soldier}}s. This is shown to have a high fatality rate even under controlled conditions (which many of the experiments aren't, as they're being done by criminals and terrorists).

* Considering that it was [[BasedOnATrueStory based on true events that transpired within Unit-731]] [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII in occupied Manchuria,]] the film demonstrates how [[MadScientist the Japanese researchers]] gleefully experimented on their captives. [[NauseaFuel Not for the faint of heart.]]

* ''WebOriginal/SCPFoundation'' ''loves'' this trope; they transfer Death Row inmates to their facilities as D[[note]]isposable[[note]]-Class test subjects, who take the brunt of the casualties from constantly handling supernatural phenomena. Since standard procedure is to continue their death sentences at the end of each month, scientists constantly use them to test properties of supernatural objects, recording their typical death throes. Occasionally, a D-class inmate will become indispensable and will spend the rest of their life containing specific supernatural objects. The downside is, some D-Class are actually innocent, or are illegally abducted against their will because they meet specific criteria or are vagrants with no real ties to the world.

** The Nazis carried out scientific explosive decompression experiments in the death camps, with a view to working out survival techniques for submariners at great depths, or for aircraft crews in planes that were going ever higher and higher and subjected to diminishing air pressure. Unlucky and dispensable test subjects were placed in atmospheric chambers and subjected either to massively increased atmospheric pressure, or to the sort of atmospheric pressure to be found in deep space. Quite often they were used to test prototype high-altitude flightsuits and survival systems, and most of the conclusions drawn above were in fact scientifically proven by a regime that viewed some people as expendable lab-rats. While nobody wants to admit it, this Nazi research was in fact vital to post-war America and Britain, who reaped the benefits of Nazi science for their own military use whilst [[BadGuysDoTheDirtyWork keeping their hands clean and staying morally spotless]].
** There's at least one [[https://www.bbc.com/news/health-49294861 Nazi surgery book]] that's become very handy for surgeons to use, as it contains the best anatomical drawings in the world.. Better not ask in which circumstances it was made.

* ''Film/BatmanVSupermanDawnOfJustice''. Lois Lane discovers that the US government is supplying mercenaries with experimental ammunition in order to field test it. The lab assistant who tells her this says the only surprising thing is that Lois can still be shocked about it.

* This is TheReveal in ''Terminal'' by Colin Forbes. [[spoiler:A Swiss clinic is testing a DeadlyGas to be used against a Soviet invasion. They force terminally-ill patients at the clinic to wear the lastest Soviet gas mask and run down hill while they shoot mortar bombs with nerve gas at them. When the hero is captured and used in a similar matter, he runs ''uphill'' towards the mortar, so they can't take the risk of firing for fear of their own gas.]]

* ''Film/TheEvilThatMenDo'' (1984) opens with the TortureTechnician demonstrating his techniques on a dissident journalist for a roomful of army officers.

* ''Franchise/WonderWoman'': The Golden Age Dr. Poison tested her biological weapons on humans, and tested other things on human captives as well, rather like what Imperial Japanese scientists and doctors were doing in real life at the time.

->''This product was not tested on animals. Write us and let us know what happens!''

The {{Necromancer}}, EvilSorcerer, MadScientist, or BigBad tests or demonstrates his latest weapon; not on beer cans or inoffensive paper targets like any decent [[TriggerHappy gun-nut]] would, but on live human beings!(or on any sentient or non sentient life)

The {{Necromancer}}, EvilSorcerer, MadScientist, or BigBad tests or demonstrates his latest weapon; not on beer cans or inoffensive paper targets like any decent [[TriggerHappy gun-nut]] would, but on live human beings!

Definitely a subtrope of KickTheDog. See also InnocentBystander and DisposableVagrant. ProfessorGuineaPig is when the thing being tested isn't a weapon, and the MadScientist uses it on his or herself. GuineaPigFamily is when the Mad Scientist uses his family. Note that this trope does not necessarily apply to humans only, any living thing can qualify.

* ''Literature/TheForeverWar'' starts with the recruits watching a lecture tape on "eight silent ways to kill a man". The protagonist thinks afterwards that some of the actors must have been convicted criminals who had been brain-wiped, as they were really killed.

* ''Film/ANewHope''. Death Star. Gran Moff Tarkin. Alderaan. You know the rest.
** In the [[Literature/DeathStar EU]], he first tested it on [[IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace Despayre]].
* ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack''. Vader wants to check that the carbon-freezing equipment is safe to use on Luke, so he orders it tested on Han Solo.

* ''Literature/TheForeverWar'' starts with the recruits watching a lecture tape on "eight silent ways to kill a man". The protagonist thinks afterwards that some of the actors must have been convicted criminals who had been brain-wiped, as they were killed off for real.

* ''Literature/TheForeverWar'' starts with the recruits watching a lecture tape on "eight silent ways to kill a man". The protagonist thinks that some of the actors must have been convicted criminals who had been brain-wiped, as they were killed off for real.

** In "Project Avalon", [[SpaceX Space Commander]] [[TheDragon Travis]] orders that a [[DumbMuscle Labour Grade]] prisoner be selected to test a SyntheticPlague. His underling asks what they're to do if there aren't any Labour Grades available, and is told to just go out and arrest someone expendable.
** In "Weapon", the eponymous weapon is demonstrated by Servalan on [[BadBoss one of her own soldiers]], just to show our heroes that she has their lives in her hands.

* Considering that it was [[BasedOnATrueStory based on true events that transpired within Unit-731]] [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII in occupied Manchuria,]] the film demonstrates how [[MadScientist the Japanese researchers]] gleefully experimented on their captives. [[NauseaFuel Not the faint of heart.]]