Forced To Watch / Comic Books

• The Walking Dead has had two examples (so far):
  • Volume 11 features a notable inversion of this trope in which the "good guys" inflict it upon villains. In this volume, Rick and his crew are pursued by a gang of vicious cannibals. After capturing and disarming the cannibal gang, Rick and his companions execute them one by one (using horrifically brutal methods) while others are forced to watch until it is their turn to die. At the end of the volume, Rick says he feels his actions were justified but realizes he has crossed a moral line from which there can be no return.
  • In Volume 17, Rick and his group are captured by Negan and his "Saviors". Negan then forces them to watch as he executes a member of Rick's crew chosen at random, hoping this will convince Rick to submit to the Saviors' dominance.
• Sabretooth does this to Wild Child with Aurora after leading the two into a trap. Creed then attacks Aurora. Wild Child goes to attack, but Creed stops him. He forces Wild Child into a corner and has him watch while he brutalizes Aurora and threatens to kill her if he interferes. Wild Child watches as it happens, with Creed then telling him to cry and beg for her life if he cares about her so much.
• Black Mask is fond of this technique as a torture tool; he drove Catwoman's sister insane by torturing her husband to death and forcing her to watch and eat the bits he cut off.
• In X-Men, Mojo does this to Professor Xavier at one point, using metal wires that force his eyes open while making him grin in Mojo's image.
• In the Elseworlds story JLA: The Nail, The Joker uses his newly bestowed energy powers to capture Robin and Batgirl, and then make Batman watch while he rips them apart. Batman gets free (too late) and promptly kills the Joker.
• The most painful moment in the "Avengers Under Siege" storyline: Mr. Hyde forces a captive Captain America to watch as he brutally beats the Avengers' elderly butler, Jarvis.
• In a story set after the end of Superman's The Death of Clark Kent, Superman finds a death trap surrounded by television screens, which Conduit had presumably set up so Supes would be able to see the captive (Jimmy Olsen) die in spite of everything he could do.
• The Young Avengers/Runaways Civil War crossover has one: The Warden kidnaps Billy, Teddy, and Karolina (bringing Xavin's dead body along), and proceeds to perform a vivisection on Teddy, while his boyfriend is forced to watch, able to hear everything except his own voice. This leaves said boyfriend brokenly trying to use his powers to kill The Warden.
• Another example from Runaways has Molly confronted with a supervillain that wants retribution on her parents by proxy of killing her. He says that his crew once got caught in a heist by Molly's parents and they, being telepaths, made him incapable of looking away or closing his eyes as they tore his partners apart. This mental compulsion was so strong, he spent seven years unable to close his eyes and needed them to be manually hydrated, leaving them permanently bloodshot in the present.
• Barracuda in The Punisher MAX attempts to exact the ultimate revenge on The Punisher by torturing Frank's illegitimate baby daughter in front of him before torturing Frank himself to death and even gloats about his intent to a tied-up Punisher. It backfires spectacularly.
• Typically a key part of the creation of a new revenant in any given episode in The Crow series. It's especially bad when fans of the first movie read the first comic, and realize just how loose an adaptation it was.
• Done to the audience in Alan Moore opus From Hell. An entire issue is spent on the grisly details of one of the killings and subsequent mutilations.
• A non-torture version in V for Vendetta when Helen's husband shoots his wife's lover but is mortally wounded, completely upsetting her plans. Seeing him about to die, she turns one of the ubiquitous security cameras towards him so he can watch himself die on his giant screen.
• In one New Gods/Superman story, Darkseid forced Mr. Miracle to watch a porno that his wife and Superman did (while brainwashed by Darkseid's rejected underling, Sleez).
• Ultimate X-Men (2001)
  • Magneto punished Pietro for making the Brotherhood a joke by knee-capping Pietro with a shotgun. Wanda's punishment? He made her watch.
  • Sabertooth took the SHIELD files about Wolverine, all that they know about his life before they erased his memory... and made a barbecue with it, with a chained Wolverine forced to watch.
• The Outsiders: Towards the end of an Outsiders (2003) arc in which Indigo is revealed to be the latest form of Brainiac, she briefly regains her normal personality long enough to beg Shift to kill her, claiming that once the Brainiac programming reasserts control, she'll be forced to watch as she kills all of her friends.
• In Thorgal, Kriss de Valnor takes advantage of Thorgal's amnesia by claiming that he is Shaigan the Merciless, a fellow pirate and her lover. Kriss enslaves Thorgal's wife Aaricia using her and Thorgal's daughter as leverage. Kriss then forces Aaricia to be her personal attendant so that Aaricia has a front-row seat as her amnesiac husband makes love to Kriss night after night. It's not enough for Kriss that she finally has Thorgal to herself. No, Kriss has to rub it in Aaricia's face that she's stolen her husband.
• In Convergence, Telos kept the New 52 Earth 2 heroes as his unwilling audience to watch him forcing the denizens of the domes to fight each other to the death. However, the Earth-2 heroes manage to break free when Telos was too occupied in pitting the heroes of Just Imagine against the cyborgs of the Futures End timeline.
• In Superman (Rebirth), Manchester Black kidnaps Jon and forces him to watch his parents lose a battle, culminating with Lois losing her leg and Clark having to cauterize the wound with his heat vision, in order to convince him that Superman's no-kill rule was harmful, Superman himself was ineffective, and Superboy should join him. It was faked
  Manchester Black: [grabbing Jon's head and forcing it to look at the television screen] I'm afraid I can't have you turn away. It's necessary you witness this...
  later
  Manchester Black: Ouch, sorry you had to see that, Jon boy...but desperate times call for desperate measures. Anything less and people are bound to suffer.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Wonder Woman (1942): Paula von Gunther was forced to watch as Nazis murdered her husband for her refusal to cooperate with them. They then took her toddler-aged daughter Gerta and informed her Gerta was next if she didn't fall in line.
  • Wonder Woman (1987): Medusa intends to force Diana to watch as she murders her way through the embassy after weakening Diana with venom. While Diana is able to save most of her friends she is horrified and enraged at the sight of Medusa gleefully attacking Peter Garibaldi's two young children and succeeding in murdering Martin.
  • Wonder Woman (2006): Genocide forces Diana to kneel before her and look at her by threatening a hostage, then, once she's sure Diana is looking, she murders the woman right in front of her.
• Hardware (1993): Deathwish's origin involves a man forcing him to watch as he raped and killed his wife and son. The man then raped the husband and father of his victims before leaving him to die.

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