"My sole purpose in life is to bring pleasure to my companions!"
-Our Man Flint
One, some or all of the main characters have been
brainwashed into happily slaving away for someone else and have to
get their memories back to escape, usually assisted by someone who remembers who they were.
In
anime, Brainwashed characters are often fairly obvious, as they have
Mind Control Eyes.
If they are attacking people, it's a case of
Brainwashed And Crazy. And look out for that one character in a million who's
Not Brainwashed. Compare with
Body Snatching. Ocasionally done via
television.
And of course, it's
somebody's fetish
. A lot of people's, actually.
Examples:
- Stargate SG-1, "Beneath the Surface"
- Farscape, "Thank God It's Friday... Again" (among several others)
- Star Trek The Original Series, "This Side of Paradise"
- Star Trek Voyager, "Workforce"
- Kids Next Door, "Operation: CAMP"
- Angel, the Jasmine arc.
- Big Wolf On Campus episode "Manchurian Werewolf".
- Literary example; The Mule, an interstellar warlord in Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy had the telepathic ability to turn anyone, even his greatest enemies, into devoted followers willing to die for him. The Second Foundation, which possesses a similar ability, later turn it against him and transform him into a pacifist.
- Ryuutauros from Kamen Rider Den-O has the ability to brainwash entire crowds at the click of his host's fingers and influence them to dance with him (whether or not they can hear the music is never touched on)
- In the old Safari Software game, Traffic Department 2192, the foul-mouthed, gung-ho Action Girl protagonist, Lt. Velasquez, is kidnapped by her hated foe, the Vulture Cult Army, and brainwashed into serving them. Not only does she perform outstandingly in the field, she's also a lot more disciplined than the loose cannon she seemed to be when she was still with the good guys. Naturally, she eventually overcomes the brainwashing and returns to the TD... where her boss is less disturbed by her being brainwashed, and more worried by the fact that she's even-tempered, obedient, and disciplined...
- The Super Robot Wars games uses this exceptionally liberally; If a particular protagonist is one of their original creations, the odds are fairly high that they've been brainwashed at least once, in at least one of the many different timelines. One Big Bad of a faction even makes it part of their standard operating procedure. Okay. More than one...(One faction's plot is to Brainwash/Clone the ENTIRE CAST!)
- The titular cybernetics-enhanced characters of Gunslinger Girl get brainwashed to make them function as cold-blooded assassins. Since they are still basically young girls though, this leads to all kinds of problems, especially since the brainwashing focuses their feelings on their guardians.
- In V, the Visitors have a brainwashing method called conversion, but humans are so resistant to it that it is only considered worth the bother for a few vital individual humans have to control.
- In Wolf's Rain Hige is brainwashed by remote control via his collar, as part of a plot by Lady Jagara to find the wolf who will open Paradise.
- "Volunteers" has John Candy's character get brainwashed in the middle.
- It happened to him in Going Berserk as well.
- Not quite the same, but many devices in the Transformers multiverse are able to temporarily "overwrite" the personality and faction programming of one side with that of the other.
- Of particular note, on Beast Wars Megatron gene-washes Rhinox into a Predacon, but he becomes so evil Megatron is forced to change him back. Perhaps ironically, he does this when Rhinox is monologuing on the machine that changed him in the first place.
- Misao in the Pretty Sammy series gets temporarily brainwashed when she is forcibly transformed into Pixy Misa.
- The Manchurian Candidateis the Ur Example of this one.
- Used on Jet in Avatar The Last Airbender, but none too effectively; with appropriate urging, he is able to break through it and lead the heroes back to where he got brainwashed... playing right into the villain's hands, not long after which he shifts into Brainwashed And Crazy mode. (Leads to a puzzling scene early on when, trying to clear up Jet's odd behavior, the characters - without a hint of precedent at any point in the series - somehow jump, correctly, straight to "Jet's been brainwashed.")
- Literary example: in The Demon Headmaster by Gillian Cross, the Headmaster has brainwashed almost everybody in the school along with their parents, and brainy new girl Dinah is powerless to resist even though she knows what he's doing. Her foster brothers, however, are among the tiny minority of pupils on whom the Headmaster's powers don't work, so they can help Dinah foil the Headmaster's plan to brainwash the whole country via TV.
