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alt title(s): Hypnotize 
"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 ( The Power Of Love often playing a part).
In anime, Brainwashed characters are often fairly obvious, as they have Mind Control Eyes. Some versions also have a non-zombie Zombie Gait.
The most fun, delayed variety of brainwashing is the innocuous Manchurian Agent. 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. Occasionally done via television.
Naturally, there is Power Perversion Potential to be found ( NSFW!) in this. See also Kiss Me I Am Virtual. Can serve as Fetish Fuel. Often done to the Weak Willed.
Examples
Anime
- 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)
- 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.
- Code Geass, also known as Mind Control: The Animated Series.
- Of course it is. It's the main character's power and (kinda) the premise of the whole show.
- 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.
- Misao in the Pretty Sammy series gets temporarily brainwashed when she is forcibly transformed into Pixy Misa.
- In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, Ginga Nakajima is brainwashed by Jail Scaglietti. Subaru eventually snaps her out of it by hitting her with a Wave Motion Gun at point blank.
Comics
- Any number of villains in Chris Claremont-penned comics are given to possessing folks, "body and soul", turning them into willing slaves/pets that will turn on their friends without a second thought. Look for Mind Control Eyes, as well as Spikes Of Villainy.
- Baron Ironblood from Action Force brainwashed his minions and henchmen into his service. His second in command, the Black Major, was formerly a member of Action Force until being captured in an operation specifically targeting him.
Fan Art
Film
- The Manchurian Candidate
- Volunteers has John Candy's character get brainwashed in the middle.
- It happened to him in Going Berserk as well.
- A Clockwork Orange has the protagonist strapped down and forced to watch violent scenes while a drug that induces nausea is pumped into him to make him feel repulsion for violence. And sex. And Beethoven's music.
- J-Men Forever (1979). The evil Lightning Bug plans to brainwash the Earth people with rock & roll broadcasts, but is successfully countered by schmaltzy music from the Military Underground Sugared Airwaves Command (M.U.S.A.C.). So the Bug decides to use hashish instead, and only the combined forces of the J-Men (a team of redubbed superheroes from Republic Film Serial clips) can stop him!
- As indicated by the page quote, one of the crimes that the Galaxy organization commits in the spy-spoof Our Man Flint is turning women into brainwashed "Pleasure Units".
- The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra (2004). The evil Skeleton, and Human Aliens Kro-Bar and Lattis, both try to mind-control housewife Betty at the same time.
Skeleton: Bring the meteor to the Skeleton.
Kro-Bar: Bring the meteor to Kro-Bar and Lattis.
Betty: "I must make a skeleton meteor using a crowbar covered in lettuce..."
Literature
- 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.
- The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon.
- 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.
- In the Hannibal novel, Lecter brainwashes Clarice Starling with drugs and hypnosis to turn her into a surrogate of his dead sister Misha. There's sex involved, so this has its own additional issues. This wasn't carried over to the movie adaptation.
- Into The Thinking Kingdoms, part of the Journey of the Catechist series has a kingdom with thought-reading birds, allowing people to find people thinking wrong, and brainwash them. It is implied that they have done this successfully to most of the kingdom, although it all comes crashing down when they try it on the main characters.
- Much like A Clockwork Orange, Crime College in Doc Savage and Psychosurgery in The Stainless Steel Rat are the common ways of dealing with criminals in their setting. A variation might be Execution in the Lord Darcy stories, which punishes practitioners of Black Magic by permanently stripping them of their Ability.
- Harry Potter has the Imperius Curse.
- The Wheel Of Time has Compulsion.
- And of course, arguably the most famous example, was Winston's ordeal in 1984. He loved Big Brother.
Live Action TV
- Stargate SG-1, "Divide and Conquer" and "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"
- Angel, the Jasmine arc.
- Big Wolf On Campus episode "Manchurian Werewolf".
- 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.
- Used on many, many people in many, many ways on Doctor Who, and inherited by The Sarah Jane Adventures.
- In a series 2 episode of The Mighty Boosh, "The Call of the Yeti," the main characters narrowly escape being brainwashed and raped by yeti.
- The vampires in True Blood have an ability to "glamour" people into doing things they would not ordinarily do.
- The enemies attempt this on Sydney in Alias, but it only fails because her own father had spent her childhood hardening her against this very possibility. Screwed up family indeed.
- What, no mention of River Tam?
- In a recent NCIS there was a North Korean assassin named Kai who had in her childhood been to an institution remarkably like The Academy in Firefly and was seeking revenge.
Tabletop Games
- In the Dungeons And Dragons 4th edition version of Draconomicon, there's a sample mini-adventure in which a green dragon has pulled this on a handful of hapless Eladrin. Yes, even with their boosted Will defence.
- In one of the Witchcraft gameplay examples they have on the Eden Studios website, the bumbling villain uses a psionic effect to do a kind of Jedi Mind Trick on an NPC, forcing her to do one sentence's worth of activities ("You love me and want nothing more than to follow me out of this bar.") so he can sacrifice her for evil purposes. However, what happens is that the PC breaks the effect, making her believe that he tried to hypnotize her, rather than use mind control, and so the lady proceeds to kick him in the balls, then smash his face in with a pool ball.
Video Games
- 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...
- Final Fantasy IV loves this trope, pulling it once with The Lancer/Mr. Face Heel Turn Kain Highwind falling subject to it twice, and then again with supposed Big Bad Golbez actually being a puppet of the real Big Bad Zemus.
- World of Warcraft features "Mind Control" as a standard Priest spell, allowing control of opposing characters and some monsters for a short period of time. Mind Control and More Than Mind Control scenarios also feature prominently in the canon.
- One BioShock audio diary reveal that Andrew Ryan had the plasmids modified to gain control over Rapture' population. Pheromones are also used to ensure that the Little Sisters stay close to the Big Daddies. There's also "Would you kindly?"
- 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!)
- In Mother 3, Porky, with the help of Fassad, use "Happy Boxes" to woo the previously low-tech and peaceful citizens of Tazmily Village into a materialistic lifestyle. Toward the end, most of the villagers move to New Pork City, except the Main party and their companions.
- This becomes one of the Overlord's powers in Overlord, in which using it on civilians will cause them to flock to the Overlord and either attack the nearest enemy when in battle or just help create resources if in a town.
Web Comics
- In Sluggy Freelance Oasis was the brainwashing victim of Dr. Steve, though since his death she's gone into Brainwashed And Crazy territory. (Or maybe not. It's still not at all clear who or what Oasis actually is.) Sam also developed the ability to control people's mind, though even that's not enough to make girls think he's cool.
Web Original
- What happened to Cavalier and Skybolt in the Whateley Universe. It took nearly a hundred stories before we found out what really did happen to them, and it's worse than we thought.
- How the hell did Whateley Fans let this page go on without mentioning what Hekate did to Cavalier and Skybolt. You want Mindrape? Well, that's it taken to its logical extreme. The worst part may be that everyone thought it was the Don who did it with Telepathy, while other thought he just used it to figure out what they wanted and tempt them over to the Darkside. However, when they broke free, shit hit the fans for all parties involves. Hekate's now in hiding after she tried to pull the same shit on Fey (AKA, incarnation of one of the Nine God Damn Queens of the FAERIE. I mean the highly capricious, easily insulted, extremely powerful Fair Folk sort) and now is running from a three-fold curse, Don had a lamp shoved up his ass (literally) and the two victims in question are in the psych ward.
- If you aren't a Whateley fan, then to explain: Hekate cast a SERIOUSLY dark magic binding spell, which forced them to obey all her commands, while still conscious. She tricked them into entering a 'Fool's Circle'. After that, Hekate and Don raped Cavalier and Skybolt many, many times. The two victims, once escaping, got very, very angry.
- Soyburger Patricia in the League Of Intergalactic Cosmic Champions
Western Animation
- Kids Next Door, "Operation: CAMP"
- A brainwashing toy called the Boyfriend Helmet appears twice. Oddly, when Lizzie uses it on Nigel, he just tells her, "Don't ever use one of those things on me again, Lizzie!" and continues to date her for six seasons, but when Jimmy (who apparently thinks he's Darth Vader) later uses it on Lizzie, he's thrown in KND prison. Fair?
- 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.
- 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.")
- Kim Possible falls victim to it at least three times and it's used at least a few more.
- In WordGirl, this is the recurring villain Mr Big's gimmick.
- Freakshow does this to Danny in Control Freaks to make him a part of his ghostly group who steals goods for him. Naturally he's freed by the The Power Of Friendship through a Catch A Falling Star moment.
Real Life
- The term in English is derived from the Chinese 洗脑 "clean/wash the brain", used to describe the combination of torture and propaganda-barrage used on Un.N.-aligned troops, mostly U.S. Americans, during the Korean War in order to extract false confessions for use in broader propaganda. The actual efficacy of any form of brain washing, from torture to subtle persuasion to drugs to hypnotism, is highly disputed. It is generally held that such techniques can be very good at extracting compliance from the victim, but true ideological turn-about à la the books and film 1984 or The Manchurian Candidate is not to be expected——in the few cases where this seems to have happened, it has generally been linked to the prisoner's captors treating her better than her own nominal side (see: Japanese P.W.'s during the Second World War).
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