Charm Person

Stormtrooper: Let me see your identification.
Obi-Wan: You don't need to see his identification.
Stormtrooper: We don't need to see his identification
Obi-Wan: These aren't the droids you're looking for.
Stormtrooper: These aren't the droids we're looking for.
Obi-Wan: He can go about his business.
Stormtrooper: You can go about your business.
Obi-Wan: (to Luke) Move along.
Stormtrooper: Move along, move along.

— Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope

Charm Person is some kind of magic, supernatural ability, Applied Phlebotinum or Charles Atlas Superpower (achieved through impossibly high amounts of personal charm) that makes people want to do what you want them to do, especially the Weak-Willed. May or may not have obvious parallels with hypnosis, which is not anything like this in Real Life.

It's distinct from Compelling Voice because Charm Person can be resisted or broken out of, leading to "I Know You Are in There Somewhere" Fight and Intrinsic Vow moments and such. A good way to differentiate between the two is that Charm Person can never be used to force someone to do anything that would violate the target's moral code (for example, attacking one's king).

If the writers want to give The Hero mind control powers, this is probably what he'll get, because it's both the least powerful and least evil of all the versions of Mind Control.

Named after the magic spell "Charm Person" from Dungeons & Dragons and its many, many variants.

Despite what the title implies, this is not about a Charm Person. The effects of more powerful Charm Person spells or abilities may be compared with Love Potions and Glamour. See also Hypnotic Eyes, for a frequent way this power is implemented. Compare Politeness Judo.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Call of the Night: Vampires are able to naturally attract people in order to suck their blood. Some of them, like Haruka, take it a step further and hypnotize their prey to put them to sleep first, which has sinister implications after all the times that sucking blood is compared to copulation by Nazuna.
• Chainsaw Man: The Control Devil's Compelling Voice powers includes a side-effect that causes the victim to fall hopelessly in love with her. For instance, Aki is infatuated with her, but when asked to say what he likes so much about her, he is unable to say. Later, a fully-brainwashed Reze, Quanxi and Katana Man attempt to kill Denji for her affection.
• Narumi-sensei from Gakuen Alice is able to emit pheromones that can make anyone, regardless of age or gender, become infatuated with him. In some cases (such as Natsume), the target may become so enamored that all they can do is faint from the shock.
• Many Eden of the East fans have concluded that Akira's Johnny has mind control powers. The reason? In the first episode, not only does he (wearing nothing but a girl's coat and scarf) flash a random guy on the street and say something that makes him laugh, then hand over his pants with a smile, but later he drops his pants in front of a female police officer who, instead of arresting him, laughs and sends he and Saki on their way. For the sake of information, the police officer had asked to see his Johnny (slang for "John Hancock", meaning his signature or ID). He (deliberately?) misinterpreted the request and dropped his pants... the officer saw that his "equipment" didn't match a picture of him naked and waving a gun around in front of the White House (it was cold outside), so she decided that was good enough and let him go.
• The eponymous character of Tomie (created by Junji Ito) relies primarily on this to get what she wants, which is ironic as most readers are more likely to remember her multiple vicious deaths and regenerating From a Single Cell every bloody time.
• Ghost in the Shell has a character use something called hypnovoice to get a crowd to turn against the police. The fact that the cops try to convince them they're being duped suggests it can be beaten.
• In the Rosario + Vampire anime, an anime-exclusive character, Ijuuin Kotaro, has the ability to enchant anybody of the opposite sex into becoming his love slave by saying "Je t'aime". He successfully charms all of Tsukune's friends and becomes their beloved Master, but is defeated, and the spell is broken.
  • This same also goes to Kurumu, who can also charm anyone of the opposite sex, provided that they look into her eyes.
• St. ♡ Dragon Girl: Yakumo is a high school substitute teacher who has the ability to hypnotize his female students into doing his bidding.
• In The Vision of Escaflowne, Folken uses a Magitek device to prod Allen and Hitomi into getting together in a process somewhere on the spectrum between this and More than Mind Control. He's not forcing them to do anything morally wrong, or even anything they might not have done on their own, just giving them an extra push to do something that both of them on some level wanted to do anyway.
• Griffith of Berserk already has a great deal of mundane charisma as a normal human. After spending a few years as a godlike demon and then being reincarnated into the human world, this has been supernaturally bolstered to the point where he has this effect on almost everybody, being considered a Messianic Archetype and commanding their loyalty after only a short conversation, or sometimes on sight.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Dio Brando was already considered charismatic as a young man, but upon becoming a vampire, his good looks and charm become supernatural. While some people serve him out of fear or desire for power, others are devoted solely because of his charms, with various women allowing him to drink their blood without any struggle.
• In Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches, Odagiri's power technically is making people fall in love with her, but she uses the power like this since her victims are so infatuated with her that they'll do almost anything she says. A drawback is that the victims may misunderstand her orders out of blind love and thus not obey - for example, when Yamada copies her power and uses it on Miyamura to ask to visit his house, Miyamura interprets it like Yamada wants to be alone with him and suggests going into an abandoned room on the school instead, completely missing that Yamada wants to visit him for entirely other reasons than intimacy.
• Nightwalker has a I Love You, Vampire Son / I Hate You, Vampire Dad interplay going on between the hero, Shido, and his obssesive sire, Cain. Cain frequently attempts to mesmerize Shido into coming back to him, and the only thing that keeps it from working is Heroic Willpower.
• Adeba the nekomata from Kitsune no Yomeiri is able to control a person if she kisses them on the nose but a big enough shock is able to break the control, leaving the victim with no memory of what happened.
• Shiro from The Helpful Fox Senko-san is capable of reading mortal's minds and unearthing their deepest desires, then using that information to control and influence their actions. This sometimes backfires on her.
• Kaiyanwang, a.k.a. Shiva from 3×3 Eyes has this power in virtue of being the Kaiyanwang (mispelled Chinese for Gui Yan Wang, King of the Demon Eye). When he's first unsealed, Pai mentally notices how everyone present reacts to him : Yakumo is crushed by despair and awe, Benares is uncharacteristically subservient and claims to be unworthy of praise, Shiva's mother Ushas (who wanted to trick and destroy him) is happy beyond belief with tears in her eyes, and when Shiva beckons Pai's third Eye, Parvati, she immediately appears and bows to him, sharing a kiss. Fortunately, Ratri's arrival dispels the charm over the good guys.

Comic Books

• Part-time The Avengers member Starfox a.k.a. Eros has this as his signature power. Oh, he may also be a Titanian Eternal, but he's primarily known for being able to make people (especially but not limited to of the female persuasion) feel good.
• Batman: Poison Ivy's pheromones tend to work like this. She can also use more direct Mind Control through toxic kisses (when they don't just kill outright). The scope and effects of these powers are Depending on the Writer.
• One of the more insidious powers of Doctor Strange arch-foe Shuma-Gorath. Shuma-Gorath is a terrifying immortal Eldritch Abomination more malevolent than most demons and more powerful than most gods. Yet the moment it manages to gain a permanent foothold on a world, its denizens will quickly be compelled to revere it.
• The Mighty Thor:
  • The Enchantress has the power to seduce people and give them a kiss that puts them under her control.
  • Her little sister Lorelei has similar spells. In Loki: Agent of Asgard, she needs a bit of cash, so she sits in a speed dating event and magically charms the would-be suitors to give her their wallets.
• The true extent of his hypnotic powers depends on the writer, but Morbius is mostly portrayed as this. He describes it himself as being able to "strongly suggest" things to people, but it depends on the will of the person. E.g. the first time he used it on Spider-Man he was sure it only worked because the latter had been drugged which impaired his will.
• Vampirella:
  • The titular character has hypnosis as one of her powers. This ability is sometimes called "The Aspect of Lilith".
  • Vengeance of Vampirella (1994): The Undead Kids are three teenage runaways who each were granted an ability belonging to the vampire Mazarin through gene splicing. Shifty turns into an enormous werewolf, Misty has the ability to turn to mist and Mez has the mesmerizing/mind control powers of vampires.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: When Ares bestows Helen Alexandros with power to make her the first Silver Swan any man who saw her was instantly awestruck by her beauty, and would be inclined to obey her and go out of their way to aid her.
• X-Men:
  • Gambit, depending on who's writing at the time, he has a degree of "hypnotic charm" that even works on men. However, it doesn't work if the charmee knows about it.
  • Stacy X has pheromone powers that can induce bliss and stimulate bodily sensations and functions, allowing her a certain amount of control over her enemies.

Fan Works

• A Celestial Mage's Charisma: In this Fairy Tail fic, Blue Pegasus guild master Bob warns Makarov that Fairy Tail's newest member Lucy Heartfilia is this, as Celestial Spirit Mages all have innate and powerful charisma to form contract with their Celestial Spirits, which also affects humans. Bob somberly recalls how the late Karin used her powers to not only make the men at Blue Pegasus fall for her but also make the girls admire her despite any envy or her lack of work, and get away with abusing her spirits with only a scolding. Makarov assures Bob that Lucy won't end up as bad as Karin, and he was right in more ways than he thought. Not only was Lucy able to connect to even her most difficult guildmates and even her former enemies, but even rally her prideful guildmates to restore Fairy Tail one year after Makarov disbanded it. After that, Makarov realizes that while Lucy is a Nice Girl that can bring her guildmates together, her charisma could just as easily destroy them with one bad word.
• In A Fox In Paradise, it's a racial ability of the kitsune and the specialty of the Fusakazu clan, used to enthrall others so thoroughly they're like an empty vessel surving the will of the caster.
• In Bloody Minded, Captain America turns out to be a mutant whose power is being able to convince everyone that he's always right. From T'Challa allowing Steve and his team to live in Wakanda and still go on missions to Tony always blaming himself for everything to Erskine willingly using Steve for the Super-Soldier program despite suspecting the man had tuberculosis (which made him a health risk to the armed forces), anyone who spends time in Steve Rogers' presence becomes utterly convinced of whatever he believes.
  Charles Xavier: Rogers has no sense of "other". The entire world revolves around his beliefs. God is what he imagines. Right is what he believes. Evil is what he defines. A bully is someone who can resist Rogers.
• Equestria Girls: Friendship Souls:
  • Cadance. Her Schrift, The Lust, allows her to influence those struck, such as making Hollows eat one another, or forcing an opponent to surrender. Its most powerful form forcibly and permanently turns the target into an enthralled "love slave" under her command that only desires to serve her. For obvious reasons, she doesn't like resorting to that.
  • Inverted by fellow Sternritter Harshwhinny. Her power, The Uncaring, produces a powerful sense of apathy in her targets that leaves them sapped of their willpower, such as their will to fight or defend themselves against attacks, leaving them vulnerable to enemy attacks.
• Discussed in Fate/Reach Out. Yosuke outright asks Shirou if he's got "some sort of innate magecraft sorcery" after witnessing Chie giving "probably the most over the top reaction possible" when he offered to help her studying. Yosuke is mistaking this for an entirely different trope.
• Max Cash from Harmony Theory, who uses a combination of Armor-Piercing Question and Break Them by Talking to compel his victims into performing, as he calls it, "One. Little. Betrayal." Him using an Inverted Element of Loyalty helps.
• Heroic example in Hellsister Trilogy. Supergirl and Superman have a seldom-used ability, related to their super-vision and reinforced by their highly-developed brains, to mesmerize people into doing their bidding. Said power is used by the Girl of Steel to force D'reema to speak the Life Equation and thus nullifying Darkseid's mind-control. Unlike the Anti-Life Equation, though, it can be broken.
• Hours 'Verse: A cognition of Akira in Akechi's Palace is able to brainwash anyone he touches, based on Akechi percieving Akira as someone who wins over everyone he comes across.
• Used on the Trevans to convince them to take a vacation from the Border Crossroads Inn in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World. It was supposed to last for a long time, but because the caster was not a specialist in that kind of magic, the Trevans broke out of it nine days after they left the Inn.
• Ferris in Life Ore Death has a version of this, where her manipulation of "spiritual connection" allows her to quickly form temporary or longer-lasting emotional bonds with people. There's the drawback that she becomes as willing to trust and help them as they are to her, though, since connection goes both ways.
• Outfoxed: Lila Rossi is a born Charm user capable of swaying others using her lies and words. It's only when she says something that someone knows is 100% false, such as being friends with Ladybug (which was how Marinette found out in canon) or being the holder of the Fox Miraculous (which is how Alya finds out in this story), that they can break free from the spell. It also proves ineffective against strong Glamour magic, like the Fox Miraculous itself.
• Prince Charming: This is essentially what Prince Adrien's blessing of charm and beauty works out as. Anyone who spends more than a few minutes in his presence is brainwashed into his adoring slave.

Films — Animation

• Aladdin plays with this using Jafar's magic serpent staff. Usually, when Jafar uses it to control people's minds it's 100% effective, but when he tries to make the Sultan order Jasmine to marry him, the spell fails for a second. "But you're so old!" It seems Jafar's powers do have some limits.

Films — Live-Action

• From Star Wars, the Jedi Mind Trick. A few of the examples in Jedi Mind Trick are also this.
• Played for Laughs when Dracula uses this in Dracula: Dead and Loving It. He pretends it's a Transylvanian method for helping with insomnia. The problem is it works exactly as he says it should work in that Renfield starts to doze off before he can be hypnotized.
• Aunt Agatha in Double, Double, Toil and Trouble places a spell on her sister's husband after trapping her sister on the other side of a mirror.
• Horvath in The Sorcerer's Apprentice uses this to find out where Dave is hiding. His Minion with an F in Evil lampshades this by quoting Star Wars.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Thor: A subtle example in The Stinger. Loki forces Dr. Erik Selvig do his bidding without the Chitauri scepter (Selvig doesn't have the Mind-Control Eyes associated with the Mind Stone, and Loki even has to touch him with the scepter in The Avengers to enslave Selvig's mind) via a Psychic Link. When Loki's "reflection" in the mirror whispers with a smirk, "Well, I guess that's worth a look," Selvig parrots his words and his grin.
  • Thor: Ragnarok: Another subtle example. When Thor first appears in the Sanctum Sanctorum, he raises his hammer (disguised as an umbrella) in defense. However, Doctor Strange greets him with "Thor Odinson... God of Thunder... You can put down the umbrella," and surprisingly, Thor complies. Strange then immediately teleports them to another location to temporarily separate him from Mjölnir while they talk.

Gamebooks

• The "Mind Charm" spell in Lone Wolf, and the "Enchantment" magic in the spinoff Grey Star. Both have rather short-lived effects, though.

Literature

• In Devon Monk's Allie Beckstrom series, Allie's father can do this. He managed to get her enrolled at Harvard and last there for two years before she broke loose from one such effect.
• In Artemis Fowl, fairies have the power to "mesmerize" other beings using direct eye contact, even when low on magic power. Against humans, the power is almost completely effective, with even strong-willed individuals succumbing in under a minute. However, eye contact is required in most cases; it doesn't work on semi-reflective surfaces like mirrored sunglasses.
• Bazil Broketail: Lessis commonly uses spells to make people trust and like her, starting with her very first scene when Besita is affected by it.
• Shannon Hale's Books of Bayern series features "people-speakers" with a magical gift that enhances their interpersonal skills, so they can read people accurately and always come up with the right thing to say to get someone to do what they want. They can be unnaturally persuasive, although others with magical gifts have some resistance to this. However, people with this gift are in danger of becoming corrupt and power-hungry, always feeling driven to manipulate others and bend them to their will.
• In Fredric R. Stewart's Cerberon, Aladavan uses this ability frequently, often accompanied by a "subtle gesture." It doesn't seem to work well when people are actively resisting him. One character knows he's doing this to her, while he's doing it, and later thanks him for it because she wouldn't have listened to him otherwise.
• In the Chaos Gods series, Missus Belana, a devotee of the High Sister goddess, is capable of imbuing her voice with magic that makes everyone who hears her want to please her.
• One of the powers consistently displayed by the human form of the god Nyarlathotep in H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos (his abilities tend to vary a bit depending on the writer, but this is one of his core abilities). He is unnaturally charismatic, and able to make people listen to him and obey his commands without them knowing why they are doing so.
• In Dark Life, Pretty has a form of amped-up hypnosis, using infrasound to alter people's brainwaves, and then implanting suggestions.
• Daughter of the Sun: Aelia can make people ignore her or think she's a friendly, familiar person to let pass by through implanting the ideas in their minds with magic.
• The Death Mage Who Doesn't Want a Fourth Time's main character has a [Death-Attribute Charm] skill that specifically affects those who have an affinity to Death-Attribute mana, like undead and races with undead parentage, or those suffering from extreme negative emotional states. Those under its effects can go from anywhere from seeing him as slightly charismatic to More than Mind Control worship depending on how much sanity they still retained before being affected.
• Tabitha, the Villain Protagonist of the Delicate Fire series, can invoke this via magically-enhanced sexual allure, resulting in what's effectively a supercharged version of The Dulcinea Effect. Her power affects both men and women, and seems limited only in that the target needs to start with at least some sliver of attraction towards her, no matter how small.
• In Demon Seed, a super-computer can control people in this way, using its artificial voice. At the end the computer has been beaten but continues to try to influence people. We then find they've cut off the voice and all its messages are being printed out and have no effect.
• In Dragon Bones, there is a character who does this to one of the hero's allies, more precisely, she compels him to murder the hero. She later says he probably would have broken the spell in time, but it doesn't matter as he was killed by another ally, who saw him trying to backstab the hero.
• Lessa from Dragonriders of Pern has an ability to subtly influence people's thinking, referred to as "leaning" on them. Used most dramatically when she provokes F'lar into dueling Fax, but overall fails about as often as it succeeds, as those on the receiving end can tell something's not quite right if they're paying attention.
• Wizards are capable of this in The Dresden Files, but it violates one of the Laws of Magic, and is increasingly likely to result in their pursuit and execution by the Wardens of the White Council. It's also addictive as hell, and Wizards that use mind magic like this find it difficult to stop. There is a subtle, faint line between a "domination" and a "compulsion", however, with the second being somewhat more acceptable: a compulsion is more like a suggestion to do something, like "sleep" or "don't walk over here right now", and done properly, it doesn't even register as an external influence. Domination forces the target to comply and know that it's being forced to do it.
  • The White Court of vampires are all capable of this. Being essentially incubi and succubi, they feed on emotions and can kindle the kind of emotions they feed on. The most common (and currently most powerful) White Court vampires are the Raith family, who feed on lust and don't bother to turn it off. When they want to, they can prompt orgies centered on them to spontaneously occur. When they don't want to, they still get looks of lust and more than a few offers for a quickie.
• The Bene Gesserit in Dune learn a technique called the Voice, which lets them persuade people to follow their instructions. The technique involves speaking in just the right tone and timbre to make the person most susceptible to your suggestions (though the film and mini-series adaptations have Voice users speak in a creepy, growling voice). It does have limitations, though: for obvious reasons it won't affect deaf people, and it also won't work on mutes, because a Voice user has to hear their target talk in order to figure out what tone to use with them.
• Empire of the Vampire: All highblood vampires radiate some kind of a dark aura, a sensory pressure which either draws or repels every mortal around them, without exception, like wolves walking among flocks of sheep. Most bloodlines can further channel this supernatural charisma buff into some kind of mind control, and all of them can command their wretched cousins to some degree. The vampires' paleblood offspring also inherit this power, though their is much more subdued.
• Ghost Girl (2021): Mr. Scratch is able to bend people to his will once he's attached himself to them.
• Graceling Realm Leck's Grace is basically a permanent and very strong version of the Jedi Mind Trick. Everyone believed what he said no matter how implausible it was. This power even extended to people hearing it second- and third-hand, though it weakened the more people it went through. It could be resisted by The Power of Love.
• The Compulsion spell in a A Grimm Quest.
• Even before he became Lord Voldemort, Tom Marvolo Riddle from Harry Potter was known to have an ability to charm people, which was how he was able to have such a huge following. He used this ability to its fullest during his time working in Borgin & Burk's, where he would persuade people to give up their heirlooms.
• The Heroes of Olympus (the sequel series to Percy Jackson and the Olympians) reveals that some children of Aphrodite can "charmspeak", and hints that children of Hermes have similar powers.
• Flinx's empathic influence works like this in some of Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth novels. His control over others' emotions is scarily potent, yet limited because he can't call up what lies outside the target's normal spectrum of feelings (e.g. making a fanatical nihilist afraid of dying won't work). Requires a lot of maintenance to keep the effect going, else the subject starts to catch on that their feelings are out of whack.
• Inkmistress: Hal is gifted with magical persuasion so he's able to talk some guards into letting both him and Asra go after they get arrested using this.
• In The Invisible Library, the librarians have the Language, which the protagonist mostly uses to tell inanimate objects to do her bidding, but can also use on people in an emergency. (It is also used by the librarians to identify each other, as only they can speak it.) Objects and people alike can only be commanded to do things that are not too much against their inherent nature, and the more against nature a command is, the sooner the effect will break.
• Saruman in The Lord of the Rings is the most powerful user of the ability in the trilogy, but it's a fairly common power among Maiar — Sauron used to be far better at it than Saruman, Gandalf shows occasional flashes of it, and for that matter so does Bombadil — and Eldar — a short list of characters whose ability to sway peoples' minds far beyond simple oratory: Galadriel, Fëanor, Lúthien, Celegorm...
• Lainie from The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess possesses the ability to cause the people around her to be attracted to her and want to protect her. The protagonist finds out that this ability comes from a piece of magicite stuck in Lainie's heart, causing Lainie the unconsciously cast the charm magic whenever she is feeling stressed.
• Mesmeric powers are what allows the Magister Trilogy's Souleaters to be the natural predators of humans. Souleater Queens are especially dangerous, since they can charm other Souleaters, providing the only unity and leadership this otherwise insanely competitive and independent species knows.
• In Masques, Geoffrey ae'Magi is a master of this, and compels an entire room of people to see what he wants them to see, and entire towns to admire and love him so much that they attack anyone who says bad things against him. The main protagonist, too, feels compelled to like him, but after she saw him murder people in cold blood, she's a bit more resistant to his charming smile, and only allows the part of her that wants to love him take over to not endanger herself. (She's a spy and entered his palace disguised as Beautiful Slave Girl)
• In Teresa Frohock's Miserere: An Autumn Tale, Catarina uses this on Lucian, managing to persuade him that it was all a misunderstanding — getting him to overlook her Deal with the Devil and the Cold-Blooded Torture that had lamed him.
• Soothers and Rioters from Mistborn: The Original Trilogy can damp or inflame other's emotions, respectively. Since you can choose exactly what to affect, it's a pretty strong power.
• Overlord: The standard Charm Person spell will compel the target to see the caster as a friend even if they were killing each other seconds ago, allowing the caster's words to affect the target while falling short of true brainwashing. The Dominate spell, being stronger, can force the target to answer a question with the truth (or at least what they believe to be the truth).
• The Power: Some of the people who have the Power learn how it can be used for affecting others' brains and thus doing what the user wants.
• This is one of the more prominent powers of the shamais in A.L. Phillips's The Quest of the Unaligned. It is an extremely subtle effect, described as "like water wearing down a stone". You can fight off the effect if you realize what's happening or are prepared, but this rarely happens. We actually see this effect firsthand when the most powerful pure shamai in the land uses it on the hero and viewpoint character Crown Prince Alaric. The bonus story "Fire, Water, Air, and Pigs" reveals that shamais are resistant to the powers of other shamais, and that the other three elements also protect you to a lesser degree. It is also implied that personality plays a part, as Nahruahn seems to be especially bad at blocking it.
• In Shadow of the Conqueror, Lightbinders can channel Light into their voice to achieve this effect, which only stubborn or iron-willed individuals can resist.
• Lisanne Norman's Sholan Alliance series is loaded with these due to the main characters being mostly strong telepaths.
• China Sorrows has this in Skulduggery Pleasant, and uses it for her personal gain whenever she can. However, its effect seems to lessen once you've known her for a while.
• In The Spirit Thief, Eli is supernaturally good at sweet-talking spirits, convincing them to do what he'd like them to. It's partly derived from the fact that he's the Favourite of the Shepherdess, the goddess of spirits.
• Star Trek Novel 'Verse
  • The Selelvians in Star Trek: New Frontier have a technique they call "The Knack", which basically lets them manipulate other races. When the Federation found out (after a Selelvian crew member was found murdered), they went to war. The Selelvians were introduced in the Next Generation novel Strike Zone.
  • In Star Trek: The Brave And The Bold, the character Aidulac, as well as the females of the Peladons (a race into which she spread her genes), can influence most males into doing their bidding. Originally, anyone and everyone was affected, but over time the ability atrophied to affect only males.
  • Lirahn in Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations.
• Star Wars Expanded Universe
  • The Thrawn Trilogy shows the difference between this and Compelling Voice as the corrupted Jedi Joruus C'baoth uses both. In the first instance he simply forces an Imperial officer into delivering a secret message and then forgetting all about it, leaving the Imperial none the worse for wear, except for a few missing memories - the sourcebook says that his willpower was permanently damaged, but considering what this officer got up to in later books, he had a lot to begin with. In the second case C'baoth uses a sustained version of Compelling Voice to break the will of a different officer, destroy most of his personality, and turn him into a near mindless puppet who can't survive without C'baoth's constant mental control.
  • Outbound Flight: Jorus C'baoth, who Joruus was cloned from, really wasn't any better. He was quite domineering and always wanted to control everything - and, given his view that morals are basically optional, he tried it. As he fell to the Dark Side he forced protesting civilians to be silent.
  • The Illustrated Star Wars Universe: As a Shi'ido, Senior Anthropologist Hoole has the ability to fog minds and implant false memories, complimenting his already impressive shapeshifting powers. According to the Essential Guide To Alien Species, most Shi'ido commonly use this power to cover up any imperfections in their transformations, while the more criminally inclined members of the species use it for con artistry and assassination.
• In The Tome of Bill this is a basic ability of Vampires. They have the ability to compel younger vampires, and if they're old and strong enough, weak-willed humans. The main character is a Freewill, a legendary Vampire breed that gets its name from its immunity to this effect.
• In The Traitor Son Cycle, the most powerful sorcerers, called the Powers of the Wild, can bend minds of other Wild creatures to obey them and fight for them.
• In The Weakness of Beatrice the Level Cap Holy Swordswoman, Tselika has this ability due to being a succubus. She can charm anyone who sees her, even if it's through a video recording. This makes her dangerous even to a modern army.
• The short stories "What Song The Sirens Sang" by Charles Sheffield and "Ignition Point!" by Isaac Asimov use the premise that sufficiently sophisticated analysis of human reactions makes it possible to automatically generate highly compelling political speeches. In the Asimov story, the psychological feedback from the fired-up audience fires up the speaker to the point of no longer needing the specially written speeches.
• Lissa Dragomir from Vampire Academy is naturally charismatic even when not using compulsion. People want to please her and the Weak-Willed are slavishly obedient to her.
• The Wheel of Time:
  • Ta'veren (think "Chosen Ones mixed with a touch of Reality Warper") have a measure of this ability, but it works only sporadically and is not under their conscious control, as their powerful destinies manipulate the people around them.
  • Verin's improvised version of Compulsion merely makes the target suggestible and well-inclined towards her; she can give them an order, but it only works if they can rationalize carrying it out.
• The Wild Cards series has several individuals who could potentially fall into this category. The most prominent is David Harstein, known as the Envoy. Harstein's ace gave him the ability to emit pheromones that made anyone who scented them immediately like, trust and listen to Harstein above all others. The only weakness of this skill was that the effects of the pheromones vanished when Harstein left the vicinity, but the influenced individual still retained the memories of what they had done while affected.

Live-Action TV

• One former Psi-Cop in an episode of Babylon 5 uses this effect to his advantage. Garibaldi figures it out and figures out a way of defeating it if he were to fall victim to it.
• Doctor Who:
  • It has been suggested that the Doctor has this ability. This power may be due to his low-level telepathy. In fact, the Doctor may have used to this power to allow Harriet Jones (former Prime Minister) to get ousted in the first place. The novelization of "Shada" strongly implies this as well, even showing the internal monologue of someone who can't understand why they instinctively trust this poorly dressed, funny-looking stranger and feel a burning desire to follow him around to ask him helpful questions.
  • The Master almost certainly has it, to the point that he was able to convince Britain to vote him in as Prime Minister. The Master built and launched a network of satellites that used a low-level psychic field to compel people. In the original series, he would often be able to mind-control people just by looking them in the eyes. Once the special effects were up to it, it was accompanied by his eyes glowing yellow. That's what the Doctor meant by "he's always been a little hypnotic" once he learned about the satellite plan. Why "I am the Master, and you will obey me!" doesn't work anymore isn't addressed, though.
  • This may be a Time Lord trait, as Professor Chronotis in "Shada" also displays it, causing people to think that despite his eccentric behaviour and dark secret that he 'seems like such a nice old man', and completely Beneath Suspicion or dislike. Even when he tricks the other characters, they let him get away with this behaviour because he seems so harmless. Of course, he is the opposite of harmless.
• In Haven, this is the Trouble that runs in the Brody family. The patriarch of the family has used the Trouble to become the town mayor and is a consummate politician. Witnessing his death triggers the Trouble in his son, Chris, who is an introverted misanthrope and absolutely hates the attention.
• The Magicians (2016): An example rather steeped in Fridge Horror reveals that a prominent politician is actually a demigod whose universal adoration is due to his unconscious use of mind control on everyone he's interacted with during his entire life. Being forced to accept this fact (which itself implies he's never once had a genuine relationship (let alone real love) with anyone and the realization that he's also primed to be a Tyke-Bomb is one heck of a bomb to drop.
• In the Supernatural episode "Simon Said", Andy and his twin can compel others to do what they want.
• The Vampire Diaries Universe:
  • Vampires from The Vampire Diaries can compel humans.
  • The Original vampires from The Originals can compel humans, other vampires and vampire-werewolf hybrids.
• The Russian mini-series Wolf Messing Seeing Through Time, based on the (fictionalized) biography of the supposed Polish-Jewish psychic Wolf Messing, has the titular character do this several times. The first time is quite by accident, when he runs away from home as a boy and sneaks on a train to Warsaw. When caught by the train conductor, he gives the man a piece of paper, who stamps it as if it's a ticket. Later, he unintentionally causes the conductor to jump off the moving train. His abilities are shown to not work on a few strong-willed individuals, including the Magnificent Bastard Baron Heinrich Canaris, who keeps hounding Messing through the latter's life, first in order to get the psychic to help him with gambling and then trying to capture him as an SS Standartenführer. Another memorable use of this ability has Messing do it from another room to 4 Nazis in order to simply walk out of a German prison.

Podcasts

• In The Adventure Zone, Taako uses this spell to convince a hostile bugbear named Klarg to help the party. Klarg offers them a valuable hostage, a gift of gold, and some tea.
• The title character of the Red Panda Adventures is an accomplished hypnotist. The Red Panda uses this skill primarily for interrogation or removing inconvenient memories from others, such as information about his and his sidekick's secret identities. He also tends to quickly recognize when an enemy is using hypnosis of their own. He can be resisted by those who possess a strong enough will or have trained for such attack. Overdoing things can also cause permanent damage. That's why the Red Panda is careful about hypnotizing the same person multiple times or, when questioning a victim that had already been shaken up mentally and emotionally, is very careful to have the man's consent before putting him under.

Tabletop Games

• Changeling: The Lost has the Contracts of Vainglory, which range from "I bear the mantle of authority, so you're more inclined to listen to me" to "I'm so unnaturally beautiful that you couldn't possibly bring yourself to hurt me" to "I think I'll pull a Galadriel and go so horrifically pretty that you run screaming."
• Dungeons & Dragons
  • Charm Person and Suggestion. There are several levels of enchantment spells in D&D. Charm Person merely makes the target perceive you as an ally (like the Jedi mind trick), Suggestion forces the target to perform a single task, and Dominate Person puts them under your complete control. There are countless other charm or compulsion spells with more specific effects. As many a DM has had to explain, however, Charm Person only makes the target perceive you as a friend, and is not an outright mind control spell. They can be convinced to do small favors, maybe loan out some money or tools, but they won't switch sides or throw away their lives for you.
  • It's very rarely acknowledged just how frightening the diverse array of mind-altering powers the Enchantment school of spells grants a wizard, up to and including charming a person so thoroughly that they will kill themselves without hesitation if so commanded. In contrast to Necromancy, which is always seen as an evil magic, Enchantment has no negative moral connotations whatsoever. There is one exception: in the Dragonlance setting, Enchantment is considered just as much Black Magic as Necromancy. This may be because the Kingpriest of Ishtar, an infamous tyrant, exploited Enchantment spells to maintain an iron grip upon his empire, using them to root out "thoughtcrime".
  • An epic level of the Diplomacy could conceivably grant a character a mundane form of Charm Person through actual charm.
• Exalted has a fair number of abilities like this, of course. One demon has the power to make anyone who sees her smile fall in love with her permanently. There are other, less-than-standard variations; Flawless Brush Discipline makes a Solar's handwriting so beautiful that those who read it will fall in love with the writer.
• Godforsaken: Discussed. Magic that controls or influences minds is very common in fantasy, but is problematic from a gameplay standpoint because it means the player loses control of their character for a while. Furthermore, some players may get upset if mind control makes their PC (often seen as an extension of themselves) do something out of character. The GM should always be careful when introducing mind control to the campaign and make sure that the actions a controlled character takes aren't something the player doesn't consent to.
• Hero System: The basic Mind Control power isn't technically limited in this fashion, but the more an intended effect goes against the subject's own usual nature, the more the roll of the Mind Control dice needs to beat the target's EGO score by to take effect — and the easier it normally is to break out again, too. Thus, smart mind controllers are encouraged by the system to choose the subtle approach over simply clobbering their victims into submission with mental brute force.
• In Nomine: Impudites, a Band (type) of demons can cause their victim to see the demon as their close personal friend, making them more likely to go along with what the demon wants them to do (and also allowing the demon to steal their Essence. The Ethereal Song of Attraction has a similar effect, making the victim passionately obsessed with the performer.
• Mutants & Masterminds has Emotion Control: Love which essentially works like a hyped-up version of Diplomacy, shifting people's attitudes to you, possibly from outright hostility to fanatical obsession.
• Vampire: The Masquerade: The Presence discipline, and its successor Majesty in Vampire: The Requiem. Low-level powers involve drawing the attention of everyone in the room and causing a person to spill all their secrets; higher level powers involve summoning a person from a great distance away and being untouchable because you are so very pretty. Dominate is more like Mind Control.
• Warhammer:
  • The Chaos god/dess of desire, Slaanesh, is so beautiful that no mortal can look at hir and not immediately be enthralled.
  • Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: The second edition campaign The Thousand Thrones revolves around a young mutant boy named Karl, born with the magical ability to make people become absolutely loyal to him the moment they hear his voice. Unfortunately, he can't actually control the power, unwittingly becoming the figurehead of a horde of religious fanatics that believe him to be a manifestation of the god Sigmar, and the rightful ruler of the Empire. Notably, individuals following Karl's mob rationalize their inexplicable loyalty by convincing themselves that he'll somehow solve their personal grievances with society.

Toys

• BIONICLE:
  • The Mask of Charisma gradually alters the target's opinion to match that of the person wearing it.
  • Or, you know, the mask of mind control.

Video Games

• After I met that catgirl, my questlist got too long!'s main protagonist, Vera, is a Charm Witch. This allows her to cast magic that can allure and befuddle her enemies, even if they're inhuman monsters.
• Priest units in Age of Empires I and II. Ditto in Empire Earth. Also Enemy Exchange Program.
• In BioShock, the plasmids Hypnotize Big Daddy (from the first game) and Hypnotize (from the second game) can be used to hypnotize many of the enemies in the game to fight alongside you. Eventually they will break free however.
  • The third game in the series, BioShock Infinite has a nastier version in the Charm Vigor. It can be used to sway enemies into fighting with you, however when upgraded, the enemey will kill themselves out of guilt for attacking their own friends when the vigor wears off. Usually while crying out in anguish about what you have made them do.
• Deconstructed in the Civilization IV mod Fall from Heaven. In the Flavor Text, the Charm Person spell is basically described as a Mind Rape, warping the genuine feelings of love and protection that the target feels for his friends and family, and mapping it to the caster instead. The victim still hates the person who's doing this to them, but the mental manipulation is so great that it leaves the victim completely unable to fight back or even defend themselves while the caster's allies cut them to ribbons.
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution has the CASIE mod augmentation available to the player character, which enables its user to pinpoint the most effective means of persuasion and releases subtle pheromones that make people more susceptible to agreeing to whatever's asked. Doing so is never an instant win, however; the player must slowly and carefully coax the target into a favourable mood, and some individuals - especially if unusually intelligent, confident, calm, manipulative and/or aware of the compulsion - are flat-out immune. If the compulsion fails, the individual will shut down any further interaction. There's always a brute-force option, but it will always have consequences later. In addition, the mod requires talking face-to-face.
• Diablo III: Eirena has the ability to make enemies fight for you. She also comments sometimes about the time she cast a charm spell so powerful one of her sisters was fawning over her for days. She says it was mortifying, but the tone of her voice makes it sound like she actually enjoyed it.
• Seraphina from Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance can use her Balor Gaze to mind control any male person. Unfortunately for her, it doesn't work on Killia. In-game, it's a Limit Break that inflicts Charm (or complete manual control after it's upgraded) on all male enemies in a large radius for a turn.
• Divinity: Original Sin has several spells/abilities with the Charm effect, which allow you to control any enemy who fails to resist it for several turns in combat. Since most spell effects in this game also come in form of Trick Arrows, there is even a Charm Arrow, which looks just like a Cupid's one, with a pink heart for the head.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • Throughout the series, there exist various charm spells. They range from raising the disposition of NPCs in conversation to (temporarily) getting hostile NPCs to stop attacking to getting neutral NPCs to attack on your behalf.
  • The Imperial race has this as one of their hats, in line with their natural abilities as diplomats and leaders. They also tend to get large bonuses to their Speechcraft and Mercantile skills. Their "Voice of the Emperor" racial power acts as semi-powerful aforementioned "charm" spell.
  • A near-universal trait of the series' vampire bloodlines is the ability to enthrall mortal servants.
  • Clavicus Vile, the Daedric Prince of Bargains and Wishes, counts among his associated artifacts the Masque of Clavicus Vile. The Masque is a powerful helmet enchanted to turn its wearer into a Charm Person.
• Enter the Gungeon has a few guns and items that will charm foes into temporarily fighting for you. This doesn't really change the game as enemy attacks are weak against themselves, but it does stall their assault on you for a few precious seconds. The shopkeepers have kinetic barriers to prevent you from shooting them with charm bullets (or just killing them), BUT if you have a Charm Horn you can "convince" shopkeepers to part with an extra item for free. You can even buy the charm horn and then use it on the very vendor you bought it from. The reason why this isn't such a game breaker is the game's karma system: steal too much stuff and an unkillable, uncharmable Bullet Hell Grim Reaper follows you everywhere and shoots at you until you die.
• EverQuest has charm spells available for various spell-casting classes, which turns the target into a minion willing to defend the caster and follow orders, no matter how suicidal. In keeping with the trope, the spell can break randomly at any time, depending on the target's magic resistance. Some classes are limited in what they can charm, such as Necromancers/Shadow Knights being limited to controlling undead, or Druids/Rangers being limited to charming animals. The Enchanter class, however, can charm almost any type of creature.
  • Once upon a time, Enchanters could also charm players, effectively robbing that player of control of their character by allowing the caster to issue commands and forcing the player's character to follow them. It was eventually deemed too powerful and removed from PvP gameplay.
• EXTRAPOWER: Giant Fist: The devil Coma occasionally does this to people, often to aid her infiltration but sometimes to turn otherwise neutral or friendly characters into a boss fight.
• In Fallout, with a high enough Speech stat, you can convince people to do just about anything. (well, as long as you get a chance to, anyway). Similar to the Planescape examples above, having high (or extremely low) stat scores can also unlock unique dialogue options. Fallout 3 changed many non-stat based charm, persuade and intimidation -type options to have a chance to fail, though, this was reverted in New Vegas and un-reverted in Fallout 4.
• Final Fantasy Tactics
  • Rather than mages getting the ability to inflict the Charm condition through a spell as in most RPGs, thieves do it. With enough "Job Points", they can learn the ability to steal not only the usual money and weapons but also hearts.
  • The thief's version of Charm is temporary; it's essentially an improved form of Confuse, in that the victim will only attack their allies instead of anyone at random. Just like confusion, all it takes to snap them out of it is a physical attack. For the permanent version, which not only lasts the whole battle but allows you to recruit the affected, you'll need an Orator.
  • Reis can also do this with her bare-handed attacks after you complete her subquest. But given that she's a dragon in human form^note Technically a human who was turned into a dragon and then back into a human, but she retained all of her dragon abilities, including the raw physical strength, even after the curse was lifted., the enemy has to survive the hit first.
• In Gems of War, the Lamia troop has this as her special attack; it compels one enemy troop make a single attack on another.
• Geneforge
  • Taking enough ranks in the Leadership skill can let you talk your way out of most major conflicts. In a few cases, you can convince the enemy to kill themselves.
  • Additionally, the Charm and Dominate spells instantly turn an enemy to your side for a while if you can overcome their mental effect resistance. With enough points in Mental Magic and Spellcraft it can work reliably even on end-game enemies.
• In Ghost 1.0, the Daisy Gun charms any robot shot with it into fighting on Ghost’s side for 20 seconds. The player can also spend skill points in Jacker’s skill tree to make him hack enemy turrets and robots during alarm phases.
• In The Legend of Dragoon, Shana, the Moon Child has this power, in which people will follow her and do as she wants. Unlike most examples of the trope, she has no control over this power (indeed, she doesn't even know she has it). It's a plot point as well, as anyone who sees the Moon Child will help her in her goals, which is to say, usher in the God of Destruction.
• Mass Effect
  • The Charm and Intimidate skills, which work exactly the same way it did in KOTOR, except there's no magical Jedi power to it.
  • Morinth's special ability "Dominate" works much like the traditional "Charm Person" spell.
• Gene's special ability in Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops works like this, his voice having some special quality that makes those listening do what he says.
• Minion Masters: Thanks to her magic, Morellia can seduce even those with her touch who know about that power.
• If your Charisma stat is high enough, some conversations in Planescape: Torment will have a conversation option labeled "Turn on the Charm". It will not allow you to flub a charm attempt — either you have enough skill to succeed at it, or you aren't allowed to choose the charm option, instead having to choose a regular dialog choice. Same with Intimidate. Planescape also has Wisdom and Intelligence reveal these options. The implication is that you have enough Charisma/Intelligence/Wisdom/Charm/Intimidate to be able to understand JUST the right thing to say.
• Myth: The Fallen Lords: The Deceiver can use his Binding Dream to convert enemies to your cause. The narrator lampshades this. "No wonder his army has always been made up of bewitched men and the walking dead - no thinking being would willingly follow him." In The Wolf Age, Mjarin uses it toward the end of the game to keep Emperor Leitrim in a semi-comatose and easily suggestible state.
• Rave Heart: Ellemine can inflict the Conversion ailment on non-boss enemies, which causes them to attack their own side. She normally doesn't use this ability in cutscenes until she brainwashes Heron to let them sneak into Rave Palace.
• Notorious in Romancing SaGa series (Remake of the first RS Game has the ailment, the original doesn't) and Sa Ga Frontier (Charm Gaze)
• Second Sight has this as one of John Vattic's powers. He can use it to either calm down allies who are panicked or gain a sort of invisibility (by making everyone passively ignore him, machines aren't fooled.). However trying to charm someone who is trying to kill you isn't recommended.
• South Park: The Fractured but Whole: Raisins Girls have the "Favorite Customer" ability, which allows them to charm teammates to their side. If New Kid charms them, they can't charm anyone else and instead inflict damage.
• In the Suikoden series, Jeane is the only character with a rare and permanently affixed Charm Rune, which she uses to charm people into liking her and monsters into occasionally fighting for her. (Of course, the type of clothing she wears might have something to do with the way all of the men go ga-ga around her.)
• Runa Amberthorne in Sweet Enchantments specializes in charm magic. The ethical implications of using such a power on other people are touched upon in her route: the heroine learns that in the past, Runa charmed Kamila to fall in love with her, which is the reason Kamila is so hostile towards Runa in her route. Kamila subsequently charms the protagonist to love her as a means of vengeance towards Runa.
• Transistor: Switch() is a Non-Damaging Status Infliction Attack for Charm. Charmed Processes can't be damaged by the player, and will switch back instantly if hit a second time.
• Unleash the Light:
  • Greg's Limit Break has him charming an enemy into attacking their allies instead of the party, but some powerful enemies are immune to it.
  • One of Hessonite's Autograph abilities has the same function as Greg's Limit Break, while another charms an enemy into healing and buffing the party instead.
• Dark Rangers in Warcraft 3 have Charm as their ultimate spell, allowing them to permanently take control of non-hero enemy units.
• In The Witcher games, Geralt has the Axii sign, which influences minds. It can calm a spooked horse, it can slow or stun opponents (or at higher levels, make them fight for you), and in conversations it can be used for suggestion. The latter use doesn't work well against a group, though, as the taget's buddies might notice what's going on.

Visual Novels

• Aquarium: Marine can apparently shoot "Sexy Beam" from her finger, which she uses to hypnotize Fubuki into approving her relationship with Theo and a few townsfolk to "sell" a ship to her. With it ending on a Non-Standard Game Over, it's not canon.

Web Comics

• Girl Genius: All Sparks have the ability to unconsciously layer their voices with powerful harmonics. The first hint that they're falling into a full spark-induced fugue state is when everyone around them starts feeling a strong combination of dread and obedience for reasons they can't always explain. Some of the people are shown to be able to resist it, with a Running Gag being von Zinzer reluctantly being Agatha's Igor.
• The Order of the Stick
  • Secondary character Thanh, a member of the Sapphire Guard order of paladins, gets put under this (technically, a Dominate Person spell) by one of the villains. The other characters break him out of it by trying to make him do something that violates his moral code: killing Lord Shojo, leader of the Guard... or the sociopathic halfling Belkar dressed up as Shojo.
  • Earlier, Nale use Charm Person on Belkar and told him to kill his companions and give their magic items to him, which Belkar refuses (though he had no problem killing them and keeping their items, while singing "Meet Me in St. Louis").
  • Nale later uses the spell "Suggestion" to a similar, but more sinister, purpose: Taking advantage of his brother Elan's anger and confusion to try and "suggest" that Elan kill his love interest, Haley. It holds... for a minute. Notably, in this case, it only worked at all because his target was extremely angry: otherwise, the Suggestion would never have even taken hold.
• Lord Grater of the Punyverse in Sluggy Freelance thinks that he has these powers. In practice, they tend to work like this:
  Lord Grater: You will lie down and take a nap!
  Guard: Huh?
  (Torg hits guard over head with large rock)
  Guard: (semiconscious) I will lie down and take a nap.
  • As a vampire, Sam has the ability to charm people to do what he wants. However, it can't make women think he's hot, much to his dismay.
• In El Goonish Shive, the Abberation that targeted Susan had the ability to magically seduce women. It is implied that it only worked on those attracted to men and/or people with low magic resistance (hence it not working on Nanase).
• The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: Everything the Ultimate Diplomat in "Futures Trading" says convinces everyone instantly and very deeply. Who knows why — it's not even explained why he's apparently a half dinosaur Half-Human Hybrid. His full speech at the end is omitted from the comic on the basis that it would allegedly be a sort of Brown Note to readers, sort of a positivity version of Pure Awesomeness, but the things he says before that are perfectly ordinary.
• The hare in The Hare's Bride seems to have some mind influencing ability. The girl starts out loudly shooing him, but each time he gives his invitation, the panels focusing closer and closer on his face, her voice grows quieter and she loses steam until she gives in.

Web Original

• Prince Adrian Juste in Ember got Cursed with Awesome to be found charming by everyone. Everyone drools over him, which for him gets really old after awhile, and he goes for the one chick who (with the help of magic) doesn't want to go for him. Turns out he was cursed with charmingness to make sure he didn't become the great conqueror he had the potential to become. If he had everything he wanted handed to him on a silver platter, his ambitions would go elsewhere.
• In the Whateley Universe, psychics generally manifest this ability as opposed to straight mind control. Don Sebastiano, Solange, and even Jade have used this to slowly worm their way into someone's psyche. Jade, however, had a series of VERY special circumstances. Unfortunately, convincing someone like this functions as More than Mind Control, and is rather hard to catch in the act. Jade has used the Big Sad Puppy Dog Eyes to get her way rather than any mutant abilities.
• In The Saints a mage can combine the Passion Path of Magic with the Connection Path to influence and subtly control the thoughts and feelings of others.
• Critical Role:
  • Scanlan, the party's bard in the first campaign, rolls scarily high on persuasion and deception attempts - high enough that he almost never fails. He also has the Suggestion spell explained in the Dungeons & Dragons section above and later gets the Modify Memory spell ^note Which lets you erase 10 minutes of the victim's memory and replace it with whatever the caster can come up with - including that the victim agreed to something they really just refused.. Thankfully, while there were a few uses that were ethically questionable over the course of the campaign (the DM usually made sure it was a No-Sell or that Scanlan quickly had to face negative consequences), Scanlan almost never used these powers for sexual or otherwise selfish purposes. The Power Perversion Potential is probably a big part of the reason why the character's player quickly steered Scanlan's characterization away from "funny but slightly creepy^note Sometimes his behaviour was only funny because he's a child-sized gnome and therefore comes across as harmless. Casanova Wannabe who makes poor choices in his interactions with women"^note To reflect his very low Wisdom stat. and more towards a genuine Chivalrous Pervert who makes plenty of sex jokes, but doesn't actually try to get laid with random women anymore, because he's in love with one of the other player characters.
  • Percy also gained the Friends spell^note functionally identical with Charm Person as explained in the Dungeon & Dragons section as a sort of scar on his soul left behind by the shadowdemon that once convinced him to make a deal with him, when Percy was young and not quite in his right mind. But he hardly ever used it. Once, a satyr in the Feywild used the same spell on Percy at a crucial moment to make him agree to a magically enforced deal against his better judgement. Percy eventually managed to fullfill the terms of the deal through trickery of his own, so avoiding the very negative consequences that could have resulted from actually doing what the satyr wanted. While gloating about the satyr's frustration, he then proceeded to lampshade the ethical problems with this type of magic.
  Percy: Don't cast Friends on people. It's not nice.
  • Critical Role: Campaign Two:
    • Molly is a Devil's Tongue tiefling, granting him these abilities by default. He uses this power to great effect while helping Fjord question Nott over her attempted thefts, causing the goblin to go from frantically spewing Blatant Lies to nearly revealing her most closely guarded secrets. All the while, she wonders why she's at ease with her interrogators, and is unable to register Molly's threat when he tells her he'll charm her again if anything goes missing. Once the tiefling breaks the spell, Nott immediately snaps back into panic and grows hostile before darting out of the room.
    "Nott, dear? Why don't you tell the nice man the truth? Devil's Tongue."
• Fire Emblem on Forums: Enchanters, who carry the Enchant skill, allowing them to charm enemies to their side for a turn.

Western Animation

• Castlevania: When Isaac reaches The Magician, he resorts to direct mind control to try and remove the threat.
• Zak Saturday of The Secret Saturdays can control cryptids, but can't make them do anything that they absolutely don't want to do.
• Freakshow's staff in the Danny Phantom episode "Control Freak", can control ghosts. Naturally, being half-ghost made Danny susceptible to it, at least until Sam fell off a bridge, inadvertently leading to the staff getting broken.
• The Legend of Vox Machina: Sylas Briarwood has a vampire's innate charm abilities, which he demonstrates by mentally dominating the Sovereign over dinner into leaving Whitestone's independence unchallenged and later making Vax leave himself defenseless to be bitten.
• Nicara of The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo can make warlocks fall in love with her. She manages to enchant Vincent Van Ghoul and plans to use her kiss to absorb all his powers before the clock strikes midnight (as her powers only work on Friday the 13th), but is delayed by Scooby-Doo and co. and fails.
• Wakfu: ShadowFang can use her charms and powers to put people under control.

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