"You'd like to quantify me, Officer Starling. You're so ambitious, aren't you? Do you know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes?"
Only a fool tries Perp Sweating on a sociopathicSerial Killer master of psychology. These loonies know all the tricks, and will turn the tables.
The looney starts out with a few seemingly-innocent questions about the interrogator's life or even appearance — "why did you go into law enforcement instead of medicine like you wanted?" or "why aren't you married?" Then, the loon asks more armor piercing questions, which turn into comments, which turn into deconstructions, which turn into declarations about how the interrogator has failed in different ways. Pretty soon, the loon is doing all the interrogating and all the answering, with the poor 'interrogator' doing nothing but nodding their assent and crying.
Incidentally, professional interrogators for police and other investigative agencies are trained never to answer questions. Ever. The main protagonist of The Closer is one of the few interrogators on TV who is faithful to this basic precept. Movie Nazis tend to respond with "Ve are askink ze questions here!".
Named for Dr. Hannibal Lecter of the 1988 novel The Silence of the Lambs, who set the standard for this trope when he was immortalized onscreen by Anthony Hopkins in the 1991 film adaptation.
Sub Trope of Break Them By Talking, where you'll find examples about someone who's not being interrogated doing it.
See also: To the Pain, Talking Your Way Out, Just Between You and Me, Evil Gloating, Shut Up, Hannibal!, "The Reason You Suck" Speech, and Critical Psychoanalysis Failure. Compare And Then What?. If the declarations come from simple clues, this is a form of Sherlock Scan.
Examples
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Anime
In X1999, at least the manga, Satsuki Yatoji Hannibalizes Yuzuriha Nekoi into nigh-catatonia by explaining why she thinks killing people is alright. She then proceeds to put theory into practice and it takes a Heroic Sacrifice by Inuki to save Yuzuriha.
In Monster, the Hannibal Lecture is one of Johan Liebert's specialities, insofar he actually drives people to suicide with them.
In the Berserk manga, both Griffith and Guts do this to antagonists who have captured them, proving that they don't need any weapons to get the better of people.
At the end of Death Note, Light has been exposed as Kira, and instead of denying it he goes into a Motive Rant slash Hannibal Lecture about how the world needs Kira's brand of justice, how war is ended and crime far down thanks to him, and stopping him would only cause the world to return to its former rotten state, and that Near was only chasing Light to feed his own ego and prove he was a worthy successor to L. The last accusation, at least, is clearly true, but Near bursts his bubble with "You're just a murderer", without being visibly rattled in the least.
This Motive Rant of Light's is often considered mostly out-and-out lies, but Near acknowledges later on that Kira did end war and most crime besides his own acts. What Light does here is use the truth to try and sell his own perspective — after Near's smackdown, Light's dismissive internal response isn't "they didn't buy it", but "they're idiots, they'll never understand".
In Slayers NEXT, Gaav questions Amelia when she attempts to attack him. Amelia stops for some seconds, confused by his words, so Gaav attacks her instead and Zelgadis is badly injured when he performs a Diving Save and shields Amelia with his own body.
In Code Geass, Mao uses a Hannibal Lecture * and* his Geass-induced psychic powers to perform More than Mind Control on Shirley Fenette. She's so badly damaged that Lelouch must erase himself from her memories via Geass.
Mao tries this again to avoid arrest by Suzaku a couple episodes later, violating his sanity by reading his mind and taunting him with such knowledge. With Shirley's More than Mind Control and Nunnally's hostage situation still fresh in his mind and Mao's visor knocked off by Suzaku prior to the Mind Rape, Lelouch had a clear shot to Geass Mao into a Fate Worse than Death.
Mao: So that's how you justify it in retrospect? You're nothing but a spoiled brat!
Lelouch: Mao! * activates Geass*
Mao: SHIT!
Lelouch: NEVER SPEAK AGAIN!
This seems to be a popular tactic among demons in general in Chrono Crusade, but particularly with the Big Bad, Aion. Two notable examples are in the manga, when two demons corner Chrono in a dark warehouse and proceed to rattle off a list of his crimes, and in the anime with Aion's first appearance, where he lectures everyone as a supernatural fog rolls in.
Chang Wufei delivers a long one in Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz, trying to convince Heero that their attempts to bring peace were pointless, as war is simply an ingrained part of human nature. Heero's response is part "World of Cardboard" Speech ("Believe in the era we live in!") and part Contemplate Our Navels ("How many more people must we kill? How many more times must I kill that girl and her dog?").
In episode 37 of Gundam SEED, Fllay Allster manages to get a gun on Big Bad Rau Le Creuset. Instead of disarming her, he proceeds to deliver a downright vicious Hannibal Lecture that pretty much destroys her will to fight. To wit:
Rau: "If you shoot me right here, you will die within moments. The soldiers will shoot you. If that doesn't suit you, your only other option would be to point that gun at yourself and pull the trigger. The gun is loaded, I presume. On the battlefield, life is cheap; it's lost in an instant. But still, people fight for their country; for justice. However, none of that suits you. You may be wearing a military uniform, but you're no soldier. Am I wrong?"
And then the Stockholm Syndrome kicks in, and Flay starts thinking of Rau like a father, even though by that point she's still a Coordinator-hating racist who hates them for killing the father that Rau is a sort-of stand-in for in her mind. This is mostly because she is stuck in a hostile environment, surrounded by enemies, and it is only Rau's protection that is keeping her alive.
Kyuutarou Ooba from Kemonozume uses a Hannibal Lecture as a last gambit after being decapitated, dismembered and finally eaten alive, flying the protagonist into the freezing depths of outer space while scolding him on believing that there's any goodness in humanity. The protagonist replies with his last ounce of consciousness by screaming a denial and ripping off Ooba's wings, sending them both plummeting back down to earth.
Fullmetal Alchemist has #66, Barry The Chopper, make 14 year old Alphonse Elric question his own existence with one of these by telling him that Ed might have faked Al's memories and that Alphonse Elric NEVER existed. How he gets out of his funk varies between the versions:
In the first anime, it takes Alphonse an entire episode which involves a pep talk from Scar and Ed telling what him what he really meant to say to him to snap him out of it.
In the manga and Brotherhood, it's only after Winry hits Al with a wrench and points out that no one would sacrifice an arm for a fake brother that Al figures out that he's the real Al.
Then we got Envy, master of this. Until Mustang and Ed returnthe favor.
And Solf J. Kimblee. He actually delivers a Hannibal Lecture with a rare positive benefit - during the Ishbalan genocide, both Roy and Riza were telling themselves that they really didn't have any choice but to take part in war crimes. Kimblee utterly shreds those ideas apart ("When you shoot a man, do you not feel even the slightest bit of pride for a job well done?"), forcing them to take responsibility and realize that they're Not so Different. The end result is Roy and Riza plotting to take down the military government to prevent such a genocide from ever happening again.
What's interesting is that Kimblee is a very smart psychopath with a flair for messing with people's heads and an apparent gift for considering himself the rational one in any given collision of philosophies. And he also comes out in the same speech with gem lines like:
Kimblee: Don't avert your eyes from death. Look forward. Look the people you're killing in the face. And don't forget them. Don't forget. Don't forget. They won't forget you either.
Kimblee: (later on while fighting Alphonse, he questions why Alphonse doesn't simply use the Philosopher's Stone to get his original body back, and following Al's response?) I see. So if you can discover an exception to the rule, you can effectively rewrite the laws of nature as we understand them. Is that how it's supposed to go? Because there is another possibility you know... you don't get get your bodies back and you don't save everyone. That could certainly happen.
Pride later gives Edward one during their brief fight. It didn't endwell for Pride though.
In the first anime, episode #49, Dante attempts this on Edward by stating that the law of equivalancy is 'a lie meant to comfort the oppressed and make children do their lessons'. She seems very determined to prove her point , even going so far as threatening to kill a helpless infant to demonstrate to him that even the most strenuous efforts (in this case, the infant crying for help) can get you nothing in return.
The truly impressive thing about this is that Dante basically takes the idea of Equivalent Exchange and deconstructs it, revealing that while impressive and accurate in theory, the law of Equivalent Exchange is very flawed, especially when one attempts to apply it outside of Alchemy. While someone may put in everything they've got to achieve something, what they receive will not always be of equal value to what has been given. Ed rejects this view instead of letting it get to him.
Pain from Naruto gets in on this and uses it on Naruto. It works.
Of course, it didn't convince Naruto to give up, but instead he decides to try and prevent the conditions which causes someonelike Pain to exist. Before that Pain gave one to Tsunade about the big villages not caring if they hurt the smaller ones. She's not convinced and claims that even the big villages suffer. Not to be outdone, Pain's response was to crush the village.
Let's not forget the one Neji gives to Hinata during the chuunin exams, causing her to pretty much have a breakdown on the spot. It took Naruto to snap her out of it. Not that it helped her much, because in the ensuing fight he delivers such a beatdown that she almost gets killed.
Verbally, Hinata still gets the last word in when she tells Neji that he's the one hopelessly fighting fate and not her.
Naruto also receives one of these from Yami Naruto in chapter 493. We don't see the end of it, but it's enough, combined with an inability to defeat his opponent in combat, to make Naruto start to seriously doubt his own morality. Naruto seems really vulnerable to these, doesn't he?
This particular lecture verges on Mind Rape due to the fact that Yami Naruto was a manifestation of all of Naruto's personal insecurities. He'd never had an answer for these doubts before but had ignored them; Yami force Naruto to face them.
The Kyuubi attempted this a few times with Naruto in Shippuden, but each time was interrupted by, in order of appearance, Sasuke, Minato, and finally by Naruto himself, who shut it up accordingly.
In Dragon Ball Z, Goku of all people manages to give one of these to Frieza during their battle on Namek. After having ascended to the level of a Super Saiyan and smacking around the now fully-powered Big Bad, he abruptly decides that their battle is done. When a shocked Frieza demands to know what he means by that, Goku's response makes the killer of the Saiyan race and former #1 fighter in the universe (at least at the time) go through a mini-breakdown:
Goku: Your power level is decreasing with every blow. You're not even a challenge to me anymore. It wouldn't be fair for me to keep fighting you. I'm satisfied now. Your pride has been torn to shreds. You've challenged and lost to a fighter who is superior to you...and to make it worse, "he was just a monkey", right?
* Frieza is seething in anger, shocked and enraged at Goku's words*
Goku: It would be meaningless to fight you now; you're too scared and ashamed. Live with the shock. Keep it bottled up inside of you...silently.
Anti-Hero Saito Hajime from Rurouni Kenshin is a walking, talking Hannibal Lecture to any villain in sight, (or anyone who just rubs him the wrong way) and he barely has to pause his beatdowns to give his lectures. Watsuki, (the mangaka who created Kenshin), bemoaned the fact that evil characters he created with the intention of being Terminator-like and tough fights for Saito were inevitably broken down into pieces and looked like weaklings after they actually fought Saito.
The granddaddy of Saito's lectures comes against Usui, where he delivers no less than three during their Duel to the Death. The final one is given with a dying Usui is pinned to the wall by Satio's sword and Saito proceeds to give him a classic "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
He may be a master at it, but he's not above receiving as well: Right before Sano goes to Kyoto, they fight. Again, Saito wins but at the very end of the fight, after Saito call him a chick, he gets something like this:
"I may be a chick right now, but I bet you and Kenshin were not that strong in the beginning"
Mahou Sensei Negima! has an interesting variation at the end of the Kyoto Arc, when the arc's Dirty Coward antagonist gets chased down by Chachazero, who delivers such a frightening Hannibal Lecture that the antagonist faints from fear.
In Bleach, during the reveal, Aizen delivers a several chapter long lecture to Ichigo, completely paralyzing him. Until Komamura attacks Aizen in a rage at his betrayal.
Aizen's response: cut off Komamura, then continue, until everyone shows up. But by then, he already finished all he said.
Repeated again during the Fake Karakura Town arc with not one, not two, but several, to the Vizards (making Hiyori Half The Woman She Used To Be) for the entire chapter, several pages long for Ichigo before Komamura pulls a Shut Up, Hannibal!, then giving more lectures to everyone else, especially Hitsugaya, while crossing swords with them (ends when they became so enraged they all fall), then another one to Yamamoto (forcing the old man to sacrifice himself), before CONTINUING his lecture toward Ichigo. Face it, Aizen's Hannibal lecture can only end either when he finishes, or when you get killed while trying to shut him up.
Aizen's not the only one. In chapter 404, we got Gin of all people giving Ichigo yet another lecture, including the line, "I thought you were better than that, but you're still a child." Many probably felt that that issue needed to be addressed by now (He's what, 15-16?) Better yet, he then proceeds to attack with another Shinso power before Ichigo can reply.
In InuYasha, Naraku deals more than one of these to the heroes, and so does local Creepy Child Akago ( aka Naraku's "heart". In fact, Akago is infamous for giving several lectures to Kagome and almost making her pull a Face Heel Turn at some point, by manipulating her insecurity about Inuyasha and Kikyou. Too bad they managed to verbally slap him back, though.
In an inversion, it's Amuro giving one to Char during the events of Char's Counterattack, waxing on about how philosophers and idealists with plans to change the world become disillusioned when things don't change as quickly as they'd like them to. It, along with the fight that followed it were meant to be the final nails in the rivalry between the two by showing Amuro had surpassed Char in nearly every way.
Another inversion is in Hokuto No Ken, where Fudoh delivers one to Raoh so crushing that it destroys his confidence for the rest of the series. Also probably the only Hannibal Lecture that doubles as a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming. Blame Raoh for explicitly telling Fudoh beforehand that he was using Fudoh a tune-up fight so that Raoh could work the fear out of his system, vaccination-style. Like Fudoh wasn't going to take advantage of that overconfidence?
Durarara!!: Izaya delivers one to Kida in the third arc.
In chapter 74 of Soul Eater the Envy Chapter of the Book of Eibon delivers a harsh one to Maka. It's enough to reduce her to tears.
Archer in the visual novel Fate/stay nighthammers Shirou. And considering Archer IS Shirou, he knows exactly how to reduce him to complete Heroic BSOD.
"You need to become a hero. That is your only emotion, and it's not even your own. You knew. Yes, but you kept that from yourself. I remember, it's not that you felt guilty for being the Sole Survivor. You just admired your Kiritsugu; he looked so happy when he saved you. But you went too far. It would have been fine to admire him. But he left you a curse. I don't even need to say it. That is everything for you. Your ideal is borrowed. You are only imitating what Kiritsugu wanted, what Kiritsugu thought was right. A superhero? Don't make me laugh. Over and over you said you wished to help people, but that's not even your wish. It's conceited to think you could help anyone! That's right! You admired his desire to save people because it was beautiful! But none of that feeling was your own! What else can you call that but hypocrisy!? Driven by your need to help someone, you don't notice how wrong you are! But it's all fake. You can't save anything. You don't even know what you wanted to save in the first place! That ideal is a failure. It's all fantasy. If you can only live holding on to that, drown in your ideals."
The worst part about Archer's speech is that, unlike the modified version above, halfway through it he starts to talk about himself, using "I" instead of "you."
And the Big Bad Reiga, who's actually Yuki's best friend Kanata, gives a few of these to Yuki and his friends in episode 13.
Utena herself gets these from way too many people.
Toru Nanamine gives one to his editor in Bakuman。, preying on his confidence issues and inexperience by telling him that he's not more intelligent than the 50 consultants he has and threatening to go elsewhere and put his editor's career in jeopardy if he refuses to go along with his plan as the 51st correspondent.
In the snime's Searrs arc, Alyssa tells the Himes that they don't truly know what they're fighting for and cannot be trusted with the power that could bring about a Golden Era.
In the manga, Natsuki gets one from her mother, chiding her for letting Yuuichi help her, and saying that because he has kissed Mai already, he is only doing so out of pity.
Comic Books
The graphic novel Watchmen (which pre-datesThe Silence of the Lambs by two years - but is predated by Red Dragon, the first Hannibal book) has a classic "psycho prisoner out-psychs the psychiatrist" scene. The prisoner in question evades the standard psychiatric evaluation questions, giving false responses to such things as a Rorschach test. The psychiatrist is hopeful for his progress, until a few days later, when he asks the prisoner to give true statements this time... at which point, the prisoner relates the entire story of how he mentally snapped and became Rorschach, a story so horrifying that he is left sitting in his chair stunned long after the prisoner is led out.
Pretty much every one of Batman's enemies has tried the Hannibal Lecture. As an action hero, he's immune, but some writers have played it as the villain being right. In the animated series, The Joker, master manipulator that he is, convinces a meek psychoanalyst named Harlene Quinzel to go crazy and fall in love with him; she becomes Harley Quinn. During the montageflashback that gives this backstory, they even trade places — he in the chair, she on the couch — in several of the analysis scenes.
In the one shot comic Mad Love as well as the episode of Batman: The Animated Series based on it, Batman does this to the Joker, manipulating him into freeing him from Harley Quinn's otherwise inescapable trap then taunting him about how she'd come closer to killing him than the Joker had ever managed.
Joker also gives Batman one in The Killing Joke, in which his plot is to drive Commissioner Gordon insane the same way he was. When Batman shows up to stop him, Joker gives him a long speech about how Batman is just as crazy as Joker is, and how the world is too hopelessly absurd for anyone to stay sane in. Batman powers through it, and, noting that Gordon was not driven mad, says that maybe Joker was the only one who couldn't take it. However, at the end, it becomes clear that Batman finds at least some truth in Joker's notion that they were both insane or, at least, absurd beings.
Neatly subverted in Brian Azzarello's Joker graphic novel, in which the Joker tries this on Batman - only to have Batman not only demolish it, but turn it into a devastating taunt right back with just three words:
Joker: Uhh, God you disgust me. You have no charm at all, just... obviousness. Dumb, dull. Disappointing. Obvious. Shame on you. Obvious... and everybody knows. You wear your shame like a badge, because you don't have the balls to actually pin one on. Yes, just look at you. Desperate to be feared, you want to be perceived as a monster, dressed in black. And yet... you leave that little window. A glimpse at the perfection underneath. Obvious - the chiseled good looks, not the jaw, the mouth of a monster... why do you let it be seen? Tell me why. Batman: To mock you.
A recent issue of the Fantastic Four comic book had the "hero won't fall for it but the villain is right" version. Reed captures Doom, who points out that Reed has sacrificed far more than it's worth to take him in.
In one issue of his comic, Wolverine has been imprisoned by the unusual method of throwing him in a pit and shooting him constantly so he'll be too busy healing to escape. And he still manages to successfully Hannibal Lecture the guy with the gun, who eventually lets Wolverine escape in the expectation that Wolverine will kill him.
In the "Elseworlds" (out-of-continuity) comic from DC, Superman: Red Son, where Superman's pod landed in the Soviet Union instead of the United States, Lex Luthor does this to Superman with one sentence. Written down. And tucked into Lois Luthor (nee Lane)'s coat pocket. Stalingrad, which was shrunk and put in a "bottle" instead of Kandor, haunts Superman. Luthor, the president of the US, takes advantage of this fact by questioning Superman's "perfect" totalitarian rule of most of Earth, with the single written sentence, "Why don't you just put the whole world in a bottle, Superman?" He has Lois put the note in her pocket and, when his plan finally spurs Superman to come to the White House personally, she is to ask Superman to use his X-ray vision to read the note. Superman very nearly breaks down in despair.
In Global Frequency #8 Miranda Zero is kidnapped by a terrorist who tries to do this to her. She does it right back to him with rather more success.
Zero: Maybe you could rape me. That'd make you a real man. Do you think I'm scared of pain? Three years ago in Haiti, a cell of ex-Tonton Macoute fired a nail gun through my right thigh. Five years ago, radical white separatists in Maine painted an eagle on my back in paint-stripper gel. Last March Russian black marketeers took bolt cutters to my breasts. Understand, you don't frighten me. Your stupid little hands and your thing with the gun do not frighten me. You are ignorant and gutless and you do not frighten me.
In the last issue of his miniseries, Baron Zemo talks his would-be murderer into attempting suicide, then stops him and convinces him to join Zemo instead.
A recent issue of Superman features a supervillain, Atlas, attempting to deliver such a lecture to Krypto the Superdog, after having delivered an almighty smackdown to Superman and caused him to temporarily withdraw, leaving Krypto the only one left to make a stand. Unfortunately for Atlas it doesn't work, for the same reason that it probably wouldn't work if you tried to verbally undermine a dog's sense of self-confidence with a Hannibal Lecture in real life.
In Eternals (or at least the Neil Gaiman revival), there is a character whose power is the ability to know just what to say to make a certain person break. When he first discovers this power, he manages to make a cop attempting to keep him in an embassy for questioning pass out with just a few words.
Druig: Yes. Tell me, is it the SLIME of the tentacles that upsets you, or the way they twine bonelessly, the faceless snaking of them... Does it remind you of the way your brother forced a rubber toy into your infant mouth, CHOKING you, the wet, the...
Lady Cop: * faints*
Druig:Interesting.
Emma Frost of the X-Men is incredibly good at this. A great example of this can be found when after finding Kimura sneaking around the X-Mansion getting ready to kill X-23, Emma goes up to her and says...
Emma: Do you ever wonder why you take such pleasure from abusing a little girl who can't hurt you, let alone defeat you? No, I thought not. You'll notice that you cannot move. I've shut down all your motor control so you can listen while I enlighten you. You are a bully, plain and simple. A product of your past. Being kicked around your whole life by an alcoholic father and an uncaring mother at home, only to find the same waiting for you from your peers in the schoolyard, day in and day out. You were born into a life you did not deserve... a life no child deserves... Someone needs to fill the role of victim and you played that part for so many... until your grandmother came to your rescue. But sadly she came too late. All the hope and good you held onto was beaten out of you long ago. After your grandmother's heart attack, you found your way to the Facility to the men that could give you what you wanted so badly... Revenge. A hollow prize, but one you begged for and once you'd gotten the best of those who wronged you, you became the very person you hated and feared growing up. And X-23 played the role of your victim. Like you, Laura didn't deserve that horrible life. No child does, remember? But you didn't care. Even though you know all too well the pain she suffered, you enjoyed inflicting it. You still enjoy it. That's why you're a bully.
More than one villain has tried this on The Punisher. Emphasis on tried.
This was used to quite lethal effect in a back issue of Excalibur, as a telepath and sadist had trapped Pete Wisdom in a room flooded with an exotic bioweapon which damaged the body of an agitated person. Said telepathic sadist was probing around for things to get Pete's goat and let his own memories carve him up like a side of beef. It didn't work, as Pete had made peace with his demons some time before. Instead, the poor maniac eventually hit Pete's deliberately assembled bloc-o'-atrocity, filled with unpleasantries from his horrific earlier career so bad it started the telepath getting damaged. When that got going, Pete hit him with a bit of the ol' Hannibal Lecture to the effect of there being a big difference between reading minds and dealing with what you find in them.
The Marvel Comics character Karnak has refined his powers to the point where he can do this. At first his power was just sensing the weak point in objects so he (or his stronger ally Gorgon) can smash it. Now he find personality flaws and verbally destroy an opponent.
Ultimate Comics Avengers features a cloned Spider-Man kept under heavy security by SHIELD as part of a Black Ops group. According to the team leader, he can "drive a man to suicide in three or four exchanges."
Moon Knight villain "The Profile" is a profiler who uses his mutant observation powers to instantly size people up. He is also a Jerk Ass who likes to give Hannibal Lectures to people for fun.
The Profile: Hey, old man. I almost forgot something. That whole thing about abandoning your family and your wife dying alone and your son becoming a serial killer? You're right. It was all your fault.
Sakki, The Hate Furnace, delivered one to Supergirl. He mistakenly believed that she was Superman's daughter, but the lecture still made sense, and picked at her shame at failing to live up to Superman's example. Sakki and his partner, Gakidou, were also emotion eaters, so Supergirl's despair and other negative emotions served to make them stronger. Unfortunately for them, she became so angry that they nearly overloaded, and they found out the hard way that their extra strength isn't nearly enough to deal with a Kryptonian.
Supergirl: I love Kal-El. I hate myself. (beats the snot out of them)
Poor John Hartigan gets two. The first comes from Senator Roark who explains that Hartigan will be framed for his son's crimes and there is not a thing he can do about it. The second is from Detective Liebowitcz who chides him on being a clean cop. Both of these lectures are so that Hartigan will sign a confession... which he doesn't.
In a 1990 story in Suicide Squad, the Israeli superteam Hayoth captures arch-villain Kobra. They assign their team AI, Dybbuk, to interrogate him... which was his goal all along. He gets the AI to wonder whether it has free will, and almost convinces it that the only way it could prove to itself that it has free will would be to do something its creators would never have wanted... like, say, launch a missile attack on the Dome of the Rock.
But what do kids know of strain, anyway? They don't know a thing. They just play all the time. Even their work is play. Not like your work. Your work... is work. Isn't it?
Fairly English Story: Minato ends up giving one of these to Junpei, specifically to make Junpei see him as the villain.
In Forward's first "episode", River delivers one of these to Niska's henchman Volsky, and while doing so informs Niska that Volsky was about to betray him. Niska promptly has him executed on the spot, allowing Jayne to snatch Volsky's knife and use to free himself.
This Dragon Age story has the dwarven noble protagonist delivering one to the female human noble Warden in her Fade nightmare, and that's just one of several.
Actually, an even more memorable example is the one he delivers during Chapter 5, when he is on trial and completely dominates the entire assembly, throwing Bhelen's pet nobles at each other and completing his epic Zero Approval Gambit by destroying the focus of the gathering, which means that no one ever got around to questioning exactly why he didn't try to defend the innocence he'd so vehemently proclaimed earlier that day. Of course, the reason was because he'd faked Trian's death and wanted to be seen as the murderer.Just as Planned.
An epic display of Hannibal Lecture versus Shut Up, Hannibal! is featured in the fourth chapter of A:TLAR, 'Revolution 1.' In a conversation set late in the chapter, morally ambiguous Katara is interrogating the warden of a prison for earthbenders. He attempts to perform a Lecture, it being centered on Not so Different, and she promptly tears that down. He later questions the idea of a battle-hardened warrior being troubled by death, which she responds to by describing his cruel nature at its roots (in a sort of reverse Hannibal Lecture). He does not take this well, which leads to her slashing his throat to keep him quiet.
"How amusing. You're not even a real human. All you are is just a computer brain using a human as a meat puppet. That body isn't the real you. It never was. You honestly believe she would love you, anyway? After all you've done to her. She could never love you. You're nothing but a pathetic moron living a lie."
Lex Luthor gives a particularly devastating one to Superman in the Naruto/Justice League crossover "Connecting the Dots".
Film
Brilliantly done in the Trope Namer, of course. Hannibal Lecter (the cannibal lecturer) gives several little speeches during the film about human nature, and easily reduces FBI agent-in-training Clarice Starling to tears. Throughout the film he continues to control her much more effectively than her boss can.
Although she gives as good as she gets.
You see a lot, Doctor. But are you strong enough to point that high-powered perception at yourself? What about it? Why don't you - why don't you look at yourself and write down what you see? Or maybe you're afraid to.
Debatable, since Lecter immediately follows up this gutsy attempt with his infamous reference to eating a dude's liver with "fava beans and a nice Chianti," and then contemptuously sends Clarice on her way: "You fly back to school now, little Starling."
Hannibal may have given an even better lecture to Miggs. Apparently, he told him something so psychologically devastating that he killed himself.
The Grinch delivers one to the Whobilation crowd in the 2000 live-action version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. He calls them all out on their wasteful spending around Christmas time, pointing out how many of their gifts the Whos just throw away, and how they're never satisfied with what they have.
Grinch: You wanna know what happens to your gifts? They all come to me. In your garbage. You see what I'm saying? In your garbage! I could hang myself with all the bad Christmas necktimes I've found at the dump!
Subverted in Hard Candy, where Jeff attempts this on Hayley, who plays along just along for the audience to think it has worked before turning around and mocking Jeff for trying. Also played straight at the end of the film where She talks him into commiting suicide.
Collateral is basically one long Hannibal Lecture by assassin Vincent to his hostage Max which backfires epically towards the end.
In The Dark Knight, the Joker gives one of these to pretty much everybody in the movie. The scariest part is, it works about half the time. The very worst of these is given to Harvey Dent after half of his face is blown off by an explosion, which results in Harvey's transformation into Two-Face.
Averted with Jim Gordon; the Joker tries to Hannibal Lecture him during an interrogation, and (true to proper real life procedure) Gordon just ignores the Joker's probing personal questions, even brushing off a request for the time of day (though it was morbidly relevant to the question he was asked).
On the other hand, the cop who guards him afterwards double-subverts the trope. First, he brushes off the Joker's attempts to provoke him...and then answers the question. But since he's not interrogating, it's not exactly against procedure. But that lays the groundwork for Joker to get under his skin...
Joker: Do you want to know why I use a knife? Guns are too quick. You can't savor all the little... emotions. You see, in their last moments, people show you who they really are. So in a way I knew your friends better than you ever did. Would you like to know which of them were cowards?
The Joker even manages to do this to Batman - who completely loses it when he finds out Rachel had been abducted along with Harvey. What began as an interrogation to find Harvey turns into a brutal beatdown as Batman desperately tries to get the Joker to tell him where she is. In fact, he was playing into Joker's hands since it was Joker's goal for Batman to beat him to death (Specifically, to break his one rule: Thou Shalt Not Kill).
Joker: (laughing): "You have nothing, nothing to threaten me with! Nothing to do with all your strength!"
Batman does manage to get the Joker back, however, when the people of Gotham prove unwilling to go along with the Joker's scheme and show that they are willing to die rather than become killers themselves.:
Batman: What were you trying to prove? That deep down, everyone is as ugly as you? You're alone.
Done in Austin Powers in Goldmember when Austin Powers asks Dr. Evil where his missing father is. Dr. Evil nudges Austin into making several dad-related-spoonerisms culminating in a flashback inducing exclamation of "Daddy didn't love me!" by Austin.
Also done in the first Austin Powers movie when Dr. Evil tries to convince Austin that he's become a "square" and that the 90s doesn't have free love. Austin counters that the 60s were about freedom, only now it's joined by responsibility and that's even groovier. And evil destroys freedom, so he's still fighting the same fight.
Then Dr. Evil points out that there's nothing more annoying an old hippie who refuses to get with the times. That gets Austin's back up.
Richard Nixon attempts to do this to his interviewer in Frost/Nixon with a late night phone call, but as his drunken ramblings progress, all his Not so Different lines only end up revealing how broken and full of self-loathing he is. Frost doesn't even need to say Shut Up, Hannibal!- he now knows that all he needs to do is corner Nixon and the man will destroy himself.
The Nazi doctor in The Debt (2011) gives lots of these to torment his captors.
Dogma, in one of its opening scenes, features Loki (Matt Damon) explains to a nun how he didn't believe in God due to the story of the Walrus and the Carpenter, successfully making her question and eventually throw away her faith...in a span of 5 minutes. As noted by his fellow angel Bartleby (Ben Affleck), "You know for a fact that there's a God. You've stood in his presence. You've spoken to him personally. Yet I just heard you claim you were an atheist." Loki's response? "I just like fucking with the clergy, man! I just—I love keeping those guys on their toes!"
In From Hell Inspector Abberline has to enjoy the insane ramblings of Sir William Withey Gull as he explains his 'motives'. Shutup Hannibal is neatly subverted by a certain officer of Special Branch
In Public Enemies, Purvis visits Dillinger's cell, and Dillinger commences with the Lecture. Purvis doesn't seem fazed much by it.
Salieri's confession in Amadeus turns into one of these. By the end, with his closing lines about mediocrity, the priest is too shell-shocked to administer the sacrament (though Salieri was obviously unrepentant for his sins, so the conditions for the sacrament were clearly not fulfilled anyway).
Agent Smith is prone to these in The Matrix films. What's interesting is that he does this even though he is the one doing the interrogating. Of course, this just makes him that much more threatening. His speech to Morpheus in the first movie is the most memorable:
Smith: I'd like to share a revelation during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure.
He delivers another one in the third movie as he watches Neo struggling to get back up after a royal thrashing - except Neo is barely listening to him and it just shows how Smith's mental state is crumbling.
Smith: Why, Mr. Anderson? Why, why? Why do it? Why, why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting for something, for more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom, or truth, perhaps peace, could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson, vagaries of perception! Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence without meaning or purpose! And all of it as artificial as the Matrix itself! Although, only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love! You must see it, Mr. Anderson, you must know it by now; you can't win, it's pointless to keep fighting! Why, Mr. Anderson, why, why do you persist?
This makes Neo's victory in the end so much sweeter.
Sherlock Holmes: Lord Blackwood is in prison awaiting his hanging and he requests the company of Holmes. The interrogated becomes the interrogator; the accused, the accuser; the prisoner the judge.
Lord Blackwood: "But beneath your mask of logic I sense a fragility... Steel your mind, Holmes...Three more will die and there is nothing you can do to save them. You must accept that this is beyond your control. Or by the time you realise you made all of this possible it will be the last sane thought in your head."
Though Holmes hardly fazed. He just blandly wonders if Watson could be allowed to dissect Blackwood's brain after the hanging.
In Serenity (the Firefly film) The Operative likes to do this to people he is about to kill, crossing it with "The Reason You Suck" Speech by explaining to people what their 'sin' is. This goes poorly when he tries it on [Mal Reynolds
Operative: "Do you know what your sin is, Malcolm Reynolds?"
Seen in Kindergarten Cop. When the gangster that the titular cop has repeatedly arrested is once again released (the witness to his current crime is too frightened to testify), he responds to the cop's vow to nail him by taunting the cop about the fact that he has no personal life, then declares that the cop wouldn't even have much of a career if it weren't for his vendetta against him.
Parodied in Cop Out. In that movie, unsophisticated criminal Dave drives even simpler-minded police officer Paul Hodges nuts, mostly by saying (in a number of different ways) that his wife is cheating on him.
In an extreme example - while bound and essentially helpless, Shen-Ji Yang from the first Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri novelization calmly Hannibal Lectures a professional soldier who is holding him hostage into putting her gun to her own temple and shooting herself, all in a time period of less than ten minutes. The sequence was presumably made to show just what an incredible badass he is, but went, perhaps, a bit over the top... (In his defense, Yang is a master psychologist, and his entire agenda throughout the game is social experimentation. If anyone can do it...)
As a counterpoint, it must be stated that the lecture falls a bit flat, being two lines long and mostly about guilt-tripping the soldier about having a crush on her female commander. Yang is the person to pull this off, but the writer obviously wasn't.
This is nothing compared to Saruman, who can persuade unsuspecting enemies to join and serve him— even after they defeat him in war. In the chapter "The Voice of Saruman" in The Two Towers, Saruman Hannibal Lectures all of his triumphant enemies, and all are swayed by the power of his voice; likewise, the Riders of Rohan are wholly overcome by it, while Pippin is particularly shamed. Grima Wormtongue is a student of Saruman's, and uses similar Hannibal Lecture techniques on Theoden to render him helpless and hopeless against Saruman, and on Eowyn in order to break her resolve and drive to desperation.
Gandalf then proceeds to demonstrate the perfect counteraction to this tactic: sincere laughter. Of course what Saruman didn't know was that he was now dealing with Gandalf the White, not Gandalf the Grey. Gandalf had just been back to Heaven and returned with new instructions and a mandate from God Himself, which left Saruman's efforts to psych him out pretty pathetic in comparison.
In The Silmarillion, Glaurung father of dragons delivered one combined neatly with a MindScrew to Túrin having paralyzed him with his hypnotic glare until he "saw himself as in a mirror misshapen by malice, and loathed that which he saw".
In The Dresden Files: Blood Rites, Harry Dresden pulls off a Hannibal Lecture on the book's Big Bad Lord Raith. By the end of it, Raith is incredibly furious that Dresden viciously deconstructed him so well.
On another occasion, the ubervillain Nicodemus tried to do something along these lines to Harry in an effort to corrupt him over to his side, and scores some hits, though Harry ends up resisting it. On a later occasion, Harry does a version of this on the shadow of the demoness Lasciel in an attempt to subvert her away from evil, and may have succeeded (the debate remains ongoing in fandom whether Lash changed, and whether she still lives.)
Euthyphro, from Plato's Socratian Dialogs seems to fit this one rather nicely, though he's not technically imprisoned, yet, and Euthyphro isn't his captor. Socrates attempts to get a description of piety from Euthyphro, but, continues to twist every argument Euthyphro offers to his own needs, making this Older Than Feudalism.
Though she's not presented as an antagonist in that book, the Star WarsExpanded Universe novel Destiny's Way, the rogue Jedi Vergere Hannibal LecturesLuke Skywalker, though in a less hostile manner than normal for this trope.
The Expanded Universe actually has a Sith lightsaber combat style called Dun Möch whose intention was to break the enemy's will, demoralize them, break their concentration and cause them to doubt themselves with taunts and jeers. Force Throwing objects wasn't considered a bad idea for it also. Unfortunately, sometimes it just pissed their opponent off... This can be pretty much classified as what any lightsaber-user is utilizing when they're talking an awful lot during a fight.
Except Luke Skywalker, whose battle with Darth Vader in Return of the Jedireversed Dun Möch.
And since the Sith seem to want to drag as many Jedi to the Dark Side as possible, and an Unstoppable Rage is linked to the Dark Side, it's win-win!
Good-guy example: Tobias in the Animorphs series was undergoing torture, and distracted his torturer with questions about her own past.
And a villainous Animorphs example is David's attempt to break Rachel down in #48.
Half of book number 19, The Departure, basically consists of this. The other half consists of the inversion of this trope.
In Peter and the Secret of Rundoon, while Lord Aster is being held captive by Lord Ombra, he is given a long lecture on how stupid the human race is and how even the seemingly head bad guys are really subservient to him.
The murderer X in Agatha Christie's Curtain also very good at this, manages to manipulate people using seeming simple but manipulative comments, gesture and words, to provokes his target to murder their source of hatred. However, he didn't like to kill directly himself, instead enjoying the process of their target murders.
Susan: I think I know you, Teatime. You're the mad kid they're all scared of, right? The giggling excitable one even the bullies never touched because if they did he went insane and kicked and bit. The one who didn't know the difference between chucking a stone at a cat and setting it on fire. I bet no one wanted to play with you. Not the kid with no friends. Kids know a mind like yours even if they don't know the right words for it. The kind of little boy who looks up dolls' dresses...
From the Thursday Next novel The Eyre Affair. The Big Bad, Acheron Hades, can talk most people into pretty much anything. Several times he has escaped by convincing cops to hand over their guns, which are then used on the cops. When Hades needs a lackey, he simply convinces a suitably fit civillain to be one. Fortunately Next can resist to the extent of keeping her wits (and gun), but Hades is still far more clever.
Big BadRuin of Mistborn loves doing this to Vin, consistently pointing out that Vin causes destruction wherever she goes, and therefore has been serving his purposes all along. In the end, though, she gets Ruin back by pointing out that as a human being she has the power to protect and destroy at the same time, unlike the much more limited gods such as Ruin. She them proves it by killing Ruin via Heroic Sacrifice.
Inverted by The Belgariad during the climactic battle between Garion and Torak. When the Dark God passes up an opportunity to kill Garion, instead demanding that he submit, Garion finally realizes that the purpose of their confrontation is not to fight Torak, but to reject him. His subsequent speech shatters Torak's will and gives Garion the opening he needs to beat him.
The War Against the Chtorr. Cult leader Jason Delandro has a chat with the protagonist Jim McCarthy (who used to be a member of his cult) the night before his execution. McCarthy comes off worst in the debate, but at least has the dubious satisfaction of blowing Delandro's head off the next day.
In The Silver Chair, the Lady of the Green Kirtle uses this trope (backed up by a little magic) to persuade Eustace, Jill, Puddleglum and the Prince that the surface world is just something they made up.
In Falling by Christopher Pike, the Acid Killer, Gene Banks, has a way of turning the tables on FBI agent Kelly Feinman. Even after Kelly has caught and made him a quadriplegic, she finds herself drawn to him and the revelations he provides her about her character. Pike has stated he owes a debt to Silence of the Lambs, and even a character in Falling name-checks Hannibal Lecter.
In Hannibal, Hannibal's former nurse Barney speaks to a psychologist and brings up the time that he saw the same man go into the basement of the Baltimore hospital to interview Lecter. A little while later, the doctor came hurrying back along the hallway, trying to hide the fact that he was crying.
Sisterhood series by Fern Michaels: In the book Under The Radar, the Prophet Harold Evanrod tries to tell his followers of the pedophile polygamist sect Heaven On Earth, "You see, this is the Devil at work! I told you the people on the outside would try to drive us away from our homes and our religion because they don't understand it. They will be forever damned, and there will be no salvation for any of them. I want you all to be strong because we will prevail." However, the Vigilantes give an effective Shut Up, Hannibal! response to that.
Live Action TV
Oz: Beecher and Schillinger do this to each other on separate occasions, mainly to provoke the other into some bad behavior to mess up their chances at parole, or to just torment each other. Keller also does this to Beecher a few times.
"Keller: (to Beecher) You know what? Oz didn't make you a bitch. You were born one."
The confrontation between Mr. Bennet and Sylar in Heroes, although Bennet suddenly realizes what's happening about halfway through.
In "Into Asylum," Sylar also uses this on Danko, convincing him to ally with him. Then Danko tries one on Sylar to make it clear who's in charge, then Sylar does one on Danko again.
Battle Star Galactica had an example when they had one of their Cylon captives aboard the Galactica. Roslin and Adama brought Starbuck in to interrogate him. He is pretty successful at getting under her skin, but, like all Cylons and Cylon collaborators must, he goes out the airlock.]]
In Power Rangers S.P.D., a Monster of the Week uses this trick on The Lancer of the team by making the guy talk about his beloved Disappeared Dad, literally driving him to tears — providing him with the reflective surface needed to teleport out of his high-security prison cell.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, "Facets." Dax communicates with her past lives, two of whom target her with a Hannibal Lecture. The first is a standard one that doesn't work — but it softens her up to fall for the second, unorthodox one.
In "Duet", also from Deep Space Nine, Cardassian war criminal Gul Darhe'el savagely Hannibal Lectures Major Kira, coupled with openly bragging about his mass murders. It turns out this is something of a subversion though, as his purpose is later revealed to be keeping Kira from guessing he isn't Darhe'el at all, but an innocent file clerk who wants to be convicted to embarrass Cardassia into admitting its guilt to Bajor.
In "The Jem'Hadar, Part II," Quark lectures Sisko about his dislike of the Ferengi, claiming that Sisko's Holier Than Thou attitude toward Ferengi greed and deceit is hypocritical, given the fact that humans had far more and worse atrocities in their history: slavery, genocide, conquest, etcetera, on a scale that the Ferengi had never rivaled. As Quark stated, "we're not only as good as you are, human — we're better." Quark's point even seems to bring Sisko up short thinking about it, at least briefly.
Also sort of pulled on Data by Kivas Fajo during the Next Generation episode "The Most Toys" which sees Data captured and held as a "highly valuable object" by Fajo. Data has spent the entire episode trying to outmaneuver Kivas's demands via passive resistance. An attempted escape has resulted in the death of someone trying to help, and Data ends up pointing a disruptor right at Fajo's face. Fajo, meanwhile, is convinced that Data cannot shoot him due to his programming.
Fajo: If only you could feel...rage over Varria's death... If only you could feel the need for revenge, then maybe you could fire. But you're...just an android. You can't feel anything, can you? It's just another interesting, intellectual puzzle for you - another of life's curiosities.
Data, however, does make the decision to shoot him, and is only stopped when the unsuspecting Enterprise crew beams him to safety just as he begins to pull the trigger.
From the first series, Khan delivers one while being interrogated by Kirk, mocking how little man has changed between the three hundred or so years between his exile and reawakening, in an attempt to justify his lust for power.
Veronica Mars, "Like a Virgin." Veronica interrogates a murderer who psychs her out. To complete the homage to Silence of the Lambs, Veronica is pretending to be a Southern girl, and speaks with a fake accent that resembles Jodie Foster's in the movie.
And true to form, she gets her own back a few episodes later in "Mars Vs. Mars", stealing his medical records and using information in them to deliver a Hannibal Lecture of her own.
Parodied in 30 Rock. During a poker game, Alec Baldwin's powerful network executive character attempts to intimidate a naive NBC page with a lengthy speech similar to the one from Silence of the Lambs. When the page eventually loses the game, Baldwin explains that it was only a test, and, as the once-again chipper page exits on his bike, Baldwin utters the classic line, "In five years we'll all either be working for him... or be dead by his hand."
Subversion: in The Shield, Dutch (the station's Butt Monkey) seemingly gets verbally torn to pieces by a serial killer he is 'interrogating'; the killer tries to demoralize Dutch at every turn, deriding him as being "a lowly civil servant" who is trying to get the respect he doesn't deserve; insinuating that Dutch's father lied to him about being proud that Dutch became a cop; and that not only did Dutch never get a date in high school, he's still having problems now. However, in one fell swoop, Dutch turns it around, beginning by saying that he did have girlfriends in high school, and that he also has one now, who's "hot". When the killer demands to leave, Dutch ridicules him for the fact that instead of leaving earlier when they didn't have any solid evidence, he chose "to stick around and make fun of" Dutch. Dutch and his partner then reveal that Dutch was just feeding the killer lines to buy out-of-town cops time to search the killer's aunt's house, where they find the bodies of over a dozen of his victims. With the killer arrested, Dutch leaves and finds that the entire station has been watching through the interrogation room's cameras. Impressed, they applaud him. But true to the trope, some of the killer's barbs struck a note, and as soon as he gets into his car, Dutch breaks down in tears.
Done again, in season three when a serial rapist taunts Dutch over his initial inability to catch the rapist, leading the guy killing one of his victims before being caught. The rapist/killer informs Dutch that his by-the-book method of catching monsters like the rapist is bound to fail, due to the fact that he's never killed and as such, doesn't truly know how the mind of a murderer works. Dutch then, that evening, kills a cat with his bare hands just to see how it feels to kill.
Another example would be in season seven, when Vic confronts a sociopathic hooker, who manipulates Vic and fellow officer Julian Lowe into killing her pimp by falsely claiming that he murdered one of her fellow hookers. While Vic is threatening physical violence against the hooker, the hooker arrogantly mocks Vic and the way that she manipulated him; in particular, she mocks Vic's burning need to protect women in peril as far as manipulating this aspect of Vic's personality and basically telling him that the only way he'll be able to prevent it from happening again is if he just cuts off his genitals.
A curious example of a good guy doing this; in the Doctor Who episode "The Idiot's Lantern", the Doctor is arrested by a police inspector after he uncovers a warehouse full of faceless people who have been rounded up by the police. When the inspector tries Perp Sweating him, the Doctor casually asks why the inspector isn't actually doing any 'inspecting' - and it only takes a few minutes for him to reduce the inspector to a flustered, uncertain wreck... at which point the Doctor authoritatively takes over the interrogation.
The Doctor does it again in a later episode: in the third series finale, the Master is about to blow up the planet Earth (which both he and the Doctor are currently standing on) with 'black hole converters' built into every ship of his conquering fleet to spite the Doctor, who has just thwarted him. Rather than trying to appeal to his better nature or beg him not to, the Doctor's response is merely to dismissively point out that he knows him; the Master is unable to do such a thing because to do so would be to kill himself, which the Master simply cannot do. As such, the Doctor calmly points out, the Master has no choice but to surrender his weapon - which he does.
It also happens to the Doctor a lot. The Beast, Davros, the Carrionites. Given the Doctor is a walking open wound since the Time War, it's a lot easier to get under his skin.
Special mention should be made to "Amy's Choice" where he receives several from himself in the form of the Dream Lord.
The Doctor: Where did you pick up this cheap cabaret act?
Dream Lord: Me? Oh, you're on shaky ground.
The Doctor: Am I?
Dream Lord: If you had any more tawdry quirks, you could open a tawdry quirk shop! The madcap vehicle, the cockamamie hair, the clothes designed by a first-year fashion student... I'm surprised you haven't got a little purple space dog, just to ram home what an intergalactic wag you are!
Later he delves even deeper into the Doctor's mind and deconstructs the Doctor's loneliness and pain to reveal it for what it truly is:
The Doctor: I have to save my friends!
Dream Lord: Friends? Is that what you call the people you acquire? Your friends never see you again once they've grown up. The old man prefers the company of the young, does he not?
The Dream Lord even Hannibal Lectures Amy to shake her faith in the Doctor:
Dream Lord: And he always leaves you, doesn't he? Alone in the dark, never apologises...
Amy: He doesn't have to.
Dream Lord: Well that's good... because he never will.
Headmaster: Well, I warn you, the school is armed. Baines/Son of Mine: All your little tin soldiers... but tell me sir; will they thank you? Headmaster: I don't understand. Baines/Son of Mine: What do you know of history, sir? What do you know of next year? Headmaster: You're not making sense, Baines. Baines/Son of Mine:1914, sir. Because the Family has traveled far and wide looking for Mr Smith and, oh, the things we have seen. War is coming. In foreign fields, war of the whole wide world, with all your boys falling down in the mud. Do you think they will thank the man who taught them it was glorious?
This was also the Seventh Doctor's hallmark in the classic series. Notable examples include talking a Dalek into committing suicide in Remembrance of the Daleks, and even talking down a guard who was ordered to execute him in The Happiness Patrol.
Subverted in Lost. In the episode "Confirmed Dead", Ben Linus attempts to do this to Sawyer, but Sawyer beats the crap out of him halfway through.
On the other hand, Ben has done this successfully (repeatedly, even) with Locke and Jack, among others.
Since Ben spends a lot of time as a prisoner, this is basically his favourite toy. It's pretty much all he did in season 2 in the hatch, and even more effectively in episode 4.4, "Eggtown," in which causes Locke to explode ("excellent, John. You're evolving!").
Sawyer: You wanna tell me why we're keeping this guy alive? Locke: Because aside from his mouth, he's completely harmless.
In season 6 The Man in Black delivers a particularly nasty one to Ben about what Locke was thinking when Ben killed him. What makes this brutal is because Ben's face makes it pretty clear that he never once thought about what must of gone through the minds of any of the people he has killed and Locke's "I don't understand." completely breaks Ben. All he can do is weakly ask what the Man in Black wants.
Also, in a way, it's also a lecture directed at Locke, as the Man in Black is also picking at all of Locke's flaws and failures. Of course, Locke is dead at this point, so he wouldn't have been able to hear it anyway.
In the fourth-season Angel episodes "Soulless" and "Calvary", Angelus is trapped in a cage most of the time, but throughout his interrogations by the members of team Angel he disdainfully probes their points of mental or emotional weakness. On other occasions in The Verse he demonstrates the same zest for breaking people's minds apart, like when he put Drusilla through the Break the Cutie treatment, but these episodes are when he does it just with words. Actually, much of the dialogue in season 4 is characters firing off Hannibal Lectures at each other.
In the third season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow gets a rather awesome one in the episode "Choices" while being held prisoner by Faith.
Faith: Give me the speech again, please. "Faith, we're still your friends. We can help you. It's not too late." Willow: It's way too late. You know, it didn't have to be this way. But you made your choice. I know you had a tough life. I know that some people think you had a lot of bad breaks. Well, boo hoo! Poor you! You know, you had a lot more in your life than some people. I mean, you had friends in your life like Buffy. Now you have no one. You were a Slayer and now you're nothing. You're just a big, selfish, worthless waste. [Faith knocks Willow to the ground.] Faith: You hurt me, I hurt you. I'm just a little more efficient. Willow: (stands up) Aw, and here I just thought you didn't have a comeback.
Ironically Willow does it again when she turns evil in "Two to Go", this time to Buffy.
"Please! This is your pitch? You hate it here as much as I do! I'm just more honest about it. You're trying to sell me on the world? The one where you lie to your friends when you're not trying to kill them. You screw a vampire just to feel. And insane asylums are just the comfy alternative. This world? Buffy, it's me. I know you were happier when you were in the ground. The only time you were ever at peace in your whole life is when you were dead."
Spike also has a tendency for pointing out the flaws of the people around him. In a bit of a variation, he tends to do this out of annoyance, not just for the sake of being smug. When he's feeling smug, he's as likely to deconstruct himself...to point out how much of a loser you are for losing to him or taking him seriously. His most savage one came near the end of season 4's "The Harsh Light of Day", until he took it a little too far and it backfired on him:
Spike: So you let Parker take a poke, eh? Didn't seem like you knew each other that well. What did it take to pry apart the Slayer's dimpled knees? Buffy: You're a pig, Spike. Spike: Did he play the sensitive lad and get you to seduce him? That's a good trick if the girl's thick enough to buy it. [They fight. Spike has the upper hand.] Spike: I wonder what went wrong? Were you too strong? Did you bruise the boy? Whatever. I guess you're just not worth a second go. Come to think of it, seems like somebody told me that. Who was it? Oh, yeah. Angel. [Buffy proceeds to kick every square inch of his ass.]
Buffy's final episode provides an example of turning the lecture back on the Hannibal, as mentioned in the header above. The First Evil uses the show's opening blurb on her. A rough paraphrase is:
First: One girl in all the world. She alone can defeat the vampires, the demons, the... There's that word again. Alone. It's how you've always been, and how you'll die. Buffy: You know, seeing as you can't touch anything but only yammer at people, you should have a new name.. The Taunter. (The First disappears) Buffy: I just realised something. We're going to win. She then carries out a plan that defeats the First's armies by making sure the Slayer is no longer Alone. Should have Shut Up, Hannibal!.
In To Play the King, Prime Minister Francis Urquhart gives a Hannibal Lecture to the King of England, breaking his will and forcing him to abdicate from the throne
At times, Frank Pembleton from Homicide: Life on the Street edges from Perp Sweating to this. In one episode, he talked someone into confessing proudly to a crime they BOTH knew he didn't do, just to keep an investigation open.The Show mostly avoided this trope as many Killers were too stupid to understand the theory behind it or acted out of impulse or Greed
As he seems to have a neon sign on his forehead saying "SELF-LOATHING WOOBIE WITH DADDY ISSUES", Dean from Supernatural tends to get this done to him a lot. The Crossroads Demon (twice), The Yellow-Eyed Demon (twice), Sam whenever he's under the influence... The list goes on.
Perhaps the best example of a Hannibal Lecture in Supernatural is the torture/interrogation scene with Dean and Alistair. Supposedly, Dean is extracting information on "who is killing the angels," but not only does Alistair have no idea, he strings Dean along and gives him a thorough mindfuck in between bouts of being eviscerated. The power dynamic in this scene goes back and forth like no other, between Dean relishing Alistair's pain and Alistair breaking Dean down.
The scene in My Bloody Valentine when he corners Famine in a diner is one of the most painful examples on the show:
Famine: Have you wondered why that is? How you can even walk in my presence?
Dean: I like to think it's because of my strength of character.
Famine: I disagree. Yes. I see. That's one deep, dark nothing you've got there, Dean. You can't fill it, can you? Not with food, nor drink; not even with sex. Oh, you can smirk and joke and lie to your brother, lie to yourself, but not to me. I can see inside you, Dean. I can see how broken you are, how defeated; you can't win and you know it, but you just keep trying, just keep going through the motions. You're not hungry, Dean, because inside you're already dead.
The best came from Lucifer in the late season 5 episode "Hammer of the Gods" in a speech to Mercury.
Lucifer You know, I never understood you pagans, you're such petty little things. Always fighting, always happy to sell out your own kind. You, are worse than humans. You're worse than demons. And yet you claim to be gods. No wonder you forfeited this planet to us. And they call me prideful.
Done by several Leviathans in 7.06 "Slash Fiction". Bobby mostly shrugs off his double's taunts, but Sam gets hit hard by Leviathan!Dean's revelation.
MacGyver's own version of Hannibal Lector, Dr. Zito, gave these during his two appearances on the show.
Parodied in Arrested Development, when Tobias, former psychologist turned acting-hopeful, manages to talk his prison bunkmate, White Power Bill, into suicide by questioning him about, "where the hate comes from."
Subverted in the live action version of The Tick. A super-villain nearly pulls this off with his guard until a super-heroine shakes some sense into him and takes over as guard. She is then so enthusiastic about discussing every aspect of her personal life that the villain gives up in disgust.
In a dazzling display of self-loathing, House (well, technically it's the guy who shot him, but it's all a hallucination, so...) manages to do this to himself:
Moriarty: You think that the only truth that matters is the truth that can be measured. Good intentions don't count, what's in your heart doesn't count, caring doesn't count, that a man's life can't be measured by how many tears are shed when he dies. It's because you can't measure them. It's because you don't want to measure them. Doesn't mean it's not real.
House: This doesn't make any sense.
Moriarty: And even if I'm wrong, you're still miserable. Did you really think that your life's purpose was to sacrifice yourself and get nothing in return? No. [As he speaks, we see House in a car with Moriarty's wife who supposedly killed herself because House told her about her husband's cheating. The car is in a smoke-filled garage.] You believe there is no purpose to anything. Even the lives you save, you dismiss. You take the one decent thing in your life, and you taint it, strip it of all meaning. You're miserable for nothing. I don't know why you'd want to live. [In the car, House closes his eyes, proving Moriarty right. And then we return to the hospital.]
In Malcolm in the Middle, Malcolm's mother comes with him to an interview for a university, much to the chagrin of the titular character (considering he is the only one there with a mother). She ends up butting heads with the RA who is a massive jerkass. In response to his locking of the vending machine, she escalates the situation in an attempt to get him fired (as opposed to what her son wanted to do, which was go to another floor where the vending machines wouldn't be locked). However, when she confronts him, he nonchalantly points out that this job means nothing to him and there are a hundred other places he could do what he does. Then he quite savagely points out how Lois is a control freak, how she's a failure at life, and how pathetically she's trying to live vicariously through Malcolm, and suggests that if she isn't sure about what he's saying, she should talk to the other parents that insisted on staying with their kids in the dorm rooms. Crowning Moment of Awesome.
Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck on Monk, after Monk's spoiled his plan for revenge and gotten his Luxury Prison Suite privileges revoked: "It's true, Adrian Monk. I may be in prison, but you're in a worse prison! You're trapped! Trapped by your own demons! You're in your own private Hell! I wouldn't trade places with you for another billion dollars!"
Turned around when Monk's response is to quietly turn around and walk away, as Dale is too obese to walk.
An inversion of this takes place in the Firefly episode "Objects in Space," where River pulls one of these on Jubal Early, using a combination of her Psychic Powers and actually being on his ship the whole time to comprehensively outline just how much a sick bastard he is, and tear apart all his pretensions that "he has a code". Somewhat monkeywrenched, as she isn't the prisoner, but her brother Simon is, and midway through the Hannibal Lecture, Early finally catches on — though that itself is probably part of the Lecture too, as River uses Early's realization to really turn the tables on him.
River is actually quite good at these. While being questioned by Badger in "Shindig," she turns around and instantly deconstructs his gangster facade, outlining just what a pathetic little thug he really is, and then casually dismisses him....in his own Cockney accent.
Sure, I got a secret. More'n one. Don't seem like I'd tell 'em to you now, do it? Anyone off Dyton colony knows better than to talk to strangers. But you're talking loud enough for the both of us, ain't tya? I've known a dozen like you, skipped off home early, minor graft jobs here and there. Spent some time in the lockdown, but less than you claim. And you're what? Petty thief with delusions of standing? Sad little king, of a sad little hill. [to the others] ...call me when someone interesting shows up.
Badger is initially very shaken by River's assessment, but at the end he settles down and says that "I like her."
Subverted in Dexter. When Lt. LaGuerta is interrogating Neil Perry (who has confessed to being the Ice Truck Killer), he tries to psych her out by discussing the reason she received her promotion (specifically the fact that she wasn't the hero cop the press portrayed her as). This allows LaGuerta to realise that Perry (who is a computer technician) must have hacked into the precinct database, which is where he got his "proof" that he was the Ice Truck Killer. She then gets him to admit his deception, by psyching him out with a severed head.
Also played with in season 2, when Dexter has Doakes, who knows that Dexter is a serial killer, locked up in the Everglades. Dexter tries to convince him they're Not so Different, but it never really sticks.
Tony Almeida gives one of these to Jack Bauer when the two end up on opposite sides in the 7th season of 24. Except they're actually not, because Tony's working undercover.On second thought, they actually are.
This trope is both played straight and inverted in one episode of The Pretender. In the episode, Jarod has to interrogate a imprisoned serial killer to try to catch a copycat killer. The killer convinces Jarod to take him to the house of the victim. At the house, the killer talks Jarod into removing his handcuffs, after which he escapes. However, it turns out that this was all part of Jarod's plan to get the killer to lead him to the site where the copycat is dumping the bodies. It then turns out that the copycat killer is a psychiatrist writing a biography of the Serial Killer.
Being a cop show that deals specifically with serial killers, Criminal Minds does this occasionally. In one episode, the unsub gave an angry analysis of each of them over the phone...and got it completely wrong. One of the agents has to stifle her laughter. It also proves to be vital in identifying him.
Brilliantly subverted in Masterpiece, during the Rothschild/Rossi interrogation scene. Rossi starts by trying to interrogate Rothschild, discussing how pathetic and cowardly he is. Then Rothschild fires back, revealing his master plan to dump acid on the entire team, to deprive Rossi of his "family" as Rossi did to him. He even walks around the room while Rossi sits, to switch the interrogator/suspect roles. Rossi panics, rushes to locate the team, sinks into a chair in disbelief as Rothschild gloats in his ear about his brilliant evil plan... when Rossi reveals to him that not only has this entire scene been a confession, but they already knew about the killer's plan to dump acid on them, got all the victims out safely, and that he will be there when Rothschild is executed. He even pulls a last-minute Batman Gambit by intentionally turning his back to groom himself in the one-way mirror, catching Rothschild and slamming him up against the wall as he is attacked. Yes, Rossi can manipulate you while stroking his beard.
In Cracker, the various psychos that Fitz is called in to deal with have a tendency to try this on him. Of course, given how Fitz is a first-rate professional psychologist and they usually aren't, he often just ends up doing it right back to them, usually more successfully.
A rare Hannibal Lectureduel in the Cold Case episode "The Woods". George Marks, who enjoys this trope, has Detective Lily Rush at gunpoint. Both know devastating facts about the other's past, and how it affects their psyche, and each scores powerful emotional hits against the other.
They also duel in his earlier episode "Mindhunters", only this time, they're refusing to respond to each other's taunts. In fact, Lily's refusal to break infuriates George so much that he very nearly confesses before pulling himself together and smugly walking out, much to Lily's frustration. Throughout the episode, the trope is played completely straight when he refuses to crack under interrogation and instead ends up taunting the detectives about painful moments in their lives—Scotty's schizophrenic girlfriend, Stillman's failed marriage and the rape of his daughter, Vera's mishandling a rape case and the death of Jeffries' wife.
In ER, Pratt gave one of these to two teenagers who unintentionally shot a six-year-old girl when trying to get someone else. He specifically had them brought to the emergency room where they could actually see the little girl, lying unconscious on the table, covered in blood, and he brutally mentioned all the organs in her body that were damaged because of what they did.
Another episode had Kerry Weaver firing an incompetent resident. When she publicly humiliates him by listing his many screw-ups, he counteracts with the fact that the entire ER staff despises her and that the only reason she's so dedicated to her job is because it's the only she has in her life.
''Law & Order: Criminal Intent often represents a curious inversion of this trope, as many episodes — particularly those with Goren in the lead detective role — frequently build up to a final interrogation wherein the detectives essentially Hannibal Lecture the perp, playing psychological mind games or confronting them with how inadequate or pathetic they are in order to get them to crack.
Subverted in an episode of The League of Gentlemen where Ross delivers one to his abusive Restart Officer Pauline during a mock interview where he's the one in charge:
You strike me as a bully; you're ill-mannered, ignorant and foul-mouthed. You're not qualified for this job. And apart from anything else - you're too old. Miss.
Double subverted when it's revealed Ross is really an undercover inspector from the employment agency.
How I Met Your Mother. Barney did this to Robin during the season 5 Thanksgiving episode.
The first episode of Sherlock. The killer almost talks and goads Holmes into playing a game of Russian Roulette with two pills — one poisoned, the other not. He got his other victims to do the same by threatening them with a gun they did not realize was fake.
Parodied in Reno911, where a serial killer gives Jones one from his cell, and promptly gets everything wrong about Jones' "ghetto upbringing." The cops end up using him for computer advice.
A Monster of the Week in Samurai Sentai Shinkenger named Zuboshimeshi has this as a superpower. He's able to search the minds of his victims and find the one word that is most hurtful to them, then turning the pain it causes them into an attack.
In The X-Files episode "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas", a ghost gives a Hannibal Lecture to Mulder in an attempt to drive him insane.
At one point he says (and invents a great word) "Cause you're a lonely man. A lonely man, chasing paramasturbatory illusions that you believe will give your life meaning"
In Community episode "Football, Feminism and You" Jeff delivers a really nasty one to Annie after she discovers his role in persuading Troy to rejoin the football team.
Dr. Maki from Kamen Rider OOO has become very fond of these after becoming the Big Bad. He's even gives a very effective one to his teammate Mezool, the water Greeed, over her "motherly" nature being a facade to try to pretend she can feel maternal love.
Subverted (sort of?) in Leverage, "The Experimental Job". A career CIA interrogator tries to break Eliot by getting him to talk about how many people Eliot has killed. Eliot convinces the CIA man that he's killed far more, and remembers far more details, and that it already haunts him far more, than the CIA man could possibly have imagined or could possibly invoke. The CIA man is so shaken that he ends the day's session right then and there.
Professional Wrestling
Shawn Michaels was a regular recipient of these, particularly in the later parts of his career once he turned perma-face, but he usually interrupted them with Sweet Chin Music. Occasionally, after knocking his lecturer out cold, he'd deliver his own over their unconscious (or at last stunned) body. He was particularly fond of doing this to Chris Jericho.
Back in his heel days, he used to hand them out like party favors. Even as a face, he'd break them out occasionally, and he's the one guy pretty much ever who could get away with throwing them at The Undertaker.
Vin Gerard performed a number of these on Shane Storm - playing off Storm's betrayal of the technicos by selling out the counter to the Chikara Special (a Chikara Moral Event Horizon if there ever was one) and then twisting his world on its axis as Vin thanked him for it. Ended with Storm 'transforming' into the rudo STIGMA, dropping the colour from his outfits, the bright mullet becoming a black mohawk and joining with Vin Gerard and Colin Delaney to become the UnStable.
Then inverted when Vin tries the same thing on Jigsaw, who had removed his mask elsewhere and hadn't been seen in Chikara for a year. Vin said that he'd never seen the boys in the back as angry at anyone as they were at Jigsaw ("No matter what I did, I never had to buy a ticket!") and there was no way to get back on their good side - Jigsaw might as well join the UnStable. Jigsaw responded with superkicks.
Chris Jericho...just Chris Jericho. Back in 2008 and early 2009 when everyone took his heel character completely seriously, Jericho would give one of these weekly. They rarely worked, but they were awesome.
CM Punk in his Straight Edge persona. He is so awesome that he can actually give these while he's in the middle of a match.
Radio
Brilliantly used in That Mitchell and Webb Sound, a radio programme. In multiple segments, Webb's character insults a woman's dress sense, weight or intelligence, eventually turning into a full-blown Hannibal Lecture. When the woman has been reduced to a wreck, Webb asks for a date, to cheer the woman up.
Referenced in the Black Phillip Show in this youtube clip. He says "I just had to "Hannible Lecter, — just talk this bitch till' she die," while explaining how his girlfriend's moodiness affects him.
Tabletop Games
New World of Darkness sourcebook Slasher (which deals with exactly what you think it does) has this as a talent of the Genius Undertaking and its natural progression, the Maniac. The Genius has the ability to instinctively profile anyone and learn what facts they'd hate to have revealed. The Maniac uses this knowledge to always have advantage over a certain target, and, with time, to convert the target to his point of view (a la Jigsaw).
On the (very) few occasions when the Dark Powers of Ravenloft have apparently communicated directly to anyone, it's been as a Hannibal Lecture to a potential darklord, delivered in familiar voices. Strahd heard the voices of Tatyana and Sergei taunting him, while Azalin heard the voices of his son and his mentor in wizardry.
In Planescape: Torment a mid-way adversary confronts any and all characters in the party with a (de)moralizing tirade about how their particular history of suffering, self-deception, and misdeeds have shaped them, noting that in the end it was these things that led them to follow the lead character on his quest, so ensnared in circumstances that the choice never truly was their own. Though she is promptly defeated after this, the things she alludes to usually cast the pasts of both the NPCs and the Player Character in a new (and usually less pretty) light.
The Nameless One himself can use the technique on the resident Knight Templar, which convinces him to pass on as there's nothing worth holding on to in his unlife any longer.
Baldur's Gate is really fond of this trope. In the second game especially you'll experience dreams where something that looks like the Big Bad lectures you.
"Why do you stand for this!? Why do you submit to the flesh when death is bred in your bones?"
Turns out though that it isn't quite what it seems. By the point the lecturer is replaced by your sister you'll have figured out that the origin though...
"What does an eternity of nothingness matters when you can defeat all your opponents as easily as one... two... three... four... FIVE!"
The prequel videos for F.E.A.R., which feature a psychologist trying to interview Alma, have an almost completely silent version of this, coupled with a savage series of mind rapes. By the end of it, the hapless doctor is crawling around on the floor crying, while Alma is playfully dancing around her.
In the Crowning Moment of Awesome for Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations, Mia Fey delivers one of these to the possessing spirit of Dahlia Hawthorne, pointing out that every single evil plot she's made has resulted in failure and shame, including the one that she made from beyond the grave. The Fey/Wright clan has always been there to stop her and even as a ghost she's doomed to eternal failure. This revelation horrifies her so much that it winds up exorcising Dahlia from Maya's body completely.
The Shadow Archetypes in Persona 4 have the Hannibal Lecture as part of their nature: As they are the anthropomorphic personifications of their originators' repressed feelings and fears, they will relentlessly hound their owners with the knowledge they are made of in an attempt to make their owners face up to their fears and accept them as part of themselves, becoming personas instead. Trying a Shut Up, Hannibal! on them is not a good idea.
The Big Bad does this, as well; see the series page.
As does the Normal ending's Final Boss, but he gets Shut Up, Hannibal!'d so hard his persona reverts into a shadow and possesses him.
Dr. Weil: I told you... I can't die! No one can stop Ragnarok now!
Zero: If I destroy Weil's core, the explosion will take Ragnarok out with it... If Ragnarok is blown apart, it no longer poses a threat!
Dr. Weil: Are you even capable of it? The Reploid hero, protecting justice and humanity! I am one of those humans you have sworn to protect! Do you have it in you to defeat me?!
Justified in that every boss represents a self-destructive component of her own psyche (the Jabberwock in particular is Alice's guilt over surviving the fire that killed her family).
Archer Hannibal lectures Shirou quite well in Fate/stay night. Bonus points because as he's Shirou's future self, Shirou knows beyond a doubt that Archer is right. Or at least, he would be right if Shirou didn't stab him the chest.
In Devil Survivor, Kaido delivers a particularly blunt one to Keisuke if you don't prevent their confrontation. Then he kills him, and follows this up by calling Atsuro out over his anger.
"...Lowlifes. ...Shameless filthy wretches. How you celebrate my ascension with such joy. Hailing the very one whom you have condemned for generations. Have you no shame? What happened to the evil, ruthless sorceress from your fantasies? The cold-blooded tyrant that slaughtered countless men and destroyed many nations? Where is she now? She stands before your very eyes to become your new ruler. HAHAHAHAHA."
Happens three times in Tales of Vesperia. First, Phaeroh explains how Estelle's power is killing the world, that killing her, while morally wrong, is the only way to prevent it, and finding an alternative is pointless. Later on, Alexei details how the world has become an utter crapsack and that its only hope is to be "reborn" (under his totaliterian rule of course). Finally, at the end, Duke explains why sacrificing humanity is the only way to destroy the Adephagos, and also why he beieves humanity deserves to die for the various atrocities they've committed throughout history. All three times, Yuri tells the speaker to stow it.
Aeon does this as part of his hyper attack. He's got one for every possible opponent, including himself.
He does this to almost every girl in the game, and needless to say...they seem to always work.
In World of Warcraft, as you progress through the questline to create Shadowmourne, a legendary two-handed axe The Lich King whispers you about how you and he both harvest souls for your own ends, he too once sought a weapon of great power, how he commands powers beyond you, et cetera.
In Xenosaga: Episode I, Albedo delivers one to MOMO (seen in the quote page) before demonstrating his immortality and other......things.
Earlier, Virgil gives a brief one to Shion just before he detonates a group of Realians in an attempt to stop a Gnosis invasion:
Shion: Stop it! You have no right to play god with their lives! Using them as bombs… I won’t let you do this!
Virgil: So whaddya gonna do about it? Tell me, why haven’t you disabled that function? Sure it’s factory-loaded, but you of all people shouldn’t have any trouble removing it. Since you care about them so much, all it would take is a little tweak, and they’d be free as birds… And yet you don’t. Why not?
Shion: Because…company protocol dictate…
Virgil: Exactly! It’s protocol! In other words, you’re just like me, bound by that protocol. We’re the ones that give them a reason to live. Am I wrong?!
Shion: But I-
Virgil: That’s the difference between us and them! Am I wrong?! So, why not give it to them? A meaning to their pitiful existence!
Malefor from The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon is a master of this. In one lecture, he's able to make Spyro and Cynder doubt everything they've done in the entire three games, though Cynder gets the worst of it, he makes her doubt herself to such a point he can retake her mind and turn her evil again, then continues to lecture Spyro as the poor guy is getting beaten down by his brainwashed girlfriend. He ultimately even drives Spyro over the Despair Event Horizon. Even though Sypro saves Cynder with the Power of Love, the shocker comes from the fact the fact we, and them, have no idea just how much of what Malefor said is true. It also helps that he has a menicing Voice of the Legion
One possible low-level monster in Improbable Island is actually named Hannibal Lecture, and tries this on the player. It doesn't work.
GLaDOS of Portal gives some pretty solid speeches through the course of both games, but they're usually so ridden with sarcasm and crazy that most players find them more funny than frightening.
Do you know the biggest lesson I learned from what you did?
You killed me. I—oh, no, wait. I guess I haven't killed you. Yet.
Food for thought.
Cut content of the second game has GLaDOS delivering some pretty devastating ones. It makes you wonder if they were cut simply for being too nasty compared to the generally humourous tone of the game.
Redcloak: Oh, so now you've gained some insight on the universe by letting your body and mind deteriorate?
Right-Eye: YES! When you're faced with your own mortality, you have no choice but to consider what's best for the next generation. And this deal with Xykon is killing our spirit as fast as it's killing our bodies. You don't know what it is you're trying to better, because you don't know what it's like not to serve an undead overlord, or a petty spiteful god.
Redcloak: ...What did you just say to me?
Right-Eye: Come on. You have to realize that the Dark One doen't care about us. Why else would he let you throw goblin lives away on this plan?
Redcloak: Throw away lives? How dare you?! Every goblin that has died since I've been high priest has been to further The Plan! Their deaths were a ncessary sacrifice! They were NOT my fault!
Right-Eye: Wait...that's it, isn't it? It's all about whose fault it is... If I kill Xykon now, then it was all a waste. You ordered goblins to their deaths believing in the Plan- so if we abandon it now, then you were wrong. You let them die for nothing. You're willing to throw good lives after bad so that you don't have to admit that we were wrong to work with Xykon in the first place, much less help him cheat death.
Redclaok receives another one shortly after this from Xykon, saying that he let Redclaok kill his brother so he would never betray Xykon. If he did, he would have killed his brother for nothing, and he's too much of a coward to face that.
A subversion occurs in this strip of It's Walky, in which the main villain - who has a tendency to Hannibal Lecture certain heroes and play on their insecurities and the secrets he's learnt about them - finds his ability to do this hampered when faced with members of the team that he knows next-to-nothing about, and what little he does know doesn't bother them in the slightest when he tries to throw it back at them. Frustrated, he curses himself for 'playing favorites'.
The main character's current situation in Flipside appears to be one of the Good variety. Which is impressive since the villain just ate her arm off!
This is a power of Thrawn, demon of half-truths, from Shades – whenever somebody gets caught in his tentacles, he can see victim's dearest ideals and describe them through dark, twisted point of view. The worst part? What he says is always at last partly true.
Cuanta Vida, page 136. Rojo attempted to backstab Bleu, and for his efforts he received a broken nose and a vicious beating from Jeremy's crutch. While lying defenseless on the ground, Rojo attempts to appeal to Bleu's pacifistic nature: "Put down the gun...How many people have you killed today? Too many, right? Why add another?" Too bad itdidn'twork.
In Goblins, when Dellyn figures out that Thaco has taken levels as though he were a Player Character, he calls it the 'most perverse thing he's ever heard of', and points out that by doing so, Thaco has admitted that goblins will always be inferior to humans.
Web Original
At the end of Survival of the Fittest v1, the only survivors are Jack O'Connor and Adam Dodd. Jack, having finally killed the terrorist who wiped out his group and killed his teammates, found himself driven insane by the guilt of the act. His moral and intellectual code unable to withstand the stress, he comes to the conclusion that each of the final four survivors is a criminal, and that the only right way for the game to end would be with the death of all the contestants. With his belief that each of the finalists need to be punished for their "crimes" by death established, he went into the endgame with one goal: make sure all three of the others died, then kill himself. At the beginning of the final duel between him and Adam, he launches into a Hannibal Lecture about how Adam is a criminal no better than Cody Jenson and therefore doesn't deserve to go home, comparing him to a serial killer. Needless to say, this pisses Adam off.
One memorable (and ongoing) scene has Lenny Priestly and Bobby Jacks (Well-Intentioned Extremist and Anti-Villain respectively) each giving the other one of these. At the same time.
When the heroes of the Global Guardians PBEM Universe finally captured The Confessor (a Serial-Killer Killer) they promptly pointed out to The Confessor that he, himself, was a serial killer. The Confessor delivered the Hannibal Lecture to end all Hannibal Lectures about the ineffectualness of superheroes in stopping really determined murderers.
Played with in The Nostalgia Critic's call to the director of My Pet Monster. While we don't hear what the director says, but the Critic's forced to admit that he watched the movie willingly, that he's not babysitting anyone and that he's a twenty eight year old man who watches kid's movies for a living. The resulting pity causes a Heroic BSOD that apparently lasts a bit more than a week.
Linkara delivers a particularly epic one to The Entity about the nature of its existence, causing it to FRIGGING KILL ITSELF.
In I'm a Marvel... And I'm a DC Zero Hour Episode 5 (Part 1), the Joker delivers an absolutely withering one of these to none other than Darkseid himself, who doesn't realize that he is a comic book character.
Western Animation
South Park, "Toilet Paper." Parodies Silence of the Lambs scene-for-scene.
Cartman's utterly unsympathetic deconstruction of one of the nannies in "Tsst" could be considered an example of this, as well.
Avatar: The Last Airbender: Azula pulls this off against another villain, Long Feng, in the second season finale.
Long Feng: You have beaten me at my own game.
Azula: Don't flatter yourself. You were never even a player.
The Assy McGee episode "Pegfinger" contains a parody of the Hannibal Lecture in The Silence of the Lambs. While walking down a corridor identical to the one in the movie, Assy warns Sanchez not to let the prisoner they're about to question "get inside his head." Pegfinger immediately does so in seconds with little more than a racist joke ("A wedding ring? How many oranges did you have to pick to pay for that?) and Sanchez goes berserk and shoots him to death.
In the Batman Beyond movie Return of the Joker, Terry McGinnis (the new Batman) achieves his Crowning Moment of Awesome by successfully pulling a Hannibal Lecture on the Joker. Check it out on the quotes page, it is epic.
Earlier in the film, the Joker gives a brief one to the original Batman, calling him "a little boy in a playsuit, crying for mommy and daddy".
Evil Flash: Slacker! Child! Clown! We have no place here among the world's greatest heroes!
Flash: Says you! I've got a seat at the big conference table. I'm gonna paint my logo on it! [punches through Evil Flash's chest]
Earlier, in the Justice League episode "A Better World", the Mirror Universe President Lex Luthor uses one of these on his version of Superman. It partially succeeds. Superman does indeed break down as a result...just not in the way Luthor wanted.
In the same episode, Batman also pulls one of these...on himself.
And he won. When you think about it, Lord!Batman manages to win the first one ("We created a world where no eight year old boy will ever lose his parents... because of some punk with a gun.") and Batman does this later while driving in the Batmobile ("They'd love it here, Mom and Dad. They would be so proud of you.").
The commentary states that the scene was created by one half of the production team debating the other from Batman's point of view. And to actually keep the viewer in the dark, neither Batman nor Lord!Batman faced the audience while talking, thus allowing a one sided conversation that either Batman could have been winning until the reveal.
In the first episode of Superman: The Animated Series, Jor-El discovers that Brainiac (the central A.I. of Krypton) has been deceiving the planetary council about the impending doomsday, and uploading himself into a satellite. When Jor-El asks why, Brainiac calmly points out that had he revealed Krypton's fate, the council would have ordered him (forcefully) to determine a way to avert it, which Brainiac knew to be impossible. He decided instead to use the remaining time to save himself. When Jor-El threatens to destroy Brainiac's mainframe, Brainiac argues that when Krypton is gone, he will be all that remains of the entirety of its culture and history, and asks if Jor-El is willing to consign Krypton to be lost and forgotten. Jor-El reluctantly lowers his gun, just before Brainiac calls the guards on him.
"Look at you? What are you? A ghost trying to fit in with humans or some creepy little boy with creepy little powers? You’re a freak! Not a ghost, not a boy! Who cares for a thing like you?"
Also, he gives Raimundo a Hannibal Lecture in a dream.
Megatron tries this on Optimus Primal in their climactic battle in the final episode of Beast Wars. He even quotes scripture from the Covenant of Primus (a book of actually truthful prophecies) to prove that Optimus would fail. Then Optimus turns it against him in an epic Shut Up, Hannibal! moment.
Megatron: "And there came a hero who said, 'Hurt not the earth, nor the trees, nor the seas, nor the very fabric of time.' But the hero would not prevail!'"
Discord in My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic gives one to most of the Mane cast to soften them up for his brainwashing. It doesn't work on Fluttershy since she is more accepting of her faults, but he brainwashes her anyway in a fit of pique.
Discord: Did you miss me, Celestia? I've missed you. It's quite lonely being encased in stone but you wouldn't know that would you? Because I don't turn ponies into stone!
In the Family Guy episode: Seahorse Seashell Party, Meg finally breaks down and points out all of their hypocritical acts of ganing up on her and puting her down making her feel awful, and how they raised her specifically for that purpose. Her Lecture is harsh enough to send Lois into tears, and then makes all of the members of the family turn onto one another, ending with Peter crying and fleeing upstairs where Lois goes to look for him.
When alone with Brian, Brian congratulates Meg on finally standing up for herself and he is proud of her. However Meg, upset, mentions how after she pointed out all of their faults they turned on each other "like a pack of wolves". She then comes to the conclusion that she is the part that holds the family together by having each family member blame her and thus are able keep peace with each other, and while not a pleasant purpose it is still her purpose and she must embrace it. Brian congratulates Meg on her nobility and self-sacrifice, telling her that she is stronger and a better person than anyone else in the family. Meg than finds Peter crying in a closet, where he states he doesn't "deserve no better than living with the shoes". After the rest of the familiy enters, Meg says that she was just taking out her frustration on them and they didn't deserve it, and are in fact a great family. After they all put down Meg, they calm down and end up hugging.
Her Lectures are so harsh that Stewie actually becomes afraid that he will be next. However, luckily for him, Meg ignores him.
Real Life
A series of independent experiments carried out by a sadist Harvard psychology professor in the 1960s could be counted as an extreme (and, as it turned out, extremely unfortunate) real-life example of the Hannibal Lecture. University students were instructed to write an essay summarizing their personal philosophy on life and underlying principles, then went into a room expecting to debate philosophy with a fellow student. They instead faced an interrogation by a far more experienced opponent, whose sole purpose was to attack and ridicule their beliefs at length. Since one of the main goals of the experiment was to induce stress and upset the subject as much as possible, it's not surprising that many students came out feeling traumatized. One of them eventually went completely over the edge (for this reason or some other) and became the Unabomber.
He had worked with the CIA in developing a test that tested pilots' wills, preventing them from possibly being brainwashed if captured. He decided to "fine tune" his technique using students as test subjects, but really the guy was a sadist who got off on the sort of thing mentioned above. WNYC's Radio Lab covered this story in one of their pieces titled "Oops", you can hear it here starting at 4:20.
The AI-Box experiment. One person plays a trans-human AI who is contained, and wants unrestricted access to the world, the other an experimenter who wants to keep the AI in its "box". The AI has two hours, using text communication only, to convince the researcher to let it out. Both times the experiment has been run so far, the researcher has been convinced to let the AI out. More experiments have been done by various informal parties as well. Though not a perfect 100%, the results are much much higher than one would expect. Notably, all the gatekeepers are chosen specifically for their steadfast belief that they would not allow the AI out.
Hilariously, one site about the experiment links back to this very article.
Dr. Robert Hare, a specialist in Psychopathy, talks about how Psychopaths regularly do this - having figured out their interrogators and interrogation techniques, they become horrible subjects to try to interrogate, often telling lies just to play with the interrogator.
