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"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? You look like a rube. You're a well-scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste. Your eyes are like cheap birthstones - all surface shine when you stalk some little answer. And you're bright behind them, aren't you? Desperate not to be like your mother. Good nutrition has given you some length of bone, but you're not more than one generation out of the mines Officer Starling. Is it the West Virginia Starlings or the Okie Starlings, Officer? It was a toss-up between college and the opportunities in the Women's Army Corps, wasn't it? Let me tell you something specific about yourself, Student Starling. Back in your room, you have a string of gold add-a-beads and you feel an ugly little thump when you look at how tacky they are now, isn't that so? All those tedious thank-yous, permitting all that sincere fumbling, getting all sticky once for every bead. Tedious. Tedious. Bo-o-o-o-r-i-ing. Being smart spoils a lot of things, doesn't it? And taste isn't kind. When you think about this conversation, you'll remember the dumb animal hurt in his face when you got rid of him. If the add-a-beads got tacky, what else will as you go along? You wonder don't you, at night?"
Prisoners don't like to talk, but interrogators have ways of making them. Police, psychiatrists, kidnappers, superheroes, shadowy government conspirators, and crazed vigilantes are all masters of Perp Sweating. Not only does the prisoner confess, they are often tricked or brainwashed into agreeing with their captor. Particularly successful Perp Sweating forces the captive to realize they have Feet Of Clay — they're not the terrifying Badass they thought they were, but a pathetic loser who is nothing compared to the one who holds them captive.
But only a fool tries Perp Sweating on a Serial Killer, a Psycho For Hire, an evil Warrior Therapist, or a Nietzsche Wannabe. These loonies know all the tricks, and will turn the tables until it's the interrogator who winds up agreeing with what the prisoner says. And the loonies always do this the same way, every time. They start out with a few seemingly-innocent questions about the captor'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, slowly, the prisoner asks more questions, which turn into comments, which turn into declarations, about how the captor has failed in different ways. Pretty soon, the prisoner is doing all the interrogating and all the answering, with the poor captor doing nothing but nodding their assent and crying.
In the climax, the prisoner's probing becomes a full-blown lecture — a Hannibal Lecture. The theme of the lecture is always the same: their captor is a sad, pathetic failure who is only holding the prisoner captive to give themselves delusions of adequacy. Frequently, the captor must admit they are Not So Different morally.
Due to Contractual Immortality or simple awesomeness, this doesn't work on long-established Action Heroes; the story will often imply, however, that the villain still has a damned good point. If the hero is suitably awesome, they may even be able to Hannibal Lecture the bad guy, or subvert an attempt by a bad guy to lecture them by turning it into a lecture right back; yeah, the villain might be sharp, but that doesn't mean that the hero can't point out a few things about how pathetic the bad guy is in return. In other cases, the hero would just beat up the guy whom he interrogates and tells him to start sweating.
In a Briar Patching inversion, some crooks push the interrogator in the other direction, allowing them to become overconfident and thus make a few lethal mistakes in the middle of questioning; the crook comes out ahead, often leaving with information he didn't have before, and the interrogator never even realizes the error.
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. Almost every example since has been either an Homage or parody of his scenes. Offscreen, he also talks another inmate into suicide.
When taken to the extreme, becomes More Than Mind Control.
If the declarations come from simple clues, this is a form of Sherlock Scan.
The opposite effect is done by a World Of Cardboard Speech, when the hero tells about his own flaws and how they don't matter now.
See also: To The Pain, Talking Your Way Out, Just Between You And Me, Evil Gloating, Shut Up Hannibal and The Reason You Suck Speech. Compare And Then What?
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 Gutts do this to villains who have captured them, proving that they don't need any weapons to pwn 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.
- 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 Mind Rape 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. First he threatened Lelouch into a losing game of chess by rigging Nunnally to a motion-sensitive bomb (which Lelouch diverted Mao's focus away from so Suzaku could disarm it), and then he violates Suzaku's sanity. With Shirley's Mind Rape 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.
- Fate, The Woobie of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, received one of this from Jail Scaglietti, who mentioned how her adopting children that became Child Soldiers that love her made her no different from Jail himself or from her Evil Matriarch of a mother. Thankfully, her children snapped her out of it by declaring how they're the ones who chose their path and that all Fate did was raise them to be strong-willed enough to do so. Fate proceeds to kick ass all over Jail and his Numbers. To the tune of Nana Mizuki's "Pray," no less.
- 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?"
- 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 the real Al is dead. 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 his the real Al.
- Pain from Naruto gets in on this in the latest chapter, using 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 someone like 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.
- Hansel tries to pull one of these on Balalaika midway through episode 15 of Black Lagoon, which, like the true Magnificent Bitch that she is, she stoically endures; long enough for Boris to line up a good shot on Hansel with his sniper rifle. She then proceeds to deliver an utterly devastating Lecture to the dying Hansel.
Hansel/Gretel: ...Heh. You're funny, lady. But what are you talking about? I'm not going to die. I can't die. Because... I killed so many people in my life. We've killed many... Many... Many... Many people. It means we get to live on for... That much longer. We can add on to our lives... So we're never going to die. That's right. We are eternal.
Balalaika: That's quite the interesting religion. It's a wonderful thought, I suppose. However, I'm afraid that Oingo Boingo said it best: "No One Lives Forever", that's just the way it goes. Now then, I suppose I could be cruel and torture you before I kill you — considering what you did to my comrade, there's no question that it would be appropriate. But unfortunately, I am not as vulgar as you; it would bring me no satisfaction. So I think I'll sit here and watch until you've taken your last miserable breath. Judging by your wounds, you have about ten minutes at best. I dedicate these last few minutes before you leave this Earth to Sahalov and Menshof's souls, may they rest in peace... Although I'm certain you wouldn't be able to understand.
*Hansel/Gretel starts crying in pain*
Balalaika: Don't cry, you fool.
- Inverted in Dragon Ball when Master Roshi convinces Tenshinhan that he isn't the cold blooded killer he thinks he is, though it probably helped that Master Crane was rigging his fight with Goku so that he couldn't properly defeat him.
- 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.
Comic Books
- The graphic novel Watchmen (which pre-dates ''The 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 montage flashback 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; this troper has yet to read the Jack Kirby original), 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.
Kimura: Why are you telling me this?
- 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 differance 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."
Film
- 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.
- Used frequently in The Faculty by various infected individuals on the cast of troubled teenagers
- 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.
- Done in Austin Powers: 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 fighting evil like Dr. Evil.
- 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.
- 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.
- Dogma, in one of its opening scenes, features Loki as played by 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, "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 phased 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.
Literature
- In an extreme example - while bound and essentially helpless, Shen-Ji Yang from the first Sid Meiers 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 compare 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 wholy 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.
- 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.
- 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 Wars Expanded Universe novel Destiny's Way, the rogue Jedi Vergere Hannibal Lectures Luke 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 Jedi reversed 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.
- A heroic example appears in Hogfather, where Susan uses this on Psychopathic Manchild Jonathan Teatime.
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 Bad Ruin 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.
Live Action TV
Professional Wrestling
- 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.
Close Professional Wrestling
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.
Tabletop Games
- The 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).
Video Games
- Eve from Parasite Eve really enjoyed giving these, usually combined with The Reason You Suck Speeches to Mind Screw Aya into either giving up or joining her.
- 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 and again on the Big Bad in the game's Grand Finale if you level him correctly.
- Have to elaborate on how it goes with the Big Bad, since it's such a memorable and Awesome example of this. Having spent the whole game facing the question "what can change the nature of a man?", it comes down to the final confrontation, and this exchange:
The Transcendent One: THEN THIS IS MY ANSWER AND YOU ARE THE PROOF: NOTHING CAN CHANGE THE NATURE OF A MAN.
The Nameless One: If there is anything I have learned in my travels across the Planes, it is that many things may change the nature of a man. Whether regret, or love, or revenge or fear - whatever you believe can change the nature of a man, can. I’ve seen belief move cities, make men stave off death, and turn an evil hag's heart half-circle. This entire Fortress has been constructed from belief. Belief damned a woman, whose heart clung to the hope that another loved her when he did not. Once, it made a man seek immortality and achieve it. And it has made a posturing spirit think it is something more than a part of me.
- He then stops existing due to the sheer power of your will. You Hannibal Lecture him out of existence.
- Baldurs 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!"
- Jon Irenicus in the sequel cranks it up to 11 during his many interventions into your dreams.
"Life... is strength. That is not to be contested; it seems logical enough. You live; you affect your world."
- 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 MindRapes. By the end of it, the hapless doctor is crawling around on the floor crying, while Alma is playfully dancing around her.
- In Knights Of The Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords Kreia uses these in conjunction with her mind invasion techniques to inflict this upon the PlayerCharacter's companions, breaking them into his/her service.
- 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 ShutUpHannibal'd so hard his persona reverts into a shadow and possesses him.
- Mega Man Zero 4: The Ragnarok Colony Drop has gone completely out of control, and Zero thought he destroyed the Complete Monster behind it all. Until:
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?!
Sigma: Wallow in despair and hopelessness! The plan to destroy the world you so love is finally coming to fruition! I shed no tears for you and your kind! Ha ha ha ha ha! It will all be over soon!
- The Shut Up Hannibal depends on who your playing as, but their all awesome. Of course, this is all on hard mode.
- Every single boss in American Mc Gees Alice. The tougher the boss, the more Mind Screw they pour on in the Boss Banter.
- 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.
Web Comics
- Order Of The Stick has a good example here
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- In the print only ''Start of Darkness"", Xykon delivers a rather nasty Hannibal Lecture to Redcloak, who had just been forced to kill his own brother who had turned against Xykon.
- Xykon delivers another one to Vaarsuvius, on the nature of power. This is actually somewhat of a subversion because the lecture helps Vaarsuvius to finally learn the lesson s/he's been needing for a long time, that power does not equal to magic spells, but rather can have all kinds of manifestations. Such as sneaking past an evil Lich and pour a few potions down a powerful paladin's throat to get him back on his feet.
- 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!
- A "good" version appears in Darths and Droids, though it is used by one protagonist convincing another to destroy the Trade Federation ship.
- A Lampshaded subversion in Fans! since seemingly every single prisoner that Rikk ever dealt with has attempted to do this on him.
- He does admit that being called a 'hypocrite' in the same encounter stung more than it should have, however.
- In xkcd, during the first meeting of Black Hat Guy and his girlfriend. here and here.
- Possibly unintentionally in Looking For Group, when Cale is taken off to be tortured, and comes back knowing the bad guys' whole plan.
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.
- Kirby gets a lot of these in There Will Be Brawl, considering he's supposed to be a parody of Hannibal himself, anyway. He even wears the mask, at one point.
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.
- The Assy Mc Gee 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.
- In the Justice League Unlimited episode "Divided We Fall" several of the robotic Evil Knockoffs created by Brainithor (Lex Luthor merged with Brainiac) use Hannibal Lectures. It works against Superman due to his fears of being Not So Different from his Alternate Universe Evil Counterpart, but Evil Flash has what might be the least successful Hannibal Lecture in history:
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.
- The Fillmore episode "To Mar a Stall" is a homage to Silence Of The Lambs, including the Hannibal Lecture from the serial graffitist.
- Spectra pulled this on Danny in their first appearances in Danny Phantom: "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?
Real Life
- A series of CIA-sponsored experiments from 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 and became the Unabomber.
- 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.
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