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To gaze upon Yugi's hair is to go mad.
A character is attacked by a villain in the most painful non-physical way possible. Their mind and soul are assaulted with painful, horrifying visions and memories, and broken until they're powerless and numb, but not dead, although afterwards they may wish they were. Nothing sexual occurs, but everything else is there to resemble a rape - violation, helplessness, and the poisoning of what could otherwise be a source of joy. The physical attacks won't go very far; all of the agony is inflicted mentally and emotionally, and it's chilling to see a villain be that cruel. The traumatized victim suffers all of the side-effects afterwards: isolation, depression, insomnia, paranoia, and may even get an Important Haircut when starting to recover. May include further sexual symbolism for good measure, such as severe and unfunny Clothing Damage and sinister Double Entendres.
Comes in two variations: one is a completely "mundane" but no less horrifying brand of torture that nonetheless breaks a characters mind. The other is the above done via Mind Probe, Psychic Powers, illusions, or seeing something Man Was Not Meant To Know. All too frequently the consequence of encountering an Eldritch Abomination. Even so much as looking at one of them might cause permanent damage to sanity.
The less said of the things that are created when this trope meets Rule Thirty Four, the better.
Can be a possible cause of Im Having Soul Pains.
Compare Fate Worse Than Death, Subtext, and Villainous BSOD. Contrast with the Care Bear Stare, which assaults the target with happy thoughts, like rainbows and stuff.
Not to be confused with More Than Mind Control (though Mind Rape can have some elements of this). Any character pulling this has little or no Mind Over Manners.
Also not to be confused with Mind Screw, despite the origin of the trope name in a quite (in)famous Mind Screw. Not to mention that some people consider the ending of said series to qualify as Mind Rape in its own right. *
Examples of Psychic Assaults
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Anime
- Occurs between Paprika and Osanai. Also among people who watch the movie as well.
- Fruits Basket: Akito does something of this sort to Yuki, Hana, and arguably the other Sohma's as well to prevent them from leaving her. Akito herself is also a victim of Mind Rape at the hands of her terrible mother.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: The trope name comes from the Fan Nickname for Asuka's brutal mental torture inflicted by an Angel. It's so debilitating, she can no longer sync with her EVA unit, and eventually falls into a catatonic depression. Most translations include Asuka screaming something like, "It's raping my soul!", "It's defiling my mind!", or "It's raping my mind!"
- The fact that the Mind Rape ray also plays the Hallelujah chorus makes it both worse and hilarious, then right back to worse.
- Considering the Hallelujah chorus, one can interpret this as a narmed Care Bear Stare
- Except that the attack flashed up things like "death" and "suicide", then proceeded to force her to relive some rather unpleasant memories.
- The last two and a half episodes were mindrape. For characters and viewers alike.
- Actually, the last episode is clearly a Care Bear Stare. Sure, it had Nightmare Fuel and surely was mindrape to the viewers. But at the end of the day, it bombarded Shinji with happy thoughts so that he would discover himself as well as figure out a new perspective on the world. This pulls him out of depression and magically ended up happy at the end. Leading to the Aesop of the series that depression is only a state of mind... or something like that.
- And let's not even mention End of Evangelion
- Mai Kujaku's Start Of Darkness in Yu-Gi-Oh: The Yami no Game between Malik and Mai, where Malik erases people from her memory, uses bondage-looking cards (for extra symbolism), and causes her to visualize herself trapped in an hourglass as she slowly dies. Yugi ultimately saves her, but Mai is traumatized afterwards - plagued by nightmares, unable to enjoy dueling, even when she wins, and helplessly lonely. In desperation to escape the pain, she joins the Cult, Doma.
- In fact, less rape-like versions of this are the point of the "Penalty Games" dealt to losers of Yami no Games, especially the ones used in the manga and first version of the anime by the Pharaoh himself. Possibly the most important of these is the "Experience of Death" used against Kaiba, which inspires the creation of the holographic duel system used in the remainder of the series. The second anime lightens the Pharaoh's image somewhat by just replacing all instances of this with "Mind Crush", which does vaguely shown mental damage to the target.
- The three sub-villains of Sailor Moon Super S examined the dreams of pure-hearted people (one attacks young girls, another attacks older women, and the last one goes against males of all ages) to determine if Pegasus was hiding there... by forcibly sticking their head into the victim's "dream mirror". While the victim screams in pain or discomfort. Usually after seducing the poor Jane/John Doe to draw him/her to a secluded spot. The symbolism was very... subtle.
- In the R season, Mamoru abandons Usagi because he's been having really disturbing dreams where she dies. He later finds out that these dreams were sent by someone else, wanting to test his bond with Usagi. The weird thing? Who sent them was... his own future self, King Endymion. Yes, Mamoru has been mind-raping himself, in a sense.
- Later in R, Mind Rape (through infusing her with Dark Energy and altering her memories of her parents to make her believe they abused her), allows Wiseman to turn a captured and emotionally fragile Chibi-Usa into Black Lady.
- Digimon Tamers features a digital Eldritch Abomination that uses human despair to create weapons. One of the secondary characters, who also happens to be a sweet and kind little girl with hidden Mommy issues who has just seen her Digimon partner die, is subjected to several weeks of having her most horrible memories played over and over (specially those related to there), as if she were there and with full emotional intensity, so her angst can power up aforementioned Eldritch Abomination. Break The Cutie taken to levels even Eva would envy.
- Not surprising, as many elements and designs for creatures in Tamers WERE actually taken from Evangelion (although, had they gone for spot-on transfer of characters, Rika/Ruki would have been the one taken, being the Asuka of that series.)
- In Saint Seiya, ex-Dragon and actual Aloof Big Brother Phoenix Ikki often uses an attack called "Phoenix Genma Ken", which destroys his opponent's mind by trapping them in horrifying visions embodying their hidden fears, which are indistinguishable from reality. Afterwards, most opponents are left as empty, catatonic shells, their spirits dead.
- Subversion: Ikki gets a rather brutal taste of his own medicine as he fights Virgo Shaka during the Sanctuary saga. Shaka, a VERY powerful psychic himself, uses his Rikudō Rinne technique to throw Ikki's mind literally into the Seven Pits of Hell, describing each of the horrible Hell stages in loving details as Ikki's psyche falls to its doom and his body lays lifeless. When Ikki brings himself back and tries the Phoenix Genma Ken on Shaka, he just shrugs it off and mind-rapes Ikki again by showing him visions of his child self with baby Shun in his arms being attacked by demons, having his feet pierced by rocks and being pressured into abandoning Shun. Shaka completes his mind rape by cutting off Ikki's physical senses with his more lethal technique, the Tenbu Hōrin... and that's what allows Ikki to actually win the fight, since it was all a Batman Gambit that allowed him to fully focus on defeating Shaka through Taking You With Me.
- Also subverted in the Ansgard Saga. Ikki first fought Mime and his Genma Ken reveals the fact Mime's parents had been killed by his adoptive father in self-defense, and when he told a teenage Mime (note that he deliberately omitted the "in self-defense" part, to provoke Mime's anger), Mime killed him (which is what the stepfather wanted in the first place, to atone for his crime). Mime, who had previously been acting rather serene, went batshit insane on Ikki and fought so furiously that he actually suceeded in fighting Ikki to a draw, with both of them dying. Too bad, for Mime, that Death Is Cheap.
- Another subversion in the same Ansgard saga. Mizar Bud had convinced himself throughly that he hated his older twin brother Syd, since he was The Un Favorite in the eyes of everyone (from the parents that had to abandon him as a baby, to Hilda who told Bud that he'd only be a full-blooded Ansgard Saint when Syd died). However, the Phoenix Genma Ken revealed that Bud never truly hated Syd, and always loved him deep down. This *also* was so shocking for Bud that it sent him into an Unstoppable Rage.
- However, the Ansgard Arc also offers a straight example: As Princess Hilda is de-brainwashed and uses the remaining of her powers in combination with the Odin Armor's own, it's revealed that when she was Brainwashed And Crazy by Poseidon, her real self was contained in the Ring of the Nibelung and mind-raped non-stop during the Ansgard arc, as she was forced to helplessly watch her Warriors (who also were her protegés and friends, and one had a huge Bodyguard Crush on her) fight to death with the Five Man Band.
- Harry's attempts to "hack" Melfina in Outlaw Star. They weren't successful on his part, but the imagery was definitely there (especially so when considering that Gene was tipped off to the first one by Harry's rather...excited reaction)
- What Mao does to Shirley Fenette in Code Geass. She was very mentally unstable after learning the truth about her crush, Lelouch, and his role in her father's death. Soon, Mao made it worse by using his Psychic Powers to read her frail mind and cruelly playing with her to force the girl into shooting Lelouch. It's so bad that Lelouch has to use his Geass to erase all of the poor girl's memories of him.
- What C.C. does to Suzaku to stop him from attacking Lelouch would also qualify; she shows him memories of his dead father, ex-Prime Minister Genbu Kururugi, who Suzaku himself killed as a young boy. It's so bad that Suzaku falls into a catatonic state and is traumatised for awhile afterwards. Partially excusable in that C.C. admits she had absolutely no idea what she made Suzaku see. Several episodes later, Mao also brings the issue up, manipulating Suzaku in a similar way he did Shirley, by reading his mind.
- Later, C.C. does it to Suzaku a second time, as well as hitting a couple of random bodyguards with the same power; in this case it's completely accidental, as a side-effect of Lelouch's Geass becoming permanent apparently boosts her own powers.
- According to one of the licensed side-novels for the show, an adolescent Mao used his power to manipulate an entire village in China into destroying itself by exposing the skeletons in everyone's closets. So, if anything, he's a practiced hand at the Mind Rape.
- And the second season reveals that during the Time Skip, the Emperor used his own Geass to give Lelouch Fake Memories. Not a traditional Mind Rape, but the scene gets almost uncomfortably close to an actual rape, with Suzaku holding Lelouch down and Lelouch begging for him to stop.
- To make things worse, Charles also mind-raped Nunnally to make her believe her mother Marianne had been murdered in front of her, mixing this with having the seven-year-old girl crippled to make the whole deal more believable. As a result, poor Nunnally was not only confined to a wheelchair, but also went blind out of trauma. Let's not forget him rewriting the memories of Anya Earlstreim, a young girl who had become the vessel of his wife through Grand Theft Me, to cover all of this up.
- If Lelouch uses his Geass to order someone with strong enough willpower to do something utterly abhorrent to them, a Mind Rape-like effect will ensue when the will of the victim tries to fight off the Geass. It happened twice in the series... and aptly enough, both of them were teenage girls who Lelouch had feelings for..
- Averted: Another, less supernatural mind rape was attempted by Suzaku on Kallen in R2. Suzaku, trying to find out if Lelouch has regained his memory and has become Zero again, attempts to use refrain on Kallen to make her tell him the truth. Kallen begs for him not to as though she were about to be literally raped by him. Just before dosing her, Suzaku realizes he is becoming Not So Different from zero, and stops. When you think back to season one and how her mother's mind was nearly destroyed by the drug, it's not that much of a stretch to believe that Kallen would liken a forced dose of refrain to a sexual violation.
- The Sol Eleven Master Pei La Cain does this a couple of times to Guy in Gao Gai Gar FINAL, showing disjointed flashes of various scenes from both the original anime and the OVA.
- In a bizarre example of a good guy doing this, Kurama in Yu Yu Hakusho executes an eternal punishment on the Elder Toguro by trapping him in his own subconscious with a treacherous plant. For some reason I think this is supposed to be seen as less disturbing than just killing him. It isn't, but let's face it - when your enemy is immortal, you have to replace "kill them" somehow. But then again, you try and mess with Kurama, and you won't end well. Or at all.
- I'm not sure it was meant to be less disturbing:
- Kurama: "Such is the plant's nature. Only your own sins can hurt you."
- Yusuke: "Uh, Kurama, if I ever did something that pissed you off, I'm sorry."
- Mitari: "Me too."
- OK, Mitari's a messed up wimp, but Yuusuke kills people all the time.
- The Festum in Fafner In The Azure Dead Aggressor use this as their ultimate weapon against mankind.
- Last Exile Dio's Rite of Convenant is basically a case of Mind Rape that turns him into a semi-catatonic killing machine.
- In the Chrono Crusade manga, Pandemonium does this pretty much constantly, mentally assaulting anyone and anything she comes in contact with. In fact, Joshua's insanity wasn't caused by a total power overload like originally assumed, but by the fact that Chrono's horns mentally linked Joshua to Pandemonium, meaning he was mind-raped almost every waking moment of his life.
- Surprising good-guy example: Ban Midou has the power to show people a perfect illusion for one minute, and he often uses the ability to Mind Rape his enemies.
- In Inuyasha, about one third of the way through the plot, Naraku traps the gang in a field of mist and some sort of root-like plant which traps them and forces them to see hallucinations of which they each fear the most.
- Virtually any character trapped by a Mangekyo Sharingan user's Tsukuyomi on Naruto is forced to endure horrific torture, both mental and physical (the pain is entirely real, although the torture doesn't leave marks on the victim's body), for what appears to the subject as any amount of time that the user deems fit, effectively leaving the victim crippled and in a state of mental collapse.
- This is Itachi's strongest mind technique; his Tsukuyomi consists of a 72-hour illusion torture while only takes a few moments in the real world. He seems to especially enjoy doing it to his younger brother, Sasuke, repeatedly leaving him a comatose wreck. The incestuous overtones to this make it even creepier than most mind rapes.
- Hell, that's probably just the worst case. In Naruto, there's a whole subsection of technique for illusions (genjutsu), and it's a sure bet plenty involve inflicting pain and mental duress.
- It does. Kurenai is a genjutsu user; her Magen Jubaku Satsu creates the illusion of trees that can effectively hold the enemy in place as she kills them.
- Road does this to Lavi in D Gray Man when she enters his mind to manipulate his conflicted feelings about becoming the next Bookman and his affection for his friends.
- Hitomi, in Vision of Escaflowne almost every time she has a vision or does a tarot card reading. In Episode 11 it's so bad that Hitomi almost dies because her heart stops (she saw Dilandau bloodily kill a shapeshifter by crushing him to death with his Guymelef's bare hands). Also forces Hitomi to declare (to Van, Allen, and almost every other main character) that she hates their world and wants to be sent back home
- Dilandau, who turns out to be Allyn's missing sister, Celena.
- Muraki from Yami No Matsuei does this numerous times to most of the people he meets (showing Hisoka memories of him raping him, reminding Tsuzuki that he's not human, guilt-tripping Tsubaki and making her think she killed her friend, etc.)
- Genkaku from Deadman Wonderland does this to Nagi while drugging and interrogating him, reawakening Nagi's surpressed memories of massacring Genkaku's soldiers and how his baby is actually still in DW.
- Often happens in .hack. The very act of a human being Data Drained is...not healthy; but Tsukasa and Sora in .hack//SIGN really get their minds slammed by Morganna. Tsukasa's was particularly gruesome, forced to lie down, floated into the sky, and her power stomps on his mind and rips his clothes. He spends the next episodes catatonic, but manages to claw his way back to sanity. Sora's was so bad that after he was finally freed his mind completely blanked out the experience. So much that he didn't realize when he played the game again as Haseo. AIDA in .hack//GU also gives it's special whammy to it's victims.
- The Gokudo series has an episode in which gods try to crush the minds of Gokudo and Rubet to take their bodies, by convincing them that their life is painful and worthless. Of course the gods lose and get enslaved by these humans instead. It seem to be useless to even try to do mind attacks on anti-heroes.
- In Berserk, Ubik, one of the God Hand, pulls an epic one on Griffith to get him to carry out the sacrifices to become a demon god. It works.
- I'm shocked that Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni isn't here yet; most of the main cast are batshit insane, and poor Keiichi gets mind raped pretty much every arc.
- I think Mind Rape implies some sort of magical beam that alters the state of consciousness. Keiichi (as well as the rest of the cast) is practially insane without any need for Mind Rape.
- They aren't insane,just..Traumatized.
- In a sense it could still be called Mind Rape, since the victims of Hinamizawa Syndrome are seeing horrifying hallucinations of their friends acting like demonic entities or something similar disturbing to make them Ax Crazy Psychos. Hinamizawa Syndrome is a mind raping disease.
- Rave Master's Sieg Hart uses this on Haru, trapping him in a barrier that turns every single thought he makes into visions where his loved ones gruesomely kill themselves for him.
- Cyborg 009 has this happen to the heroes in Conclusion: Gods' War. The villain responsible tries to cast this as exposing their true selves, drawing out and twisting the very darkest aspects of their character... or, in several cases, their cybernectic enhancements, bringing their worst fears to life. This results in scenes like Joe going over the line while beating up a group of human thugs, Geronimo unable to meditate because Cybernetics Eat Your Soul, or G.B. melting down.
Comic Books
- This is the premise of Ghost Rider's "Penance Stare" power. By looking into the eyes of a sinner, he forces them to experience all the pain they have inflicted onto others.
- Nothing new under the sun: E.E. Smith's Arisians (the Lensman novels) do exactly this to interlopers who enter their space uninvited or in violation of previous warnings. All the bad, wrong or evil things they have ever done are dredged up to haunt them, and they go insane from the experience to the point where it actually kills them.
- In Watchmen, this is the effect that Ozymandias' cloned monstrosity has on several thousands of the people who survived the creature's explosion. Ozymandias actually had artists, musicians and writers come up with imagery and sounds so thoroughly alien and bizarre (without them knowing what they were doing) that when coded inside a "psychic shockwave" released by the creature in its death drove said thousands utterly insane. A particularly disturbing example briefly mentioned in a news report was a woman that performed an abortion on herself because she was convinced her unborn child was eating her from the inside!
- X-men. 'You feel no pain. You will go straight to a hosptial. Remember nothing of this place. And every time you hear the words parseley, intractable or longitude, you will vomit uncontrollaby for forty-eight hours.".' Seriously, don't piss off Emma Frost.
- Another of her famous tricks was punishing a sadistic villain with an awful past by making her forget the only person who was ever kind to her. Actually, X-men is full of examples of mindrape, from Professor X formatting Magneto's brain, through Cassandra Nova forcing Beak to beat his friend an inch away from death with a baseball bat, to Dark Phoenix punishing Mastermind's hunger for power by granting him omniscience.
- An example of an attempted physical rape that ends up as pure Mind Rape: in the 80s Captain Britain series, one of the concepts constantly explored in the series is alternate universes. Well, a Captain Britain from an alternate universe where England is a totalitarian state called Kaptain Briton switched places with ours, and in a scene infamous to this date, he tried to rape Betsy Braddock, aka Psylocke, Captain Britain's sister (and in a certain way, his own). Psylocke killed him in self-defense using her telepathic powers, still believing it was her own brother who tried to rape her. Needless to say, this experience fucked her up.
- In the "Emperor Joker" storyline, where the Joker tricks Mister Mxyzptlk out of most of his 5th dimensional powers to reshape reality, the Joker finally manages to kill Batman. He then revives Batman and kills him in a different way. The process is repeated over and over for several months until Superman works up enough willpower to challenge the Joker. When he asks Batman what he should do, Superman is horrified to learn that Batman is so broken, he asks Supes to kill Joker when he has a chance. When reality is properly restored, Mxyzptlk and the Specter reveal to Superman that the experience of dying countless times has ruined Batman's mind and he literally can't live with that knowledge. Superman makes the hard choice to move the memories to his own mind. In the epilogue Batman slept well while Superman mentions having some trouble sleeping...
- This is the explanation for Dr. Light's Villain Decay in the DCU. As revealed in Identity Crisis, while mindwipes were... tolerated (to protect secret identities), a cabal in the League decided to screw up Light's brain to change his personality to make him a near-Harmless Villain. When Batman saw the personality changing, he was mind wiped too... of the previous ten minutes. While Dr. Light eventually retakes a level in badass, Batman loses what little trust of the Justice League and creates Brother Eye.
- In Joss Whedon's run on Runaways, the kids meet the time traveling parents of Gertrude York, who died some time earlier. The kids are then face with a problem: The elder Yorks can't know because that could change the future, and mind wiping is too nice. Cue Niko using the spell "The Show Must Go On" which makes the Yorks know everything that will happen to them, up to and including their own death and Gert's after them, but incapable of doing anything about it. Just to clarify, Niko isn't normally a Beware The Nice Ones, just a nice one.
Fan Fiction
- In Arabella's fanfic "The Very Secret Diary"
 , all of the gruesome mind-rape that probably went on between Tom Riddle and Ginny Weasley in the second Harry Potter book is detailed to an uncomfortable degree. It's damn fine writing, though.
Film
- Hero on villain example: In The Crow, Eric Draven can experience the sensations and memories of others through touch. When he picks up from Officer Albrecht what his fiancee Shelly went through before she died (thirty hours of surgery and intensive care), he's staggered by it all — though he recovers, as he's already undead and probably quite insane from a certain point of view. He also demonstrates another ability — to transfer the things he knows through touch, which he uses to full retributive effect on the final target of his Roaring Rampage Of Revenge, Big Bad Top Dollar, whose orders were responsible for Shelly getting raped and beaten to death, and Eric himself being gunned down. Top Dollar, who while evil is quite alive and mostly sane, proves to be unable to stand "thirty hours of pain," all in one shot...
- In Star Trek VI, of all places, Spock's mind-meld with Valeris definitely comes close to this trope, and it's really uncomfortable to watch. Really, Spock, you're a bit of a bastard here. The only saving grace being that it is made obvious Spock is almost equally affected by his actions. Self inflicted Mind Rape anyone?
- Implicitly accepted by the rest of the crew because sometimes you just gotta do what you've gotta do.
- Star Trek: First Contact (1996): Captain Picard's transformation into Locutus of Borg from the episode The Best of Both Worlds seems to have left him with violent nightmares, paranoia, isolation and depression. His mercy killing towards a potential Borg victim and his own desire for a Roaring Rampage Of Revenge against their species imply this. His conversation with the Borg Queen pretty much confirms it. It begs the question how he got so messed up aboard a spaceship with a registered psychotherapist with empathic abilities.
- Whats worse is in Star Trek: Nemesis (2002): Deanna Troi is literally mind raped by the villain who invades her mind when she and Riker are about to do the buisness.
- Samara Morgan from The Ring has a history of Mind Rape, though not always intentional. Her biological mother tried to drown her shortly after giving birth because she claims Samara "told her to". She caused her adoptive mother terrifying visions for years and was forced to live in a barn, where the horses got a taste of it and ran themselves off a cliff to get away. Fast forward to her killing years, where she apparently Mind Rapes her victims enough to literally scare them to death. Any witnesses get enough second-hand Mind Rape to end up as blank-staring mental patients. Lastly, the scene from The Ring twO, where Samara (possessing Aiden) Mind Rapes a doctor to the point of suicide. Oh, and her video's pretty fucked up, too.
- Repeatedly happens in Scanners. The movie starts with the hero accidentally doing this to somebody.
- Event Horizon was full of mind rape of the rescue crew by the hellish entities that came from another dimension - which is worse than what most of you would imagine as "Hell" - by they worst guilts and causing several members of the crew to go insane, one of them even rips out his eyes, mutilates himself and vivisects his mate alive and the dimension itself is mind rape + blood orgy, for eternity.One of the rescue crew who entered the portal into the hellish dimension and was pulled out after a moment by one of his mates, went to catatonia and after he was semi "sane" again he tried to kill himself even if the method he chose is be very painful (explosive decompression by throwing himself out of the airlock), they rescued him, but he was seriosly injured - even through the psychological trauma that he has suffered would make it merciful to just euthanize him.Needless to say, the film as a whole is High Octane Nightmare Fuel.
Literature
- A mild version of this is a favorite tactic of the elves in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel Lords and Ladies; they use their "glamour" (which is essentially a form of psychic domination) to make all but the most strong-willed mortals feel worthless and powerless.
- In the Discworld novel Eric, the new Demon King Astfgl has worked it out that Hell's traditional punishments - burning, etc. - are useless for tormenting the damned, who have no bodies. He substitutes relentless mind-numbing boredom, like having a demon show you an interminable slideshow of his vacation to the Fifth Circle.
- While, in the books, Legilimency is used only as a Mind Probe, the fifth Harry Potter film suggests that Voldemort uses it to inflict mental torture as an end in itself.
- While we're still on Harry Potter, coming near a Dementor will cause a Mind Rape-like effect to occur; they are used as guards in the Wizard prison of Azkaban to sap the prisoners' will to escape.
- Again in Harry Potter, Muggles unfortunate enough to bear witness to magic are Mind Raped by the government.
- Jane and her brother Alec in Twilight each have their own special Mind Rape powers. Jane's is pain while Alec cuts off all your senses.
- In the Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant a villain gives doubting Linden a brief demonstration to prove that True Evil does indeed exist. Touching mind-to-mind with said Always Chaotic Evil entity leaves her in a coma.
- A similar case is the basilisk in Peter David's Knight Life. She reveals that a basilisk's gaze doesn't kill you in and of itself: it lets you see yourself for who you are, everything about yourself, even the things that are hidden from you. Most victims, faced with everything they didn't want to know about themselves, willingly submit to being eaten.
- Northern Lights: The way Lyra describes how it feels when an attacker touches her daemon, she could very well be describing a rape:
"It was as if an alien hand had reached right inside where no hand had a right to be, and wrenched at something deep and precious. She felt faint, sick, dizzy, disgusted, limp with shock. ... It wasn't allowed. Not supposed to touch. Wrong..."
- To further exemplify this comparison, her lover Will does the same thing on purpose. Only this time, she enjoys it. Context is everything.
- Sailor Nothing establishes that this is basically what happens every time a Yamiko is made: "This form of reproduction could be considered 'asexual rape', a spiritual violation totally alien to humans. This is partly why the human host forgets the incident; the mind is often emotionally incapable of understanding what has occurred."
- The Mule in Asimov's Foundation series has this ability, and ruthlessly uses it on the poor Second Foundation decoy who ends up completely brain-dead by the end of it. In one scene, he muses on how he could use his mind-controlling abilities for physical conquest, which wouldn't count as rape since the subject would genuinely feel nothing but complete love and devotion to him - but doesn't, because.. he didn't choose his nickname due to his stubbornness or physical strength...
- The Sword of Shannara from the eponymous novel shows the person the absolute truth, stripped of any sort of perspective—every little lie one has ever told oneself or another is stripped away. It is the only weapon that can harm the Big Bad as he is keeping himself alive through sheer effort of will and self delusion.
- In the novel On a Pale Horse, Luna Kaftan, the main female character, confesses, "I have fornicated with a demon of Hell." She doesn't reveal until much later in the novel that the demon violated her mind and soul, but not her body.
- Mucking about for any reason in someone's head (no matter the intent) in The Dresden Files will usually cause permanent mental damage. There's a reason people who do it are usually summarily executed.
- Also, White Court vampires usually do perform both the Mind and regular varieties, though their preference varies by family. Vampires from House Skavis cause people to feel despair until they commit suicide, those from House Malvora cause fear until people die of a heart attack, and the Raiths cause lust, usually seducing and feeding off people's souls during sex. Lara Raith both mind rapes and regular rapes her own father so hard that his mind is completely destroyed. To be fair, he had done the same to her and he really had it coming.
- In the 11th book, Dresden encounters something sufficiently nasty that merely looking at it with his Third Eye instantly mindrapes him BAD.
- Not to mention the traitor on the White Council having about three-quarters of the younger wizards on the Council in the grip of mind control, and influencing the thinking of the entire Senior Council through enchantments and potions for years.
- And let's not forget Thomas getting taken apart physically, mentally and emotionally by the Big Bad. Mind rape seems to be a theme in Turn Coat.
- The White Watch in Jesse Hajicek's The God Eaters conduct mental "Surveys," in which a member of the Watch is searching a person's mind for magical ability or for information. Often, the Surveys are described as painful Mind Rapes, and in some cases used as instruments of torture. The galling part is that later, you find out that it's entirely possible to do it painlessly, they just don't care or weren't trained to do so.
- In the Conan The Barbarian story "The People of the Black Circle" (1934), a princess is forced to relive all her past lives — many of which, it is implied, suffered actual rape among other degradations.
- The necromancer Vargûl Ashnazai in Nightrunner has the ability to force visions on people. The hero Alec is held captive and treated nightly to the mutilated bodies of his dead friends taunting him and blaming him for their deaths; later, he watches the man he loves get murdered, and the illusion includes spilled blood that does not disappear when the vision is over.
- The Prince Of Nothing series has the Cants of Compulsion, a type of sorcery that allows the sorcerer to reprogram someone's beliefs and desires, completely altering their personality. It's a temporary effect, so everyone who undergoes it has to live with the trauma of having done things that they themselves would never do, even though they remember wanting to do it at the time. The only people who are immune to this effect are Mandate Schoolmen, since they already have an alternate personality living inside them.
- Aornis Hades attempts this on Thursday Next in The Well Of Lost Plots by destroying her memory, first of her unpersoned husband, then of everything else.
- In one Animorphs, Tobias is captured by the Yeerks and is subject to a torture that draws up his happiest memories and quickly swaps them with very painful ones. He Wangst alot about this. Of course, he wangst alot before this too. But this was a subject that really ruffled the birds feathers.
- In David Eddings' The Belgariad, Polgara's preferred method for getting information out of captives is to subject them to visions of the thing they fear most.
- In the second book of The Sword of Truth, the ghost of Darken Rahl gave Kahlan a kiss in the neck, and she literally had a vision of being raped.
- In James Swallow's Warhammer 40000 Blood Angels novel Deus Encarmine, Inquisitor Stele's Cold Blooded Torture of a prisoner Word-Bearer culminates in a Mind Rape that reveals Stele's not even human.
- The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy has the Total Perspective Vortex, which shows the victim the entire vastness of the universe and how tiny he is in relation to it. The first time it was used on someone, it completely destroyed their brain.
- In Robin Hobb's The Farseer trilogy, The Pretender King and his agents use mind rape to forcefully help themselves to whatever a persons mind can give them. Be it information, loyalty, control of the body or simply for the sadistic pleasure of it.
- Another Warhammer 40000 example: a trainee Soul Drinker psyker in Crimson Tears uses his abilities on a human who died as a sacrificial combat slave under the lash of the Dark Eldar, and described it as "someone...someone tore out their souls."
- In the Anita Blake books. There's simple brainwashing into a happy automaton with no independent thought. (As this is primarily a vampiric ability, it's more often used to get people to stand still while they take blood than for physical sex. However, taking blood this way is very sexual and is described as metaphysical sex.) There's dream(/magical simulation) manipulation. (Considering the potential, it's actually a relief all the characters able to do this are nymphomaniacs and just use it force sex on the unwilling( and carry messages).) There's emotional manipulation. (This can be making people hopelessly in love with them or incapable of feeling anything but fear. Both types are shown both with and without physical rape.) There's establishing a "servant/master" bond against the servant's will. (Basically, being a servant is the equivalent in being the wife in a medieval marriage, except the ceremony allows your husband to make you watch any memories he chooses during it and to play with your mind, to some extent, afterwards.)
- In the New Jedi Order series, teenage Jedi apprentice Tahiri Veila is kidnapped by Yuuzhan Vong Shapers, who attempt to rewrite her memories to convince her that she was a warrior of their species, as part of an attempt to create Jedi-fighting Force-sensitive Yuuzhan Vong. She's rescued before they finish, but there are still lingering consequences for the rest of the series.
Live Action TV
Tabletop Games
- The Nightbringer of Warhammer 40000, an Omnicidal Maniac Physical God that usually takes the form of a forty-foot-tall, flying, metal Grim Reaper is reputed to have, at the dawn of time, Mind Raped proto-life so comprehensively that he instilled the fear of death in all living creatures in the galaxy (except the Orkz).
- As well as creating entire races just so they would fear it and then proceed to feed on that fear.
- Eldar Farseers can have a psychic ability called 'Mind War,' essentially a Mind Rape as a weapon to burn out an enemy's brain and kill them.
- The process of creating an astropath involves a normal human psyker making psychic contact with the Emperor for a brief instant. The process is so traumatic that it burns out the subject's eyes.
- Inquistors frequently use this one. Inquisitor Ravenor is particularly adept at this. Partially subverted in the Ravenor series of novels where the titular character performs the closest thing to a benign Mind Rape, taking physical and mental control of the wearer but still being them at the same time. This is almost always traumatic and allows Ravenor total acess to any and all of the persons memories. He only does it as a last resort.
- What the Emperor uses on Horus destroying both of their souls, which was some really nasty business.
- A spell called Mind Rape appears somewhere in the Dungeons and Dragons "Book of Vile Darkness" sourcebook. It lets you completely rewrite or erase the victim's memories, feelings, and alignment. Naturally, it has an [evil] tag, which is D&D's way of marking a spell as, well, evil... amusingly, there is another spell, Programmed Amnesia, that does nearly the exact same thing with no evil tag. Presumably it's all about the name, or maybe just how you use it.
- The implication is that with the Mind Rape spell is something that a) hurts a lot and b) is actually forcibly removing the memories and character traits. Selective Amnesia is a subtle blocking of certain parts. Both are a violation, but the implication is that the Amnesia is supposed to be used for blocking traumatic experiences and such.
- Another spell exists in the divination category called Terrible Secret, which causes the caster to reveal a mind-shattering secret to his opponent. The secret is so horrifying it causes the creatures brain to simply malfunction and potentially. It can also be applied to a group with the upgraded Terrible Revelation.
- Normally the good guys don't get to do this, but in the book "Exalted Deeds",the good counterpart to the "Book of Vile Darkness", there's an Exalted Spell that does this.
- Mage: the Awakening has a spell called "Psychic Violation" which essentially does this to people. The effects include sapping their will, potentially driving them insane, and giving them a pathological need to avoid confronting the caster. There is another spell, "Nightmare Journey", which takes the concept of Mind Rape a step further by detaching the subject's consciousness, and projecting it into the mind of a Cosmic Horror. Both spells are mostly practiced by a group of mages whose whole creed essentially revolves around Mind Rape, and can only be performed by a person with a criminal mentality without potentially putting a ding in the Karma Meter.
- Partially subverted with the acamoth. Sure, they're evil, reality-hungry spirits who recreate their horrific home in the minds of those they enter...But it was entirely consensual, to the point that whatever they do with their host dings the Karma Meter, since you literally let them in, and are thus a willing accomplice to their deeds...
- For the Banishers, the Awakening (the moment of becoming a mage) itself is Mind Rape. The point is particularly driven home because it is usually a profound and joyous, inspiring moment (even in some of the less pleasant places, like Pandemonium or Stygia). To Banishers, it is unwanted, misunderstood, or traumatic, in a way that causes them to want to destroy all magic.
- Two vampire clans have this as a power. In the old World Of Darkness, Malkavians used Dementation to drive potential victims and rivals insane. In the new WoD Nosferatu use Nightmare to inspire great fear... and break minds with it.
- Mind Rape tends to be what changelings go through during their stay in Arcadia. Notably, the driving ethos of many of the changeling Courts seem akin to the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
- Thanks to the (somewhat bizarre) metagame explanation for Magic The Gathering (basically, two almost-all-powerful wizards fighting, with cards representing spells and allies) most spells forcing players to discard cards come across this way. cases in point.
- The flavor explanation is that a discard spell functions by reaching into the enemy mage's mind and destroying their knowledge of particular spells before they can be cast. There's an example in the Ice Age block novelisations where the protagonist, Archmage Jodah, engages in a battle with an evil wizard. He gains an advantage by using mass-discard spells to tear apart his opponent's mental library of spells.
- Exalted has quite a lot of mindrape powers, most spectacular being the Border of Kaleidoscopic Logic Kung Fu style, which can not only fundamentally and permanently rewrite one's mind, but also do things like permanently locking the target in an illusion of being a perfect, flawless being, or denying the target the capability to comprehend any spoken or written language, ever.
- GURPS has a number of ways to do this. The Terror advantage can cause permanent insanity and even reduce intelligence at high enough level. The spell Fear, Panic, Terror, Madness and Nightmare all can cause this. Magically increasing the beauty of someone who is Transcendently attractive causes anyone who sees them to be mind raped. A few ultratech devices can do this during the process of tearing out someone's mind.
Video Games
- Final Fantasy VII had Sephiroth doing this to Cloud to the point where he could no longer function. He needed "rape counseling" from Tifa in a Journey To The Center Of The Mind before he was able to do anything at all.
- Metal Gear Solid 2 had The Patriots do this to the main character. But it also used Post Modernism and Fourth Wall breaking to extend this to the player as well. It hurt.
- In Half Life 2 Episode 1, Gordon Freeman is mind-raped by a Combine Advisor in first person. It's not fun for him or the player.
- This happens a number of times in Episode 2, as well.
- In Kingdom Hearts: Chain of memories Namine is first ordered to make the clone of Riku think he's the real Riku (she also makes him devoted to her) then later on she voluntarily breaks the links in his heart, basically snapping his mind and memories to stop him from attacking Sora, he recovers from the coma like state though. Despite this there are people who ship these two as a loving couple.
- In Drakengard there is a disturbing cutscene in which Manah begins to speak in her evil man-voice, speaking Furiae's innermost thoughts out in front of her brother, the protagonist. Okay, not too bad, unless you happen to be harboring incestuous feelings towards your brother. The allusion to rape is helped along by Furiae's winces and verbal reactions throughout the whole ordeal. Her shame is so great that she immediately commits suicide. Manah also does this to the Anti Hero's best friend early on in the game, using it as part of the process for More Than Mind Control to make the best friend into a Rival Turned Evil.
- This is how the Mind Worms from Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri paralyze their victims in order to give them a Face Full Of Alien Wing Wong.
- The final battle of Earthbound was, according to the game's creator, a replication of his own mind rape (a "direct attack to [his] brain," in his own words) he suffered after walking into a drama movie in the middle of what he thought was a rape scene as a child.
- Shirou from Fate/Stay Night, when he goes up against Kotomine Kirei in the final battle.
- There's also every time he has sex with Sakura, as she's physically conected to The Corruption.
- Not to mention Using Archer's arm. Everytime he does so, he's bombarded with the sum of Archer's experience, and knowledge, conveyed by disjointed statements, and complex formula. To begin with, this causes his mind to literally dump whole hours of memory at a time, days after he first uses it. if he uses it too much, then he's overcome, loses his identity entirley, and is overwhelmed by his Reality Marble from within. "Bone of my Sword" indeed.
- Persona 4's Shadow Persona are the character's fears with a mind of their own. That's not necessarily a good thing, since the Shadow Persona are jerk asses who over-exaggerate the character's fears until they're left screaming "You're not me!". Examples are: the character with sexuality issues seeing himself depicted as a very stereotypical gay guy and the pop idol who's worried about becoming a sex symbol seeing herself naked on a pole dancing erotically without shame.
- In Halo 3, during and after rescuing Cortana, her words and verbal cues drop indications that she went through the AI-equivilant of this while a prisoner of the Gravemind. The rather agonized, audibly shaken way she begs for the Chief to get her out of High Charity and to destroy the reactors to pay it back just emphasizes this.
- The Zuul of Sword of the Stars regularly perform mind raping of lesser beings to perform research, leaving their victim a maddened degenerate husk. In fact, they do this to obtain information in general... Or because they think it's fun... Frankly, the Zuul like mind raping their lessers and thus they never really got used to asking nicely. Or asking at all.
- MassEffect: On Feros you discover a mind-controlling creature known as the Thorian. It works because its spores implant in your brain and cause agonizing pain if you even *think* something you aren't supposed to.
- In Knights Of The Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords Kreia uses her mind invasion techniques in conjunction with Hannibal Lectures to inflict this upon the PlayerCharacter's companions, breaking them into his/her service.
- In F.E.A.R., this happens to anyone who has had any lengthy contact with Alma, but especially the Point Man and Sergeant Becket. In the former case, its because the Point Man is her son, while in the latter case, its because Alma is apparently in love with Becket and repeatedly tries to literally rape him.
- In Dawn Of War 2, the cutscene that introduces the Tyranid creature called the Zoanthrope does this to the player: random and distorted visuals overlapping with the image of a bloated alien braincase, with loud screeches paired with the sound of audio feedback assaulting the ears.
- This is basicly a visual representation of the Tyranid psychic power 'The Horror', which is Mind Rape taken to the third degree.
- Shadow Priests in World of Warcraft have many abilities made to mess with the opponents mind. These include Mind Blast (causing an explosion of shadow magic inside the enemy's brain), Mind Flay (slashing at the enemy's brain with shadow magic whips), Mind Sear (burns the opponent's brain with shadow magic) and the classic Mind Control. Both Priests and Warlocks can cast a version of the Fear spell, which causes immense fear in the target's mind, making them run around aimlessly for a few seconds.
- Basically every character in Silent Hill has this inflicted on them by the eponymous Genius Loci, and being a Survival Horror series the player gets to experience it as well. Wonderful.
Web Comics
- Used in the thought experiment/webcomic 1/0: Ghanny is forced to enact corporal punishment on Junior despite being a ghost, so Ghanny possesses Junior and gives him a "mind wedgie" that leaves him a gibbering wreck for six hours.
- In this page of the webcomic Triquetra Cats, Blaze's adoptive (yet genetically similar) older sister is subject to a Mind Rape by a Hand Of The Dragon vampire with illusionist powers.
- The "Wayang Kulit" arc from Sluggy Freelance combines this with a Vision Quest, forcing Torg to kill all the women he's ever loved (or who have ever loved him) and gradually transform into a demon. It all ends up for the best, teaching him not to blame himself so much, but it's done in the most sadistic way possible.
- Shockamancy in Erfworld appears to work by planting horrible images in the victims' minds, if one judges from the names used in this Shockamancy-scroll incantation.
- A hero-on-villain(or at least Jerkass) version in this episode[1] of Freak Angels, when Arkady makes Luke experience the memory of her drug overdose.
Western Animation
- Ben 10 Alien Force: A very literal mind rape of Ken Tennyson by the Highbreed. It forced him to fight his cousins, which did not go over well with the Tennysons.
- Teen Titans: The confrontation between Slade and Raven when Slade first returns includes Slade ripping her cloak, her clothes magically disintegrating, and her hair growing as he holds her immobilized, showing her a vision of The End Of The World at her own hands before tossing her unconscious from a roof.
- In addition, the entire episode 'Haunted' is just one gigantic Mind Rape.
- Not to mention what Raven did to Dr. Light (implied) during the opening teaser for "Nevermore", when she went all demonic with him with the glowing red eyes and all the black tentacles dragging him under her cloak. He came out shivering with his suit shattered, mumbling incoherently.
- In a later episode, Dr. Light quietly agrees to go to jail when Raven confronts him.
- Tarantulas did this to Blackarachnia in Transformers: Beast Wars, hitching a ride inside her body, complete with a few creepy visuals to show his domination of her mind. Of course, she went into his brain to retrieve information first, so if you've got a sick sense of humor you could say she was asking for it. She does, eventually, free herself from his control, and she recovers a bit more fully (not to mention quickly) than most victims, but compare how she acts towards him in the first season to how she does in the second.
- Also happened in Beast Machines to Silverbolt, by Megatron, via Jetstorm. If you doubt it, compare his description of being Jetstorm to Carrie's mom describing being raped physically by her husband.
- Megatron did this to amnesia!Starscream in Energon, to get Starscream back on the Decepticon side. It was also a fairly obvious metaphor for something... else.
- What? You mean when Megatron traps Starscream in a darkened room, then repeatedly commands his struggling and protesting victim to "say his name" while simultaneously stabbing him with his massive sword? What could possibly be suspect about that?
- Vlad just loves to do this to Danny Phantom. Danny later on begged for it, in an alternate future after everyone he ever cared for died because of him. Vlad Masters respected his wishes and removed his humanity. What happens from there is ten years of Moral Event Horizon material. He steals Vlad's ghost half and murders his human self/shell. Luckily, it is averted.... or IS IT?
- In the '80s Defenders Of The Earth series, ex-Distressed Damsel now Hot Scientist Dale Arden is actually killed through Mind Rape by Ming The Merciless. Her mind is later put in a crystal and becomes the core of the super-computer Dynak-X.
- The Spectacular Spider Man: most other versions have Peter simply use loud noise to remove the symbiote, but here he also had to face it forcing him through a Journey To The Center Of The Mind re-telling the story of him gaining his powers and Uncle Ben's death.
- In the second season of Justice League, Doctor Destiny (John Dee) uses his powers in a disturbing fashion - he traps his ex-girlfriend in a nightmare. In one creepy scene, he removes his clothes in front of her, before "putting on" his costume. She ends up becoming the first person in the series to actually die by action of a supervillain.
- Also, Martian Manhunter, in order to get some codes for a Thanagarian ship forces himself into a Thanagarian's mind. The guy obviously resists, but MM overcomes him. He's left mostly a vegetable, and the next time we see him, he's hooked up into a mech and can barely string sentences together.
- And then there's Ace of the Royal Flush Gang, who can make people insane simply by staring at them. The Joker takes her out of the government containment facility where she was held, and attempts to use her powers to drive the entire planet insane with a reality show. According to Joker, his insanity protects him from her milder mind-rapes, but when Ace realizes that he's no better than the government agents who kidnapped her, she makes him so insane that he goes into a coma (those who think of Batman Beyond as an alternate timeline like to believe that Joker remained in this state for the rest of his life), and the only reason he might have recovered is because he's too crazy to be properly Mind Raped.
- X-Men: You wouldn't expect this from him, but somewhat applied to Magneto by Professor Xavier, by having him relive his memories of the Holocaust. It may have had a point in teaching him that violence is wrong, but it is still forcing someone to relive his darkest memories.
Examples of "Mundane" Torture
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Anime
- Monster: Everything anyone who is remotely close to Johan experiences is pure mind rape.
- What Akito Sohma did to Kana in Fruits Basket is a mix of this and More Than Mind Control. After Akito blinded Hatori for asking her for permission to marry Kana, she turned against the poor nurse and blamed her so much for Hatori's partial blindness that she drove her mad. It was so bad that Hatori had to delete Kana's memories of their relationship, so effective and cruel Akito's mind rape of her was. We can also count Akito similarly "torturing" Yuki as a kid, telling him he was unwanted and useless every time; poor Yuki was deeply traumatized for years. Also, telling Kyo constantly that he was a monster who could never be loved and should be locked up probably wasn't too helpful either.
- It's also hinted in the manga that Akito herself was a victim of mind rape at the hands of her own mother, Ren, who treated her the same way she treated Kana and Yuki later. This explains, although not justifies, Akito's misogyny and cruelty towards everybody else.
- What about Spandam's brutal treatment of Robin in One Piece?
Comic Books
- In the Batman graphic novel The Killing Joke, the Joker brutally tortures Commissioner Gordon with images of the Monster Clown's torture of his daughter Barbara Gordon, AKA Batgirl, in an effort to prove that "one bad day" can drive anyone insane.
- In The Batman, the Joker gives a similar speech to police detective Ethan Bennett, while simultaneously terrorizing him with hypnosis and poisoning him with the chemicals that would turn him into the first Clayface.
- We can't forget Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, where mind rape was just one of SEVERAL things that the Joker and Harley Quinn subjected young Tim Drake to, torturing and brainwashing him into becoming "J.J", the Joker's Mini Me. The effects of such a mind rape last until Tim's adulthood and are a BIG plot point in the movie.
Film
- Of all the Joker's countless acts of villainy in The Dark Knight, none is more sickening than his Mind Rape of Harvey Dent. The twisted Monster Clown approaches the hideously disfigured attourney, confined to a hospital bed and mad with grief for the death of Rachel, and proceeds to warp his faith in justice into nihilistic cynicism in his most emotionally vulnerable hour. What little was left of Harvey Dent dies there, and in his place stands Two-Face, a vengeful and insane murderer who is as much an instrument of anarchy and chaos as the Joker himself.
- In The Silence Of The Lambs, Dr. Hannibal Lecter causes a fellow inmate to kill himself through sheer force of personality.
- In Push, Cassie lures her Evil Counterpart, the Triad Watcher, into getting sneak attacked by a Wiper, who wipes out her entire memory of her family and knocks her unconscious. And Cassie is supposed to be one of the heroes.
- The plot of Clockwork Orange is nicely summed up by this trope.
Literature
- Nineteen Eighty Four.
- Further to this, the premise of DoubleThink is a slow-acting form of Mind Rape in and of itself. Even worse because it's self-inflicted.
- In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, Túrin Turambar and his sister Nienor get cursed by the Big Bad and go through one disaster after another. The thing is, when it all started, Túrin was all of eight and Nienor hadn't even been born yet—-the person the Big Bad really wanted to break was their father, who had to sit there for twenty-seven years and helplessly watch it happen. It worked.
Live Action TV
- During the occupation of New Caprica at the beginning of season three of Battlestar Galactica, Leoben Conoy puts an interesting twist on this trope. He gives Starbuck a perfectly normal, stable, well-ordered life - inside a jail cell. He also uses the opportunity to bring up as many images of Starbuck's abusive mother as he can manage. Oh yeah, and there's also the fact that he can resurrect himself every time Starbuck kills him.
- Being Human had a Sylar-worthy example with Owen, Annie's ex-boyfriend and her murderer. First, he does this as he's comforting his current girlfriend, who's freaked-out because a ghost was talking to her, trying to warn her about him. Second, he denies the very existence of Annie whilst he's looking her straight in the eye with a shit-eating grin: "I don't see... anything". Then he twists the knife by admitting that he was cheating on Annie when she was still alive. Evil. She ends up in a Heroic BSOD till her roommate George pulls her out of it.
- Annie later uses a more supernatural example to turn the tables, telling Owen "a secret only the dead know" that causes him to break down entirely.
- In Firefly, the Reavers will often convert their victims into second-hand Reavers by forcing them to watch the horrific tortures they inflict on other captives. This pushes them to a point where the only way they can survive facing that kind of madness is to become part of it.
- What Merrit Rook puts Elliot Stabler through in an episode of Law And Order Special Victims Unit. *shudders*
- Angelus on Buffy. In the past he drove Drusilla completely insane by torturing and killing her entire family before siring her. He had other victims as well, many others, in the old days, and it's implied he did physical rape as well. When he is reawakened in the the 21st century, he uses major psychological war on Buffy, Giles, and generally anybody who happens to be around. The Master aptly describes him as "the most vicious animal I have ever known" Even Spike is afraid of him, for all the mocking he gives Angel's ensouled persona.
- The First's taunting and manipulation of Angel in Amends. He winds up so bad-off he tries to kill himself.
Video Games
- In Second Sight before the game begins, John Vattic is tortured by NSE director Hanson with a combination of mind-altering drugs, vicious beatings, and horrific images. All the while, Hanson's digitally altered voice echoes through the room, insulting him and blaming him for the deaths that occurred in the playable backstory. Apparently, this torture session was intended to break down John's psyche, forcing him to reveal his psychic abilities to the onlookers, and eventually obliterate his memories. The final and by far the most painful moment of this scene is when Hanson actually enters the interrogation room, and informs John that he's the only friend he has left; John's so traumatised, he can scarcely remember a thing, so he tearfully submits to Hanson's scheme.
- Jayne Wilde suffers a similar treatment before being committed to an insane asylum.
Western Animation
- In one episode of Transformers, a Quintesson placed a Junkion in a bare cell to see how long it would take someone accustomed to the most cluttered environment in the galaxy to break down when deprived of stimulation. Almost immediately, the Junkion starts tearing at the walls and ripping up the floor. Disappointed at how quickly his subject collapsed, the scientist turns off the monitor. Later, the trope is subverted when the scientist checks back to see if anything has changed, and sees the Junkion, perfectly relaxed, laying back on an improvised couch. The Junkion hadn't suffered a breakdown; he'd just been redecorating.
Real Life
- Repressed memory therapy. In theory, it allows patients to recall memories that their minds suppressed because they were too traumatic. In reality, the patient fabricates life-shattering "memories" based on suggestions from the psychiatrist. It doesn't help that psychiatrists practicing RMT instist that the patient must have been abused and claim that the patient is merely in denial if he/she says otherwise. Thanks to this "therapy," patients have "remembered" incest, Satanic ritual abuse, multiple personalities, and a plethora of other horrors. Side effects may include depression, ruined marriages, and broken families. If that's not mind rape, I don't know what is.
- Very few psychiatrists still practice this. When it was widespread, it was also unintentional—the therapists using it truly believed the memories were true recovered memories.
- The worst part, perhaps, is the fact that repressed memories do happen...as a result of other forms of mind rape. (It's a flawed coping mechanism: "The mind rape didn't happen" taken to its logical conclusion.)
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