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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. 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.
Compare Fate Worse Than Death, Subtext. 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. 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
Live Action TV
- Star Trek The Next Generation dealt with this trope two times and actually stressed the physical sexual elements. It happened in both times (the latter in a movie) to the half-Betazoid Counselor (and telepath) Troi, just as she started having sex with her husband Riker. The mind rapist used the real sex with Riker to make her think Riker was raping her instead of making consensual love to her. Nothing graphical was shown, of course.
- T'Pol is subjected to this in an early episode of Star Trek Enterprise by mind-meld with a Vulcan renegade. And it gave her Vulcan AIDS. I Am Not Making This Up.
- Star Trek Voyager did this a number of times, without the Anvilicious rape analogy. "Persistence of Vision" was "Violations" on a shipwide scale, and the culprit responsible had nearly put the entire crew into a catatonic stupor by the time the last one or two members standing were able to stop him. Then there was the time a Maquis fanatic back home sent subliminal messages to Tuvok, which made him forcibly mind-meld with every ex-Maquis on the ship and start a takeover. Then there were the dream aliens, then there were the aliens who Brainwashed the crew into working in their factory, then there was the Lotus Eater Machine, then there were the Hirogen making the crew think they were part of the simulated World War II they'd created as they 'hunted' them, and on and on and on. Honorable mention for the friendly Negative Space Wedgie inhabitants whose means of communication nearly drove Chakotay nuts. This crew's brains got baked so many times it's surprising that they knew up from down by the time the series ended.
- Mirror Spock's forced Mind Probe on McCoy in the original series episode "Mirror, Mirror" came across this way for some viewers. It didn't help that McCoy appeared almost catatonic afterwards, although of course he was fine by the end of the episode.
- An episode of The Twilight Zone featured this trope. A former Nazi commander who had escaped to Argentina came back to Germany to visit the concentration camp he was in charge of during World War II. He encounters a ghost of a man he killed who terrorizes the German with Mind Rape of what it was like to get shot, burned, hanged, etc. When the police find the German he is delirious beyond help.
- Power Rangers Mystic Force: An emerging Sealed Evil In A Can causes Daggeron to experience his own death. (It happens, but a little differently than the flash-forward. He gets better.)
- Tegan's encounter with the Mara in "Kinda" has been compared to a rape scene. Remember that Doctor Who is a family programme.
- This troper found much of the episode "Midnight" to fit this trope, although the episode never shows what the alien does to its victim's head. One character's physical reactions after the whole thing is over don't exactly do much to dispel the idea.
- That well-known tearjerker of a scene in Journey's End
also came close to this fit this trope to a "T": Donna wants to stay but the Doctor takes that choice away from her while she's crying and pleading with him not to. To be fair, she would have been killed by the knowledge if she had!
- Roswell. Half the plots after Tess entered had her mindwarping some person or other, to the extent that she ends up killing Alex by mindwarping him one too many times to get the translation to the Royal book.
- The Stargate SG-1 episode "Unnatural Selection". Also, a slightly milder version of it occurs when human-form Replicators interrogate prisoners.
- Done more directly by Fifth to Samantha Carter, after escaping the incarceration she tricked him into. His insertion of his hand into her brain is shown as particularly akin to forced penetration, and we are shown glimpses of the horrific imagery she is subjected to. By the end, she is in tears, begging him to stop.
- Pretty much the background for Firefly's River Tam; she was tricked into going to a government-run facility known as "the Academy" where she spent three years having her brain cut apart and transformed into a psychic killing machine. Once she was rescued, she was reduced to a babbling, incoherent and at-times violent little girl who spends plenty of time crying or shaking helplessly in corners... until she's triggered, at which point she unleashes the Waif Fu to end all Waif Fu.
- Maury and Matt Parkman of Heroes are actually capable of Mind Rape and, even stranger, Matt is a good guy - both father and son have the power to force some poor SOB into a living nightmare which puts their body in a coma and their mind in...well, their worst nightmare. Maury gets the tables turned on him in a season two episode and gets trapped in his own mind by Matt.
- The episode Dust to Dust of Babylon 5. G'Kar takes a drug called "Dust" which allows the user to gain telepathic powers for a few hours. He uses it to invade Londo's mind and go through his memories, tormenting him about them in the process. He physically beats him up beforehand in order to subdue him, which emphasizes the similarity to actual rape.
- Also, somewhere on Beta Colony there is a man in an institution who spends his days and nights screaming at things only he can see, things planted in his mind by the Psi Corps as punishment for murdering telepaths. He has to be restrained lest he tear out his eyes.
- In the Torchwood episode "Adam", said Adam implants fake memories into the team by touching them. Using this to make Tosh believe they're a couple and sleep with her was bad enough, but when Ianto is onto him, Adam gleefully implants him with memories of brutally murdering women for pleasure, all the while saying he "forgot how good it feels to put the bad stuff in". Ianto is, understandably, horribly traumatized by this.
Anime
- 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.
- 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, as a part of a More Than Mind Control process (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 Cosmic Horror 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 Cosmic Horror. 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 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 almost non-stop during the Ansgard arc, as she was forced to helplessly watch her Warriors (several of them being her protegés and even friends, not including the one with a 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 feeling like an actual rape.
- 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 use 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 happens twice in the series.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
- 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!
Literature
- A mild version of this is a favorite tactic of the elves in the 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.
- Granny Weatherwax tries her own version on Lady Felmet inWyrd Sisters by showing her her true self. Unfortunately, Lady Felmet is fully aware, and proud, of just how evil and cruel she truly is. It's subverted a moment later when Nanny Ogg defeats her by braining her with a cauldron while she's in the middle of a rant.
- 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-light effect to occur; they are used as guards in the Wizard prison of Azkaban to sap the prisoners' will to escape.
- 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.
- In Watership Down, Fiver performs a textbook Mind Rape on one of Woundwort's soldiers during the final battle.
- 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..."
- 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's impotent.
- 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.
- The White Watch in Jesse Hajicek's The God Eaters
 conduct Mind-Rapey mental "Surveys" as a matter of fact. Over and over and over and over. 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.
- Older Than You Think: 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 Vargűl 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.
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 which this troper finds rather squicky.
- 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 horror movie in the middle of a rape scene as a child.
- Metal Gear Solid 4. Beauty and the Beast Unit. 'Nuff said.
- Shirou from Fate/Stay Night, when he goes up against Kotomine Kirei in the final battle.
- 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.
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.
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.
- 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.
- Vlad just loves to do this to Danny Phantom. Almost literally done when Vlad tries to remove Danny's human emotions. To say it backfired does not begin to cover it: it rendered Danny's ghost side free to become a very twisted sadistic sociopath. Amazing for what otherwise was a childish show.
- In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003 cartoon, the obsessive government agent Bishop kidnaps the Turtles' ally Leatherhead and subjects him to brutal psychic torture, calling him a 'monster' and causing a savage, murderous second personality to emerge, that periodically sends the big guy into homicidal rages.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
Tabletop Games
- The Nightbringer of Warhammer 40000, an Omnicidal Maniac Physical God who 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.
- 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.
- 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 essentailly 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.
- Two vampire clans have this is a power. In the old World Of Darkness, Malkavian's 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.
- 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.
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 definately 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?
- 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.
- The above troper has never gotten around to watching the original Japanese Ring series, but he figures Sadako has her share of moments as well.
Machinima
- Red Vs Blue Reconstruction: Apparently what was done to the Alpha AI/Church in order to break it into the fragments that were the Freelancer AIs.
Examples of "Mundane" Torture
Live Action Television
- 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.
Anime
- Monster: Everything anyone who is remotely close to Johann experiences is pure mind rape.
- 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.
- 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.
- It's also hinted in the manga that Akito herself was a victim of mind rape coming from 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.
Comic Books
- In the Batman graphic novel The Killing Joke, the Joker brutally tortures Commissioner Gordon with images of the 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 new cartoon 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.
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.
Film
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