"You're grievously ill, Grace. There's an infection coursing through your body, probably caused by a botched hysterectomy. I've been accused of having committed this savagery. Both you and I know it's not the truth. At this stage, it would be easier just to let you die... but I will not be the one to take the fall for this. It'll require a strict regime of medicines and around-the-clock care, but you will live, Grace... if only to set the record straight."
Oh no! Alice has been captured by the evil Dr. Disaster! She's got numerous broken bones from the fight and is barely conscious, she doesn't stand a chance of escaping! Who knows what the villain could do? He could... wait. He's taking her to the hospital?
Sometimes, the villain (despite really wanting to defeat/kill/humiliate the hero) will be the one to make sure that an injured or sick hero gets medical attention (or, should they have medical training, treat/cure them themselves). The reasons why can vary:
- They want to be the ones to officially end the hero, and thus wants them to heal from any wounds caused by other villains.
- The villain is a Noble Demon who'd rather fight their nemesis when they're healthy and strong rather than kick them when they're down.
- Their plans require that the hero live.
- It's in the best interests of themselves/their goals to make sure the hero lives.
- They want to get the hero or the hero's sidekick on their side.
- They want the hero to owe them a favor.
- They want the hero's affections.
- They have the decency to at least get a seriously injured person medical care; they're not monsters, after all.
- The villain is related to the hero somehow, and still cares for them enough to get them medical attention.
Not to be confused with Mad Doctor or Medical Horror, as those are tropes where the hospitals or doctors/nurses are evil and mean to do their patients harm. Nor with a Punch-Clock Villain who Signed Up for the Dental.
A Sub-Trope of Pragmatic Villainy, The Only One Allowed to Defeat You, Can't Kill You, Still Need You, and Villainous Rescue. See also Kidnapped Doctor, for when the villain forces a doctor to tend to the hero (possibly because the villain is wanted and can't risk going to a public hospital). A character might use this trope to their advantage via a Sick Captive Scam. Expect the trope The Farmer and the Viper to appear somewhere, as the hero will possibly repay this kindness by escaping or doing something to derail the villain's plans. Compare/contrast with Save the Villain (where an inversion of this trope may occur), Determined Doctor, and Inconvenient Hippocratic Oath. See also Enemy Compassion.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Naruto: In the backstory of Obito Uchiha, he was crushed by a boulder that would have landed on his teammate Kakashi Hatake. Obito was saved when a white Zetsu acting under the orders of Madara Uchiha brought Obito to Madara where he received medical treatment for his injuries and received new limbs cultivated from the cells of Hashirama Senju to replace the ones that were too badly damaged.
- Princess Resurrection: Sasanaki hospital is staffed entirely by vampires. They take pride in their ability to treat any injury that isn't instantly fatal, though there is a 50/50 chance of you leaving the hospital as a vampire, yourself.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL: During Gauche and Yuna's duel in the World Duel Carnival, due to the tournament's rules, duelists don't regain Life Points between duels. This rule (combined with the fact of the villains' meddling) results in Gauche starting with 4000 Life Points while Yuma only has 100. Due to Gauche's desire to defeat Yuma fairly, he plays a card that restores Yuma to full Life Points rather than taking an easy win.
Comic Books
- Fantastic Four vs X-Men 1-4: Kitty Pryde is about to fade out of existence, and it is only with the help of Doctor Doom that she is saved.
- Sin City: That Yellow Bastard, after Hartigan is shot in the back, Senator Roark has the bullet wounds healed and Hartigan's heart fixed so that Hartigan can be framed for Roark Jr.'s crimes and kept alive to torment.
- Spider-Man:
- During the early days of the second The Clone Saga (in late 1994 to early 1995), Spider-Man is infected with a deadly virus by the (rejuvenated) Vulture and suffers its symptoms. In the next arc ("Web of Death"), Dr. Octopus finds a fallen Spider-Man on a rooftop and rescues him, taking him to his secret lab. He synthetizes a cure and gives it to Peter, just in time for him to celebrate a baby on the way with Mary Jane, and Kaine, a failed Spider-Clone, to kill Doc Ock.
- In Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 1) #700.4, Spidey is accidentally healed by doctors who focus on supervillains and are panicked that they accidentally healed not just a hero, but someone as famed as Spidey.
- Uncanny X-Men: During a 1997 arc (issues #341-345), some X-Men are transported to the Shi'ar Empire to release them from the Phalanx. In issue #345, the X-Men's return ship explodes. In issues #353-354, it is shown that Bishop survived the explosion, but the other X-Men have been teleported back to Earth: Deathbird (who began to develop something of an attraction to the X-Man) has rescued him from the explosion and explains that his body is recovering in a sickbed. It is implied that Deathbird is faking his paralysis.
- This is the start of the very first arc of X-Men: Legacy (2008): at the very end of the crossover X-Men: Messiah Complex, Xavier is shot by a deranged Bishop (former X-Man) and seemingly dies, but his body disappears on-panel. A flashback in X-Men: Legacy #208 shows that the Acolytes (an inimical mutant faction to the X-Men) rescued Xavier's body by using Tempo's powers of time manipulation, and preserved him by using Omega Sentinel's robotic circuitry. The Acolytes take Xavier to their base, and their leader Exodus uses his own telepathic powers to piece together Xavier's mind.
Fan Fiction
- The Boys: Real Justice. Inverted:
- Several times, members of the Seven try to fight recurring villains from the DC universe and prove themselves as strong enough to match the Justice League... only to find themselves curb-stomped and left with often severe injuries. Every time, they're rushed to Vought Tower or the nearest hospital for medical treatment by the Justice League.
- During the Boys' stay in Gotham, they tried to prove themselves as vigilantes by attempting to take down some of its rogues. Every single time, they were lucky to escape with severe injuries, shattered egos and their lives. When Batman catches them (and proves himself as a better vigilante than they could ever hope to be), they're taken to Arkham Asylum for medical treatment.
- Dungeon Keeper Ami: In the rare cases that Ami captures the surfacers that think she's an Evil Overlord, her actual heroic nature drives her to heal them of the injuries that were needed to capture them in the first place since she has the homefield advantage and isn't concerned anymore.
- On Trial: While imprisoned at the asylum, Cassandra grows sick from the "treatments". She's given the most basic medical care available simply because they need her to live to see her execution.
- In the Star Wars Rebels fanfic Patron Of The Art Of War
, Thrawn has decided to enlist/kidnap/capture some of the best artists in the galaxy, including Sabine Wren. The trap he sets up to catch her succeeds, but leaves her injured. He ensures that she get access to the best medics and med-droids under his command until she's at full strength.
- Property Of: The premise of this fic is that the Decepticons have started abducting humans to be sold on Cybertron as pets. A lot of humans are injured (with injuries ranging from cuts/bruises to broken bones and possible internal damage) while being captured. Because their prisoners need to be alive in order to be worth anything, the Decepticons give them all a brief medical exam that mainly consists of covering them with a paste that speeds up their healing process but also knocks them out for a significant amount of time (anywhere from several hours to a full day). Perceptor later notes that this drug is dangerous, and that a human being given too much could possibly be lethal.
- Shadows over Meridian: When Vera's team surrenders due to realizing their infiltration mission of Snowpoint is an utter failure, Jade agrees to allow Philip and Alan to be treated for their wounds to show she's not utterly merciless. Snowpoint's head healer Sofia and her daughter Maya are kind enough to ask Caroline to help them with the patients after she treats a wounded Mogriff's wing simply because it's the right thing to do. They even opt to tag along when the prisoners are taken to be interrogated to ensure Philip and Alan's condition won't get worse.
- In the Turning Red fic The Great Red Panda Rescue, after an especially abusive guard beats up Mei for biting him note , the scientists treat her injuries. This is purely in the name of Pragmatic Villainy, as they still need her alive to further their experiments. It's also implied that they gave her the bare minimum of medical care, as they don't give her a cast for her broken arm.
- The Ultimate Evil:
- When Valerie Payne is nearly killed by Hak Foo, Shendu gives her first aid and treats her with a Healing Potion to fasten her recovery before returning her out of necessity to the Chans who treat her further. Since she's his Other, he has no desire to let her die, but while he already made the decision to seduce her in order to make her more compliant, their time together starts making his Villainous Crush more genuine on his part.
- Shendu, now honestly in love with Valerie, uses the Horse Talisman's power to heal Valerie's scratched feet at one point during the Demon World arc. He does it again in the sequel after he has killed Daolon Wong for shooting Valerie.
Film — Animated
- Kung Fu Panda 2: Shen blasts Po with a cannon, seemingly killing him. However, Po lives, though he's injured, unconscious, and floating down a river. The Soothsayer, who up until then had been serving Shen against her will, finds him and performs acupuncture, healing his injuries and saving his life. Po, however, didn't know that she was serving Shen against her will, and assumed this trope was in play.
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: Implied when Peter B. Parker gets captured by Dr. Olivia. Due to her Affably Evil nature, she seems genuinely interested in meeting someone from another dimension, gives him a brief medical exam, and seems sympathetic when she realizes that he's slowly dying from cell degradation (i.e. glitching) due to being outside of his home dimension for so long. Subverted when she reveals that her full name is Doctor Olivia Octavius, known to her enemies as Doctor Octopus, that dimension's version of one of Spider-Man's oldest enemies.
Films — Live Action
- The Princess Bride: After his fight with the Rodent of Unusual Size, Wesley is taken to the Pit of Despair. He's treated for his injuries... so Count Rugen can use him as a test subject for his torture device.
- Saw 3D: Jigsaw rescues Dr. Gordon from bleeding to death due to his amputated foot.
Literature
- Chronicles of Ancient Darkness: When Torak's caught by Seshru the Viper Mage in Outcast, she uses her healing skills to cure his chest wound that's been festering ever since he cut the Soul Eater tattoo from it because she wants him alive for her own nefarious purposes.
- In The Hunger Games novels, typically the winners of the games are given the best possible medical treatment for any/all injuries they sustained during the games such as giving Peeta a prosthetic leg after his was severely damaged at the end of the first book. This is after they had forced two teenagers to fight nearly two dozen other teens and preteens to the death, and showed it to the people as though it was some big, entertaining spectacle.
- In Heralds Of Rhimn, Knight Jeidhe does genuinely intend to get Navaeli medical care while she’s being held in Stonehold... if only because the Irongardhe don’t want to have her look “ugly and battered” before her execution.
- In The Lord of the Rings, Merry and Pippin are taken captive by the Uruk-Hai, who plan on taking them alive to Isengard so that Saruman can find out if either of them has the One Ring. When Pippin sees Merry behaving as though sick, he begs the Uruks for water, and their leader Ugluk orders them to instead "give him some medicine". The medicine, in this case, is some dark red liquid that, judging by Merry's expression, tastes really foul, but seeing as he stops feeling sick by the time they arrive at Fangorn Forest and finally escape, the Orcish medicine definitely must work wonders.
- In the second novel of The Maze Runner series, a random Flare-infected citizen attacks the group of Maze survivors, and shoots Thomas. Not only does he suffer from the bullet, but he develops an infection that the Maze survivors don't have the knowledge or equipment to treat. Shortly after, a drop ship from WICKED abducts Thomas. They heavily sedate him (to the point that he wakes up once over the course of several days) and treat him, saving his life... so he can risk it by continuing with the Scorch Trials.
Live-Action TV
- American Horror Story: Asylum: In "Dark Cousin", a botched hysterectomy results in Grace suffering a serious infection and a near-fatal hemorrhage that nearly ends with Shachath claiming her at the start of the episode before the nurses revive her. Dr. Arden naturally gets the blame for it, though for once he's not responsible. Despite remarking that it would be easier to just let Grace die, Arden gives her all the medical attention she needs to survive the fever, if only so she can recover long enough to testify that he wasn't to blame.
- House of Anubis: Despite being a villain to the students for most of the second season, Victor wastes no time when it comes to saving a dying Joy's life with the last tear of gold. This acts as one example of his true care for the students despite his bad attitude, contrasting him with Vera, who has no issues with letting the students get hurt to further her goals.
- Unknowingly done in Once Upon a Time. Back in the Enchanted Forest, moments before the Dark Curse engulfs them, Prince David is wounded as he tries to protect his daughter Emma and places her in the enchanted wardrobe. Due to his bleeding, he falls to the ground, as his wife Snow White finds him and tries to use True Love's Kiss, to no avail. Suddenly, the Evil Queen (Regina) appears to gloat about her victory over Snow and her family, as the Dark Curse takes them to a Land Without Magic (the real world). Regina becomes the mayor of the curse-created town of Storybrooke, princess Snow White becomes a mousy elementary school teacher, and prince David becomes a nameless coma-induced patient in the Storybrooke hospital on life support by modern-day medicine (the implication is that Regina, casting the curse, accidentally allowed David to live a little longer, instead of dying to blood loss in the Enchanted Forest mere moments before the Dark Curse took them). Later, David wakes from his coma, and Regina uses this in her favor to further hurt Snow White.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In "Waltz". Sisko and Gul Dukat crash on a planet with Sisko sustaining some injuries. Dukat takes care of him, but also delays their rescue in order to keep him there to help feed his delusions and earn Sisko's validation for his past war crimes.
- In "Defiant", Kira sabotages the stolen Defiant to try to prevent Thomas Riker from going any further. The attempt severely burns her, but Riker treats her and keeps her close by. He's not happy about the sabotage, but he wanted the ship and would have been just as happy to not have her on board in the first place.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: Subverted in "Liaisons" where Picard crash lands on a planet and is nursed back to health by a woman who was marooned there, except his injuries were superficial and she placed a device on him to keep him weakened so she could use him to conduct a social experiment. Also she was actually the shuttle's pilot in disguise.
- Trace: In "The Wench Off the Cart", a small gang drugs and robs people, leaving them in the park afterwards. However, Vyazov, the one who actually does the robbing, doesn't want to sink to murder and always stays nearby to make sure the victim wakes up. When Tatyana Mitina doesn't regain consciousness, he drives her to the hospital. Little does he know that the gang's leader, Tatyana's stepsister, intended for her to die from the start, since Tatyana has a medical condition in which a combination of alcohol and the drug the gang uses is lethal.
- In Watchmen (2019), after Angela overdoses on Nostalgia in an attempt to see her grandfather's memories and find out why he murdered her boss, she is taken to the sinister Lady Trieu for treatment.
Theater
- In many productions of The Tsars Bride, such as the 1965 opera film, Bomelius, the royal physician, is shown treating Marfa in the last act, despite the fact that he was the one who mixed and sold the poison which is now killing her. It's a downplayed example, however, since a) he is ordered to do his job by the Tsar (whose bride Marfa is), and b) Bomelius has no personal quarrel at all with Marfa: he simply sold the poison to her Unknown Rival Lyubasha in exchange for getting to sleep with the latter.
Video Games
- Empire Earth: During Novaya Russiya's conquest of China, Sergei Molotov is grievously injured by the radiation from the destruction of a time machine. The robotic despot Grigor II has Sergei undergo massive emergency surgery to save his life, viewing him as still valuable to his plans, turning him into a hideous-looking cyborg.
- In Mortal Kombat 9, Kabal was burned alive and left to die during Outworld's invasion of Earthrealm, but was kidnapped/rescued by Outworld forces, given an emergency reconstruction (including a respirator face mask), and was summoned before his former boss in Black Dragon and ally of the invasion, Kano, who attempted to have him join their forces once again. Part of the reconstruction efforts involved magical enchantments by Shang Tsung, which additionally gave Kabal Super-Speed powers.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Shortly before the events of the game, Zeke was on his last leg. He was coming close to death, and try as she did, Pandoria wasn't able to reach help in time. Just as she's about to give up, she comes across a shadowy figure, saying that she doesn't want to become a bandit's blade. Next thing she knows, both Pandoria and Zeke are alive and well in the hospital. It turns out that the one they met in the forest was Amalthus, the head of Alrest's religion (and the Big Bad, though no one knew that at the time). Once Pandoria blacked out, he performed an emergency surgery that involved cutting out part of her core crystal and transplanted it into Zeke, giving his body a newfound energy that keeps him alive, as well as making him a Blade Eater (which are humans who have Core Crystals, or parts of them, in their body). The reason that he did this is because Amalthus acknowledged Zeke's strength, and wanted him to keep an eye on the Aegis for his own selfish plans, being Faux Affably Evil all the while.
Visual Novel
- Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: After Nekomaru Nidai gets in the way of an execution, Monokuma belatedly takes him in for care. He's eventually returned in a brand new robot body.
Web Original
- This is a common staple of ASMR roleplay videos where the listener is supposed to take on the role of an injured warrior or superhero, only to be found by the in-universe villain (who tends to be female although male examples do exist) and is taken in as they pass out from their injuries. Upon awakening, they find the villain (and possibly their minions) have saved the hero's life. The story can play out any number of ways from there with the villain simply doing so out of disgust that someone would do the damage they did, be shocked the hero could even be defeated, find out the hero's own allies did so and express anger, or tell the hero of their adoration for the hero as their motivation (which frequently leads to a bedside romance), or some combination of any of them.
Website
- Not Always Working: In this story, a phone scammer accidentally helps an injured child over the phone. Afterwards, he tells the kid's mom that he's going to quit his job as a scammer.
Western Animation
- Amphibia: Immediately after the events of "True Colors", Marcy is put into a healing tank by King Andrias after he stabbed her through the chest. This is because the Core wants her as it's new host, and it can't use her body if she dies.
- Used a few times in Justice League:
- When the Justice Lords capture the Justice League in "A Better World", League Hawkgirl is injured. The Lords imprison the rest of the League, but make sure to get League Hawkgirl medical attention. This is largely due to the fact that the Lords already lost one teammate (Lord Flash) and (as Lord Batman later demonstrates) will do anything to avoid losing another teammate (even if it's just another version of that teammate).
- In a later episode, Vixen pretends to perform a Face–Heel Turn to pull a trick on the Thanagarians. She invokes the trope by saying her leg is injured, and that she can't track down Shayera if she can't walk. They seem to buy it and take her to their ship to get a medical kit. Unfortunately, they'd predicted she'd try something like that...
- Star Wars: The Bad Batch: At the end of season 2, Omega is captured by the Empire to use as leverage to make Nala Se work with them. Despite her obviously being a prisoner, the first thing the Empire does is get her medical care (as she'd been injured even before the Empire attacked and is walking with a visible limp). After all, they need Omega alive and well if they want to blackmail Nala Se.
- TRON: Uprising: In "Isolated", the Renegade and Paige are trapped on a slowly de-rezzing island together, and need to form an Enemy Mine if they want to escape. When the Renegade proposes their temporary alliance, Paige notices that his arm was injured when they landed on the island. As a show of temporary trust, she uses her programming in medical care to heal the arm (which reveals to both Beck and the audience that she used to be a medical program note ).
- The Venture Brothers: In ''The Devil's Grip, Dr. Venture is badly injured following the events of the previous episode and has been "rescued" by his Arch-Enemy, the Monarch, who intends to subject him to Cold-Blooded Torture. First, however, Dr. Mrs. the Monarch tends to his injuries as Guild of Calamitous Intent rules require that prisoners receive medical attention (the fact that the Monarch is about to inflict more injuries be damned, to the Monarch's frustration). This is not the Guild being surprisingly righteous, but rather pragmatic, as it is one of many rules to keep the peace with the O.S.I. and prevent an Escalating War.
