Mind Rape / Film

Psychic Assaults

Animated Films

• Pitch to Jack in Rise of the Guardians. His power is finding out what a person's fear is, and he uses this to psychologically torment Jack.

Live-Action Films

• In the Apocalypse film series movie Tribulation, a One Nation Earth agent subjects Tom Canboro's brother-in-law Jason Quincy to this while in a hospital room recovering from a fall that almost killed him. The agent relents when he senses the presence of a Christian — Tom's sister Eileen — entering the room, who then gets the Ghostly Chill.
• Hero-on-villain example: In The Crow (1994), Eric Draven can experience the sensations and memories of others through touch. When he picks up from Officer Albrecht what his fiancée 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 The Dead Center, just a brief exposure to the demon's soul-sucking power is enough to give Dr. Forrester disturbing visions of previous victims and leave him a nervous wreck.
• In a deleted scene from Dogma, Azrael subjects Bethany to a vision of what Hell is like thanks to mankind's need to be punished. The script describes it as "ten seconds... of the most fucked-up and disturbing imagery that can be crammed into 240 frames of film". Afterward, Bethany convulses uncontrollably from the mental trauma.
• Taken to its most literal extreme in Dredd with Judge Anderson, who's psychic, and Kay. Since her abilities are always on, he tries to get to her by imagining himself actually raping her. She smacks him with her gun to make him knock it off. Later, during their Battle in the Center of the Mind, he tries it again. This time, however, Anderson is ready and changes the experience somewhat. Not only does he reveal what she wants to know, but when it's all over, he's pissed himself.
  Anderson: You're not the only one who can play mind games.
• In End of Days, Satan screws with Jericho by forcing him to relive the murder of his wife and child in a home invasion he wasn't there to stop.
• Event Horizon is 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" — via their deepest guilt, and causing several members of the crew to go insane, with one of them ripping out his eyes, mutilating himself and vivisecting a crewmate. Another one of the crewmembers who accidentally falls into the portal and is pulled back out after a moment goes temporarily insane and tries to throw himself out of an airlock, telling the rest of the crew that "if you had seen what I've seen, you wouldn't try to stop me".
• In Freaks (2018), Chloe has a Jedi Mind Trick-like ability to make people do or say what she wants, which has a very painful effect on those she uses it on. She's the protagonist, but since she's also a seven-year-old girl in an unstable home environment, she doesn't exactly know how to wield her power responsibly — the first time she's seen using it, she's basically mind-raping another little girl into buying her ice cream (since Chloe herself is forbidden from leaving the house).
• While in the books, Legilimency is used only as a Mind Probe, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix suggests that Voldemort uses it to inflict mental torture as an end in itself.
• The Harvesters from Independence Day use this as a weapon of last resort, when deprived of their weapons and technology. At a range of a few meters, one of them was able to cause pain and establish a psychic connection to President Whitmore. Dr. Okun, who was physically grabbed by a tentacle, didn't get off so lightly, being put into a coma for 20 years.
• In The Lawnmower Man, there are two instances of mind rape by the protagonist/villain, Jobe. One is when he takes his girlfriend Marie into Cyberspace and they try to make love; he loses control of his powers and ends up accidentally mind-raping her instead, leaving her catatonic. The second time is when Jobe, who's now both more in control of his growing powers and becoming more villainous, psychically unleashes a "Lawnmower Man" inside the head of a bully, purposely rendering him catatonic as well.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • The Avengers (2012):
    • Loki is given a scepter containing the Mind Stone so he can conquer Earth. With it, he brainwashes Clint Barton, Erik Selvig, and a few other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to serve his cause. Selvig nearly goes insane to the point that he gets committed to an asylum in Thor: The Dark World. When Clint is freed from the brainwashing and discusses the experience, his description has heavy shades of this.
      Clint: I don't understand. Have you ever had someone take your brain and play? Pull you out and send something else in? Do you know what it's like to be unmade?
      Natasha: You know that I do.
    • Loki also does a variation of this to Natasha Romanoff when she attempts to interrogate him. Using information gleaned from his thrall, he taunts her about trying to atone for all of her past crimes, capping it off with threatening to have a brainwashed Clint torture her to death, before releasing him from the mind control to realize what he'd done before killing him as well.
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron: Wanda Maximoff got her magic powers enhanced as a result of exposure to the Mind Stone. While acting in opposition to the Avengers, she invokes horrific visions in the various Avengers of their greatest fears.
    • Tony (who has PTSD as a result of the events of The Avengers) sees a vision of his teammates dead or dying in front of him, and several Leviathan heading towards Earth. The vision is enough to convince him to expedite the creation of Ultron. He's the only one of the Avengers to snap himself out of his vision. The others are all rendered catatonic, desperate, and confused.
    • Thor finds himself in a hellish Asgardian party, where a blind Heimdall gleefully claims to him that they are all dead and that he will lead them to their deaths.
    • Steve (who fears that he won't have a purpose without a war to fight) finds himself seeing Peggy Carter at a World War II victory party where she asks him to dance and celebrate.
    • Natasha (who has "red in her ledger") relives her training in the Red Room, where she had to execute a bound and blindfolded person as a show of her allegiance, as well as undergo sterilization surgery.
    • We don't see what vision Wanda gives to Bruce, but it's enough for him to Hulk out and go on a rampage in Johannesburg.
    • The only Avenger that Wanda doesn't get to brainwash is Clint, who sticks a taser arrow to her forehead that shocks her as she's about to hex him.
      Clint: I've done the whole mind control thing. Not a fan.
  • Black Widow (2021): Those recruited into the Red Room are brainwashed, involuntarily sterilized, and forced by Dreykov to commit actions against their will, all while being aware of what they are doing.
    Yelena: I killed the Widow that freed me.
    Natasha: Did you have a choice?
    Yelena: What you experienced was psychological conditioning. I'm talking about chemically altering brain functions. They're two completely different things. You're fully conscious, but you don't know which part is you. I'm still not sure.
• 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.
  • Really, any of the "Pushers" in the movie could qualify, consider how many people's memories they rewrite or how the actions they force people to do directly. Kira, to escape a team of Division agents pushes one to think he has a brother that the other killed. The agent sees his partner brutally murder his "brother" and shoots his partner dead. Even after he realized he was pushed, he still remembered growing up together with his brother and still felt the grief and shock of his death.
• 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 (or perhaps mind-tricks) a doctor into 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.
• In Stargate: The Ark of Truth, Daniel, Vala, and Tomin are tortured by the Priors of the Ori. The Ori appear to be chanting and using their psychic powers to reduce the good guys to weeping messes.
• Star Trek:
  • In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, of all places, Spock's mind-meld with Valeris definitely comes close to this trope, and it's really uncomfortable to watch. They attempt to excuse it by making it obvious Spock is almost equally affected by his actions; self-inflicted Mind Rape, anyone?
    • The Novelization, recognizing the implications of Spock's act, first explicitly declares a forced mind meld to fall into this category and then explains that Spock didn't force her, he mentally convinced her of the seriousness of the situation and she gave in willingly.
    • It still doesn't explain Valeris' screaming at the end.
  • In Star Trek: First Contact, Captain Picard's transformation into Locutus of Borg in the Star Trek: The Next Generation 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. When he goes home to Earth to visit his family, he tearfully admits to how much it traumatized him, especially being forced to use his skills and knowledge as a Starfleet captain against his own people. His conversation with the Borg Queen pretty much confirms it.
  • In Star Trek: Nemesis, Deanna Troi is literally mind-raped by the villain who invades her mind when she and Riker are about to do the business. (That wasn't the first time this happened to poor Troi; one episode of TNG features an alien passenger aboard the Enterprise mind-raping the crew in the figurative sense, but he mind-rapes Troi in the literal sense, and fairly graphically.) The act is even flat-out referred to as "a form of rape" at one point, in case anyone didn't quite get the implications.
  • Of the Brown Note variety in Star Trek Into Darkness. When Spock is fighting Khan, he briefly mind-melds with him. Whether Spock just transferred his feelings of grief and rage or did something else, Khan lets go of him and stumbles around a bit before regaining his feet. It's also possible that, given Khan was attempting to physically crush his skull at the time, Spock was sharing the physical pain he was experiencing at the time.
• The title character in Tamara does this to nearly everyone she touches, but special mention goes out to what she does to Roger, forcing him to experience what it's like being Buried Alive (in graphic detail), and to Keisha, exploiting her insecurity over her body by making her imagine that she's literally vomiting her guts out.
• X-Men Film Series
  • X2: X-Men United: The backstory of Col. Stryker involves his telepathic son, Jason, mind-raping him and his wife with hallucinations so horrific that the wife took a power drill to her temple to get the images out.
  • X-Men: First Class: Emma Frost uses her telepathy to bring out Erik's traumatic memories of being tortured by Sebastian Shaw as a child in Auschwitz.
  • X-Men: Apocalypse: Charles suffers this torture thrice: the first is being mind-controlled by Apocalypse through Cerebro, the second is during Apocalypse's near-successful Grand Theft Me attempt, and the third is during their mental battle. The sexual assault subtext is blatant; Xavier — a Pretty Boy and a mild form of Fanservice^note Professor X bares more skin here than in the previous films who gets several downplayed Female Gaze shots^note he's a sensual subject rather than a sex object — is pushed down and cuffed to a slab against his will before his mind, body and soul are violated, and he screams "GET OUT!" multiple times, which reinforces the metaphor that he's a victim who can't fight off his attacker. After Charles is freed from Apocalypse's pyramid, the latter behaves like an obsessed stalker who is desperate to possess the body of his prey. Apocalypse later beats Xavier to a pulp on the astral plane, which leaves Charles crawling and covered in blood, and his mind almost dies. There is an I Have You Now, My Pretty vibe when Apocalypse forcibly shoves his severely injured but still beautiful-looking captive down to the floor and gloats, "You're mine now." Professor X in the Alternate Timeline is thus a survivor of a brutal and violent figurative rape.

"Mundane" Torture

Animated Films

• Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker: Mind Rape was just one of several things that the Joker 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.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop is forced to undergo this in The LEGO Movie, when his Good Cop side is forcibly removed after failing to follow Lord Business's orders. This therefore erases any form of distractions and leaves only Bad Cop to focus purely on his boss' goals, effectively turning him into a puppet. Not only is Lord Business a Manipulative Bastard by forcing his way into his lieutenant's psyche by physically removing a part of him that was no longer required, but this form of brainwashing leaves a lot to be suggested as to the abuse that he may have inflicted on Good Cop Bad Cop over the past 8 and a half years.
• Rango: Jake does this to Rango upon meeting him via Break Them by Talking, causing him to go on a quest to find himself.

Live-Action Films

• The plot of A Clockwork Orange is nicely summed up by this trope; the villain protagonist is tortured mentally to the point that his ultra-violent hobbies cause him pain, to achieve a form of brainwashing that will "reform" him.
• Of all the Joker's countless acts of villainy in The Dark Knight, among the most sickening is his Mind Rape of Harvey Dent. The twisted Monster Clown approaches the hideously disfigured attorney, 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 Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler, Dr. Mabuse kills his own patient with nothing but words.
• Gaslight's presentation of a woman's abusive husband slowly driving her out of her mind by making her question her own perception of reality was so iconic that this technique is now called Gaslighting.
• In Sadie Thompson, Davidson the puritanical, zealous "reformer" does something very like this to Sadie the ex-prostitute. After "three tortured days", she cracks, casting aside her makeup and flamboyant clothes, letting her hair hang limply, and donning a modest wool dress. She converts to Christianity and accepts that she has to go to San Francisco and serve her sentence, even after O'Hara says he can get a boat to smuggle her to Apia and freedom.
• In The Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling is on her way down the hall to see Lector for the first time when another of the inmates throws his semen at her. Later, she learns that in retribution for this unspeakable rudeness, Lector had talked the inmate into killing himself.
• Thirst (1979): In order to unleash her thirst for blood and indoctrinate her into their vampire cult, Mrs. Baker and Dr. Gauss subject the protagonist Kate Davis to all kinds of sadistic psychological abuse, forcing her to endure horrific hallucinations via the use of psychedelic drugs.
• Undercover Brother: Undercover Brother (who is black) must infiltrate Multinational Inc., a corporation controlled by The Man's white supremacist organization. To do this, he must become familiar with white culture in order to fit in. Smart Brother uses a technique he calls "Caucasiavision" on Undercover Brother: using electronic goggles to make him watch a film about white society. After watching for a while, Undercover Brother freaks out.
  Undercover Brother: Make it stop! Make it stop! I see white people. It's too much! Too much! Caucasian overload! Caucasian overload! Caucasian overload! That's too much white for one brother to take.
• What essentially happens to Lawrence in The Wolfman (2010) after his time in the asylum, poor man.

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