Restraining Bolts in Webcomics.
- 8-Bit Theater: Black Mage's restraining bolt is his body. When he died and went to Hell, without a squishy physical body holding him back, he effortlessly took over and removed everybody in Hell's spines for good measure.
- Among the Chosen implies that these are in use with the "Addicaines" Super Soldiers in addition to meds that suppress psychic abilities.
- In Axe Cop: Bad Guy Earth, the Psychic Brothers subjugate the people of Uni-Smart World by dropping special traffic cones onto everyone's magic horn. The cones work by causing all offensive magic to backfire onto the user, but soon the Psychic Brothers use teleportation to simply remove all the horns.
- Like in the original, Pete (playing R2-D2) in Darths & Droids gets one installed that not only restricts what he can do but actively prevents him from even wanting to escape or getting it removed. He later uses Reverse Psychology on Corey (playing Luke/Adam Lars) to get him to remove it by saying that he shouldn't remove it and he doesn't even want to think about what would happen if it was.
- Drive (Dave Kellett): Every ship in the armada has a governor on its ring drive, as not even the Continuum can handle its full power.
- Much of the humor in Freefall comes from the directives requiring A.I.s to follow human orders, report to the scrapyard for decommissioning at a certain time, not harm humans, etc. (And the ways they work around them.) Even biological A.I.s like Florence (a genetically engineered anthropomorphic wolf) have restraints programmed in. Florence likens this to "targeted obsessive-compulsive disorder". Of the restraints, however, Asimov's Three Laws are explicitly not among them for much of Jean's robot population, which is good — in this universe, Three Laws robots are considered pretty terrifying to aliens and artificial life forms (i.e., the entire main cast) due to the Laws' incautious use of the word "human". A plan is underway to install an additional law into the minds of the planet's robot population via automatic update: the zeroth law, intended to prevent the robot from engaging in (or by inaction allowing) actions that may expose its manufacturer to liability. Given the sheer number of situations this covers, it is more of a lobotomy than a restraint.
- In Girl Genius, Agatha was given a locket to prevent her abilities from being detected when she was too young to defend herself from those that would want those abilities. A source of much frustration, it gains a second function later on in the story, inverting the trope. It's eventually revealed to have actually prevented her Spark from triggering, causing her to have headaches whenever she tries to use it. When the locket is stolen, it kills the thief holding it by shutting down his brain. In a sense, you could say that Agatha now is a restraining bolt for the Other.
- In Goblins, Kin has a leash around her neck. When someone holds it, she can't do anything violent, and she has to obey them. Her captors told her that trying to cast Remove Curse on the leash, which would remove it, has a 50/50 chance of creating a mountain-sized explosion
, so she's stuck with it. - Reynardine of Gunnerkrigg Court must remain obedient to Antimony as long as he inhabits her stuffed toy wolf, and he can't leave the toy without her permission.
- The Greater Mark of Justice placed on Belkar Bitterleaf in The Order of the Stick. With this on, Belkar can't kill or commit lethal violence against anyone within a town, go more than a mile away from Roy Greenhilt or piss Roy off enough to speak the command word (the other parts got voided due to Roy being killed by Xykon). The Kobold Oracle that the Order of the Stick meet while seeking to have Roy resurrected foresees that Belkar will try to kill him (no spoiler because, frankly, if you didn't see it coming you must be new) and gets back by creating the village of Lickmyorangeballshalfling around his compound. Even better, he plans in advance to have himself resurrected. This comes almost straight from Dungeons & Dragons itself, as seen in the d20 SRD (the Greater version in this comic has a command word).
- Plume: Corrick is controlled by an amulet that compels him to protect its wearer and forbids him from harming the person.
- In Skin Horse, Nick (a military aircraft with a human brain) has a censor chip similar to Zodon's, while Unity (a patchwork zombie killing machine) has a Trigger Phrase ("Blueberry Waffles") which short-circuits her murderous impulses. Nick also has a code phrase that removes his free will, but Dr. Lee considers it a Fate Worse than Death, so she chooses to let him risk his life rather than use it. Mr Green has no such compunctions.
- Sluggy Freelance: With the magic of the Book of Eville, Gwen can conjure up many spectacular powers, but her Restraining Bolt seems to be... The Power of Friendship, awww. Nothing else seems to work for her, not possession, not accidents, not embarrassments. However, she's not a particularly friendly person, so she's easily tempted to use her power when the plot demands.
- S.S.D.D.: In order to prevent robots from becoming ridiculously human, most are designed with limits to their intelligence and personality development, and many robots designed without caps have their personalities completely erased every few months. Sticks originally had limits, then Tessa removed them to make him more interesting and he became her boyfriend, whereas Tin Head was designed without limits due to the requirements of his job (looking through people's luggage) and when he missed his bi-monthly mind wipe he got bored and defected to the other side.
- Unsounded has zombie-like "plods", which are reanimated and controlled with magic masks. It's mentioned that when the enchantments were newly discovered, people used collars that delivered crippling Agony Beams when the plod did something wrong; however, since they're completely mindless, that was roughly as effective as trying to debug a computer by yelling at it.
