Help my villain with his evil plan

He wants to manipulate some heroes into abandoning their loved ones to prove that human beings truly only use each other. So once it more convenient for them to betray those they say are close to them they would do so. So what would be a good way for him to do this?

This seems like exactly the sort of plan that you should have fail, to demonstrate, you know, that the villain is wrong. If the villain were successful at proving this, he would be right, and he would be the hero of a cynical story instead of the villain of an idealistic one.

Torture them until they beg that he do it to their loved ones instead.

It's kinda hard to say, if we don't know what resources/abilities this guy has.

Well, if the heroes have some sort of traumatic past, he could use that. For example, trick the sexual abuse survivor into thinking her boyfriend only wants her for her body, so she freaks and leaves him. Or set up one character to get an addiction because the partner had addicted parents and is vehemently opposed to addictions.

Where do the heroes' personalities and their loved one's personalities clash?

Somehow, explaining the reasoning behind a variation of the simplest trap ever turned into a wall of text.

So:

He captures two of the heroes and locks them up in a room. Inside the room there is a single bed, an alarm clock, some water, a single loaded gun with one bullet, and some kind of mechanism.

He explains to them that there is but little air in that room, and the mechanism is a machine that recycles the air, so if they take turns in using it, they are spared from asphyxia. The problem is, as he points out, the water. There’s enough to for a week or so, but the door will automatically open in two weeks. If they’re alive by that point there’s nothing to stop them from going home.

What he doesn't tell them is what they’ll soon find by themselves: The air-recycling mechanism isn’t there to make them more thirsty- it’s there to make them more tired. It requires constant, heavy labour to remain active, with only period of a few hours between uses. After hours and hours of working, one of the heroes falls exhausted while the other gets up to take their place. They immediately fall asleep the first few times, but after that, it becomes harder and harder to do this.

They know that their dear friend would never take that gun and kill them in cold blood to save their own live. They also know, from personal experience, that the sight of your friend lying in the bed sound asleep, is an extremely tempting sight. They’ll never know you betrayed them if you do, they’ll just close their eyes once and never open them again.

And so, after a while, every time you fall asleep, you make a bet that your "friend" will resist the temptation, and you know the odds are not in your favour, because you’ve been in their place before. You try to stay awake till your next shift, but, eventually, you’ll have to give up and just trust your friend.

Before a week passes, the sound of a gunshot proves the villains point.

If there's only one bullet why wouldn't they just shoot at the wall before things get hairy to make sure they can't shoot each other?

edited 28th Apr '11 2:17:51 PM by melloncollie

...Shit. And I thought the alarm clock was proof I had thought everything.

Okay, they could have a steel dagger instead. I don't see how they could get rid of that.

How would the villain react if someone killed themselves so that their partner could survive?

Simple. He rationalizes that either the survivor has convinced his partner that he was worth laying down his life for - even if not intending that it would inevitably come to that - or now the survivor is forever in his partner's debt, and will do whatever it takes to make it up.

Either way, one is (or was) being controlled by the other.

Don't know why, but this thread's name is Made Of Win.