Torture is evil. And yet we're fascinated by it.
Tropes:
Physical torture methods
- Agonizing Stomach Wound: A wound to the stomach which leads to a long and painful death.
- Agony Beam: The fantastical ability (in whatever form) that causes extreme pain to whoever it hits.
- Bathroom Control: A character having a Potty Emergency is tortured by not allowed to go to the bathroom.
- Cooked to Death: Covers torture by roasting or boiling a victim.
- Corporal Punishment: Inflicting physical pain as punishment for one's misbehavior.
- Creepy-Crawly Torture: Torture with insects and other crawly things
- Cruel and Unusual Death: When torture is taken far enough, it may lead to someone dying in a way that is extremely painful, humiliating, and/or bizarre.
- Execution: Many (though not all) methods of capital punishment (especially in earlier periods of history) are intended to have the victim suffer a very slow and painful death, and thus can be considered an extreme form of torture.
- Denied Food as Punishment: Denying food as punishment.
- Electric Torture: Torture done by zapping or electrifying the victim — bloodless, but effective.
- Electroconvulsive Therapy Is Torture: Electroconvulsion Therapy depicted in a negative light.
- Flaying Alive: Removing someone's skin for torture.
- Flipping Helpless: A creature that is flipped over on its back cannot get back up again without help.
- Force Feeding: Forced to eat.
- Forced Addiction: Getting someone addicted to a drug by force in order to break them.
- Hanging Around: Hanging someone to cut off their air supply without necessarily killing them.
- Head in a Vise: A character's head is put in a screw-press, slowly crushing their skull.
- Iron Maiden: A torture device filled with spikes to stab the poor soul inside of it.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: The hero needs information, and fast—thus, they immediately decide to torture their captive.
- Knee-capping: A good way to keep someone down is to go for their knee.
- Lobotomy: The medical procedure of cutting into part of the brain to change a person's behavior — either as a "treatment" of mental illness, or torture.
- Mutilation Interrogation: Torturous interrogation wherein the punishment for not talking is having part of you cut off one-by-one.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Someone overpowers another with little effort and in a very painful, bloody manner.
- Playing with Syringes: Unethical and possibly incredibly painful experimentation with the goal of creating something.
- Sinister Suffocation: Torturing someone by suffocating them, but not outright killing them.
- Soap Punishment: Punishment for crass language involves having to put soap in one's mouth.
- Stock Punishment: A device that holds someone immobile so that others can assault them with foodstuffs.
- Tar and Feathers: Either as a comedic prank or a serious form of punishment, someone is covered in hot tar and feathers for humiliation.
- A Taste of the Lash: Someone is flogged with a whip or cane.
- Tickle Torture: Tickling is horrible.
- Water Torture: Such as simulated drowning, ie "waterboarding".
- What a Drag: Torture/attack/punishment by dragging someone across the ground.
- Wheel of Pain: People are forced to push a wheel as punishment.
- Zen Slap: A Zen mentor slapping their disciple as a punishment for misdemeanor.
Mental torture methods
- And I Must Scream: When a character is forever stuck somewhere, probably unable to talk, move, or even die.
- Enhanced Interrogation Techniques: Non-physical forms of torture, usually psychological, that still freak someone out enough to work.
- False Roulette: A near-empty gun is fired over and over to cause fear that the next trigger-pull with discharge the only bullet—except, the gun is actually empty.
- Forced to Watch: A character is forced to watch as someone they love is tortured and/or killed.
- High-Altitude Interrogation: Getting someone to talk by holding them over a high drop.
- The Ludovico Technique: Drugging someone and forcing him (sometimes up to strapping the eyelids so he can't close them) to watch something related to his bad habits to "cure" him from them.
- Mind Probe: A device that forcibly reads someone's mind, usually in the most painful and traumatizing way possible.
- Mind Rape: Psychological torture that forces the victim to see horrible things, re-live terrifying memories, feel things that aren't happening, etc.
- Past Victim Showcase: To show just how bad the torture someone is about to endure is, the villain shows them someone who has already been through it.
- Punished with Ugly: A beautiful character is punished by losing their beauty.
- Punishment Box: Punishment comes in the form of being forced into an empty, but probably very uncomfortable and/or lonely, box.
- Reel Torture: Torturing or punishing someone by making them watch a movie, play, TV show, video recording or photo reel that they find so terrible it causes them agony.
- Sadistic Choice: Forcing a person to choose between two terrible options.
- Suicidal Sadistic Choice: Forcing a person to choose between something horrible and death.
- Sleep Deprivation Punishment: Not allowing a person to sleep.
- To the Pain: Telling a future victim exactly what is going to happen to them in slow, painful detail.
- Torment by Annoyance: Being annoyed over and over and over and over...
Results of torture
- 2 + Torture = 5: Psychological torture that causes the victim to believe something that factually isn't true. For example, 2 + 2 = 5.
- Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Tortured into evilness.
- Break the Cutie: A character that was once kind and lovable is put through hell and back.
- Deadly Hazing: A hazing results in death (usually through physical violence but not always).
- Driven to Suicide: The victim kills themselves.
- Interrogated for Nothing: Someone is tortured for information, but they truly don't know anything.
- Stockholm Syndrome: A proposed psychological condition in which people who have been kidnapped/captured come to feel sympathetic for their captors.
- Torture Always Works: When torturing someone not only works in a work, but the information gathered out of it is true, accurate, and detailed.
- Torture Is Ineffective: It accomplishes nothing.
Character tropes
- Bunker Woman: A woman is kidnapped and held somewhere contained, usually a bunker, usually by a man.
- Exalted Torturer: When the person doing the torture is also the hero.
- Loves the Sound of Screaming: Someone finds joy in the loud, loud misery of others.
- Too Kinky to Torture: A character actually enjoys being tortured.
- Torture Technician: The guy with the job of torturing people.
Locations of torture
- Fire and Brimstone Hell: When Hell is depicted as a fiery place of eternal torture.
- Locked in the Dungeon: Someone is locked in a dungeon to be tortured or punished.
- Maximum Fun Chamber: Something torturous is said to be so, so horrible, but is either never seen, or seen, but seems innocent enough until it's used.
- Room 101: The audience may or may not even know what happens in there, but this room is the one no one wants to be sent to.
- Torture Cellar: A room with the express purpose of torturing people.
Other tropes about torture
- Abuse Discretion Shot: When abuse (including torture) doesn't get fully shown onscreen.
- Anything but That!: When something pretty mundane (or even harmless) is treated as a Fate Worse than Death.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Subjecting people to severe pain either for information, as punishment, or out of sadistic pleasure.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: A punishment that gets the job done, even though it's ridiculous.
- Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: A threat so odd it's Played for Laughs.
- Defeat Means Menial Labor: A defeated villain is punished with menial labor, often in their (no longer) own place.
- The Easy Way or the Hard Way: A Stock Phrase.
- Hostage-Handler Huddle: The bad guys huddle together to decide how torture is best carried out.
- The Joys of Torturing Mooks: When players of a video game find joy in torturing and killing their always-spawning, nameless enemies.
- Noodle Implements: An odd assortment of objects (and maybe people) are all brought together to do something, but the audience never sees what.
- The Not-So-Harmless Punishment: A punishment seems bearable enough, maybe even laughable... until it's used.
- Painless Death for a Price: Someone on death's doorstep is offered a Mercy Kill in exchange for something valuable (and may be threatened with a long, torturous death instead if they refuse).
- Robotic Torture Device: A robotic device with many tools to torture, from knives to lasers and more.
- Scream Discretion Shot: The audience doesn't see the pain being inflicted, only hearing the victim's scream.
- Shake Someone, Objects Fall: A comedic trope in which simply shaking someone causes everything they have on them to come falling out.
- Suckiness Is Painful: Someone is just so bad at something (singing, acting, you name it) that just seeing them do it is painful.
- Televised Torture: The torture is being broadcast, either for the villain's personal entertainment or for public consumption.
- Too Broken to Break: There's no torture that can affect him/her, the damage was done a long time before.
- Torture Chamber Episode: An episode in which one or more characters are tortured for the entire duration.
- Torture First, Ask Questions Later: Someone gets so caught up in torturing someone (or has even already killed them) that they forget to ask questions.
- Torture for Fun and Information: A torture-filled interrogation is presented as comedic.
- Torture Porn: A work that's main appeal is its graphic and unrelenting depiction of torture.
- We Have Ways of Making You Talk: A Stock Phrase.
- Whip of Dominance: Using a whip as a symbol of dominance, control, authority, or sadism.
