Test of Pain

"Today I am a warrior! I must show you my heart!
I travel the river of blood!"

Reverend Mother Mohiam: Put your right hand in the box. [...] I hold at your neck the gom jabbar. Poison needle. Instant death. The test is simple. Remove your hand from the box, and you die.
Paul Atreides: What's in the box?
Mohiam: Pain.
Paul: Why are you doing this?
Mohiam: An animal caught in a trap will gnaw off its own leg to escape. What will you do?

— Dune (2021)

Sometimes a character will face a test or pursuit of a goal that requires their commitment to be measured to its very end. Therefore, some method of causing the character pain can be a very effective tool for testing their resolve. The methods used for this can often appear to simply be torture on the surface, and in some cases that may indeed be what is done, but often the pain is short-lived but intense. The test may involve some form of Self-Harm, such as inflicting cuts on oneself or holding extremely hot or cold objects. The test also doesn't have to involve physical pain; emotional and/or psychological torment can be just as effective if not more so, especially for those who Feel No Pain or have a high tolerance.

An Initiation Ceremony or Rite of Passage can involve tests of pain tolerance depending on the culture in question, but unlike hazing, these are done with the intent of measuring strength, endurance, and willpower rather than just pulling cruel pranks (and are usually not meant to be fatal, which hazing can end with). Also, such tests may be well-known to those who will be undergoing them due to being culturally or spiritually engrained, or they may be a Secret Test of Character. Failure in such a test, depending on the circumstances and the cultural/spiritual/etc. importance of passing, can result in ridicule, loss of social status, or even being made into a Persona Non Grata and/or The Exile.

One commonly-used method for this test is "running a gauntlet". While the particulars can vary greatly, it usually involves the person being tested having to walk between rows of people who inflict pain on them in some manner, with the goal being to get out of the "gauntlet" without giving up or succumbing to what's being done.

Threshold Guardians will often be the ones to give these tests. The way they are administered can overlap with a "Leave Your Quest" Test if the recipient is urged to give up on the test if they can't handle the torment.

The Gang Initiation Fight is a subtrope. See also:

• Heroic Willpower, where a character overcomes being possessed or otherwise taken over by an evil presence through sheer force of will.
• Macho Masochism, where a person lets themself get hurt or deliberately encounters painful things to make themself look tough.
• Misery Builds Character, the general mindset that experiencing pain and suffering can make someone develop inner strength.
• Training from Hell, which is just a harshly rigorous training program meant to toughen up someone.
• Trial by Ordeal, where a person's guilt or innocence of a crime is judged based on how they react to pain or torture.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: In Chapter 89, Mei and Iku participate in an ascetic training regimen created by the Serious Group, the former in the hopes of being able to better serve Hahari and the latter to feed into her masochism. The training is described as so hellish that only one person ever managed to complete the entire regimen, with such exercises as doing a hundred cleaning laps, meditating under the watch of a machine that smacks them if they lose focus, chanting prayers at the top of their lungs, simple meals that are difficult to eat, and Meditating Under a Waterfall that's only just warm enough to avoid causing hypothermia. The two of them are the only ones in the trainee group still standing in the end, and after they leave, it's revealed that the one other person to complete the regimen was Rentarou.
• Fruits Basket: In an inversion of the Gang Initiation Fight, when Arisa Uotani decides to go straight and leave the gang of sukeban she belongs to, the price she has to pay is to get beaten to a pulp by the other members. She's brutally punched and kicked, and likely would've been beaten badly enough to need to be hospitalized if Tohru's mother hadn't shown up to rescue her (having been tipped off by a member of the gang who was fond of Uotani).

Film — Animated

• Felidae: Several initiates of the Claudandus Sect are shown being subjected to Electric Torture, seemingly to the point of death, but more likely to unconsciousness. According to Kong, the ritual is used to "see who's chicken" (i.e., to weed out cowards from the ranks). It's implied that nonbelievers dare each other to undergo the ritual as well.

Film — Live-Action

• Dune: Part Two: One of the film's changes from the book is that Lady Margot Fenring administers the gom jabbar test to Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. When the needle is shown at his neck, the scene then cuts to a discussion between Reverend Mother Mohiam, Princess Irulan, and Lady Fenring, who implies that he not only passed the test (hence Lady Fenring touching her belly and mentioning that the bloodline was secure), but his reactions indicated that he enjoyed the pain and that pain could be used to control him.
• Maverick: While his party is surrounded by hostile Natives, Bret Maverick tells the others someone must face the "Indian bravery test", in which someone has their hands cut off, only passing the test if they don't make a sound. He nobly volunteers and leaves the group to meet his fate... and it turns out the bravery test was bullshit. The Native chief is a buddy of Bret's who owes him money.
• The World Is Not Enough: Discussed by Renard when he holds a meeting with his associates at the Devil's Breath, a natural gas fire that blazes continuously around a natural grotto. He talks about how Hindus make pilgrimages to the site to marvel at the eternally burning flames and test their devotion by saying prayers while holding scalding stones in their hands. He then picks up one of the stones to demonstrate his own immunity to pain and uses it to torture one of his minions who bungled an attempt to assassinate James Bond.

Literature

• Deryni: In the first novel, Deryni Rising, Prince Kelson Haldane must go through a specific ritual to awaken the Haldane magic he inherited from his father King Brion. At the heart of the ritual is a huge jeweled brooch whose clasp is a three-inch-long sharpened needle made of gold. Kelson has to drive the clasp through the palm of his hand. And he has to do it himself; no one else can help him, or the ritual will be ruined and the backlash could kill him.
• Dune: A key scene in both the novel and its various adaptations is when Paul Atreides undergoes the gom jabbar test. In the test, which is administered to all Bene Gesserit initiates (and thus to Paul since his mother has given him Bene Gesserit training, and because he is potentially the Kwisatz Haderach), a person places one hand in a box which gradually stimulates the pain receptors, culminating in excruciating agony. At the same time, the Reverend Mother giving the test holds the gom jabbar (a needle carrying a deadly poison) to the neck of the testee—if the testee removes their hand from the box before the Reverend Mother ends the test, they're killed. Near its end, Paul seriously thinks that his hand has been burned to a cinder inside the box, and Reverend Mother Mohiam says that none of the previous — all female — initiates she had tested had endured that much pain, admitting that she must've wanted him to fail. While she initially compares the test to the difference between an animal chewing off its leg to escape a trap versus a human enduring the pain of the trap in order to kill the trapper, the ensuing conversation with Paul reveals that the test is ultimately to see how a person will behave in a crisis situation, and that it sprang from the early Bene Gesserit needing a means to weed out those who were too weak to include in their breeding programs.
• The Fifth Season: The Fulcrum tests orogene children by breaking their hands, ostensibly to see if they can control their powers since they can be triggered by the orogene's fight-or-flight response. Those who lash out are killed. It was a defining horror of Essun's childhood, and a Wham Line when she's revealed to have done the same to her daughter.
  Schaffa: Can you? Control yourself. It's an important question. The most important, really. Can you?
• Fred, The Vampire Accountant: In Bloody Acquisitions, Fred engages in a duel with a vampire from another clan. Because silver is painful and debilitating to vampires, they both have to hold onto silver swords for as long as possible without letting go or fainting from the pain. Unfortunately for the other vampire Fred is immune to taking damage from silver.
• Inheritance Cycle: The Wandering Tribes of the Hadarac Desert, introduced in Brisingr, has "the Trial of the Long Knives", a ritual/ceremony to resolve leadership disputes where the opposing parties must cut themselves with a dagger to see who can endure more injuries without giving up or passing out. Furthermore, magical healing is not permitted on the wounds after the trial. The one who can sustain the most cuts wins. In the book, Nasuada faces off against the tribe leader Fadawar over the right to lead the Varden and, after defeating him in the trial, takes over the headship of his tribe.
• Island of the Lizard King: You^note the Fighting Fantasy books are written in second-person perspective as if they're narrated by a DM, hence this format need to seek a shaman and complete a series of tests in order to defeat the Lizard King. One of them is "pain", where the shaman casts an Illusion spell that makes you feel like you're being chewed apart by hundreds of flesh grubs. You suffer no health damage, but if your Stamina stat is too low you'll fail the test.
• The Lightbringer Series: This is one of the tests to join the elite Blackguard. Using a combination of several colors of magic, the aspirant is made to experience increasing feelings of fear and pain, until they surrender or pass out. Aspirants are told that they'll be ejected from training if they give up; the truth is that the test is designed to be impossible to pass and the point is to see how long the aspirant can endure. Despite this, Dazen Guile endured everything that the trial could throw at him, and was the only one to do so in living memory.
• The Saga of the Volsungs: Before Signý sends off her sons, at the age of ten, to be trained by her brother Sigmund for the purpose of avenging their father Volsung and their brothers, she tests the boys' toughness by sewing the sleeves of their shirts into the skin and flesh of their arms.^contextAt the time the saga was written, upper-class people would wear clothes with wide sleeves which were "sewed fast" around the wrists in the morning. Her first two sons "complain" about this, and are later deemed unfit to be warriors by Sigmund. When Signý tests her third son, Sinfjotli, in this way, he does not flinch. Signý then rips the sleeve from his arm, tearing off his skin. She remarks that that must have hurt, but Sinfjotli replies that "Volsung wouldn't have thought much of such an injury." Eventually Sinfjotli passes Sigmund's training and avenges Volsung.
• Terra Ignota: Traditionally, aspirants to the throne of the Masonic Empire undergo weeks of Cold-Blooded Torture to prove they have the willpower and the integrity to be good rulers. Among other things, Emperor Cornel MASON had his left foot hacked off piece by piece with a cleaver. 25th-century medicine regrew it just fine, but he suffers from a psychosomatic limp that manifests whenever he's stressed, as it never felt quite right again.
  A MASON will not pass the throne to one who has not been tested beyond the limits of sanity and mercy. Only he who comes through Hell still sane and loyal can, they say, resist the corrupting influence of power this close to absolute.
• The Wheel of Time:
  • The test to become Accepted of the Aes Sedai is to overcome an immersive illusion of the candidate's deepest fears. Egwene's and Nynaeve's tests both pit their duty to the Aes Sedai against their loved ones in more and more painful ways, like abandoning them to a Fate Worse than Death.
    Nynaeve: I left my friend... I left my people... in the Pit of Doom to come back.
  • To become an Aiel Clan Chief or Wise One, the testee is forced to relive ancestral memories revealing the Awful Truth of their people: that their Proud Warrior Race were sworn pacifists who betrayed their vows. Many don't survive the experience — one actually ate his own eyeballs to blot out the visions.

Live-Action TV

• Babylon 5: In "Moments of Transition", Delenn, de facto leader of the Minbari Religious Caste, ends the Minbari Civil War by inviting Shakiri, the leader of the Warrior Caste, to an ancient site where both leaders are expected to stand in a circle and be blasted with successive waves of energy from an emitter in the ceiling. Whoever endures longer is the winner. Shakiri can't endure and flees, but Delenn collapses before she can exit the circle. Shakiri's Number Two Neroon, a former enemy of Delenn, then enters the circle to pull her out at the cost of his own life, while crying to the heavens that "the calling of my heart is religious!"
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Spike in the S6 finale undergoes a series of arduous and painful trials so as to regain his soul and prove his worth to Buffy.
• Kung Fu (1972): In order to become a full Shaolin priest, a trainee must lift a heavy brazier full of hot coals with his forearms and move it away from the temple's exit door. The rim of the brazier is set with tiger and dragon reliefs on its underside so that the trainee will brand himself by lifting it. Kwai Chang Caine passes this trial without crying out in pain, and the door opens so he can leave the temple and begin searching for his brother Danny.
• Kung Fu: The Legend Continues: In the Grand Finale story arc, Peter Caine (the great-grandson of the original Caine) passes this test in order to take his father's place as a spiritual leader in the city.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: in "You Are Cordially Invited", O'Brien and Bashir are looking forward to debauchery at Worf's "bachelor party". They are dismayed to learn that said party is really the four-day Klingon ceremony of Kal'hyah. The group is expected to fast, endure brutal heat, shed blood, and pass other tests of pain and endurance, which leads to some dark humor when O'Brien and Bashir begin to crack under the pressure. They get to take the frustration out on him later: part of the marriage ceremony involves the groomsmen attacking the newlyweds with sticks, in homage to how Kahless's wedding was attacked by one of his enemies.
    Bashir: It's working. I'm having a vision...about the future... I can see it so clearly...
    O'Brien: Yeah?
    Bashir: I'm going to kill Worf. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to kill Worf. It's all so clear to me now. Kill Worf... kill Worf...
    Both: Kill Worf... kill Worf...
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: Painstiks are Shock Sticks used by Klingons in two important rites:
    • The Rite of Ascension consists of two rites that formally recognize a Klingon as a warrior. In the second rite, the Klingon walks between eight warriors wielding painstiks, who deliver powerful jolts to the Klingon's torso while he expresses his most deeply-held feelings. In "The Icarus Factor", Wesley, Geordi, Data, Chief O'Brien, and Dr. Pulaski arrange for Worf to go through the second rite via the holodeck, since he hadn't had an opportunity to go through it at the time that a Klingon normally would.
      Data: The true test of Klingon strength is to admit one's most profound feelings while under extreme duress.
    • The first step in the Rite of Succession is the Sonchi ceremony. The Arbiter of Succession and all those who are vying for the position of Chancellor give a formal challenge to the corpse of the former Chancellor and shock him with a painstik. The thought process is that between the pain from the painstik and the challenge, no living Klingon would dare back down lest he lose his honor, and this confirms that the former Chancellor is indeed dead and not faking it. This ceremony is shown in "Reunion" being done to K'mpec by Duras, Gowron, and Picard, who K'mpec named as Arbiter before his death due to suspicions that Duras was the one who masterminded his poisoning.
  • Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: "Charades": One of the Vulcan engagement rituals involves the groom-to-be making tea for the bride's parents, wherein they are required to pour the boiling hot kettle bare-handed—a test of their ability to suppress their emotional response to pain. While rehearsing this with the temporarily biologically human Spock, his mother Amanda Grayson mentions that living among Vulcans involves hiding a lot of pain.
  • Star Trek: Voyager: "Day of Honor": B'Elanna has mixed feelings about her Proud Warrior Race heritage and only reluctantly undergoes her Day of Honor ceremony in the Holodeck, so when she hears that it will begin with the "Ritual of Twenty Pain-Sticks", a duel, and a slog through sulfur lagoons, she says, "You know, I don't think so."
• Xena: Warrior Princess: Xena's old war-party before she abandoned her raiding lifestyle has a trial they call the Gauntlet. The trial-goer removes all armor and other members of the war-band form a short pathway lining up, and then the one being tested proceeds to march between the lines the others have formed while the other members beat on the one with sticks. Xena goes through it herself in one episode and comes out of it successfully. When someone attempts to order the war-band to kill her while she's vulnerable, they refuse to follow that order out of respect for Xena's strength and resolve.
• Zorro (1990): In the season 4 episode "Ultimate Justice", Zorro has to save the Alcalde's life when the latter strays onto sacred Indian lands. The Indians are willing to let the Acalde go if Zorro passes three tests, the first one of which is called the "River of pain" where Zorro has to crawl through a lineup of Indians who subject him to a brutal beating.

Tabletop Games

• Ars Magica: One Wizard Duel variant has the contestants stand in a field of Magic Fire until one of them forfeits or collapses. As a formal duel, it's legally binding in Magical Society but is unpopular outside the more pyromaniacally inclined magi of House Flambeau.
• Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition: The shriver is a Robotic Torture Device from the Nine Hells that grants magical augmentations to people who can endure the literally hellish experience without passing out or screaming in pain. If they can't pass a series of saving throws that scales with the damage they've suffered, they don't get the reward.
• Mage: The Awakening: As embodiments of strength through adversity, demons of Pandemonium require their summoners to overcome a painful physical or mental ordeal. One demon, The Thousandth Cut, slowly lives up to its name until the summoner either imposes their will on it or passes out from blood loss.
• Shadowrun: Initiation into the Yardies gang is simple: the applicant has to stand still and not make any move to defend themselves while a bunch of Yardies members surround them and beat them mercilessly for a few minutes. Only orks and trolls can survive the brutality — they deliberately kill any elves or dwarves who try to join and humans just aren't tough enough for it. Newly-initiated Yardies typically have to get multiple cybernetic replacements for body parts that were too heavily damaged to be saved.
• Vampire: The Requiem: In the Sotoha bloodline, the only way for a vassal to free themself from their oath of fealty is to commit ritual Seppuku in denunciation of their Lord. Being vampires, the disembowelment only puts them in a survivable coma.

Video Games

• Baldur's Gate III: Inside the abandoned temple of Selûne, you can stumble upon a worshiper of Loviatar, the Faerûnian goddess of pain. Upon meeting him, he would soon encourage you to alleviate your suffering by undergoing the Rite of Loviatar, which involves enduring a lot of beating. Should you perform this rite correctly by reveling in the pain that is being inflicted upon you, the man will be impressed by your fortitude and grant you Loviatar's blessing in the form of a permanent status buff.
• Divinity: Original Sin II: One ghost only grants his Sidequest to someone who can experience his final memories in silence — he refused to make a sound as his murderer burned him to death.
• Earthbound 1994: In order to complete his Mu training, Poo undergoes a test where an illusionary being asks Poo to take portions of his body, starting with his limbs, to his ears, to his eyes, and finally his very mind. Each loss comes with a corresponding loss of HP, and for the loss of Poo's ears and eyes, the battle music turns off and the battle screen is replaced by darkness, respectively.
• Fallout: New Vegas: The Great Khan tribe's initiation ritual, used for outsiders that wish to join the Khans or children born into the Khans who believe they're ready for adulthood, has the initiate enduring a beatdown from several other Khans for a full minute without fighting back or calling for mercy. Despite rumors of the ritual being potentially fatal, the Khans see no shame in someone calling for mercy and attempting the ritual again when they feel more prepared, so cases of the initiate dying are mercifully rare.
• Heavy Rain: The Origami Killer kidnaps young boys as a way to test their fathers, putting them through a series of bloody trials to see who behaves as a father should in his mind, i.e. enduring whatever pain and overcoming any obstacle to save his son. The reason behind this is because his own dad failed to save his younger brother as kid and basically allowed him to drown via inaction.
• League of Legends: Urgot is a brutal Social Darwinist leading a cult within the depths of Zaun, and everyone who joins is subjected to brutal, unfathomable torture as a way for Urgot to test their "worthiness".
  You will thank me, between the screams.
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
  • In the quest "Test of Will", Link is challenged by three Goron brothers to sit on a super-heated rock without leaving a designated area or passing out from the heat. If he can endure the heat of the rock for long enough, he is rewarded with access to Joloo Nah Shrine.
  • In order to demonstrate that he is worthy of wielding the Master Sword, Link must allow the sword to drain some of the life energy from his body. If he attempts to claim the sword with less than 13 full Heart Containers, the sword will kill him before he can claim it.
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: In the vicinity of Spectacle Rock on the eastern border of the Gerudo Desert, a Hylian man named Rahdo challenges Link to two tests of endurance against the heat during the day and against the cold during the night, each without wearing clothes. The first guy to pass out from exhaustion loses.
• Neverwinter Nights 2: In order to become a member of the Ice Troll Berserkers in the Mask of the Betrayer expansion, one of the initiation rituals the Player Character will have to overcome involves them demonstrating their tolerance of harsh conditions by standing in a tub of icy cold water for an extended period of time, without any of their gear or any magical protection. Once they've joined, they can attempt it a 2nd time in water chilled with ice magic, and enduring will net them a magical ring of cold resistance.
• StarCraft 2 has the Shadow Walk, a Dark Templar test in which an aspiring Protoss wishing to take the title of Dark Templar must make their way through a dark valley while fellow Nerazim leap from the shadows and attack the initiate. If the initiate reaches the end of the valley without being incapacitated, they are promoted to Dark Templar. The only person to be given the title without doing the Shadow Walk was Artanis. Vorazun felt that Artanis, fending off hundreds of Zerg in the dark depths of Ulnar, was symbolically identical to the hazard of the trial (possibly moreso), and his efforts deemed him worthy. The trial isn't explicitly about pain, but the violent method of the trial will likely result in injury.

Webcomics

• Kill Six Billion Demons: One God-Emperor's Praetorian Guard only accepted men who could withstand a two-hour flogging. It doubled as a Secret Test of Character: men who stayed completely silent throughout were too dangerous to keep.
  Au Vam did not trust any man who had become so intimate with pain. A man like that must be fed with blood.
• The Order of the Stick: Parodied when Redcloak takes command of the hobgoblin army. Learning that his induction would involve the Ritual of Public Spanking, the Ritual of Uncomfortable Piercings in Private Places, and the Ritual of Doing the First Four Rituals Over Again, Only Slower and While Singing, he gives himself a Klingon Promotion instead.

Western Animation

• The Dragon Prince: After getting saved by the human General Amaya, Sunfire elf Janai vouches for her. In order to decide Amaya's fate, the sunfire elves use a bright blinding light, telling her to look at it or die. It shrinks her pupils and leaves the general in tears, but she stays alive and is judged to have a pure heart.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: "The Good, The Bad and The Ed" has Eddy challenge Rolf to earn the most difficult badge possible, the Hairy Chest of Resilience badge. This requires both Eddy and Rolf to go through a series of challenges where they have to endure each painful task, such as getting their leg hairs waxed, getting their funny bone banged up, going through thorny brambles naked, getting crushed between boulders, and finally go through a domino effect of painful experiences that ends with them landing on solid ground. Eddy loses by passing out one second before Rolf, and to add insult to injury, gets the humiliating prize of the "Crybaby Boo-Hoo Badge".
• Gravity Falls: In "Dipper vs. Manliness", one of the tests that the Manotaurs give Dipper in order to prove his manliness is to stick his hand in the hole of pain. He does so reluctantly, and can be heard screaming offscreen.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: In "My Fair Mandy", one of the events at the beauty pageant is the gom jabbar test from Dune (one of many references to the series in the show). The scene isn't shown in detail, but what is depicted consists of Mindy screaming that her hand burns while sticking it in a box with a hole in the front. When Mindy pulls her hand out prematurely, it costs her a few points.

Real Life

• The Sateré-Mawé tribe of Brazil has an initiation rite for boys in which they put their hands into gloves made from sewn-together leaves which have 80 agitated bullet ants^note one of the insects at the top of the Schmidt sting pain index, and so called because the sudden shock of intense pain is compared to a gunshot in the seams. They must keep the "gloves" on for 5 to 10 minutes and are only considered to be fully initiated when this is done twenty times.
• Justin O. Schmidt claimed to have apparently put himself through this repeatedly for scientific categorization purposes in his Schmidt sting pain index, which rates the relative pain caused by insects' stings and provides brief descriptive comparisons on the sensation. The aforementioned bullet ant was said to be "pure, intense, brilliant pain...like walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail embedded in your heel." The sting of a warrior wasp caused him to ask, "Why did I start this list?"

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