Basic Trope: Creating or raising minions from birth to ensure perfect training and loyalty.
- Straight: Alice was raised by Dr. Dark to be a Super-Soldier with Psychic Powers. Alice is often beaten for failure.
- Exaggerated: Dr. Dark raises his own minions from zygotes, training them to be unstoppable forces of evil right when they're born.
- Downplayed: Alice started training young, but not as a toddler.
- Justified:
- Dr. Dark plans upon replacing humanity so of course his minions will be his creations.
- Dr. Dark believes that minions with no family ties whose only purpose in life has been service to him will be more loyal than mere Punch Clock Villains.
- Inverted:
- Dr. Dark uses only the elderly and infirm to create his Super Soldiers.
- Professor Lightgiver adopts Alice to teach and train her since childhood so she would become a brave, kind, caring and compassionate empowered protector of the humanity.
- Subverted: There are rumors that Dr. Dark's Shadow Blades are created this way. After some investigation it turns out they're merely cyborgs made from the best of his minions.
- Double Subverted: Except that his best minions were grown in a jar.
- Parodied: Dr. Dark attempts to rob the treasury with a squad of babies. The babies don't obey his commands at all and he is hauled off into the insane asylum. His babies are all rapidly adopted.
- Zig Zagged: There are rumors that Dr. Dark's minions are this but it turns out their cyborgs made from his best minions. Then he reveals those minions were grown in a jar, and then he states that he was speaking metaphorically so 'raised in a jar' means 'raised with canned health food', which in turn was made from failed Tykebombs.
- Averted: Dr. Dark only has hired mooks or robotic minions.
- Enforced: "We want Dr. Dark to be truly soulless and awful. How can we do this?" "I know! Let's have him experiment on an adorable child!"
- Lampshaded: "You want us to fight a child! You Monster!"
- Invoked: "I, Dr. Dark, have had enough of these pathetic Mooks, with their unions and their dental plan benefits. I shall create my own soldiers, who will follow me without question. An if they complain of a toothache, I'll beat all their teeth out out of their mouths."
- Exploited: Hiro uses the knowledge of this unethical behavior to drive Dark own minions against him.
- Defied: Lt. Gray proposes this and Dr. Dark not only rejects it but shoots the man for several reasons including both that it'd take too long for the reward, be unreliable, and just plain wrong.
- Discussed: "It's not uncommon for mad scientists to make their own personal armies from scratch."
- Conversed:
- Dr. Dark chooses for his Super Soldiers the people he knows will do anything to help him succeed: his parents.
- Super-Soldier Dark is capable of conquering the world; he just needs a ruler to present it to. He raises his son/daughter to be that ruler.
- Deconstructed: Alice's issues are shown in great detail as well as the extent of her abuse. She obviously understands her position and resents her master. When she tries to rebel one too many times Dr. Dark has her killed without effort.
- Reconstructed: One of Dark's officers discovers the Shadow Blades project and is horrified. He takes particular pity on Alice, and tries to smuggle her out to be deprogrammed, but her programming runs so deep that she feels genuine love for Dark and treats the officer like you would expect a highly trained Super Soldier to act if you threatened her family.
- Played For Laughs: Alice was created for this purpose but is totally ineffectual due to being just a kid. Dr. Dark doesn't have the patience to raise an army and gives up and raises Alice as a daughter.
- Played For Drama: Alice is raised by Dr. Dark and even after her Heel–Face Turn to the heroes she can't socialize normally, resorting to violence at all times. She can't help it. The heroes struggle between helping her and helping her victims.
Behold, the perfect trope: Tyke Bomb! I have edited it myself from back when it was just a Describe Topic Here...
