| rdfs:comment
| - Being Tortured Makes You Evil is a TV-Tropes-popularized term about the villains who were being tortured or abused, both mentally and psychically, turned evil due of being inflicted with pain and suffering that they endured. Motivation of torture that resulting a character become evil in this way ranges from simply mere amusement to more complex and systematic one, the way a Big Bad indoctrinated his subjects.
- Need someone to Face Heel Turn, but the individual is uncooperative? No worries, just strap him/her to a table and go to town for a while. That's right, if you inflict enough pain on someone, they WILL turn evil. Somehow. Sometimes handwaved by throwing the word 'brainwashing' around, but more often than not, it comes down to this simple theory: Pain is bad, so if you add enough pain to someone, they become bad! As a literary device, it has two handy uses: It counts as a severe Kick the Dog (or worse) for the original villain, AND creates a tear-jerking Tragic Villain.
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| abstract
| - Need someone to Face Heel Turn, but the individual is uncooperative? No worries, just strap him/her to a table and go to town for a while. That's right, if you inflict enough pain on someone, they WILL turn evil. Somehow. Sometimes handwaved by throwing the word 'brainwashing' around, but more often than not, it comes down to this simple theory: Pain is bad, so if you add enough pain to someone, they become bad! Though you have to wonder... why does it tend to make them loyal as well? You'd think the newly evil victim might turn their newfound lack of morality toward the guy that did this to them, preferably in a manner similar to what the villain did to them. Stockholm Syndrome might factor in depending on how the torture was inflicted. In some cases, also, the torture was so horrific as to give the torturer a psychological hold on the victim, terrifying into obedience. Also, sometimes the the newly evil victim isn't loyal to their torture, but is still evil all the same and is just lashing out at everyone. This trope finds some justification in Real Life, where the cycle of "abusee turns abuser" is well known and documented. And that's ignoring how many an anti-hero becomes semi-evil after some sort of tragedy -- emotional pain and trauma, if you will. As a literary device, it has two handy uses: It counts as a severe Kick the Dog (or worse) for the original villain, AND creates a tear-jerking Tragic Villain. Related to Teach Him Anger, Beware the Nice Ones, Break the Cutie, I Control My Minions Through... and possibly Who's Laughing Now? Can often be a Start of Darkness or Freudian Excuse. It can also result in the creation of a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds if done too seriously. A character with Incorruptible Pure Pureness is resistant to this. Rape as Redemption is roughly the inverse trope. Examples (Read at your own risk, as many are spoilers)
- Being Tortured Makes You Evil is a TV-Tropes-popularized term about the villains who were being tortured or abused, both mentally and psychically, turned evil due of being inflicted with pain and suffering that they endured. Motivation of torture that resulting a character become evil in this way ranges from simply mere amusement to more complex and systematic one, the way a Big Bad indoctrinated his subjects.
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