Heel Face Brainwashing

Someone is Brainwashed or Mind Controlled into a Heel Face Turn. Yes, that's right, a Heel Face Turn.

This is most notable when it's considered inherently different, or better, than when the heels do the Brainwashing. Then it sends the classic "the ends justify the means" Family-Unfriendly Aesop.

In-universe, the Godzilla Threshold can justify almost anything, but on a meta level, when this happens, it means that either the morality is Black and Grey Morality (or Grey and Gray Morality), or there is serious Values Dissonance going on, or maybe just thoughtless Moral Dissonance. Occasionally, the heroes ask first, and the villain figures that he's stronger than whatever they will do, and accepts, only for it to work.

Someone who breaks the brainwashing that put him in a Heel Face Mind Screw, if he doesn't decide on his own to stay good (the Power of Friendship is powerful) similar to Amnesiac Dissonance, will likely be a more formidable enemy than before out of righteous indignation. If they have some special powers, it's much more likely that they'll break the brainwashing after exhibiting said powers.

On occasion, happens as part of a Memory Gambit. May be induced with a Mirror Morality Machine. The brainwashing can sometimes involve Mind Rape or (oddly) a Care Bear Stare, though not always. However, if it does involve Mind Rape, expect even more Black and Grey Morality. Compare Brainwashing for the Greater Good and Deprogramming and contrast Face Monster Turn.

It should be noted that if any kind of brainwashing is successful in turning a person from one side to the opposing side, the brainwashee will automatically consider the change (by virtue of the brainwashing itself) to be a Heel Face Turn, no matter what the real case is.

Anime and Manga

 * In Death Note,
 * In Code Geass R2, Lelouch Geasses a lot of people into . Since by this point in the story the Black and Gray Morality has turned into a soupy mess, whether this is a Heel Face Turn, a Face Heel Turn, a Mook Face Turn, or what is up for a lot of interpretation. Before that point, the most he'd done was Mind Control people into doing specific tasks for him, not actually compel them to switch sides against their will.
 * Less morally ambiguously, this happens to who develops Laser-Guided Amnesia and is taken in by a nice guy (who happens to be a rebel) who does his best to take care of her.
 * In Dragon Ball Z this happens... sort of... when Goku has Buu resurrected as a good person, though technically he's not actually being controlled. He's simply been reincarnated with all of the power retained, but all the evil cleansed from his soul between lives.
 * If I recall correctly, Neo Queen Serenity wanted to cleanse the evil out of her subjects. Those who didn't like the idea of being Mind Raped Gently Massaged left the Moon and became the Black Moon Clan.
 * Sounds like fanon, not canon.
 * Made a bit clearer in the books, where it's less this, and more the fact that she sent away a guy who was a serial killer, and said villain happened to have kids somehow.
 * in Durarara!! can do this, as part of the character being Bad Powers, Good People. For instance, in one scene a mind-controlled thug is told to go home and lead a good life.
 * Fairy Tail has the superweapon Nirvana, which can deal these out en masse (as well as making good guys evil). While it's used by the villlains (and a bunch of people spontaneously changing their alignment is recognized as a bad thing), one of the villains is hit by accident, and no one sees the brainwashing as wrong. It helps that it was an accident, the heroes weren't actually involved, and the villain was revealed to be a Fallen Hero anyway.
 * The titular protagonist of Kajika has the ability to literally punch the evil out of people, which he does to a few villains who offend him. A couple of secondary characters who get caught up in the events see him do this, and he politely asks if they want him to help them get rid of their evil, too, but they nervously turn down the offer.
 * This is how Dartz actually recruits new members of Doma during the fourth season of Yu-Gi-Oh!.
 * In Naruto, does this to himself. That was an accident, though.  And since It Only Works Once, his plan was ruined.

Comic Books

 * This apparently happened to several Flash rogues.
 * To elaborate, during Identity Crisis (see below), it was revealed that Barry Allen had Zatanna brainwash The Top, after he caught Top vandalizing Iris Allen's grave. The newly heroic Top went on to do the same to other rogues. He also lost his mind, which taught Flash a valuable lesson about this trope.
 * One of the key revelations of Identity Crisis was that the Justice League had been doing this to its villains. Doctor Light, in particular, made something akin to a Heel Mook Turn before having his memory restored and becoming a legitimate threat again. Who likes to rape.
 * Not exactly true. Certain members of the Justice League had been secretly erasing villain's memories when they learned heroes' identities, and it was only after Dr. Light raped Sue Dibny (and swore to do it again to anyone within reach) that they tried to Heel Face Mind Screw him. Then Batman showed up and, when he protested, they mind wiped him. They notably don't do that anymore, especially after all of that came into the light.
 * At the end of Chris Claremont's run on X-Men, Magneto finds out that Moira MacTaggert had a procedure like this to him after he was turned into a child during one of his many zany schemes for world conquest. Thinking that this was the reason for his Heel Face Turn, he uses the procedure on one of the X-Men teams for a Face Heel Turn, but finds out that the use of mutant powers quickly reverse the effects of the procedure. (A matter of minutes.) Then he dies but he got better, and becomes a one-dimensional cliched villain again who later uses drugs because being bad wasn't bad enough then dies again (but it wasn't really him this time) until Claremont finally got a hold of him for some Character Rerailment in the relaunch of Excalibur.
 * Another X-Men example. Magneto kidnapped Xavier. Sadly, the X-Men were disassembled at the time. Jean Grey had to find a new team, and quickly. So she goes around asking for help to former allies and recruiting unknown, unexperienced mutants. Also, she acknowledges that one of Magneto's lieutenants, Frenzy, has been captured by the US Army. Not only does Jean enter her mind to get the info she needs on Genosha (Magneto's island) and its defenses, but she thinks that having a superpowered guide in that hellhole would be a good idea, so she just rewrites Frenzy's mind and makes her an X-Men enthusiast (so fanatically devoted to the X-Men cause, all of a sudden, that it was creepy).
 * Guess what was the reaction of a character named Frenzy, after she found out that the "good guys" brainwashed her...
 * Ghost Rider's Penance Stare occasionally has this effect, although forcing people to feel all the pain they have inflicted on the innocent is more a punishment than anything else.
 * This, and all of its myriad Unfortunate Implications, was a huge part of Mark Gruenwald's Squadron Supreme series. The Squadron (an Expy of the Justice League) institute brainwashing as the all-purpose punishment for crimes. The Black and Grey Morality of the series shows the brainwashing being a good thing for one character (who was just misguided to begin with and stays a good guy after the brainwashing is undone), and tragic for two others (one of whom becomes irreversibly catatonic after running into a contradiction in her programming).
 * In Volume 5 of Empowered,
 * In an issue of Swedish children's comic Bamse, notorious villain Krösus Sork is given a drink that makes him temporarily kind and generous.
 * In the X-Men Spin-Off Exiles, the reality-altering, body-swapping villain Proteus  It does help that Proteus WAS planning on making the entire universe his plaything.
 * When J'onn J'onzz undoes a mental block that makes him afraid of fire and unconsciously sends himself into a Face Heel Turn, one of his first "evil" acts is to use his mental powers to perform this on various criminals. Inmates in high class prisons begin watching Sesame Street, the patients in Arkham are suddenly overcome with grief over their crimes and have to be restrained from committing suicide, KKK members begin lynching themselves, and Lex Luthor (at the time president) is put into a coma.
 * The entire Indigo Lantern Corps. Their rings specifically seek out people who lack compassion for others such as Black Hand and force them to feel it. The rings also use their ability to manipulate other emotions on the emotion spectrum to control the feelings of the Indigo Lanterns (the Indigo entity itself, however, averts this and seeks out hosts who are already compassionate).
 * Two Silver Age Superman "Imaginary Stories" featured this trope. The first, "Superman-Red and Superman-Blue," had Superman split into the titular super-genius versions of himself. They then create an "Anti-Evil Ray," which they then upload to a bunch of satellites and bombard the planet with. Sure enough, the ray brainwashes everyone into being "good," which leads to a perfect world, free from disease, crime, and war. The second (whose title escapes me) has Luthor get Mind Raped by psychic aliens until all evil is removed from him. He then marries Lois Lane, has a son, and becomes the world's most famous and beloved scientist.
 * In Thieves and Kings,
 * Discussed at the end of Mandrago, an obvious parody of Mandrake the Magician by the Italian Jacovitti. The protagonist, who has acquired limitless magic powers, decides to make the world a perfect place and brainwashes every single inhabitant of Earth into being unable to do evil. When Mandrago overdoes it, loses his powers and the world snaps back to normal, the narrator points out that mankind lost world peace, but regained free will.
 * In the first appearance of the Legion of Super-Villains, Saturn Queen explains her backstory, that she was good while she lived on Titan, and just suddenly became evil after leaving it. Supergirl deduces from this that Saturn's rings emit radiation that keeps Titan natives good, scoops some up, and changes Saturn Queen's alignment so she betrays her allies. She promises to keep a chunk of ring-rock with her at all times so she will stay good forever. None of our heroes is bothered by this in the slightest. This aspect of her character is ignored in every subsequent appearance, thankfully!

Fan Works

 * Done in Kyon: Big Damn Hero to . It was considered a better option than
 * Technically, she wasn't brainwashed. Haruhi thought that brainwashing was not cool.
 * The Villain Protagonist of the Mass Effect fanfic "The Council Era" is growing an army of dezba from the DNA of one of his Mooks. He intends to surgically alter their genetic thought process in order to "civilize" them, so that they will serve the Citadel against the krogan during the war. They were an almost Exclusively Evil race beforehand, so he's somewhat justified.

Film

 * In 102 Dalmatians, this is tried on Cruella de Vil. This being a Disney film, it works until it's broken, and then...
 * This is done to Foxy Loxy at the end of Chicken Little, for extra Broken Aesop-ness.
 * Star Wars - Attack of the Clones: "You don't want to sell me deathsticks". "I don't want to sell you deathsticks". "You want to go home and rethink your life". "I want to go home and rethink my life". Granted, all he was made to do was go home and have a good think, it was perfectly within the dude's power afterwards to decide for himself that selling deathsticks is a pretty good gig after all, if that's what he really wanted out of life.
 * He turns up in one of the later Boba Fett books, and guess what?
 * At the end of The Neverending Story II, Bastian uses his final magic wish to ask that the nearly omnipotent Big Bad gain "a heart". She's so struck with grief at what she's done that she proceeds to fix all the evils carried out in the rest of the film.
 * This troper got the impression that Xayide's new heart caused her to have a lethal My God, What Have I Done? moment, and the undoing of everything she'd done to Fantasia was a case of No Ontological Inertia.
 * Stargate: The Ark of Truth. The Ark is a brainwashing device that's the only way to stop the Ori worshippers from taking over the galaxy. The moral objections are raised, but in the end ignored.
 * The Ancients did refrain from using it because of moral objections, and decided to flee instead; given the trouble caused by the continued existence of the Ori, this was a seriously neglectful act. When it is eventually used, it's a fairly simple case of self-defense.
 * This was status quo in Demolition Man, where criminals placed in cryoprisons were brainwashed with various "rehabilitation" programs, like an affinity for taking up knitting and such. It was also inverted, as it is discovered that the Big Bad
 * In one of the Garfield Non Serial Movies, Garfield's Pet Force, Vetvix (Dr. Liz Wilson from Another Dimension) ends up like this, satisfying Emperor Jon (Jon's counterpart)'s movie-long desire for a wife.

Literature

 * In The Stainless Steel Rat series, the protagonist's future wife starts at as a brilliant but hideously evil con artist. She is brainwashed in a way that allows her to retain her personality but lose the crazy (except for some Mama Bear and Beware the Nice Ones moments).
 * This operation can be seen as a cure for sociopathy, which contemporary research suggests is more like a cognitive and emotional disability than a character trait. The moral implications of this type of "brainwashing" are probably less negative than most other examples given here.
 * Slippery Jim refers to it as a "surgically implanted conscience".
 * Pumping the Family Unfriendliness up a notch is a double subversion of Beauty Equals Goodness: What originally caused Jim to stay his hand upon meeting Angelina was her striking beauty. However,.
 * In The Riftwar Cycle, the dark and light elves are the same people, separated by culture and morality. The dark elves live in the frozen north, the light elves in Elvandar, a magical forest created by their Spellweavers. It's possible for a dark elf to hear the "Call of Elvandar" and over a span of years, culminating in a single, sudden switch, convert to the other side. The conversion involves a full-scale Loss of Identity, complete with taking on a different name. Their previous self is explicitly said to be considered dead by all involved. Due to the Protagonist-Centered Morality, however, this more questionable side of the light elves is never explored.
 * A Clockwork Orange is a possible Ur Example and also an Unbuilt Trope - Villain Protagonist Alex is conditioned to have strongly adverse reactions to the mere thought of sex or violence, and it pretty clearly ruins his life.
 * Unusual in that Alex seems to remain the same Complete Monster he was before the treatment: his brainwashing just prevents him from acting on it. In effect, it's more of a Restraining Bolt.
 * Which was the entire point of the story: if you force someone to be good against their will, then they aren't really a good person.
 * And when Alex does become a Retired Monster (depending on what version of the story you're reading) in the end, it's not because of the conditioning but because he just doesn't find wanton violence fun anymore. Which was the reason the rest of his droogs eventually gave up the life and something that was already starting to happen with Alex even before the brainwashing.
 * In Craig Shaw Gardner's Cineverse Cycle, Captain Crusader (known by various names in the Cineverse's many B-movie worlds) has a habit of spouting vaguely relevant Aesops when encountered. It's eventually discovered by the main cast that hearing these has profound psychological effects on anybody native to the Cineverse, sometimes including the power to instantly convert mooks and minor villains. As all villains in the Cineverse are the card-carrying variety, who get their mooks from Central Casting, the Heel Face Mind Screw is here played as straight as possible.
 * In an instance where the title itself is a spoiler, Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man refers to a future America's use of a punishment along these lines. It involves utterly breaking someone mentally and then rebuilding them into a model citizen.  It's commented that the old punishment of execution is barbaric and pointless when a person could contribute to society if the bad was drained from them.
 * This is pretty much the effect of a Confessor's power in the Sword of Truth series. Said power being to make whoever is Touched love the Confessor so much that they'll do anything for her. So someone could be fanatically devoted to gutting the Confessor one second, then fanatically devoted to saving her the next. This is typically only used in self defense.
 * During the series proper; in the setting prior a Confessor's duties normally included being on call to do this to convicted criminals, prisoners of unknown guilt to be interrogated, and accused people who request this as the only way to conclusively prove their innocence (lie-detector magic doesn't seem to exist). Differing regions had different stances on the practice, but there was evidently steady work for a considerable number of Confessors.
 * This fails spectacularly in an episode of Legend of the Seeker, based on the books. Kahlan confesses a convicted murderer who reveals that he did indeed commit the crime. Turns out the real criminal used a magical artifact to plant the memory of the murder into the patsy's head. Unfortunately, they figured it out after the guy was already executed.
 * In The Farseer Trilogy, this is done to Regal (the morality is admittedly grey anyway.) Frustratingly enough, he is then killed by a rodent in the same (last) chapter, so the reader never gets to actually see good!Regal in action.
 * Doc Savage's Crime School, which bears an uncomfortably close resemblance to lobotomization for modern readers.
 * This is surprisingly common in Utopias before science fiction's Golden Age—as in, so before the Golden Age that they also talk positively of the annihilation of all non-"useful" animal life. It's still used straight as late as the middle of Isaac Asimov's career, although in the short story in question the character advocating the procedure is
 * Given a Shout-Out in the Whateley Universe story 'Razzle Dazzle', in which the narrating supervillain (who probably isn't entirely honest overall, mind) reminisces about how he basically shut down the setting's Doc Savage Expy hard by blowing the whistle on the massively debilitating long-term consequences of his version of the process...
 * In the Foundation novels, the Mule is a terrifying, unpredicted mutant who has the power to conquer worlds by brainwashing their leaders into liking him. He effortlessly topples the First Foundation with nothing but this ability. The Second Foundation eventually beats him by, uh, brainwashing him. Into being a nice guy. Really, though, the Foundation is never exactly portrayed as morally good. Its survival is simply considered necessary.
 * In a supreme irony, a Knight Templar who engages in this behavior in Glasshouse is forced to reprogram herself so she believes it's wrong to change people like this. Decide for yourself whether that's hypocrisy or Karma.
 * In Villains by Necessity, this is the force driving the plot. The Anti-Villain / Anti-Hero main character doesn't want to have his free will stripped away by a do-good Knight Templar priest who has nearly driven all evil from the world using a magic brainwashing staff. However, this is in a Dungeons & Dragons type setting where the Balance Between Good and Evil is imperative, and the world will end when the last evil is wiped away. (The last evil is implied to be within the main party.)
 * Considering that the world ending would be evil (and appears to be viewed as evil In-Universe), it appears that the last evil would never be wiped away. Consequently, problem solved.
 * In a noncanon Percy Jackson and The Olympians side story, Percy battles the Titan Iapetus near Lethe, the River of Forgetfulness. Percy dunks himself and Iapetus in the river. Percy, a son of Poseidon, stayed dry, and Iapetus is soaked so he forgets everything. He gets renamed Bob and even helps cure some nasty wounds.
 * It is canon, or close enough. The stories have already influenced the canon books. Percy mentions in 5th book that he's seen Persephone in winter (which happened in the same story with Iapetus/Bob), and in The Heroes of Olympus, the kids use the bronze dragon from one of the other stories as transportation for their quest.
 * Annabeth, also in The Heroes of Olympus, tells Jason that Percy told her about the power of the River Lethe to erease memories, even from Titans, which is what happened to Iapetus. Its Canon alright
 * In the third book in the Sea of Trolls series, we meet a dwarf (not the fantasy kind, but a "little person"). He seems decent at first, but we later learn that he's a shady, treacherous Jerkass working for the evil king. After his memory is erased, he becomes a perfectly decent guy.
 * In Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Harry casts the Imperius Curse on a Death Eater. Granted, he only made the Death Eater play along with the Hermione-is-Bellatrix facade, but still! It could be seen that he had no other option, however—it was either use the Imperius curse or be revealed as imposters. The Order (and later Harry) also give Kreacher orders that are supposed to keep him from betraying them, knowing that he's really on the Death Eaters' side - as a House Elf, he can't help but obey.
 * He's certainly a gray character at best, but Barty Crouch Sr. breaking his son out of Azkaban and then using the Imperius curse to control him could qualify, since his purpose was mainly to keep him from revealing himself and killing people/trying to resurrect Voldemort.
 * Artemis Fowl.
 * Not really. Artemis turned good because of his experiences with the People. After they mind wiped him, he turned evil again.
 * Some of Heinlein's early works feature The Covenant (No, not that Covenant), a sort of updated super US Constitution. Either you're a peaceful member of society or you're cast into the wilderness with the other reprobates. If you don't want option B, you can get your mind psychologically reconditioned. This is a society in which psychology is like magic and they really can iron out the kinks and turn you into a different person. But they would never do that against your will, hence the wilderness option.
 * Likewise, in C.J. Cherryh's Union-Alliance series, you can be conditioned to make sure you're not a threat. All they do there is give you a phobia about sabotage, though.
 * Captain Underpants revolves around Mr. Krupp, a Jerkass principal who was turned into the friendly superhero "Captain Underpants" by a Hypno Ring. He becomes a Manchurian Agent who turns into Captain Underpants when someone snaps their fingers, and reverts back to principal form when someone pours water on his head.
 * The same thing happens to in the 5th book.
 * Remoralistion spell in Night Watch.
 * Played with in the Rebel Force series. A brainwashed Imperial assassin, X-7, has been trying to kill Luke Skywalker, but his continuing failures and time away from his master shake the brainwashing - not much, but enough that he's bothered by stray emotions and fragments of memory with no context to them. He goes rouge in order to search for his obliterated past - the Rebels, aware of this, decide to set things up to convince him that he's the long-lost brother of one of them, in the hopes of turning him against the Empire. It's much milder than what was done to him in the first place, but still harsh.  The brother in question comes to believe that X-7 used to be his brother, then doubts it again
 * In the next book Luke Skywalker pulls off a much kinder example
 * In Nineteen Eighty-Four at the end, Winston Smith "loves Big Brother." The reader sees it as a Downer Ending where The Bad Guy Wins, but Smith himself views the change as Heel Face Brainwashing.

Live Action TV

 * The entire first season of Viper.
 * In the final episode of volume 4 of Heroes,
 * And before that in volume 3, Ma Petrelli Mind Screws Sylar into trying to be a hero by tricking him into believing she's his real mother.
 * And in the last three episodes of volume 5,
 * Mr. Smith from the The Sarah Jane Adventures got this after being revealed to be the Big Bad of Series 1. Of course, the Earth would've gotten destroyed if Mr. Smith didn't get brainwashed.
 * Babylon 5 used this as an alternative to the death penalty. Heavily inspired by The Demolished Man above, from which it got its idea of telepathic police.
 * Notably, there's an episode built around the idea that many people consider the practice too lenient, unable to stand the thought that murderers get to live out their lives despite the fact that the person's original personality is for all intents and purposes dead.
 * There's a reason they call it "Death of Personality".
 * In Stargate Atlantis, they capture a Wraith, wipe his memory, turn him into a human, and try to convince him he's one of them. It fails in the end, so of course they promptly try it again on a larger scale?
 * Though at least the plan there was that the Wraiths-turned-human would promptly be killed by other Wraith (who would thus leave the existing humans alone for a while).
 * Refreshingly, this particular case is treated as a monumentally stupid decision on the part of the Atlantis expedition, and recurring villain Micheal (the original test subject) repeatedly calls them out on the immorality of the action.
 * Stargate SG-1 gives us one episode where a recently widowed Daniel Jackson falls in love with the the brilliant young medical researcher and provisional leader of a Mind Wiped and partly depopulated world as they investigate the cause of its people's current state. As it turns out? She's actually . The kicker? After she inevitably ends up succumbing to curiosity about her past and uses the memory-restoring plague cure she and Jackson were working on, they manage to get her to re-Mind Wipe herself before she succumbs to her rapidly returning memories. What do they do with this Sealed Evil In A Person? They send her BACK to the one planet in the galaxy where huge numbers of people now secretly knows who she is, to help produce and administer the very plague medicine that could turn her into a homicidal maniac at any moment.
 * Actually, if I remember correctly, only the two people with her know who she really is, and they tell her she had a bad reaction to the cure, so she won't try it again.
 * Farscape has Durka, who established himself as a villain by torturing Rygel and turns up in a later episode having been brainwashed by aliens into a friendly, helpful person incapable of violence.
 * Star Trek: Voyager had an episode where the EMH accidentally corrected an anatomical defect in the brain of a serial killer on death row, giving the inmate the ability to feel guilt. However, this was more like a cure for sociopathy rather than straight-out brainwashing, and thus not really in the same negative sense as most other examples on this page.
 * There is also an entire planet of telepaths where violent thought is punished by having said thoughts removed. The problem is that the person they want to do it to is B'Ellana Torres, a half-Klingon whose violent thoughts make up a large chunk of her personality.
 * Angel, from Angel, would seem to qualify for this: the most evil vampire in history, he was given a soul by Gypsies against his will, and spent the rest of his life atoning for the horrible deeds he'd done. Except when he went evil again, and then, you guessed it, Roaring Rampage of Revenge (Omnicidal Maniac, even). The difference, of course, being that the Gypsies weren't the good guys - they did it as the worst punishment they could think of, after he killed one of them.
 * Wait. Punishing "the most evil vampire in history" for murder means they aren't good guys?
 * They did include the clause "If you ever experience happiness again, you'll lose your soul again". They not only neutered his evil side, but also wanted his morally responsible side to suffer forever. Even going so far as to allow the whole thing to come undone, just so he himself would have to deny himself happiness because he wouldn't want to turn evil again (There's no way that could ever go wrong). I'd call that a tad bit too sadistic for "good guys".
 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Season 4 gives us  which is very much like A Clockwork Orange in that it doesn't change the personality, just makes it impossible to hurt humans.
 * At the end of Dollhouse, the good guys, which is revealed to be  , into
 * Zordon's purification of the villains in the Power Rangers in Space finale "Countdown to Destruction". Most of the villains are reduced to dust, but Zedd, Rita and Divatox become ordinary people (Karone survives too, but by that point brainwashing was the only thing keeping her evil).

Tabletop Games

 * Warhammer 40,000, this trope applies to the Space Marines. The Space Marines often recruit Complete Monsters and somewhat more savoury gangers, barbarians, war criminals, cannibals and etc. They take the nastiest bastards in the human race, because they're vicious and tough enough to survive in conditions that would drive a normal person insane or dead. But the Marines must first do psychic-surgery and hypnosis on these guys to give them a modicum of conscience or at least make them less likely to commit an atrocity at the drop of a hat. That said after the procedure, the new Battle Brother has no complaints about it and will likely argue for its necessity!
 * Dungeons & Dragons features an item known as Helm of Opposite Alignment. While it's meant to be a torment to the players, some parties have used one as a portable redemption machine.
 * Perhaps more frighteningly, the Book of Exalted Deeds (the good equivalent to the Book of Vile Darkness) includes a spell (Sanctify the Wicked) only useable by the most pure 'good' casters that imprisons its target in a diamond where the target "reflects on past evils and slowly finds within itself a spark of goodness" which then leads it to becoming a good entity like the caster. Yet oddly enough, if the gem is shattered before a year is up, the target is restored and is amazingly pissed at the caster. Thus there are some who would see this conversion via imprisonment as not unlike a specific use of the evil spell (From the Book of Vile Darkness) Mind Rape. Unlike Redemption Mind Rape could be used to (in example) remove horrible memories. (Not that anyone who knows it is likely to do so, just that it could be used that way. Well, they technically created a neutral version of this spell called "Programmed Amnesia" that allows you to do anything you wanted, good or bad.)
 * The main advantage of Sanctify the Wicked over Programmed Amnesia is that it is perfectly effective on fiends (devils and demons, who are literally made out of evil). Altering a fiend's alignment with Programmed Amnesia is likely to be temporary, either until it finds a cure or its inherent nature causes its alignment to drift back to its natural state.
 * GURPS has the Crown of Benevolent Rulership in Magic Items 2, it makes whomever wears it into a kindly and benevolent ruler. Personality effects can persist if worn too long, however the compulsion disappears with the removal of the crown. However the blurb about the crown subverts the trope. Evil Overlord Wenceslaus who had the the crown created to lull his neighbors into a false sense of security. (He had obviously read the Evil Overlord List, noting the part about how adhering to the list makes one indistinguishable from a competent good ruler.) However, it's implied that it worked too well and he never did get around to his evil schemes.
 * In Exalted, the various types of Exalted are all capable of learning to be supernaturally persuasive, occasionally to the point of Mind Rape, and often leading to this trope. The books are very much aware of the implications, however. Stuff like this is one of the many reasons the Usurpation happened.

Video Games

 * In Knights of the Old Republic, it is eventually revealed that the Big Bad is actually . This is a case where the questionable moral implications are pointed out, and it can be the motivation
 * Similar to the B5 example above, this is apparently the replacement for capital punishment in Xenosaga. Unfortunately, it doesn't always take & in at least one case wound up making the guy even crazier.
 * Partially because the guy was a, and that his lawyer/wife was just using him.
 * In StarCraft, Terran criminals that commit particularly brutal crimes undergo "neural resocialization" where their memories are essentially frosted over, and afterwards are usually drafted into the military as now-loyal Marines with a combat life expectancy of under 90 seconds. In the novels one marine regains his memories while aboard a ship. Bad things happen.
 * In another novel, a female marine turns out to have been a serial killer preying on men by seducing them, taking them home then slowly flaying them. Her resocialization programming had problems when she was under heavy stress and when she was caught by Zerglings, it gave out completely: she whipped out a knife and went Ax Crazy on them. Didn't save her from getting killed off-screen, though.
 * To be fair, the marine in the first example didn't regain his memories on his own or by accident. This was done deliberately by a Protoss Preserver, a powerful psychic. Jake calls her out on it, as many of his friends and colleagues die because of this. On the other hand, this was the only way for Jake and Samara to escape and avoid Jake being vivisected by Mengsk's people.
 * In Mass Effect 2, you have the option of doing this to . And yes, the game treats this as the Paragon choice.
 * Then again, since the alternative is genocide...
 * Indeed, while it may be the Paragon choice, it's by no means presented as the "good" choice. The whole thing is treated as a grey area from start to finish (One of your squad members even points out that it's morally equivalent to killing them, since by brainwashing them you're "killing their viewpoint").  indicates how grey the situation is when its 1000+ individual personalities split almost evenly on what to do. And yes, the only alternative is to kill them.
 * also points out that the concept of Brainwashing may not even apply in this situation, because.
 * In City of Villains, Scirocco does this to his lackey, Ice Mistral, as a prelude to his plan to attempt to do it on a worldwide scale.
 * In this case, mind you, Scirocco is a self-hating villain who sees this as his only chance for redemption. Since it's a villain arc, we never find out what actual heroes would think of this.
 * A similar case within City of Heroes could be the case of Malaise, an insane supervillain who projected his thoughts onto others in the form of intense illusions. He was eventually subdued by the psychic superheroine Sister Psyche, who 'healed' his mind and had him serve as her sidekick while maintaining a Mind Link with him. Of particular, suspicious note however: when the Mind Link was broken, Malaise quickly reverted.
 * Happens to  at the end of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky due to him being
 * Zelenin from Strange Journey tries to save the Chaotic Evil members of Jack's crew by transforming herself into an angel whose song could make them all Lawful Good. It worked! Problem?
 * It becomes a point of contention with the crew at an earlier point
 * In Age of Empires II, priests can do this to enemy troops.

Web Original

 * In Fine Structure, it is implied that
 * The Legion in the MSF High setting, which has only come up in the RP, are naturally capable of doing this. They actually consider it very immoral, allowing it only in clear cases of self-defense, since they kinda went overboard with doing it beforehand. To the point where they weren't the 'Face'.

Western Animation
"Wicked: Puppied and clowns, trick or treat From now on, you are nice and sweet!!!"
 * Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: One episode ended with a scene where Sonic hypnotized a generic group of biker pigs into becoming good guys, and this was treated as totally fine when Robotnik had spent the entire episode using the same tactic on others.
 * It's made more complex by the fact that Tails returned Sonic from Robotnik's hypnosis, by hypnotising him again to think he was Sonic the Hedgehog.
 * Also played with in "Snow Problem", Robotnik implants Scratch and Grounder with mind altering chips that turn them into (even more) mindlessly loyal droids. These malfunction and make them loyal to Sonic instead. While the heroes have no deliberate play in this, they get the gist of what's happened and make the two into their servants for the temporary length it lasts. Interestingly the chip is also implanted onto Tails during the episode, turning him into a mindless zombie (in contrast to Scratch and Grounder who act more or less like good versions of their normal sentient selves).
 * Sonic Sat AM has an instance of this in the episode "No Brainer." For most of the episode, Snively, with the help of a "memory scrambler" device, has brainwashed Sonic into working for the bad guys, but by the end, the tables have turned, and Sonic brainwashes Snively. While he doesn't really force Snively into doing anything directly helpful for the good guys, Snively does physically attack Robotnik when he sees him, thanks to Sonic filling his freshly-laundered brain with insults about Robotnik. It doesn't end well for Snively. But then again, for Snively, nothing ever does.
 * This happened in an episode of C.O.P.S., where one of the bad guys was forced by a judge to wear a headset that prevented her from thinking negative thoughts. Unlike most examples on this page, the good guys were very much against it and quite vocal about how immoral it was, citing free will and the fact it would not be true reform but rather something forced on her by a piece of technology (which of course fails at a critical plot point).
 * ?by making the one sentenced to wear the headset so Lawful Stupid they let the episode's Villain of the Week go so they can chase a litterbug.
 * In the 90s animated version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, this once happens to Shredder. By accident. Except the trigger to turn the brainwashing on and off is the word "Shredder." So, of course, they go into a factory, which just happens to have a cheese shredder in it...
 * In the original Transformers episode "The Core," Optimus and the Autobots suffer a major Out-of-Character Moment when they authorize Chip to use Mind Control Phlebotinum on the Constructicons. In fairness, another episode had revealed that the Constructicons were victims of a Decepticon Mirror Morality Machine and had originally been nice, but Chip's gizmo didn't reverse that, it appeared to be just enslaving them (although it really isn't clear; they don't get many lines during the brief time they're working for the 'Bots). Particularly glaring in light of the fact that the Constructicons' obvious camaraderie in this episode makes them seem downright sympathetic. "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" indeed!
 * Also, about that episode that says the Constructicons were good once? Two other episodes give two other histories for the Constructicons, each backstory incompatible with the other two. They Just Didn't Care about continuity, so The Core being a followup to the earlier episode - which it didn't reference at all - would be entirely Out of Character for the writers. Odds are, The Core's writer had never even heard of the earlier story. In the episode itself, the decision was presented purely as Chip and the Autobots saying "Ooh, the Constructicons turn into a really strong Combining Mecha! What if it was ours?" and then going and whipping up some "dominator discs."
 * Interestingly Chip is disappointed that the Constructicons remain loyal to Megatron after escaping control, hoping they would learn something from their experience as an Autobot, laying some ambiguity as to whether the device was designed to enslave their mind or merely give them good will.
 * The Venture Brothers does it with Sargent Hatred, when the OSI deletes pedophilia from his brain. Although it doesn't seem to have been 100% effective.
 * Punch Clock Villain and/or Hero with an F In Good Shego from Kim Possible turns into the painfully sweet and kind Ms. Go after getting zapped by the attitudinator.
 * This was, in fact, the second episode to feature the Attitudinator. The first had Drakken get temporarily turned to good.
 * In one episode of The Dreamstone, Zordrak takes a shortcut through some kind of dimensional rift so that he can return to his body before it crumbles to dust. The Narrator is happy to inform the viewers that if he strays off course, his worst fears will come true, and sure enough, Urpgor comes through the vortex at the exact same time, knocking Zordrak off course and causing his worst fear to come true: he comes out the other end as "a very nice person", and stays that way long enough to admonish Blob, Frizz and Nug for stealing the Dreamstone and send Urpgor back to return it (with "an apology and flowers"), along with suggesting a few other changes including a dancefloor and a more colorful reburbishment to his lair. He returns to normal after a piece of rubble lands on his head, and he's not happy when Urpgor triumphantly tells him what he's done...
 * Also done in "Too Hot To Handle" when the Urpneys accidentally get a good dream flashed into their minds by the Dreamstone's magic beams, causing them to becoming extremely kindly and prissy, willingly handing back the stone to the Dream Maker and happily informing Zordrak of their actions...with the expected results.
 * Done more directly in the first season finale, with the protagonists using magic to turn the Urpneys docile and nice. They seem to change back immediately after Blob and Urpgor evacuate them back to Viltheed the following episode.
 * In Beast Machines, the Maximals remove Megaton's mental conditioning on, they are shocked to find that he actually agrees with him. Cheetor orders Rattap to reprogram him back to their side, but is overruled but by Optimus.
 * In a Darker and Edgier alternate universe of Justice League, the villains of Arkham Asylum have become model patients thanks to lobotomies from Superman's laser-eyes.
 * Pulled off both accidentally and in a very mind-screwy manner in Legion of Super Heroes with the added elements of shapeshifting and infiltration.
 * A prison in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command uses technology to affect this change. It's Played for Laughs when the Galactic President muses about its potential in upcoming elections. Unfortunately, the makers of the brainwashing caps apparently decided to include a setting that had the reverse effect.
 * In X-Men: Evolution, Magneto did this to his daughter, Wanda, AKA the Scarlet Witch. Subverted, though, in that she was still a bad guy, she just didn't try to destroy Magneto any more.
 * Wizards - an assassin working for the villain is reprogrammed to fight for the good protagonists, later changing his name to "Peace" and proving instrumental in befalling the bad guy.
 * In My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, the mane six use the Elements Of Harmony on Nightmare Moon to turn her good. Justified somewhat, as it was turning her back into her original, sane, Princess Luna persona. When the Elements Of Harmony are used on Discord, who was not originally good, it had a different effect. Also, according to Lauren Faust, there was an external entity involved in Nightmare Moon. As she's not making the show anymore, it's uncertain if that's canon.
 * Inverted by Discord himself, as he flipped the qualities that let five of the Mane Six utilize the Elements of Harmony, rendering them both unable to use their elements and forcing them into a Face Heel Turn in the process. Of course, this allowed Twilight Sparkle to play this trope completely straight by forcing good memories of their friendships into her corrupted friends to break them of Discord's hold.
 * In episode 11 of the cartoon version of Space Ace, after Kimberly was turned into a baby, Dexter becomes brainwashed by Borf into grabbing Kimberly, so every time Ace turns back into Dexter, the brainwashing process is in effect. However, after turning back into her adult form, Kimberly uses the brainwashing machine to snap Dexter out of his brainwashing state, and destroies the machine using Dexter's gun.
 * Happens to the Hacker at the end of the Cyberchase episode "Harriet Hippo and the Mean Green."

Real Life

 * Anti-psychotic medication and anti-depressants are as close as humanity has so far come to this trope. The question of exactly how one determines that a patient lacks capacity to refuse treatment is and probably always will be controversial.
 * Which creates the arguably depressive cycle that many on anti-psychotics go through. They will be found unfit and require medication, after which they will get well enough to be able to refuse medication... so then they are no longer fit. All the while, their lives are often spent homeless and destitute and horribly malnourished because they don't know how to take care of themselves.