Forced to Watch/Playing With
Basic Trope: A villain forces the hero to watch someone they love get harmed.
- Straight: Emperor Evulz straps Bob to a chair and forces him to watch Alice get tortured.
- Exaggerated: Bob has to watch all of reality get destroyed.
- Downplayed: The “torture” Bob has to watch is just something relatively minor, like getting pinched a few times.
- Justified: Evulz wants to traumatize Bob.
- Inverted: Bob gets to watch Alice get her injuries healed, which is optional.
- Subverted: Bob is strapped to a chair and shown a view of Alice, but nothing happens to her and she appears to attempt to leave the other room.
- Double Subverted: But this is when Evulz starts torturing Alice.
- Parodied: Alice is just subjected to an annoying noise such as fingers on a chalkboard.
- Zig Zagged: Alice keeps repeatedly escaping, only to be captured again.
- Averted: Bob does not have to watch Alice getting tortured.
- Enforced: The creators just want to show how evil Evulz is.
- Lampshaded: “Alice, NO! Why do I have to watch this?”
- Invoked: Bob angers Evulz and tells him Alice’s location so he can capture her.
- Exploited: Bob secretly records the torture to show to the public after freeing Alice, in order to show what Evulz is doing.
- Defied: Bob immediately tries to subdue Evulz and free Alice.
- Discussed: “Evulz loves forcing people to watch others get harmed!”
- Conversed: “Why does the villain in these shows always force the hero to watch someone else get tortured?”
- Deconstructed: Bob is scarred for life and gets PTSD, just as much as Alice if she survives the torture.
- Reconstructed: Alice and Bob are able to seek therapy to overcome their PTSD.
- Played For Laughs: The torture involves Alice’s least favorite foods getting thrown at her.
- Played For Drama: Bob gets PTSD and Alice is severely injured if she survives at all.
- Back to Forced to Watch