Mutilation Interrogation: Difference between revisions

 

One of the many forms of [[Cold-Blooded Torture]] or the [[Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique]]. See also [[Fingore]] and [[Kneecapping]], which this tends to include.

 

== Anime, Manga, and Light Novels ==

* ''[[Weiss Kreuz]]''. In one of the drama CDs, Birman is interrogated this way - by the time Weiss manages to rescue her, she only had enough fingers to pick up a gun {{spoiler|and shoot herself}}.

 

* In ''[[Elf Quest]]'', Ekuar reveals that the troll King Guttlekraw would torture his elven prisoners by amputating fingers, then limbs. As proof of this, Ekuar himself has only one arm (with a finger missing), and a wooden leg.

* In ''[[The Punisher]]'' story-arc ''Up Is Down and Black Is White'', Frank and some friends have [[Smug Snake]] Rawlins tied up in a motel room and are trying to think of how to get him to talk. Frank is left alone with him and...

'''O'Brien:''' ...well, why fuck around when you don't have to. }}

** In ''The Slavers'', The Punisher is tracking down the leaders of a Human Trafficking ring. When he gets one of the three bosses, he knocks the man out, drags him out to the woods, ''and cuts him open, pulling out the man's intestines''. Then he wakes the man up and starts asking questions...

 

 

 

 

== Film ==

* [[Quentin Tarantino]]'s ''[[Reservoir Dogs]]'' has Mr. White mentioning this to his protege {{spoiler|who (unbeknownst to him) is a cop}}:

* Chevy Chase's character in ''[[Spies Like Us]]'' was threatened with this one after being captured by Soviets. Only through [[Obfuscating Stupidity]] (or actual stupidity) was he able to stall long enough to keep his digits:

'''Fitz-Hume:''' ''Mine, or yours?'' }}

* This happens to Mel Gibson's character in ''[[Payback]]''. He kidnaps {{spoiler|the son of the most powerful mob boss in the city}}, so they politely ask him for the location using his toes and a hammer.

* "I'm gonna ask you questions. And every time you don't give me answers...I'm gonna cut something off. And I promise you, they will be things you will miss." No mistake about it, [[Kill Bill|Beatrix Kiddo]] does not fuck around. And the very first part that she starts with is Sofie's ''other'' arm, as she already chopped off the other one...

** The Japanese cut has her making good on this threat.

* Happens in ''[[Battle Beyond the Stars]]'', though it could have just been because the [[Big Bad]] wanted a new hand.

* In ''[[Blue Thunder]]'', Lymangood is kidnapped and threatened with having his fingers broken, one by one, until he reveals the location of the tape exposing the [[Government Conspiracy]]. Surprisingly for a character who had, until that point, been the [[Plucky Comic Relief]], he feigns acquiescence and then makes an escape.

* ''[[Marathon Man]]''. Two words: Nazi dentist.

 

 

* Another inversion in ''The High King's Tomb'', third book in the ''[[Green Rider]]'' series. In this one, a female interrogator does this to an evil henchman who had ''already'' lost one hand. To top it off, [[It's Personal|this same henchman had driven the interrogator's brother to suicide]] by blaming him for an incident that made their sadistic master cut off ''both'' hands.

* This happens to Tia, a major character of Jennifer Fallon's ''Second Son's'' trilogy. This is more of a warm up for the torture that would have occurred however. Years later the protagonist asks her if she has any idea what her enemy would do to her and she replies that she has a pretty good idea, holding up her mangled fingers for emphasis. The protagonist, Dirk, swiftly explains that she has no idea whatsoever, having being made privy to some of the real methods that the [[Torture Technician]] employs (he was very happy to explain it to someone who he thought would be able to appreciate how cleverly brutal and twisted, and effective, it could be. The protagonist Dirk had to pretend to find it fascinating).

* Multiply inverted in [[Dean Koontz]]' novel ''Sole Survivor''; agents of a secret conspiracy threaten to do this to a flight controller's son if she doesn't keep quiet about what she heard on a black-box recording. Worse, her son will be told that she could save him by cooperating, but in fact they'll keep cutting regardless of what she does, once they've started.

* Happens to the cop protagonist in the book/film ''Sharky's Machine''. Every hour they cut off part of his finger at the joint. I think he loses a complete finger before he escapes.

* In the ''[[Lensmen]]'' books, when Jill is captured, she is threatened with this. Her brave defiance is [[Honor Before Reason]] because she managed to alert the Lensmen who are in telepathic contact with her and urging her to talk because they can ensure that no one who hears will get out alive.

* The principal viewpoint character of ''The Zoo Gang'' by Paul Gallico has no fingernails because the Gestapo pulled them out approximately twenty-five years before the events of the book. That the rest of his [[La Résistance|group]] are still alive indicates he didn't talk.

 

 

== Live Action Television ==

* Octavian and Pullo use this method on Evander in ''[[Rome]]'' to get him to fess up about having had an affair with Niobe.

* [[Firefly|Jayne]] threatens mole Dobson with this in order to find out how much the Alliance knows from the transmission he sent. A spooked Dobson immediately blurts that the Alliance knows everything, leading a disappointed Jayne to deduce that they know nothing. "Was gonna get me an ear, too."

* In the TV adaptation of ''[[Casino Royale 1954]]'' in ''Climax!'', the ball-whacking is [[Executive Meddling|substituted out]] for Bond's toenails being painfully pulled out.

 

 

== Video Games ==

 

 

== Web Comics ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Narrative Devices]]

[[Category:A Tortured Index]]

[[Category:Sublime Rhyme]]

[[Category:Mutilation Interrogation]]