Sink-or-Swim Mentor: Difference between revisions

** It should also be noted said friend was a {{spoiler|''mountain bandit''}}. He was asking for it, really.

** Dracule "Hawk-Eye" Mihawk seems to have become one for {{spoiler|''Zoro,'' [[Worthy Opponent|of all people.]]}}

** Consider the ever-so-brilliant martial arts teacher, Genma Saotome. Genma's shown methods of training his son have included hurling a nest of agitated wasps at him and watching the poor bastard fend for himself, dragging him to a cursed training ground simply on the basis that it was dangerous and without finding out why it was considered dangerous, and reminiscing about how, when Ranma was a child, he routinely forced him to fight for every scrap of food he got, remorselessly eating Ranma's food if he couldn't defend it. He also admitted that he tried to "cure" Ranma's [[Unstoppable Rage|Neko]]-[[Harmful to Minors|Ken]] induced cat phobia by throwing him into the pit of starving cats again. When told about some of this, even the borderline sociopathic Nabiki disapproves, proving that sometimes [[Even Evil Has Standards]]. Coupling this with his willingness to simply [[Sins of Our Fathers|throw Ranma into trouble and expect him to sort things out]], often with barely any idea what's going on or why it's happening, he could border on [[Fair Weather Mentor]]. If it weren't for his moments of [[Idiot Savant|Idiot Savantdom]], it would be the conclusion of most fans that not only was Ranma lucky to survive, he's gotten as good as he has despite Genma's training, not because of it. And as bad as Genma is, Happosai is '''worse'''; his nature as a [[Fair Weather Mentor]] is an obvious fact.

** Cologne is just as bad, even if she ([[Chaotic Neutral|sometimes]]) means well. The training for the Bakusai Tenketsu (swinging multi-ton boulders at the trainee until he can make them explode with a finger) and the Hiryu Shouten Ha (wrapping the person in "memory-metal" that will shrink, seize up, and lock down, turning him into a human pretzel if he sheds the slightest amount of heat) would be deadly if these people weren't [[Made of Iron]], and if they end up knocked unconscious from the blows, or drowning in a hot spring, well, that's their fault. Only by learning the fundamentals of these techniques ''on their own'' can the trainee even withstand the training itself.

* Robert De Niro's character in ''[[Men of Honor]]'' is quite literally a [[Sink or Swim Mentor]], as he is the trainer at the Navy's Deep Sea Diving School. He sets out to purposefully make Carl Brashear's (played by Cuba Gooding) life miserable and force him to quit Diving School. This makes complete sense since he's a racist. Of course, this harsh brow-beating is what makes Carl refuse to quit until he becomes a master diver.

* Denzel Washington's corrupt cop Alonzo Harris in ''[[Training Day]]'' could've been the [[Trope Namer]] considering all the many times he left Jake Hoyt (played by Ethan Hawke) out to sink or swim or get shot.

* Henri Ducard/{{spoiler|Ra's Al Ghul}} in ''[[Batman Begins]]''. They duel with ''real swords'' and in one scene beats the hell out of him.

* During [[X-Men (film)|X-Men: First Class]], Charles and Erik attempt to teach Banshee how to fly. At first, they let him jump out of a second-story window, into some bushes, and he forgets to scream. Their next attempt is to have him jump off of an enormous satellite dish. Charles assures him that he doesn't have to do anything he's not comfortable with... Erik disagrees. Justified in that he could, theoretically, control the metal of Banshee's uniform if anything ''really'' dangerous came along.

[[Category:Mentors]]

[[Category:Sink or Swim Mentor]]