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Strapped to an Operating Table
"It's not another party head, this time you cannot rise
Your hands are tied, your legs are strapped, a light shines in your eye
You faintly see a razor's edge, you open your mouth to cry
You know you can't, it's over now, blade is gonna ride"
When captured by a Mad Scientist, don't expect to be left alone in the dungeon. In fact, don't even expect to see the dungeon. Odds are you'll be hauled into the lab for immediate experimentation and end up strapped to the operating table. Heaven help you if They Would Cut You Up.
This is particularly popular with the Evilutionary Biologist and often occurs when people start Playing with Syringes. Abducting aliens also seem fond of doing this to their victims.
Even if you're dealing with an Evil Overlord who merely wants to kill you, many a Death Trap still involves strapping the victim down to a flat surface. Some even automate the process.
For some reason, the entire room is usually dark except for a spot-lit circle around the table. You'd think working scientists — even mad ones — would prefer better lighting.
More realistic settings involve victims bound to a chair (possibly a Shackle Seat Trap) instead. Speaking of reality, remember: the invention of surgery long preceded the existence of anesthetics, so... you and your surgeon needed those straps. Now hold still...
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Assassination Classroom:
- It happens to Itona in a flashback. Being a lab experiment, it kind of comes with the territory.
- The human who would later be known as Koro-sensei was often strapped to a table during his months of undergoing unethical experimentation. The restraints were increased as he lost his humanity and developed tentacles.
- Brynhildr in the Darkness: When the Witch Kanade is captured by the organization Vingulf, she is stripped naked, brought to a laboratory, and shackled to a table facedown before being interrogated.
- Tomoya of CLANNAD finds himself strapped to an operating table (and attended by nurse Kyou) during an odd dream sequence that rapidly grows disturbing.
- In Code Geass, Kallen is strapped to a table for no reason save Fanservice after being captured in the second season.
- Kei of the Dirty Pair spends a good chunk of the penultimate TV episode doing a Goldfinger. As Yuri notes, she's lucky she's a girl.
- In Durarara!!, Celty actually agrees to an autopsy in return for room and board from the doctor performing the dissection. She discovers a little too late that general anesthetic doesn't work very well in this case. While she doesn't feel nearly as much pain as humans, it didn't look very comfortable.
- Fullmetal Alchemist: In a flashback, the future Führer King Bradley is strapped to an operating table to be injected with a Philosopher's Stone and turned into the homunculus Wrath.
- Fullmetal Alchemist (2003): Izumi finds Wrath strapped to an examination table by the military.
- Chidori Kaname of Full Metal Panic! is subjected to this in the first season.
- In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, after the Major's cybernetic body suffers heavy battle-damage, she goes to a clinic to get her brain transferred into to a fresh one. The process involves putting her current body into something between an operating table and a mechanic's lift and having her motor functions disabled, leaving her unable to move or speak. At that point her doctor reveals herself to actually be a sadistic assassin that enjoys torturing her targets before killing them.
- Gundam:
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny features a less villainous version of this: Stellar is bound to the operating table by her captors, but that's largely due to the fact that she's a chemotherapy-altered biological weapon engineered by her masters; not only is she dying from not being administered the highly-illegal chemicals that are keeping her alive, she's fighting tooth and nail to kill the doctors - technically her enemy - who are trying futilely to save her.
- Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: in episode 2, Heero Yuy is strapped down after being captured. His response? He lowers his own pulse to make it seem like he's still unconscious and almost manages to break through his bonds, leaving a bloody mess. (Keep in mind, he's 15...)
What's confusing is the fact that he's lying there for God-knows-how-long with an open bullet wound that's bleeding out, meaning the medics actively had to remove the bandage Relena made from a scrap of her party dress. When Relena visits later, she even demands to know why he's tied down like that; Sally Po says they're trying to keep him from hurting himself further.
- Happy Lesson - Chitose gets strapped to a table by Kisaragi for the worst Ear Cleaning ever.
- Integra Hellsing from Hellsing is trapped by Big Bad Incognito on a cross-shaped table in the last episode of the Gonzo anime series.
- Vivio of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, after being recaptured by the Big Bad. Agito as well, although ironically she's saved by the Big Bad. Well, his minions, anyway.
- Sanji of One Piece gets this as treatment from the sadistic (but with a Heart of Gold) Dr. Kureha for spinal injuries when he didn't have the sense to not injure himself further by NOT fighting.
- Trafalgar Law's devil fruit power functions as a variation of this. He has the ability to create "Rooms", clear domes where his powers work. As long as someone's stuck in a room, their bodies are completely at the mercy of the Surgeon of Death, which can include such things as swapping places, swapping people's bodies, removing hearts without leaving a cut, or even completely liquefying someone's internal organs with millions of tiny blades
- Paprika: The titular character is not strapped to an operating table per se, just a table, and she has butterfly wings behind her.
- Soul Eater:
- Professor Stein ironically hallucinates ending up like this in a later arc while he is going insane.
- He did it a lot to Spirit in their backstory — he was operating on him for five years before Spirit found out after being told by the woman who would become Maka's mother. The hallucination mentioned above actually reverses their roles, with Stein as the "patient" and Spirit the "doctor".
- Tenchi Muyo!: Washuu gets Tenchi strapped down in her lab for at least a little while, early in one series. And proceeds to attempt to take "DNA samples" while dressed as a naughty nurse, no less. Lady has... issues.
- At one point in Toumei Shounen Tantei Akira, Akira gets caught by Team Z and strapped to a table, with a laser slowly moving towards his crotch. The laser gets stopped before it can do any damage, however.
- The Vision of Escaflowne: In the movie, Dilandau is seen strapped to a table and screaming.
Audio Plays
- Big Finish Doctor Who Special: The Last Adventure: In The Red House Charlie is strapped to an operating table by Dr. Pain who intends to use the physic extractor on her. Dr. Pain comments that the procedure is painful to a 'pure human', not realising that Charlie is one.
Comic Books
- In the Outsiders (2003)/Checkmate crossover, Captain Boomerang II and Sasha Bordeaux are captured on a mission to Oolong Island and wake up strapped to operating tables in the lab of Chang Tzu.
- Cavewoman: In Cavewoman: Labyrinth, Meriem is strapped to an operating table after being captured by a zombie cyborg guard in an abandoned military research facility. Because she is superhumanly strong, this situation does not last long.
- Desolation Jones: Desolation Jones goes through this as part of a horrifying experiment of which he is the sole survivor.
- JSA Classified: Delores Winters has Dr. Mid-Nite strapped down and his eyes forced open in order for her pet doctor to extract them for sale to clients wanting meta-human parts.
- Sabretooth & the Exiles: At least some of Dr. Barrington's mutant prisoners are used for medical research, secured to operating tables, and vivisected by Barrington or her robot Auto-Doc. In Sabretooth's case, after he threatens her, she makes a point of getting the robot surgeon to remove his claws without sedating him.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): In the Scrapnik Island mini-series, Mecha Sonic straps Sonic to an operating table - well, technically, it's the table Sigma normally uses to repair the robots - so he can force him into a machine that will swap their minds.
- Superman:
- In The Death of Superman (1961), Lex Luthor straps Superman to an operating table so he can bathe him in Kryptonite radiation until killing him.
- Heroic example in The Supergirl from Krypton (2004). When Supergirl arrives on Earth, she is confused, frightened, doesn't know English, and doesn't know her own strength, so she causes several disasters without meaning it. Batman knocks her out using a Kryptonite chunk, carries her to the Batcave, and straps her to an operating table to examine her and check if that unknown alien girl is Kryptonian as he suspects.
- Day of the Dollmaker: A flashback panel shows one little girl gagged and chained to a table while the titular villain turns her into a living doll.
- In Superman: Brainiac, Superman is strapped to an operating table after being captured by Brainiac. When he comes around, he breaks his restraints and rams his fist through a Brainiac's robot.
- Swamp Thing: This happens to a few hapless souls who fall foul of the Un-Men.
- Thanos: In Thanos Rising, Sui-San, Thanos's mother, is captured by her villainous son, strapped to an operating table and vivisected. Thanos, unaware of his family's full history, doesn't realise that Earth's Eternals have full Resurrective Immortality and she returns to life on Earth. It's a long time until Thanos realises that, though.
- Transformers:
- The Transformers (Marvel): Happens to some nameless Decepticon grunt who is chosen as part of Straxus' plan to replace Megatron. He's strapped to the table and taken apart, piece by piece, before being rebuilt in Megatron's image.
- Transformers: TransTech: Shockwave straps some dimensional travelers to tables for analysis.
- Ultimate Marvel:
- Ultimate Origins: Everyone who's a "guest" of Project: Rebirth and Weapon X, including Nick Fury, Logan, and T'Challa.
- The Ultimates: Captain America has been found alive, but he's still a man with superhuman strength, and there's no telling to the way he would react to the idea of having been frozen for so long (or if he's still sane). Strapping him to the operation table was a mandatory precaution.
- Wonder Woman:
- Sensation Comics: In her first appearance, Doctor Poison straps Steve Trevor to an operating table to force a truth serum into him and question him, with the promise of returning later and using him in her experiments.
- Wonder Woman (1942): Paula von Gunther straps her victims into chairs and onto tables both in preparation for torturing information out of them and to condition people into her agents via The Ludovico Technique.
Fan Works
- Asylum of Doom: When Gaz finds herself waking up in 1945 as a patient of the Burke Lunatic Asylum, she's strapped to a bed in a patient room, something that's done to her every night for her whole experience there. She's also strapped to an actual operating table for her repeated bouts of electroshock and eventually for a lobotomy.
- Catwoman is strapped to a table in a warehouse by the Joker in Captured.
- In Alternate Universe Fic, Case of the Missing Technology, has Girls Aloud and Melanie C meeting this fate, as they’re subjected to Unwilling Roboticisation, which leaves their living heads in a machine ala Mars Attacks!.
- Child of the Storm this happens to Harry in the sequel at the hands of Sinister and the Red Room, then later, to Clark Kent, who Harry finds in this position at the mercy of a Mad Scientist/Evil Sorcerer. Possibly thanks to memories of the above, he goes berserk.
- When Lydia gets kidnapped in Cinderjuice, she ends up in this situation — on live television.
- Code Prime: This is Mao's fate after failing Megatron one too many times (failing to get a sample of C.C. along with failing to kill Lelouch/Zero), in which the latter hands him over to Shockwave for experimentation.
- Dead Things Should Stay Dead has Dr. Jason Olsen strap Agent Coulson to a table so he can kill him, as he believes Coulson should die as fate intended.
- In the RWBY fic Death's Door, Cinder wakes up from her Dying Dream to find herself strapped to a hospital bed in Salem's lair, being transformed into something Grimm.
- In the Discworld as revisited by A.A. Pessimal, Madame les Deux-Epées takes afternoon tea with the Watch Igor to discuss a medical process. She notes the nearest thing Igor has to a table on which to serve tea and sandwiches is a large rectangular marble slab with a restraining cuff at each corner. She tries not to dwell on the implications of this.
- The Dissonance of The Earthling Saiyan: In a Flashback, Gine is shown being experimented on by some of King Cold's doctors. She was forced into a chair inside the laboratory which unfolded back into a bed. She was then strapped to it with metal restraints.
- It happens to Danielle of Danny Phantom again in the Facing the Future Series by the Guys In White. Based on her previous experiences, she's not impressed.
- Like the Maximum Ride example below, most Final Fantasy VII fanfics featuring Professor Hojo and his experiments involve this at some point.
- In the Turning Red fanfic The Great Red Panda Rescue, Mei is kidnapped and gets her appendix removed in this way.
- In Heroes for Earth, when the Planeteers are captured, the villains decide to try and find out just exactly how their magic rings work, by any means necessary.
- The Infinite Loops: Happens to Blues in one of his failed Loop attempts, at the hands of something that's taken over Dr. Light. Mercifully reality crashes before anything serious happens, but it leaves some nasty psychological scars.
- In the Star Trek: The Original Series fanfic Insontis, McCoy straps Spock to a biobed as part of a game the two are playing with kid!Kirk, in which Spock's character has been strapped down by an evil doctor.
- In the Danny Phantom fic "Lab Rat", Danny wakes up on an operating table so his parents could dissect him.
- Most Maximum Ride fanfics that involve characters being captured by the School and experimented on by the whitecoats will involve this.
- Phantom Pains: In "Whiteout," the Guys in White strap Jermaine down to an operating table for experimentation after they've lured him to their headquarters and captured him.
- Frieza, in Chapter 4 of Savior of Demons, during his extensive recovery is either strapped to a table or strapped to an upright vertical frame. Naturally, this means he can't get away when Goku torments him with his Super Saiyan transformation. Even before Goku showed up, he was being restrained, probably for reacting very violently to whatever the doctors did to reconstruct his body.
- In the Dark Fic Show me what's in you, mad!Stein chains Marie to a lab table to gorily dissect her.
- In the Soul Eater fanfic When I Was Young, human!Ragnarok and Crona (who are nine and about five, respectively) are both strapped to operating tables in Medusa's lab before she forces Ragnarok to turn into his weapon form, melts him down, and injects him into Crona.
- In Chapter 3 of Mars Attacks: Simpsons Melanie finds herself strapped to a table at the Gnard station. When it was very clear what the Gnards were about to do to her, Melanie simply responded by saying, “D-OH”.
- In The Pirate's Soldier, Ryoko is submitted to this by Washu. Unusually for this trope, despite being possibly the greatest Mad Scientist in the universe, Washu's intentions aren't malicious, since she's just doing a complete physical checkup on Ryoko, but the experience is still embarrassing for her.
- My Hero Academia
Films — Animation
Films — Live-Action
Literature
- In one book in the Animorphs series, the Animorphs are strapped to operating tables by creatures who want to kill and stuff them for display.
- In The City of Dreaming Books, one character wakes up to find his body strapped to the operating table. His head, on the other hand, is being held by the villain.
- In The Cobra Trilogy, protagonist Jonny Moreau is strapped to one when he's captured by the Troft (invading aliens) and expects to be vivisected (live-dissected); however, as a Cobra supersoldier, he has a bomb in his body. The Troft know about this from previous attempts at vivisection, so they just stick monitoring equipment on him and fill the place with video cameras so they can get information on his surgically implanted equipment from how he uses it during his inevitable escape attempt.
- Roald Dahl describes how in his childhood, small surgeries were carried out without an anaesthetic, or even painkillers: he himself had his adenoids removed, and witnessed a seven-year-old boy at school having a boil lanced, by the doctor throwing a towel in the boy's face, and jumping on him with a scalpel. He also describes that although they were put to sleep for this, other operations were carried out not in a hospital, but on an ordinary table at home.
- In Robert A. Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold, Hugh Farnham and his son, Duke are strapped to an operating table where they're about to castrate both of them until Ponce decides not to have them do this. Later, they actually end up doing this to Duke.
- Into the Bloodred Woods: Happens to Hans when Albrecht is cutting him open to try and force him to transform.
- In A Macabre Myth of a Moth-Man, poor Brett spends an entire year more or less strapped to a table while Dr. Wu turns him into a moth/human hybrid. Later on, he's strapped to the same table when Dante Eclipse tries to psychologically break him (this time though, the restraints are rigged to electrocute him if he tries to break free).
- In Maximum Ride, when the School captures them, Max and her flock are strapped to tilted tables.
- The Railway Children: Soon after the children have rescued Jim from the tunnel, with his broken leg, Peter decides to play at "bone setting", and describes to Bobbie and Phyllis how the doctor straps the patient down, and then yanks the leg so that the bones go back into place; and he suggests that they act this out. Bobbie calls his bluff, and says that she will be the doctor. The girls promptly tie Peter up very thoroughly indeed, and leave him like that, making him promise never to talk about blood and wounds again, unless they say he may. Just then, the actual doctor comes in, sees Peter tied up, and suggests that they untie him before their mother comes in. The narrative notes that Peter was suddenly horrid because he had spent the day so far being very kind to Jim, and needed a change.
- In A Series of Unfortunate Events, Count Olaf and mooks briefly capture Violet Baudelaire this way in Book the Eighth.
- Star Wars Legends Typically, Doctor Evazam used straps to keep patients on operating tables. In Galaxy of Fear: City of the Dead he doesn't bother; he just has his super-strong obedient zombie servant hold Zak Arrandar down while he injects him with things.
- In Space Assassin the titular protagonist is infiltrating one of Cyrus' labs when he comes across an unfortunate captive in this state, with his limbs and most of his appendages surgically removed in a mutant conversion. Within the same room, there are several jars of random, harvested organs floating in translucent liquid...
- Space Brat: In book 3, both Blork and Lunk get strapped to operating tables on Squat's command so Dr. Pimento can use his "Freaky Friday" Flip machine to pull a body-swap on them. Lunk has a harder time with it because of his size and klutziness, but Dr. Pimento and the spider-people manage.
- Super Stories: Happens to Veldron after being captured by the Ultimate Justice Squad.
- The Ultimate Adventure (1939): Doctor Bolton has built a chair to strap someone into for the purpose of taking away all their senses, which is needed to send them across realities. The chair looks disconcertingly alike to an electric chair, but other than the straps and a focus cap it is an ordinary chair.
- Void Domain: Sawyer takes a great deal of pride in his skill at strapping people down to the point where even little movements are near-impossible.
- Happens to several characters in the Whateley Universe, often as part of their Superhero Origin. For example, Trevor Goodkind gets darted when he turns into a mutant, and wakes up clamped down on a table under the 'care' of the notorious Dr. Emil Hammond.
- Taylor in Worm, courtesy of Bonesaw's paralysis.
Live-Action TV
- Alex Rider (2020):
- Shortly after arriving in Point Blanc, Alex is drugged unconscious. Next morning, he mentions to James that he didn't sleep well because of a nightmare about this trope. Kyra, sat nearby, chimes in to finish his description with eerie precision, revealing that she had the exact same nightmare, with James soon admitting the same thing. This, along with Laura suddenly turning all Stepford Smiler, makes them decide to escape.
- Later, after Alex's cover gets blown, he's caught and subjected to this while doped on Truth Serum.
- Every time Cyd and Shelby travel to the future in Best Friends Whenever, they find themselves strapped to examination tables under blinding white lights, with a figure in a Hazmat-type suit walking towards them.
- In one episode of Big Wolf on Campus, Tommy finds himself in another dimension where he never became a werewolf, but his much less responsible football teammate did. While trying to fight with said teammate, Tommy is bitten and passes out. Merton and Lori (who, in this dimension, aren't normally friends with Tommy) have him strapped to a table in Merton's lab until they can determine if he's safe or not. He promptly rips the (metal!) straps apart just by sitting up.
- In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "New Moon Rising", the werewolf Oz is strapped naked to an operating table by the Initiative, experimented on and tortured to find out what makes him tick.
- CSI: In "Lying Down with Dogs", the Victim of the Week was strapped to an operating table in a rescue kennel before being injected with a euthanizing solution.
- Dexter is fond of securing his "playmates" to tables (or equivalent surfaces) with plastic wrap.
- Doctor Who:
- In "The Savages", the Doctor is strapped to a gurney before he undergoes the transference process.
- This happens to Polly as the first cliffhanger of "The Underwater Menace", as she is forcibly anaesthetized, about to be turned into a fish-person while kicking and screaming. This scene was so brutal that it was cut by the Australian censor board, thus making it some of the only surviving footage of the episode.
- In "The Dominators", Jamie gets this at the hands of the Dominators, only instead of straps, the table paralyses him via molecular forces.
- In "Genesis of the Daleks", Sarah Jane and Harry are strapped to a table and tortured via Agony Beam so that Davros can force the Doctor to reveal the information of how he defeated the Daleks in every encounter in the past (in Davros' future).
- In "The Brain of Morbius", Sarah Jane is tied down to an operating table by Solon. Thankfully, he's too busy trying to reanimate Morbius to operate on her — he just wants to keep an eye on her, as she keeps running away and causing trouble, even whilst completely blind.
- In "The Deadly Assassin", the Doctor experiences a hallucination of this in the Cyberspace Nightmare Sequence, in a sequence inspired by the common phobia of waking up in the middle of surgery. He also willingly submits to this in order to enter said Cyberspace world, complete with head nodes and agonized screaming.
- In "The Face of Evil", Leela's first story, she gets strapped to a table in her little leather leotard, setting a trend for her later appearances.
- In "The Robots of Death", one robot is seen immobilized on a table in Taren Capel's workshop with its face removed while Capel sticks a laser probe into its CPU. The robot is clearly aware of the whole process, and being Three Laws-Compliant, it loudly protests against being reprogrammed into a killer.
- In "The Androids of Tara", Romana I is strapped to a table and nearly cut up for parts due to being mistaken for an android.
- "Resurrection of the Daleks" has the Daleks do this to the Doctor.
- During the Sixth Doctor's run, this happens twice to Peri — one of the reasons why this era was widely perceived as nasty and mean-spirited.
- In "Dalek", the Doctor gets strapped to a wall-based body scanner and unwillingly examined via Agony Beam.
- This happens to Rose and Mickey in "The Girl in the Fireplace". There was an unintentional pan over Billie Piper's tightly clad body; when the production team saw it in the edit, they kept it.
- Subverted in "The Hungry Earth"/"Cold Blood": the Silurian doctor doing the examination turns out to be perfectly well-meaning, if a bit lacking in anesthetic techniques.
- River from Firefly is strapped to a chair by the Hands of Blue at the Academy.
- Natalie from Forever Knight ends up strapped to one by a desperate doctor who wants her heart to save her dying daughter. Natalie was going in for knee surgery and it would have ended badly if Nick hadn’t found the truth.
- People keep doing this to Olivia Dunham of Fringe, and she keeps kicking their ass for it. Her alternate isn't too fond of it either.
- A late-entry Get Smart episode has Smart and Agent 99 in a Mad Scientist lair, strapped to tables. As the scientist and his Igor dementedly play organ and violin, Smart works to set them free. To give them more escape time, 99 cheerfully cries out "One more time!" and they obligingly play another verse.
- Gotham:
- In "All Happy Families Are Alike", Falcone is wounded in an assassination attempt. When he wakes up, he is strapped to a gurney in an abandoned section of the hospital. The Penguin and Butch then arrive planning to kill him.
- A mob plastic surgeon who transplants captives' faces to give criminals new identities has his latest victim strapped down and gagged this way, and is marking pen-lines on her face in preparation for removing hers when Barnes busts in and interrupts.
- Several of the heroes in Heroes were subjected to this by Mr Bennet.
- Happens to Duncan in a season 1 Highlander episode. He gets hit by a car and catches the attention of a Mad Doctor when his Healing Factor kicks in and he tries to leave the hospital. He’s drugged and taken to the doctor’s basement lab. Fortunately, he’s able to escape when the guy leaves for a while.
- The climax of The Hunger (1997) episode "Sanctuary" has Mad Artist Julian Priest (David Bowie) strapping Eddie, a murderer on the run, to an operating table to turn him into a grisly piece of performance art. Worse, Eddie is conscious, but only from the neck up thanks to Julian's subsidiary skills with anesthetics. Even worse, Eddie does not exist, and the legless corpse the police discover is Julian's. What we saw was his Dying Dream: having committed the murder, he proceeded to kill himself by numbing his body, strapping himself to the table, and severing his own legs — knowing he would gain artistic immortality this way.
- Kamen Rider: The first episode of the original series had protagonist Takeshi Hongo strapped to a circular table while Shocker turned him into the Kamen Rider; as a result, this has become one of the most iconic pieces of imagery in the entire franchise. Kamen Rider OOO's Milestone Celebration of the franchise's 1000th episode (which had the cast making an In-Universe Kamen Rider movie) paid homage to this with a shot of Eiji strapped to a table...in his trademark boxer shorts.
- On Lost, Sawyer is strapped to an operating table by Ben's henchmen in Season 3. Cue lots of Sawyer squirming and yelling while he gets an enormous fucking needle jabbed into his heart. Ben then brings out a bunny in a cage and induces the creature to have a heart attack. Except not.
- The Magician: When Tony finds his kidnapped friend The Amazing Denbo in "The Illusion of the Deady Conglomerate", Denbo is strapped into a dentist's chair as a dentist prepares to forcibly alter his teeth to match those of a criminal preparing to fake his death.
- Mission: Impossible: Happens to Barney when he is tortured in "The Golden Serpent (Part 1)".
- The Outer Limits (1995):
- In "Last Supper", Frank Martin's flashbacks show Jade strapped to an operating table being experimented upon and tortured by Dr. Lawrence Sinclair to test the extent of her Healing Factor.
- In the final scene of "Blank Slate", Hope Wilson is strapped to an operating table about to have her memory erased by Dr. Tom Cooper, with whom she had a brief relationship when his memories were erased.
- Pennyworth. Dr. Lucius Fox sneaks into Level 7 and watches aghast as a British military scientist straps a metahuman child to an operating table and zaps him with enough electricity to have the boy Stripped to the Bone.
- In Power Rangers: Dino Thunder, this happened to PhD-holding/high school teacher Tommy Oliver before his students saved him (and he became a Ranger again). The evil villain, once friends with Tommy when he was human, was oddly gleeful about having him strapped down.
- In Roswell, Max is strapped to an operating table as Agent Pierce prepares to dissect him.
- Sanctuary: Henry is strapped to a chair several times. He manages to break free on one occasion, though that was exactly the plan, as they intended him to go on a murderous rampage after he had transformed into his werewolf self.
- A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017): In The Hostile Hospital, Violet Baudelaire finds herself captured by Esme Squalor and Count Olaf, tied to a gurney in the Heimlich Hospital. When she attempts to call for help, they put tape over her mouth. The next time we see Violet, she's tied to a hospital bed, where the "mad doctor" Count Olaf taunts her in a very creepy way. He also reveals his plan to "operate" on Violet, performing a craniectomy which means cutting off her head. The resourceful Baudelaire does manage to escape her bonds by using a scalpel but is caught and restrained again on a gurney with thicker restraints. She is then put under anesthesia for the operation, to which the villains release her from her bonds now that she was not able to escape.
- Happens to Chloe on Smallville when Lex Luthor discovers she's a Meteor Freak.
- Also happens to Kara in Season 7, when an agent from the Department of Homeland Security finds out she broke into a secure location to retrieve the blue crystal they took, putting two-and-two together and concluding she's not from Earth.
- Also happens to Tess in the series finale. Earth-2 Lionel wants to cut out her heart so that he can use it to bring Lex back to life.
- Stargate Atlantis: Late in season 4, Teyla gets this treatment after being kidnapped by Michael because he wants to use her unborn child for his schemes.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: "Schisms" includes a very creepy reveal as several people who were abducted and experimented on slowly regain their memories and describe them to the computer, which recreates them as holograms. Result: one sinister-looking operating table.
- Star Trek: Voyager: In "Shattered", after entering the Captain Proton holoprogram, Captain Janeway finds herself strapped to Dr. Chaotica's Cradle of Persuasion ("It's fully equipped: Brain Probe, Pain Modulator..."). Much to her annoyance, Janeway has to resort to the undignified method of vamping her way out.
- Star Trek: Enterprise: In "Singularity", a Negative Space Wedgie is making the crew act loopy. Dr. Phlox becomes obsessed with finding the cause of Ensign Mayweather's headache. He refuses to do any further tests and says Phlox will "have to strap him to a biobed". Guess what happens a mere thirty seconds later.
- Supernatural:
- In "Time is On My Side", Sam has this done to him by a zombie doctor who wants his Puppy-Dog Eyes.
- After being stripped and redressed in lederhosen, Dean had his turn in "Monster Movie".
- And Ruby while being tortured by Alastair. The table is shaped like a cross.
- The same table crops up again in season 6, this time with Meg as the victim.
- This happens routinely to Castiel in season 8, as part of a Brainwashing scheme. He actually doesn't remember any of it until another torture victim screaming triggers a PTSD reaction. He's still brainwashed though, so Naomi is able to order him back to Heaven and keep doing it to him.
- Happens to Dean again in season 10, when he's captured by a family who routinely harvest other people's organs to replace or add to their own. Dean suggests they not kill him, because if they don't, some of them might survive, but if they do, the Mark of Cain will resurrect him as a demon and he'll kill all of them. Needless to say, it's doesn't end well for the family.
- Happens to Martha Jones in the Torchwood episode "Reset".
- Wonder Woman (1975): In "Fausta, The Nazi Wonder Woman", Wonder Woman is captured, her belt of strength removed, and put into this position. Pride saves the day as Fausta's superior officer throws the belt and lasso back to Wonder Woman. A minute later Wonder Woman is the only one left standing.
- Alex ends up on one close to the end of The Secret World of Alex Mack.
Music & Music Videos
- The music video for "Asylum" by Disturbed has the delusional patient of the titular asylum being wheeled down a hallway in this manner then drowned as the doctors try to calm him down with cold water to the face.*Since the patient/protagonist is insane and all, this probably wasn't actually happening.
- Blue Öyster Cult's "Doctor Music" is at face value a rock tune with a dance-disco edge. But listen carefully to where the lyrics go: Doctor Music is a psycho who hears music in the sounds of the strapped-down women he is torturing.
- The music video for "Nightmare" by Avenged Sevenfold begins with such a situation happening to the lead singer M.Shadowsnote given the surreal imagery throughout the video while Shadows is wheeled down the halls of the institution and since the song is called "Nightmare", this probably isn't actually happening.
- The music video for "The Phoenix" by Fall Out Boy has Patrick strapped to a table whilst his hand is chopped off and other various tortures inflicted upon him... none of which stop him from singing.
- The first minute of the music video for "This Is Gospel" by Panic! at the Disco finds Brendon Urie strapped to an operating table while scrubbed-in surgeons perform various tests and prepare him for some conveniently metaphorical open-heart surgery... again, none of which stop him from singing.
Pinball
Radio
Tabletop Games
- Magic: The Gathering:
- Ravenloft:
- In Hazlan, a domain ruled by a wizard darklord with an enquiring turn of mind, being sent to "the Tables" is a standard punishment for those convicted of sedition or other capital crimes. Or those who just piss him off, for that matter.
- This trope is just the beginning of one's problems if Frantisek Markov gets a hold of you.
- Or golem-creator Emil Bollenbach.
- One of the images of incapacitated Tempest in Sentinels of the Multiverse shows him in this predicament while an evil Thorathian scientist prepares to do his worst.
Video Games
- In Army Men II, one of the Game Over videos (on the mad grey scientist's island) was of Sarge strapped to an operating table and torn apart by zombies.
- BioForge: Happens to Dane, to the hero in the opening cutscene, and presumably to all of Dr. Mastaba's other cyborgization victims.
- The BioShock series:
- BioShock:
- While you never get strapped down yourself, the first boss is the deranged plastic surgeon Dr Steinman:
- When you show up at his operating room (with the ominous-sounding name "Aesthetic Ideals"), he's slashing away at some poor splicer strapped to the table, ranting that she's still not "perfect". On the whole, you may want to think twice before you go to a plastic surgeon who loves Cubism.
- Steinman's other failed works are suspended from these on his ceiling.
- One bed in the Little Sisters' orphanage/lab has straps...
- The crucifix-like operating tables in the Big Daddy factory, headrest restraints bathed by spotlight.
- In BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea: Episode 2, Atlas does this to a helpless Elizabeth to get information out of her.
- In BlazBlue, Relius Clover's Astral Finish had his opponent in this condition. In a way, this varies between characters, such as Arakune's 'Operating Table' being a big flask, Ragna and Rachel being bound to crosses, Jin being tied with ray lights, Taokaka being inside a cage, Bang being bound and forced to kneel thanks to the heavy weights on his legs, etc. (The only one actually strapped to something like a table is Mai Natsume.) Regardless, knowing what kind of person Relius is, rather than showing what happens to the character, the door closes in and a scream is heard.
- Call of Duty: Black Ops: THE NUMBERS, MASON.
- Chzo Mythos:
- In 7 Days A Skeptic Doctor William straps you to an operating table after you find out he was possessed by DeFoe.
- In The Art of Theft you are brainwashed like this, the tilted version.
- Alcatraz in Crysis 2 after Hargreave captures him. The table has dozens of arms suspended above it with lasers for slicing.
- In the text-based Gamebook-style game Cyberqueen, the eponymous A.I. straps the protagonist down for experimental surgery. Twice.
- JC from Danger Girl briefly suffers this fate at the start of a level, after she's abducted by Assassin X, with a Mad Scientist threatening to use a "probing device" on her. Press X to Escape a gruesome fate via dissection ensues.
- Happens off-screen in Déjà Vu (1985): the amnesiac protagonist comes across a restraint chair which is later revealed to be where the bad guys strapped him down and gave him the drug that caused him to lose his memory prior to the start of the game.
- Disgaea:
- At the end of Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, Mao declares Super Hero Aurum will be his guinea pig for his experiments. Cut to the credits where a very distressed Aurum is strapped down while Mao delightfully contemplates what he should do first.
- In Disgaea 4, all of the generic classes have introductory cutscenes which play when you create a new one to add to your team. The cyborg class's cutscene shows a female fighter being subjected to Alien Abduction, followed by being restrained this way and undergoing Unwilling Roboticisation.
- Endless Nightmare: Hospital begins with the player character, James, waking up in a hospital ward with a probing device lowering on him. But he breaks out in an instant and starts exploring the place.
- Occurs in Epic Mickey, as seen here.
- In F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, Becket briefly wakes up after a city-shattering explosion to find himself strapped to an operating table and enduring a horrifyingly traumatic surgery, made all the worse by the fact that every time he passes out, Beckett experienced hallucinatory dreams involving the operation, except the doctors are replaced by screaming demonic ghosts ripping into his guts. Before he passes out for the last time, the doctor in charge kindly says, "You'll feel a... little pinch... now." Cue writhing in excruciating agony when the final hallucination shows one of the monstrous doctors slamming a blade into his heart. Later on, Becket learns what that surgery was all about: Genevieve Aristide was surgically implanting Beckett to attune him to Alma in order to draw her attention after she was released.
- Redd Jankowski undergoes similar treatment but doesn't survive, since the medical staff overseeing the automated surgery machines were killed.
- The Final Fantasy VII Compilation pulls this one on the endlessly unlucky Vincent Valentine, seen in a backstory cutscene in the original and expanded upon in his solo game Dirge of Cerberus. Interestingly zig-zagged, as while he is implied to be the victim of multiple experiments, he never seems to be strapped down - in the original Hojo simply puts him on his desk and leaves him to wake up after the event (though Hojo's note implies he was the one to lock Vincent in the basement with no explanation how he got there or got his prosthetic golden arm and new outfit), and in Dirge he wakes unbound on an operating table in a few flashbacks or is otherwise suspended in a semi-conscious state in some sort of liquid in a tank. Whether this was an attempt to keep the certification down is anyone's guess, though it should be noted that Hojo shot him immediately prior to this and Lucrecia was trying to save his life, so he likely didn't need to be strapped down in his wounded state.
- Final Fantasy VII Rebirth adds this with Red XIII. During his trial in the Temple of the Ancients he remembers his capture by Hojo, including being dragged over to a lab table, tied down and branded with his number tattoo.
- In The Force Unleashed, this is where Starkiller wakes up six months after being stabbed, beaten and spaced.
- Galerians opens with the protagonist bound to a table, receiving an injection of some sort of chemical. He discovers he can release the restraints through telekinesis, but he has no idea who he is.
- Happens a few times in Geist. First, Raimi is strapped up in a gigantic, vaguely telescope-like thing to be separated from his body. Later this happens to his friend Bryson, and when that is interrupted Bryson is strapped down and left to die. There are also a few others who failed separation and got strapped and straight-jacketed down.
- Faust from Guilty Gear places his opponent in this condition with his instant kill. He proceeds to detonate the nuclear bomb planted under the table, which either goes off normally or malfunctions and gives him and the victim a Funny Afro. In Xrd, he instead gives them a swift facial.
- Happens to Madison in Heavy Rain.
- The intro of Jak II: Renegade shows Jak strapped to an operating table while undergoing Dark Eco experiments at the hands of Baron Praxis. He manages to break himself free apropos of his first transformation into Dark Jak.
- Roger has flashbacks of when this happened to him in Jeanne d'Arc.
- In the Infocom text-adventure Leather Goddesses of Phobos, the player is strapped to an exam table by a mad scientist and turned into a Gorilla. It's also possible to observe other experiments of the Leather Goddesses, but the game won't tell you what they are. Whether that is a Sexy Discretion Shot or a Gory Discretion Shot is entirely up to the player's imagination.
- In Madou Souhei KleinhasaThe Content Policy prevents this page, one of the bad endings has Roze strapped to a gynecologist's chair as scientists perform various experiments on her. It's implied that she doesn't survive.
- Mass Effect:
- Mass Effect 3: If you don't go to help the Ascension Project in time, this is the ultimate fate of Jack, experimented on by Cerberus until they turn her into a Phantom.
- Mass Effect: Andromeda: The kett love doing this. Many times through the game it's possible to find their victims, often with a recording of their last words before the kett killed them.
- Metal Gear: A recurring theme is less "the protagonist comes to strapped to an operating table" and more "the protagonist comes to strapped to a torturing device", but it's not better.
- The Medical level of Nightmare Ned plays this for laughs. One half of it opens with a Hospital Gurney Scene where Ned has to avoid evil doctors that are out to steal his organs, and the next puzzle has Ned strapped to a spinning table on a wall. The player then has to stop the table at one of eight glass jars containing substitute monster organs, and repeat depending on how many organs were taken at the start. Succeeding allows Ned to leave the room, but failing the puzzle drops Ned into a body bag, returning him to the level's hub.
- Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee: In the bad ending, if you didn't save enough Mudokon scrubs and Fuzzles, Munch becomes a victim of this.
- Dr. Loboto in Psychonauts straps his victims into a dentist's chair before removing their brains.
- Early in Quake IV, the hero gets in a little over his head in a battle and is subsequently knocked out and captured by the enemy aliens. When he wakes, he's strapped to the operating table/Conveyor Belt o' Doom for a rather nasty surgical procedure to turn him into one of them...and after watching most of the "Stroggification" procedure happen to yourself, the cavalry shows up.
- Although Return to Castle Wolfenstein starts you off in the dungeon, the first thing you see is your fellow spy strapped to the operating table. And you were going to be next...
- In one cutscene of Sanitarium, Dr. Morgan catches Max sneaking into his laboratory and straps him to a cross-shaped operating table to be injected with a strange substance.
- In The Secret World, Illuminati characters are strapped to a table as part of their introduction to the organization.
- Shadow Guardian begins with Jason waking up in Dr. Novik's lab, wrists and legs bound to one such table as Novik prepares to interrogate him.
- Silent Hill: Homecoming: How you start off, complete with a bit of Controllable Helplessness. Then you hear good old Pyramid Head lumbering towards you. Cue "Oh, Crap!" and furious button mashing to break free.
- Silent Hill: Origins: One of the endings has the protagonist strapped to an operating table.
- In Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, an officer is strapped to an assimilation table.
- Cletus in The Simpsons Game gets abducted by aliens and is found stapped on a table along with a pig with both of them having a rather big pointy thing pointing at them.
- In System Shock 2, you come upon a ghostly reenactment of one of the ship's scientists about to perform a rather... radical cybernetics procedure on an unwilling female victim. Considering that you meet the results in the very next room, it's ever-so-slightly chilling.
- In Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 1: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal, Guybrush Threepwood gets strapped to an operating table by the Marquis De Singe, who attempts to cut off Guybrush's Poxed hand, and our hero must use his limited movement ability (and the Marquis' helper monkey Jacques) to escape.
- Team Fortress 2: Look closely at the operating table in "Meet the Medic". The table has restraints, but they aren’t being used on the Heavy, who is currently being treated. It’s only natural to assume some of Medic’s other patients were... troublesome.
- In X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Charlie Nash is seen restrained like this in his ending. This particular "continuity" states that not only Charlie was tortured and experimented on, but transformed into a Brainwashed and Crazy Super-Soldier known as Shadow.
Web Animation
- Chadam:
- A unknown woman wakes up in episode 1, strapped down to an operating table, seeing nothing but the bright lights above her head before her captor suddenly appears and clamps his hand over her mouth...
- The same thing happens to an innocent artist later, who gets captured by Viceroy and then wakes up in the same operating room.
- Even later, Ripley herself ends up getting kidnapped and strapped down by Viceroy.
Webcomics
- The Adventures of Wiglaf and Mordred: Gawain finds himself on Galen's exam table fairly quickly after she realizes his whole can't die thing.
- Charby the Vampirate: Zeno was strapped down and experimented on by scientists. He could kind of watch TV though from where his head was strapped down.
- In Commander Kitty, CK follows a group of androids into a room prominently marked "abattoir" apparently thinking it's something else. Predictably, he winds up on an operating table.
- In El Goonish Shive, a scrapped idea for Grace's restraints after being captured would have looked like this. Instead Dan went with a chair that resembles a Shackle Seat Trap.
- Girl Genius:
- Parodied in Real Life Comics, when the James Bond parody spy is captured trying to sneak into Tony's base. He gets strapped to a table and asks Tony if he's going to put him in some overly elaborate Death Trap and then leave. Tony denies it; he says he's going to point a gun in the spy's face. If the spy moves, he pulls the trigger. If the spy doesn't move, he pulls the trigger.
- Spectre does this. Interestingly, the operating chair has both straps and a row of needles that pierce the victim's back to hold them in place.
- Protagonist Callas is given an option: either he goes in the chair or his Woobie friend Alexi does. Callas volunteers himself, only to find out that his opinion doesn't matter as they lock him in a cell and force Alexi into the chair anyway.
- Strong Female Protagonist: this is the fate of Feral. The kicker? She does that in order to help people by becoming the ultimate organ donor, by virtue of her potent Healing Factor. And yes, it's completely voluntary on her part. Later, Alison is able to arrange for Feral's healing power to be supercharged, to the point that she's able to meet global demand for organ donations with just 40 hours of surgery a month.
Web Videos
- In Atop the Fourth Wall, after Linkara beats Mechakara, the robot is captured by Dr. Insano, who has him tied down and tortured with magnets.
- Maggie of LG15: the resistance is shown to have spent a lot of time strapped to an operating table in Flashbacks.
- The Whartons of lonelygirl15 appear vulnerable to this; it happens to Emma in "Girl Tied Up" and Jonas in "Dangerous Injection!" and "Rooftop Brawl".
- In Zero Punctuation's Duke Nukem Forever review, Yahtzee tells that ear-flailing buttons come in handy when Duke is strapped to an operating table and must activate a crossbow somewhere left of his head.
Western Animation
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