Science Fiction
In the television series Doctor Who, The Master is able to control the minds of individuals with a weak will by looking into their eyes, a form of hypnosis. He is later able to do this on a massive scale through the Archangel satellite network, but this backfires when the Doctor manages to use the network to defeat him.
In the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange, later adapted into a film by Stanley Kubrick, the "Ludovico Technique" is a form of mind control that causes the subject, in this case the thug anti-hero Alex, to feel sickness and pain whenever he has a violent or anti-social impulse.
Mind control (telepathic hypnosis) is a prominent psionic gift in the Scanners series of films. It is used by the Scanners to escape imprisonment in the first film, and to sometimes control others in the subsequent films.
George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four features a description of mind control, both directly by torture, and indirectly, in the form of pervasive mind control by the use of Newspeak, a constructed language designed to remove the possibility, Sapir-Whorf-wise of articulating or of even thinking subversive thoughts.
The Jedi mind trick is a prominent plot device in the Star Wars saga.
In The Matrix, a chemical was injected into Morpheus to make him reveal access codes.
In Michael Crichton's novel Terminal Man, Terminal Man has doctors implant a simple computer into the brainstem of a man who suffers from impulsive violence. The plan is to stimulate certain nerves to ease the violent impulses. Instead, the violence becomes even more irresistible.
In the anime, movie and video game series Street Fighter 2, the main villain, known as M. Bison uses his "Psycho Power" to brainwash and corrupt street fighters across the world into joining his criminal organization known as Shadowloo, turning them into remorseless killing machines fully under his control.
In the X-Men comic book series, Professor Xavier, can read and control people's minds.
The House of the Scorpion is a science fiction book in which people have computer chips implanted in their brain, allowing them to only do what they are 'programmed' to do. These people are referred to as 'Eejits'.
In the anime series, Code Geass, the protagonist, Lelouch Lamperouge, gets the ability, Geass, which gives him a form of mind control by allowing him to give someone an absolute order, by looking them in the eye.
In the film Control Factor, an unsuspecting "everyman" slowly realizes he is an unwitting guinea pig being used in a mind control test. If successful, the test will then expand to behavioral control of an entire population.
In the Resident Evil films, based on the video game series of the same name, the fictional Umbrella Corporation captures and brainwashes the protagonist, Alice (portrayed by Milla Jovovich), as part of their "Program: Alice" experiment.
In the Bionicle storyline, a Kanohi mask called Komau allows the user the power to control minds of beings.
In John Christopher's Tripods trilogy, the alien Masters control all of humanity via devices called Caps which are permanently affixed to the skull. The Caps received signals broadcast by equipment in the Masters' cities.
In Empire of the Ants, giant ants used a white gas to control the minds of humans.
In Stargate SG-1, the Goa'uld had brainwashing technology that is used several times over the show and proves both easy and difficult to defeat depending on what technique is used.
In Stargate Universe, using presumably left-over Goa'uld technology, the Lucian Alliance are able to brainwash their enemies into becoming spies for them as they do with Colonel David Telford. This brainwashing is difficult to break as shown with Telford: the charchters were forced to evacuate the air in the room he was in, let him die for a short period of time then revive him. Those brainwashed are shown to remember their actions as Telford remembers everything he did.
in "Star Trek: The Next Generation", there are at least two episodes featuring Mind Control. In The Mind's Eye, Geordi La Forge is brainwashed into becoming an assassin by the Romulans to reignite hostilities between The Federation and the Klingon Empire. The depiction of brainwashing in the episode relies upon feeding images and impulses directly into La Forge's cortex via his VISOR interface In the two part Chain of Command episode Captain Picard is captured and a Cardassian agent uses traditional methods of brain-washing (sensory deprivation, sensory bombardment, forced nakedness, stress positions, dehydration, starvation, physical pain, and cultural humiliation).
Read more about this topic: Mind Control In Popular Culture
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