"Because we're all just a bunch of genetic mistakes, those rotten guards tell us what to do and treat us like their own personal guinea pigs!"
—Testicle Head, Dead Leaves
A trope often used to show the cruelty of tyrannical regimes, it usually takes the form of a Mad Scientist or an evil scientific organization getting their test subjects from Hellhole Prisons or concentration camps. As such, one can expect Prisoner Guinea Pigs to be used by state-sponsored Mad Scientists, villainous weapons manufacturers, and pharmaceutical researchers, or Evil Sorcerers and Necromancers in more fantastical settings. Just to highlight how bad things are, these "criminal" test subjects may be victims of state oppression like vulnerable minorities, political dissidents, or prisoners of war.
There is likewise a good chance for this to occur at the behest of the prison's warden or even have them perform the experiments.
Naturally, this trope is often presented in a negative light. Medical ethics exist for a reason, after all, and most individuals tend to object to the idea of even the worst of the incarcerated being subjected to horrific and often lethal experiments.
However, while Prisoner Guinea Pigs are generally portrayed in a morally dubious fashion, this trope can come in lighter shades of grey. In these cases, the experiments will be less dangerous (or at least less intentionally dangerous) and the inmates will be given a legitimate choice to be part of them, usually in return for a reduction in their sentence.
Occasionally the inmate in question is so evil that even being subjected to something this horrific is presented as a twisted form of karma. Regardless of whether or not the victim deserved the Laser-Guided Karma, bonus points for if they just so happen to also be on Death Row, meaning that they're probably going to die regardless of the experiment. And that's only if the victim is lucky...
Considering how frequently mad science experiments result in unforeseen circumstances, there is always a chance that this trope will backfire spectacularly. A common variety is that the experiment ends up granting the former test subject tremendous powers, especially as the superpower-granting substance is also quite likely to be a Psycho Serum.
In some cases, the empowerment might even have been the goal of the scientist (although this certainly opens questions about the wisdom of empowering test subjects that would want to take revenge on you, unless you’re absolutely sure you can still control or even win against a superpowered prisoner). In any case, things could get very bad very quickly; Mad Scientists are especially prone to overestimating their abilities and underestimating the powers of their creations. After being tortured by someone, even a moral person would jump at the chance to turn the tables on their tormentor.
Whilst almost universally illegal today, the use of prisoners in scientific, medical, and social experiments has been a fact throughout much of history. Some sources claim that Herophilos (the father of anatomists) vivisected hundreds of live prisoners in his pursuit of understanding the workings of the human body.
Compare Professor Guinea Pig when the scientist experiments on themselves, Guinea Pig Family when they experiment on their family, and Boxed Crook. Contrast with Kidnapped for Experimentation, where the one doing the experimenting has no actual authority to detain their victims and is operating outside the system, and Test Subject for Hire when the individual volunteers for the experiment out of hope of monetary gain.
Sister Trope to Disposable Vagrant (in instances where they are subjected to human experimentation).
Even though there have been documented cases of this happening, due to the controversial legacy of such events no real-life examples, please.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Assassination Classroom: Koro-sensei's backstory is that he was a dangerous assassin who got arrested and then was used as a test subject to undergo experiments that turned him into a powerful tentacled monster. In reality, he deliberately allowed himself to be arrested because he knew that the experiments would make him an even better assassin.
- Blade of the Immortal: The Shogunate captures Manji and starts trying to replicate his Healing Factor by cutting off his arms and attaching them to prisoners. However, they quickly run out of prisoners because of organ rejection and start grabbing people off the street on trumped-up charges.
- Dead Leaves: Almost all of the prisoners of the Dead Leaves penal colony are the cloned failures of a top-secret biological weapons program, used for cheap labor and abuse by the only successful results of the program: Triple-6 and Triple-7.
- Death Note:
- Great Detective L pretends to reveal himself on live TV as a man named Lind L. Taylor, promising to catch the Serial Killer "Kira". Light Yagami promptly kills Taylor with the Death Note to Make an Example of Them, only for a voiceover from the real L to explain that Taylor was a death row inmate scheduled for execution the same day, whom L used to test his hypotheses that "Kira" could kill people remotely, and furthermore that he was located in the Kanto region of Japan (the broadcast had been falsely stated to be worldwide). By Light's inability to kill him as well once the ruse is revealed, L also proves there are limitations on "Kira"'s abilities.
- L gets hold of a Death Note with a fake rule written on the cover that claims whoever uses it must continue to kill someone with it once a month or they'll die. L plans to test that rule by having a death row inmate use the Death Note to kill another inmate but doesn't get the chance as Rem realizes this would expose Misa and Light and kills L first.
- Fullmetal Alchemist: The Death Row of Central Prison is used by the adjacent Lab 5 as a source of guinea pigs for experiments on human transmutation.
Comic Books
- Batman: In his backstory, Bane was born and grew up in Peña Dura, due to the corrupt government punishing him for his father's crimes. Sharpening his mind and body to perfection, Bane rose until he became the prison's "king". This led to him being selected to be a test subject for the experimental Super Serum Venom, which had killed all the previous test subjects. Bane not only survived, he gained temporary superhuman strength and durability, which he used to break him and his men out of the prison.
- Captain America: The original Baron Heinrich Zemo was a Nazi scientist during World War II. In one of his first chronological appearances, he was testing his prototype Death Rays on a concentration camp prisoner. He later attempted to test an updated version on dozens of POWs but was thwarted thanks to Sergeant Fury and the Howling Commandos.
- "The Ghoul of Death": Dr. Hastings's latest surgical research centers on a method to cut out the part of the brain that endows hate and with that the capacity for evil. Hastings needs a convicted criminal to test the surgery on because he needs someone who is proven to be capable of evil. Only one test subject is needed and four prisoners volunteer, so he picks the most violent one. The surgery goes well and although it takes longer for the volunteer to awaken than anticipated, he does awaken as a good and remorseful man.
- L.E.G.I.O.N. (DC Comics): Starlag is a prison run by the Dominators, where particularly interesting prisoners like Vril Dox II are subject to illegal experimentation. Not that the Dominators have any ethical concerns about experimenting on any other species at all, but practically speaking, high-security prisoners are less likely to have anyone miss them.
- Luke Cage: Luke Cage's origin story has him gaining his superpowers when he was selected from the population of Seagate Prison (serving time for a crime he didn't commit) as a test subject to recreate the Super Serum that empowered Captain America. Unlike most examples, Luke was on very good terms with both the doctor who experimented on him, and the warden who authorised the experiment (to the point Cage stayed in contact with them after his escape and exoneration). It was a racist, sadistic prison guard called Rackham who sabotaged the procedure in a failed attempt to kill him. Instead, it granted him Super-Strength and Nigh-Invulnerability.
- The Simpsons: In "Sideshow Blob", Sideshow Bob agrees to be a test subject in a trial for a new kind of medicine in exchange for having time cut off his latest prison sentence. The drugs have the unfortunate side effect of mutating him into a Blob Monster, and he breaks out of prison and goes on a rampage across Springfield.
- Truth: Red, White & Black: Played With. Maurice Canfield was forced to join the United States military as an alternative to going to prison for sedition. While in the military, he was selected as a test subject for the American super-soldier program.
- V for Vendetta: The man who would become V is revealed to have once been a prisoner in the concentration camps created by the Norsefire party to purify the nation. He was one of four prisoners selected to undergo horrific medical experiments in the hopes of creating Super Soldiers for the regime. Whilst the others were left crippled or dead, with V it succeeded in increasing his physical abilities to the level of an Olympic athlete and drastically increased his intellect. V in turn used his newfound prowess to escape, destroy the camp, and begin his master scheme to tear down the Norsefire regime.
Fan Fiction
- Alien/Species Crossover: Return to LV-426. A prisoner on death row is used as a test subject for the facehugger, but it's made clear to him that he's volunteering for a painful and non-survivable experiment, in exchange for his family being well compensated.
- Dungeon Keeper Ami: In "A Hairy Situation", when testing experimental spells are mentioned, the use of prisoners of war as test subjects is mentioned too, and summarily denied.
I shall use a prisoner next time.
- The Morrigan: Cathedra uses prisoners for their experimental Gundculpa gundams, killing them and shoving their souls into the machines to act as dampeners against the datastorm.
Film — Live-Action
- Batman And Robin: The film's version of Bane was originally Antonio Diego, a vicious criminal who was serving a life sentence for multiple murders. He was chosen to be the latest test subject for Doctor Jason Woodrue's experiments to create Super Soldiers with Venom for the highest bidder. Bane was the only survivor of the process and thus the only successful candidate, granting him incredible strength and durability, with the side effect of destroying most of his higher brain functions.
- Beyond Re-Animator: Played with. Upon being imprisoned, Herbert West manages to set himself up as the assistant to the newly hired prison doctor, then corrupts him into allowing West to continue his experiments in bringing the dead back to life, using the prisoners (and eventually staff) as his test subjects.
- Captain America: The First Avenger: During his time captured by Hydra during World War II, Bucky Barnes was experimented on by Doctor Zola using a recreation of the Super Soldier formula. Whilst initially seeming to have no effect, in reality, the experiment gave Bucky enhanced strength, endurance, and durability on the same level as Steve's. This allowed him to survive falling off the train, where he was recaptured by Hydra and thus had his full powers fully unlocked along with them brainwashing him into becoming the Winter Soldier.
- The Empire Strikes Back: Han Solo gets to be the guinea pig when Darth Vader uses him to see if a human can survive carbonite freezing in Cloud City.
Vader: This facility is crude, but it should be adequate to freeze Skywalker for his journey to the Emperor.
Lando: Lord Vader, we only use this facility for carbon freezing. You put a man in there, it might kill him.
Vader: I do not want the Emperor's prize damaged. We shall test it first, on Captain Solo. - Terminator Salvation: Played With: At the Longview State Correctional Facility, capital criminal Marcus Wright is on death row. He is convinced by the ambitious Serena Kogan to donate his body to her research. He will ultimately become a cyborg destined to save John Connor from the clutches of Skynet.
- V for Vendetta: Lewis Prothero used to run the Larkhill prison camp where "undesirables" of the regime were rounded up, abused, and experimented on. It's through these experiments that the plague that Norsefire would use to wipe out thousands and allow them to take control of Britain was found.
- Wonder Woman (2017): Doctor Poison is revealed to have used captured POWs as test subjects for her chemical weapons. In her introduction scene, she's seen experimenting on one prisoner with her new gas designed to also destroy gas masks. When it fails to have the desired effect, she simply yanks off the mask, ensuring the poor man still agonizingly dies.
Literature
- Blindsight: In the backstory, vampirism was discovered by accident during an experiment on prisoners in Texas attempting to "cure" psychopathy with gene therapy.
- Dead Man's Land by Robert Ryan. Knowing Dr. Watson's famous role as the partner of Sherlock Holmes, Winston Churchill tries to interest him in "The Case of the Man Who Died Twice" — a soldier who was executed for cowardice, yet somehow turned up back in England dead of exposure after living rough in the countryside. On being told the place of death was near Porton Down, Watson comes up with an unpleasant theory. The soldier was told his life would be spared if he volunteered for top secret work, only to flee after discovering that he was to be a test subject for Deadly Gas weapons. While Churchill has no sympathy for a coward, he's shocked at the idea and promises to look into the matter.
- The Expanse: The Laconian Empire uses prisoners, political dissidents, and anyone else who runs afoul of their law as fodder for the protomolecule, an alien nanomachine that repurposes organic beings into Organic Technology that gives Laconia a massive edge over the rest of humanity.
- A Hero's War: The world of Firma has different norms from Earth; Landar the Mad Scientist and Kupo the healer see no problem with studying the nature of life force by slowly dissecting a death row prisoner who was still alive when they started. Cato, being from Earth, is more alarmed, but Landar can't understand his objection.
Landar: Minmay gave the bandit to us when I asked him. We had some destructive tests to run on lifeforce, and human ones were preferable for accuracy. I may have had a light episode but even when I'm crazy I wouldn't kidnap random people off the street and cut them open.
- Alluded to in Lensman. When a proposed human regeneration treatment is going to be tested (after Kinnison is maimed), the original plan was to run the test on a death row prisoner. Two other Lensmen with less-severe old injuries volunteer instead.
- Morganville Vampires: Rhys Fallon is the leader of the Daylighters and declares Martial Law in the town of Morganville and has all its vampires arrested. Fallon has his chief scientist Dr. Anderson subject the vampires to inhumane experiments in an attempt to create a cure for vampirism despite the fact his cure has a 70% fatality rate.
- Skeleton Crew: "The Jaunt" is about a teleportation system that is nearly instantaneous in real-time, but anyone who isn't unconscious when they go through experiences a length of time that feels eternal and comes out driven utterly insane. When they were first invented, a condemned prisoner took a deal to take a Jaunt awake in exchange for a pardon, but only lived long enough to report "It's eternity in there."
- Tree of Aeons: Crime rates are quite low in Aeon's territory once he's properly established. For those who really cross the line, however (e.g. multiple murders), the highest punishment is "Aeon's Mercy" — i.e. they are at his mercy and he can do what he pleases to them. What this typically means is destructive experimentation and research in his soul forge, slowly and methodically tearing apart bodies and minds to see how they respond and what he can do with them. It's not sadistic, just ruthlessly pragmatic; Aeon figures that if they're going to die anyway, he may as well get some use out of them. His investigations result in wonders such as replacing long-lost limbs (which are beyond the reach of standard healing magic), or the "soul-strengthening seeds" that allow recipients to pass the usual level 80 cap. Even hardened criminals are reduced to begging and pleading when the sentence of "Aeon's Mercy" is pronounced.
No one subjected to Aeon's Mercy had ever returned. How could they, with their souls ripped out of their bodies and turned into living experiments.
- The World's Finest Assassin: The main character, Lugh, was raised in the Tuatha De' family comprised of both doctors and assassins. According to Lugh's father, Cian, their connections with the kingdom they work for give them access to prisoners on Death Row to practice both of their professions.
- X-Wing Series: In Wedge's Gamble, General Evir Derricote tests his Krytos virus on nonhumans taken into custody under Imperial authority from the Fantastic Ghetto on Coruscant.
Live-Action TV
- The Big Bang Theory: Played for Laughs in The Workplace Proximity, whilst discussing Amy's research on monkeys, Bernadette (who works in pharmaceuticals) offhand admits to having performed the same experiment on people, then attempts to unsuccessfully walk it back.
Amy: I’m leading a study to see if a deficiency of the monoamine oxidase enzyme leads to paralyzing fear in monkeys.
Bernadette: If they’re anything like humans, the answer’s yes.
Amy: Wait, you’ve, you’ve done this experiment on humans?
Bernadette: You mean like death row inmates with nothing to lose? No, that would be unethical. - The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Isaiah Bradley and several other African American super soldiers were deployed in Korea, and when Bradley sneaked out of his base to rescue his squad mates before the POW they were held in was firebombed, but they died shortly thereafter from complications of the super soldier serum. For disobeying orders to stay put in his base, Bradley was court-martialed and convicted for insubordination and going AWOL. Since he was the only person aside from Steve Rodgers to survive the serum's transformation process, the U.S. government spent more than 30 years experimenting on him in the hopes that they could find a way to make the process survivable and make more super soldiers, and Bradley only escaped with the help of a sympathetic nurse that helped fake his death.
- Law & Order: Discussed, in a case involving an animal rights activist who "liberated" monkeys from a lab where they were being infected with HIV to test a possible cure. An activist testified as an expert and posed the question to the jury:
Witness: If I told you that we could find a cure for cancer by sacrificing ten newborn babies. Make it easier, ten convicted murderers. In either case, we wouldn't allow it. The life and body of a human can't be violated.
- Mission: Impossible: One episode has the IMF infiltrate a foreign military base, where an evil scientist plans to test a new biotoxic gas on a hapless prisoner while military honchos observe. The team intercept the prison transport bus and replaces the doomed man with Rollin Hand. The IMF not only captures a sample of the biotoxic gas but obliterates the toxin lab with a thermite charge. The Generalissimo is furious, and orders the scientist arrested pending execution.
- Mutant X: Warden Wallington from "Hard Time" is the crooked Warden of Hillview State Penitentiary. Already subjecting the inmates to regular abuses and beatings, Wallington also secretly experiments upon dozens of them with an experimental steroid that induces crazed bloodlust and insanity. Wallington then forces the drugged inmates into brutal fights to the death for profit.
- No Ordinary Family: Implied. One of the supervillains admits he has no idea how he got his powers. He said he was in prison doing his time and the next thing he knew, he was a freak. This strongly suggests that most of the empowered villains were former prisoners, which is why they all tried using their powers for crime.
- The Outer Limits (1963): In "The Mice", convicted murderer Chino Rivera volunteers to be the test subject for an experimental teleportation device developed by the Chromoites, who claim to want to start diplomatic relations with Earth. This example is lighter than most, as it is a genuine choice and the scientists lay before Chino the exact nature of what he'll be signing up for (namely the tech is experimental, has never been used on a human before, and if it succeeds, it means he will be spending years on an alien planet where he might not be able to come back from) before asking his decision. In return for saying yes, his remaining sentence will be commuted.
- Oz. Some of the prisoners in Em City volunteer for a drug trial. It appears harmless until one of them suddenly keels over.
- Rebel: Rebel and her friend Julian were suing the Corrupt Corporate Executive responsible for the faulty heart valve that killed Julian's wife. In the course of their investigation, they discovered that when the executive became aware that there might be a problem with the valve, he tested it on prisoners.
- Revival (2025): Myles Miller, a reviver prisoner serving life, gets treated as a guinea pig by doctors from the CDC to test if snake venom will affect them. It turns out to slow down their Healing Factor. Rahim is horrified by this and orders it stopped. He gets overruled by his boss and replaced for objecting.
- In the French series Les Sentinelles, Dr. Marthe, the female doctor treating Private Gabriel Ferraud after he's been injected with Super Serum, recognises his tattoo to Gabriel's surprise. Marthe says she does a lot of work in the prison system, and he quickly works out why. "A convict's life isn't work much; even less than a soldier." Marthe claims the test subjects were volunteers, but won't meet his eyes when saying this. Marthe herself is shocked when she later discovers that a disciplinary company of over 300 soldiers, who supposedly vanished in the Moroccan desert with all hands, were actually fatalities from an earlier version of the project. Later on in the season Aria Sainte-Rose, a woman condemned to death for murder, is given a chance to volunteer for the tests. Naturally she agrees, as a slim chance of survival is better than the guillotine.
- Star Trek
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
- In "Dagger of the Mind", Dr. Tristan Adams, the warden of a Federation prison colony, experiments on the prisoners in order to create a brainwashing machine that can change a person's memories or personality. He ends up dying when he is accidentally exposed to the full power of the machine with nothing programmed into it to be implanted, completely erasing his mind.
- While under the influence of Beta XII-A Entity in "Day of the Dove", Doctor McCoy accuses the Klingons of regularly practising medical experimentation upon their captives and POWs, along with slave labour and torture as an argument that they can't be reasoned with and need to be exterminated before they take over the ship. It's heavily implied to simply be another delusion caused by the entity to provoke more conflict for it to feed off of. On the other hand in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Affliction" we see the Klingons use a condemned Klingon prisoner for a medical test and then euthanize him afterwards. Whether they do the same with alien prisoners-of-war is unknown.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In "The Passenger", the supposedly-deceased Mad Scientist Immortality Seeker's litany of crimes include using prisoners for illegal experiments in cellular longevity, while he was the prison's medical superintendent.
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
- The X-Files: In "F. Emasculata" Mulder and Scully investigate a viral outbreak at a prison. It later turns out that a pharmaceutical company (Pinck Pharmaceuticals) was using the prisoners to test the pathogen on (with the implication of government involvement). Things take a seriously bad turn when two infected prisoners escape.
- The prologue of Z Nation occurs during the early days of the Zombie Apocalypse, with Murphy and a couple of other inmates being given possible cures to the zombie virus. The other inmates turn and are promptly shot dead. Murphy is the one who gets the functional cure.
Music
- Thing-Fish: The title character is one of many potato-headed, duck-mouthed creatures called "Mammy Nuns" created by a right-wing aristocratic theatre critic's concoction that was tested on prisoners.
Tabletop Games
- Champions: The villain Grond's backstory is this coupled with Disaster Dominoes: three-time loser Sidney Potternote volunteers for such an experiement, but in short order is:
- injected with the wrong serum;
- thrown into a shelf full of random chemicals during his Freak Out from being injected with the wrong serum;
- escapes only to find the river he dove into to relieve the agony was polluted;
- is struck by lightning in the river due to a convenient rainstorm.
- The result is a combined Expy of the Savage Hulk (childlike but aggressive) and The Abomination (gruesome appearance) who is also Multi-Armed and Dangerous.
- Scarred Lands: In The Magocracy of Hollowfaust, the highest criminal sentence is "Final Forfeiture", where the condemned's body is granted to a random Necromancer for study. If they're lucky, they're immediately killed and used for parts. If they're unlucky, they're not killed.
Video Games
- Batman: Arkham Series:
- Batman: Arkham Asylum: This is established to be Bane's backstory, growing up in the vicious Santa Priscan prison Peña Dura to serve his dead father's sentence. He was subjected to horrific military experiments with Venom which granted him superhuman strength. Bane ends up secretly smuggled out of Blackgate Prison into Arkham Asylum and falling into this fate again at the hands of Doctor Penelope Young. Young was manipulated by the Joker into experimenting on him to study and extract all the remaining traces of Venom from his blood, using the research to develop the Titan Serum, the effect of which left Bane malnourished, bone-thin, and struggling to breathe.
- Batman: Arkham City: As revealed in this game, the deranged Lunatics that Batman encountered back in Arkham Asylum were the result of Professor Hugo Strange experimenting upon vulnerable patients with his early mind control drugs. When they failed and instead left the inmates far more insane, Strange simply lobotomised them and discarded them in the sanatorium.
- Batman: Arkham Knight: The Seasons of Infamy DCL introduces Iron Heights Penitentiary, a mobile prison inside an airship. Already having a reputation as one of the worst prisons in the world, Batman and Nightwing's investigation into trying to recapture the escaped Killer Croc reveals the true horrors. It turns out that Warden Ranken has secretly been experimenting on the inmates, subjecting them to torturous procedures. Hired to capture Killer Croc, upon succeeding Ranken became fascinated with Croc's Healing Factor, and subjected him to increasing brutal torture and mutilation just to see how much he could recover from. From him, Ranken was able to develop a formula that he believed would give people the same healing factor, which he tested by injecting another inmate and cutting off his finger to see if it would regenerate.
- BioShock 2: The Alpha series Big Daddies were former prisoners who were subjected to the procedures to turn them into Big Daddies.
- The Callisto Protocol: The warden of the Black Iron prison colony on Callisto had the various prisoners used as test subjects for Biophage, an alien virus that, if properly harnessed, could create the next super-soldier to help humanity fare outer space. Unfortunately, most of the subjects wind up mutating into grotesque, savage monsters, hence all the anarchy seen in-game.
- Divinity: Original Sin II: The Fort Joy Penal Colony for Sourcerers turns out to have a large dungeon where the Magisters try to "cure" them of their magic, using such enlightened experimental techniques as inflicting brain parasites or just stealing their souls.
- Jak II: Renegade: At the start of the game Jak is imprisoned by the tyrannical Baron Praxis, ruler of Havan City. When Daxter finally finds Jak two years later and breaks him out of the prison, he discovers that he's been experimented on. Not only is he Suddenly Voiced, but he now can utilize Dark Eco, transforming him into the destructive Dark Jak as well as a series of other powers.
- Mortal Kombat 1: During Chapter 4 we get to know Shang Tsung's laboratory. During an infiltration mission, Kenshi, Johnny Cage, and Kung Lao are captured for interfering in imperial business a.k.a. interrupting Shang Tsung while he was finding a cure for Princess Mileena's Tarkat syndrome. They're jailed in the Flesh Pits, the lower levels of Tsung's laboratory, where Tsung performs actual experiments with other people's bodies (normally those suffering from Tarkat syndrome). Chapter 5 is all about escaping this hellhole.
- RATUZ: A case of this kicks off the plot of the game, which takes place in a prison where inmates are experimented upon. This inevitably goes awry when one of the inmates transforms into a homicidal rat man, forcing you, two other inmates, and a scientist's lives to be repeatedly threatened by it as it slaughters personnel around you.
- Warframe: The Wolf of Saturn Six in the first Nightwave series breaks out from the namesake top secret Grineer prison upon finding out its warden, Gharn, was selling the Wolf's fellow prisoners to a Corpus Mad Scientist Alad V for use in experiments with creating Amalgams — Sentients fused with organic or synthetic beings. The Wolf manages to get his revenge on Gharn, but only by taking Alad V's bait which gets him to become another subject in Amalgam experiments.
- Wolfenstein: The New Order: During the prologue mission of the game, Blazkowicz and his fellow soldiers are captured by German troops under Deathshead's command. The latter then offers the American soldier a Sadistic Choice to spare one of his fellow soldiers, either Fergus or Wyatt, while one ends up becoming a test subject for the Nazi officer's latest experiment. Whichever one that Deathshead has experimented on and killed becomes part of Deathshead's latest Super-Soldier project in the 1960 section of the game, whom Blazkowicz must fight and ultimately put down.
Web Animation
- Emesis Blue: The mercenaries are revealed to be clones of death row inmates who survived being used as test subjects for Jules Archibald’s respawn machine.
Websites
- SCP Foundation: The Foundation regularly recruits their D-class personnel from convicted criminals detained in prisons around the world, especially prisoners sentenced to death or life imprisonment (although in times of crisis, they have been known to do so from convicts of lesser charges). They are thus used by the Foundation as their expendable guinea pigs (the "D" in their classification sometimes even stands for "disposable") in whatever experiments the Foundation needs to practice with the SCP. The general rule of thumb is if something horrible is going to happen, it will happen to the D-class.
Western Animation
- Batman: The Animated Series: In his backstory revealed in "Bane", Bane was originally an inmate in Peno Dura, a prison designed to contain the harshest and most dangerous criminals in Cuba, who was selected to be part of "Project Gilgamesh", a government-run project attempting to create Super Soldiers by the use of the super-steroid Venom. The results went about as well as expected, with Bane quickly proving too powerful to control and using his newfound abilities to escape the prison and become an assassin for hire.
- Justice League: In "Only a Dream", a prison is running ESP experiments using a volunteer, model inmate John Dee. This ends up going horribly wrong as during a riot John takes advantage of the situation to use the machine to grant himself tremendous psychic powers. Rechristening himself Doctor Destiny, he proceeds to torture his ex in her dreams until her heart gives out, and then attempts to do the same to the entire Justice League. Green Lantern even lampshades the stupidity of doing such experiments within a prison, which the warden sheepishly defends on the grounds it's impossible to find anyone else who would agree to them.
- Transformers:
- Transformers: Animated: Prometheus Black is mentioned to have experimented on prisoners provided to him to support his research into biotech enhancements. However, after his demonstration of a biotech-enhanced human ends in disaster when Colossus Rhodes goes on a rampage, Porter C. Powell cuts off his funding and informs him that even the prisons won't provide him any more test subjects.
- Transformers: EarthSpark: It's revealed that G.H.O.S.T experiments on and tortures Decepticon POWs.