50 Ways to Leave Your Love (of Torture as a Plot Device)

This blog is mostly taken from a thread I posted on a website I liked before it became overrun with Nazis.

It was inspired by an episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, a show I typically love (You might have heard me mention my love of the “Planet of the Week” format before…), “The Broken Circle”, and it featured two of our beloved characters, Nurse Chapel and Doctor M’Benga, extracting information from a Klingon with torture.

No need to give you a blow by blow of the specifics, because it went exactly like these scenes always go. Our ethical and heroic characters need information that the baddie has. The baddie, for obvious reasons, doesn’t want to tell them. Being heroic and ethical, our characters don’t want to torture the baddie, but time is running out and goddamnit, they have no choice!

Cue a bit of light but oddly persuasive roughing up, or a tasteful cut away so we don’t actually need to watch our heroic and ethical characters doing terrible things to someone.

Now let’s say the thing I hope we all already know – torture is bad. Not only is it morally toxic, it has been proven, time and time again, to be ineffective at producing reliable information. The reason it keeps being used is not because the people using it don’t know this – it is because torture isn’t for information extraction, it is a method of coercion and control of victims and perpetrators alike.

Star Trek, and all these other stories that have done this, didn’t actually torture anyone. They are fiction. And sometimes even our most heroic characters do unethical things for good or bad reasons. My own book series features a gang of people who are responsible for a genocide at the end of each story, and they make plenty of mistakes and do a lot of morally dodgy shit between genocides too.

And while writers like to talk a big game about the inescapable power of storytelling, we all, in our heart of hearts we all know the truth of Kurt Vonnegut’s quote about the artistic world’s reaction to the Vietnam War:

“During the Vietnam War… every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.”

But when it comes to torture, I feel like this is a rare area where storytelling can help shift the needle.

All stories, from top rated TV shows to indie RPGs, help to set the temperature of the discussion. Just like the “CSI Effect” has impacted the way juries view forensic evidence, every time we show torture actually working, it is another grain of sand on one side of the scales.

Only torture does serve a purpose in fiction. Sometimes there will be villainous characters who know things, and the heroes will need to find out those things. How is the writer supposed to get that information for the villain to the hero without a little bit of sanitized fictional torture to grease the wheels?

Fortunately, I am here to help.

50 Ways For Your Heroes to Get Info from a Baddie (Without Torturing Them)

So, the clock is ticking. If you don’t get hold of the secret code to Dr Bad Guy’s Doomsday Weapon is will explode all of the world’s cutest babies. What can do you do?

  1. Go undercover, sidle up to one of the guards and say “Remind me, what’s the secret code for the super weapon again?”
  1. Point out that they really don’t pay the guards enough *not* to tell you the secret code for the superweapon.
  1. Related to 2. Nothing like a good old fashioned *bribe*.
  1. “No, it’s fine, I understand that you can’t tell me the codes. That’s your job. It’s just… I told little Timmy I’d get him some secret weapon codes for his birthday and he had his heart set on them…”
  1. Irritatingly gloat that you already know the code to the secret weapon, then tell them an obviously incorrect one so that they correct you.
  1. Log into the Evil Base’s messaging system and send a round robin saying “Your Evil Overlord Name Is Lord (Your Mother’s Maiden Name) Von (Secret Super Weapon Code)”.
  1. Convince the baddie that you’ve already input the Secret Super Weapon Code, so that they input the Secret Super Weapon Code to try and undo whatever you’ve done.
  2. If your villains are homophobic, walk into the barracks and shout “Anyone who’s gay don’t say the secret weapon code!”

    Now, doing this would be wrong, for various reasons, but that’s my point. You’re characters can go to morally dodgy places without going straight to torture.

  1. The old “shade a pencil over the next page of the notebook” trick.

10. Just the opening to Mission Impossible: Fallout. Just literally steal that idea. You were going to do a torture scene so don’t cry at me about originality.

11. Print out a fake newspaper with a crossword on it. Make one of the clues “Code for a secret weapon”. Leave it in the badguy’s break room and go back to retrieve it after lunch.

12. Fuck it, just give them a truth serum. Yes, they’re not real but it’s still more realistic than “Torture bequeathing reliable, actionable intelligence”.

13. Implant false memories of your long and deeply valued friendship, including that you gave them a kidney and they swore that if you ever needed anything, include secret weapon codes, they would give it to you, no questions asked.

That one is actually more devastating than torture once you take into account the emotional impact of the subsequent ghosting.

14. Read the code off that post-it note they stuck to the monitor.

15. Try “Password1”. Go on, it’s worth a shot.

16. Look around for clearly labelled pictures of their beloved cat.

17. Explain that you could torture them, but frankly that whole trope is played out and problematic, so maybe they could just tell you the code and stop holding up the plot?

18. Put on a really rad pair of sunglasses so they think you’re cool, then teach them a cool handshake that is like a fistbump that shifts into a highfive, an elbow lock, reciting all the letters and numerals in the secret weapon code, and then a double high five.

19. Walk in with a phone “Your mum called, she says she’s forgotten the code to the secret weapon again?” Offer to let them speak to her (they won’t)

20. Fake secret weapons code pad painted onto a wall with ACME paint.

21. Tell them “Torture me if you must, but I will never tell you the secret weapons code!”

22. Tickle them (but like, only if they like tickling, because otherwise it would be torture)

23. Did you even try saying please? You didn’t? Well, wow. This is saying more about you than the villains to be honest.

24. Ask the guard what his *brother* would say if you asked him what the *opposite* of the secret code was.

25. Quickly and painlessly kill the guard, then ask them what the code was via Ouija board (Once again, this isn’t about finding nice ways to extract the information, we’re just not torturing)

26. Pause the simulation, get out your phone, google “What is the secret weapon code? Walk-thru.”

27. Buy a T-shirt with “FBI” written on the front and tell people it means “Federal Bsecret weapon codes Inspector”.

28. Walk in with a clipboard and tell people that you’re doing a survey of everyone’s favourite alphanumeric symbol from the secret weapon code.
You’ll have to ask a few people but you’ll get there in the end.

29. Hack into the personnel files and find everyone’s star signs. Geminis are notorious blabbermouths.

30. I’ve held off on this one so far, because I’m not a hack, but it needs to be said: Seduction. It’s a classic for a reason.

31. If they won’t give up the intel, torture Milo.
Milo is a golden retriever who only wants to love you. He is invisible, and most importantly, imaginary.
But if this guard won’t play ball, you will mime the most horrendous acts imaginable to that fictional pupster.

32. “You don’t need to tell me your secret weapon code. Mine is much cooler anyway. No, sorry, I can’t tell you what mine is, it’s secret. Fine. I guess it would be okay if we swapped…”

33. “Simple. If you lose, you tell me the secret weapon codes. If I lose, I’ll tell you the antidote. Sound fair? Then I’ll begin.”
*Withdraws a piece from the Jenga tower*

34. “You ‘won’t tell me nothing’? But that’s a double negative, so actually you *will* tell me *something*.”
*Sensible chuckle*

35. “Tell me the secret weapon code or I will shoot you in the face”
(Torture is wrong but just murdering people is fine)

36. Hide in the confession box in the evil base’s Catholic chapel and ask the guard when they come to confession.

37. Ask Chat GPT? This won’t work and isn’t ethical either, but it is still, in the strictest and most technical sense of the word, an alternative. 

 

38. “Just one more thing… what was the code to that secret weapon again?”

39. “You’re secret weapon code is too predictable. Change it something no-one would guess, like your favourite character from the novel, Fermi’s Progress, about an FTL ship that destroys every planet it encounters.”

(The code has to include letters and numerals, so they’ll have no choice but to change the code to Samson 39, the only character with a numeral in their name)

40. “You’re too chicken to tell me the weapon codes anyway.”

41. “I’ve strapped a baby to a bomb and hidden it and it will go off in 5 seconds if you don’t tell me the secret weapon code. To be clear, I’ve not really done this, it’s just a thought experiment to show you that telling me the code is the right thing to do.”

42. “Have you ever noticed how the secret weapon code scans perfectly to the lyrics of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song?”
*Walk out of the room and listen carefully at the door*

43. Figure out the first letter of the code through other means then start a game of I-spy.

44. “If you were trying to get you to give up the code, what would you say to you?”

45. *Find two guards*
“I’ve got a box of Maltesers here. If neither of you tell me the code, you can share the Maltesers between you. If both of you tell me the code, I’m going to eat the Maltesers myself. But if only *one* of you tells me the code, you get ALL the Maltesers.”

46. Paint a door to the secret weapon on a wall and stick a calculator next to it where the door code panel would be, then wait behind a nearby rock.

47. Three words.
Truth.
Or.
Dare.

48. Telepathy.

49. Give someone a Furby as a gift.

50. Freaky Friday with the head bad guy and go through his stuff.

Neither Fermi’s Progress, or its sequel series, Fermi’s Wake, feature torture. Instead they feature of prototype Faster-Than-Light spaceship that inadvertently vaporises every planet it encounters. If you’ve enjoyed this blog, you’ll enjoy those stories.

To read Fermi’s Progress, buy the season pass from Scarlet Ferret (which includes all four Fermi’s Progress novellas in one volume), or the paperback from Amazon.

To read Fermi’s Wake, buy the Fermi’s Wake season pass at Scarlet Ferret, or get all the individual novellas in the series from Amazon here.

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