Cybernetics Eat Your Soul/Playing With

Basic Trope: A cyborg becomes more and more inhuman as the more stuff gets replaced.

• Straight: Cyborg Dan increasingly loses his sense of self as more of him gets replaced.
• Exaggerated: Dan gets a pacemaker and decides because of that the human race needs to die.
• Justified:
  • Either the psychological impact of being a cyborg distances him from humans, or parts of his brain had to be replaced, ones that involve emotion.
  • Dan's cyberware brought him Back From the Dead. He Came Back Wrong.
  • Only people who are already comfortable with non-human existence are considered for cybernetic implants.
  • The cybernetics damage adjacent tissues due to a Foreign body reaction, this leads to parts of Dans organic body gradually failing and needing to be replaced with more cybernetic implants that along with causing more tissue damage are imperfect for emulating the function of the organs they replace, This causes a large amount of cumulative damage to his brain that results in violent dementia
• Inverted:
  • Dan was a sociopath until he got an Emotion Chip.
  • Alternatively, the living robot Tridan becomes increasingly more savage and animalistic as he upgrades himself with Organic Technology.
• Subverted:
  • Cyborg Dan becomes a Tin Man.
  • Alternatively, people expect Cyborg Dan to become inhuman because of prevailing attitudes towards cybernetics, but he doesn't.
• Double Subverted: Cyborg Dan has very convincing software to emulate emotions in a Tin Man like way, but it's just to enforce his role as a Manchurian Agent.
• Zig Zagged:
  • Cyborg Dan's a fake Tin Man Manchurian Agent who develops real emotions because of the software meant to fake it, but then turns out that he likes his sociopathic personality.
  • Cyborg Dan spends most of the first half of the movie doing his best to stay 'cultured' even with his robotic enhancements, from attending festivals to colunteering in Soup Kitchens to even babysitting a group of young girls, trying his hardest to appear soulful to others. Until his main Morality Pet undergoes a Disney Death, and he goes crazy evil in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, only for the Morality Pet to wake up from the Disney Death and snap him out of it, turning into a Tear Jerker scene where he hugs his pet tightly crying his eyes out, saying he 'doesn't want to be evil'. But then the main villain who created Dan in the first place shows up and takes matters into his own hands, forcing Dan to destroy things against his will and with him at full consciousness.
  • Getting a replacement prosthesis (which might even work better than the original) is ok, but getting heavy machinery and guns implated makes Dan go crazy, because natural-as-possible prosthetics are instinctively understood, while the programming for cranes and guns need to be downloaded into the brain, where they gradually over-write his personality.
• Parodied: "I mean, being a cyborg's great, but we don't have emotions, and sometimes that makes me very sad."
• Deconstructed: Characters who get cyborg parts justify their own coldness to themselves, blaming the parts, and so grow more cold; other characters assume in advance that they will be cold and treat them accordingly, giving them little motive to act different.
• Reconstructed: Characters who get cyborg parts believe the idea is nonsense, but gradually grow apart from the rest of humanity as they forget the limitations they had before their upgrades.
• Averted: Cyborg Dan is not any more inhuman in personality as when he was a full human.
• Enforced: The show's premise is that everyone has a light side, but a darker character is also needed. So they made him a cyborg to justify negative feelings and others' prejudices.
• Lampshaded: "Ever notice how Dan's been acting more and more distant since his implants?"
• Invoked: "We will remove all those pesky emotions and replace them with emotionless computers"
• Exploited: Dan uses his cybernetic implants to justify his Lack of Empathy. However, the truth is that he was a massive Jerkass long before they were installed, they haven't altered his personality at all!
• Defied:
  • "No, just because I got a prosthetic arm does not mean I will go nuts."
  • Dan sees to it that he at least has his human brain.
• Discussed: "Oh, man, Dan's lost an arm! We need to find his real one and reattach it or else he'll need a cybernetic replacement and then he'll go crazy!" "... his arm will make him go crazy?"
• Conversed: "Why is it that every time someone becomes a cyborg in shows like this, they always go nuts? Did Transhumanists steal the writer's lunch money or something?"
• Played For Laughs:
  • Dan believes he got a robotic arm, and suddenly starts drinking motor oil and plotting the Robot War. Dan attends meetings by robots and makes out with his computer. At the end, someone points out to Dan that his arm was never actually replaced, and he sheepishly reverts to normal.
  • Breaking in Old Habits
• Played For Drama: Dan gets a robot arm, and comes home from the hospital. His wife acts strangely toward him, despite his insistence that nothing is different. Dan goes out drinking with his friends, but they find he's not as much fun to hang out with now. In reality, Dan's behavior is quite a bit colder than usual, and he seems to be incapable of relating to others, all without realizing it. Dan's steadily changing behavior eventually drives everyone close to him away, and Dan rips his robotic arm off in a fit of despair. Even this isn't enough to return him to normal, and Dan is Driven to Suicide. Dan's friends and family lament at his funeral that he would have been far better off with no arm at all.

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Back to Cybernetics Eat Your Soul, worthless human.