History Main / DiagnosisKnowingTooMuch

*** "[[Recap/StarTrekS2E21PatternsOfForce Patterns of Force]]": A Federation cultural scientist, John Gill, breaks the Prime Directive by introducing a pre-warp urbanized planet to Nazism, and takes over as a ''Führer''. The original intent was to bring the planet out of their dark age, without the sadism and racism, but one of the members of the Nazi party, Melakon, found the idea of absolute power too enticing, so he became TheStarscream and had Gill heavily drugged, but kept as a figurehead to allay any suspicion. When Kirk and the away team are able to meet up with a resistance cell, they discover that Gill has set up a "FinalSolution" attack against another planet. Later, when they find and meet with Gill at the Chancellery's[[note]]Main Headquarters[[/note]] television broadcasting center, they realize that his pre-attack speech makes no real sense; it's a bunch of tyrannical platitudes strung together, cluing them into the drugging. They then sneak into the broadcasting booth and desperately try to get him to call off the attack. When Gill finally fights through and starts to speak on his own and off-schedule, Melakon tries to play Gill's odd timing as being tired and ill. Unfortunately for Melakon, Gill has just enough strength to call off the attack '''''and''''' reveal Melakon as the traitor, who then takes one of the soldiers' automatic weapons and fires into the broadcasting booth to silence him. In retaliation, one of the rebels shoots Melakon.

* ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'': Belle's father, Maurice, is assumed to be insane and experiencing delusions when he tries to drum up assistance to save Belle from the Beast.

Compare MistakenForInsane. Not to be confused with DumbStruck.

-->-- '''Michael Westen''', ''Series/BurnNotice'', "Shot in the Dark"

* In ''Literature/WhyDidntTheyAskEvans'', Bobby and Frankie become suspicious of the psychiatrist Dr. Nicholson, who runs an asylum that the locals call a BedlamHouse. Rumours swirl of patients being abused and treated horrifically by Nicholson; it's not helped by the fact that his wife Moira is a BrokenBird who seems terrified of him. Bobby eventually suspects that Nicholson is actually keeping sane patients under lock and key to extract information from them and keep them silent. [[spoiler: The trope is ultimately [[SubvertedTrope subverted]], though--Dr. Nicholson is actually a perfectly normal if hard-nosed psychiatrist, and Moira is one of two [[BigBad Big Bads]] in the novel; she and her partner [[ExploitedTrope exploited]] this trope to cast suspicion on Dr. Nicholson and make themselves look more innocent.]]

** {{Subverted}} in "[[Recap/BurnNoticeS3E5SignalsAndCodes Signals and Codes]]", Michael and Sam are approached by Spencer, a defense contractor employee who claims a manager at the company is selling secrets. Spencer starts babbling about aliens and gets carted off to a psychiatric hospital by the paramedics, who tell Mike and Sam that he has a history of schizophrenia and is probably off his meds. After quickly escaping the hospital, he contacts Mike and Sam again and shows them a full-blown RoomFullOfCrazy that seems like alien conspiracy theories, but ''also'' contains evidence of US State Department codes being compromised, leading to the assassination of one of Sam's old friends. Spencer was telling the truth, but also he really ''is'' an unmedicated schizophrenic and looked unreliable purely through his own behavior.

* ''Series/{{Psych}}'': In "Shawn Interrupted," Shawn goes undercover as a patient at a psychiatric facility to investigate Bernie Bethel, who Lassiter believes [[InsanityDefense is pretending to be insane to escape being prosecuted for his ex-mistress's murder]]. Shawn soon realizes that Bernie is slipping between lucidity and genuine insanity, and during one of his lucid moments Bernie tells Shawn that his arthritis is too severe for him to have strangled his mistress, but he was too ill during his trial to tell anyone. Shawn tries to get out to tell the SBPD what's happening but gets restrained by orderlies who don't realize he's undercover and telling the truth. Eventually Shawn is able to escape and prove that [[spoiler:Bernie's younger brother Daniel has conspired to have Bernie institutionalized so he can get access to his inheritance, with the help of a nurse who's been [[MedicationTampering manipulating Bernie's prescriptions so that he becomes psychotic]] and can't defend himself coherently.]]

* The central theme to the 2005 film ''Film/{{Flightplan}}''. A widow, Kyle Pratt, is bringing her recently-deceased husband's body and her daughter Julia back to the United States. After Kyle falls asleep to take a nap, she awakens to find Julia missing and all evidence of her being on the flight has disappeared. A search is conducted, but no one on the plane has seen her. Word comes in that her daughter died with her husband, and a therapist tries to calm her down. Seemingly, she was so distraught from their deaths, that she imagined bringing Julia on board. It isn't until Kyle exhales in grief on a window, where [[WhamShot a heart that Julia had drawn with her finger earlier in the movie]] [[TheCloudCuckooLanderWasRight is revealed]] [[CondensationClue from the condensation from her breath.]]

** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': Played completely straight in "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS7E15Workforce Workforce]]". At the start of the episode, the crew of Voyager is working at an alien power plant, seemingly not realizing or knowing who they actually are, or having any complaints about where they work. Tuvok regains his memories for a short while, and tries to convince the rest of the crew working there who they are, but is taken away to be reprogrammed under the guise of being affected by a mental condition known as Dysphoria Syndrome. The governmental doctor running the whole operation, Kadan, has abducted the crew, as well as other planetary passers-by, to use as what amounts to slave labor during a worker shortage. When one of the medical workers, Ravoc, realizes that there is too much of a coincidence of a large number of people being affected by Dysphoria Syndrome and that they just happened to find enough workers to fulfill the quota of the shortage, they try to confront Kadan of their findings. Unfortunately, Dr. Kadan is too deeply entrenched in political power to be exposed. Even worse, Ravoc is ''also'' WronglyCommitted as well. Thankfully, only when the remaining crew of Voyager and several deprogrammed crew members hatch a plot to overload the system and beam themselves away is the plot revealed, Kadan deposed, and the conspiracy unraveled.

** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': Played completely straight in "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS7E15Workforce Workforce]]". At the start of the episode, the crew of Voyager is working at an alien power plant, seemingly not realizing or knowing who they actually are, or having any complaints about where they work. Tuvok regains his memories for a short while, and tries to convince the rest of the crew working there who they are, but is taken away to be reprogrammed under the guise of being affected by a mental condition known as Dysphoria Syndrome. The governmental doctor running the whole operation has abducted the crew, as well as other planetary passers-by, to use as what amounts to slave labor during a worker shortage. When one of the medical workers realizes that there is too much of a coincidence of a large number of people being affected by Dysphoria Syndrome and that they just happened to find enough workers to fulfill the quota of the shortage, they try to notify the doctor of their findings. Unfortunately, the doctor is too deeply entrenched in political power to be exposed. Thankfully, only when the remaining crew of Voyager and several deprogrammed crew members hatch a plot to overload the system and beam themselves away is the plot revealed and the doctor deposed.

* ''Film/TheGlassHouse'': After Ruby and Rhett's failed attempt of escaping their guardians, Terry and Erin sedate her heavily, because she knows that the couple is after the kids' huge trust fund. However, Erin regrets of doing that to Ruby and cuts the medication, before committing suicide with an overdose of the painkiller.

* ''Literature/MillenniumSeries'': After attempting to burn her abusive father Zalachenko, alive, Lisbeth Salander has been sent by the Section to Teleborian to be drugged into not speaking about her father, since he was a major asset of Swedish intelligence in the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

* ''Series/MalcolmInTheMiddle'': Lois' evil mother announces that she is engaged to an elderly man with a lot of money, but is later revealed that she has been drugging his daily tea with opiates, making him as happy and high as a kite, and unable to really fight back against her scheme. Lois later switches out the tea, making the elderly man eventually come out of the effects, and he dumps Lois' mother right then and there at the altar.

[[folder:Film -- Live-Action]]

* ''WesternAnimation/AMonkeysTale'': The King and people of Laanko think that the Princess is sick, but she's has been kept in a drug-induced coma by Lord Sebastians' minions, so he'll be able to manipulate the King and, eventually, inherit the throne.

* In ''Film/TheCannonballRun'', J.J. and his team use a modified ambulance in the race, but they're unable to get someone to pose as the patient. They later kidnap Pamela to pose as the patient while leaving her companion Mr. Foyt behind. When they get pulled over, she lies on the gurney hooked up to an array of medical equipment including an oxygen mask which is actually dosing her with laughing gas. When she asks the police officers to go back and pick up Mr. Foyt, the doctor dismisses it as a side-effect of the medication.
* ''Film/{{Changeling}}'': When Christine Collins tries to make public that the LAPD convinced a teenager to pretend to be her missing son Walter when they couldn't find him (it is eventually revealed that [[spoiler:Walter had been kidnapped by a SerialKiller and the LAPD not only didn't bothered to look, but when another teen victim managed to escape and tried to alert the police, they refused to follow that lead because that would mean finding evidence they really did not found Walter]]), the LAPD has her tossed into the local sanitarium and bribe a doctor to claim that Christine has gone mad from the stress of Walter's disappearance and can't recognize her "son".
* The central theme to the 2005 film ''Film/{{Flightplan}}''. A widow, Kyle Pratt, is bringing her recently-deceased husband's body and her daughter, Julia, back to the United States. After Kyle falls asleep to take a nap, she awakens to find Julia is missing and all evidence of her being on the flight has disappeared. A search is conducted, but no one on the plane has seen her. Word comes in that her daughter died with her husband, and a therapist tries to calm her down. Seemingly, she was so distraught from their deaths, that she imagined bringing Julia on-board. It isn't until Kyle exhales in grief on a window, where [[WhamShot a heart that Julia had drawn with her finger earlier in the movie]] [[TheCloudCuckooLanderWasRight is revealed]] [[CondensationClue from the condensation from her breath.]]
* ''Film/TheGlassHouse'': After Ruby and Rhett's failed attempt of escaping their guardians, Terry and Erin sedate her heavily, because she knows that the couple is after the kids' huge trust fund. However, Erin regrets of doing that to Ruby and cuts the medication, before commiting suicide with an overdose of the painkiller.

* ''Film/Sabrina1995'': When it looks like David Larrabee might get distracted by Sabrina and call off his engagement to Elizabeth Tyson -- with tremendous fallout for the Larrabee Corporation -- his older brother Linus arranges for David to suffer a minor injury and then be kept on very strong painkillers, so that he won't be coherent enough to talk to Sabrina while Linus gets her out of the way.
--> '''David:''' ''<slurring>'' Do the dry cleaners have your car?

* In ''Literature/WhyDidntTheyAskEvans'', Bobby and Frankie become suspicious of the psychiatrist Dr. Nicholson, who runs an asylum that the locals call a BedlamHouse. Rumours swirl of patients being abused and treated horrifically by Nicholson; it's not helped by the fact that his wife Moira is a BrokenBird who seems terrified of him. Bobby eventually suspects that Nicholson is actually keeping sane patients under lock and key to extract information from them and keep them silent. [[spoiler: The trope is ultimately [[SubvertedTrope subverted]], though--Dr. Nicholson is actually a perfectly normal, if hard-nosed, psychiatrist, and Moira is one of two [[BigBad Big Bads]] in the novel; she and her partner [[ExploitedTrope exploited]] this trope to cast suspicion on Dr. Nicholson and make themselves look more innocent.]]

* ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'': After a Cylon ambush on Caprica, Starbuck is wounded and loses consciousness. When she awakens, she's been taken to a hospital. Her doctor, Simon, seems nice enough, but, suspiciously and repeatedly, drugs her, under the guise of a serious injury. [[INeverToldYouMyName She finds out that Simon is actually a Cylon when he calls her "Starbuck", even though she never introduced herself as such.]] When she fakes her final sedation, she sneaks out and finds Simon speaking with a Number Six clone; when Simon returns, she kills him with a piece of broken mirror glass, and makes her way through the hospital, eventually finding a room where Caprican human women are being used by the Cylons as breeding stock, by being attached to machines, since the Cylons and Cylon-Clones cannot reproduce on their own.

* ''Series/NipTuck'': One episode features an elderly man named Dr. Joshua Lee who comes to Sean and Christian to have a device removed from his body, claiming that it's a leftover from a time he was [[AlienAbduction abducted by aliens.]] Before they can begin the procedure, a young blonde woman and some men in white coats arrive; the woman explains that the man is her mentally addled father and the device is simply a medical scanner. Lee screams that she's a fake ("My daughter is dark-haired and fat!") accompanied by government agents disguised as doctors, but they lead him away before anything can be done, with him protesting all the while. At the end of the episode, Sean and Christian comment on the man and how sad it is that someone can become so delusional with age--and then [[RealAfterAll a heavyset brunette woman walks into the room]], asking if her father is out of surgery yet.

*** "[[Recap/StarTrekS2E21PatternsOfForce Patterns of Force]]": A Federation cultural scientist, John Gill, breaks the Prime Directive by introducing a pre-warp urbanized planet to Nazism, and takes over as a ''Führer''. The original intent was to bring the planet out of their dark age, without the sadism and racism, but one of the members of the Nazi party, Melakon, found the idea of absolute power too enticing, so he became TheStarscream and had Gill heavily drugged, but kept as a figurehead to allay any suspicion. When Kirk and the away team are able to meet up with a resistance cell, they discover that Gill has set up a "FinalSolution" attack against another planet. Later, when they find and meet with Gill at the Chancellery's[[note]]Main Headquarters[[/note]] television broadcasting center, they realize that his pre-attack speech makes no real sense; it's a bunch of tyrannical platitudes strung together, cluing them into the drugging. They then sneak into the broadcasting booth and desperately try to get him to call off the attack. When Gill finally fights through, and starts to speak on his own and off-schedule, Melakon tries to play Gill's odd timing as being tired and ill. Unfortunately for Melakon, Gill has just enough strength to call off the attack '''''and''''' reveal Melakon as the traitor, who then takes one of the soldiers' automatic weapons and fires into the broadcasting booth to silence him. In retaliation, one of the rebels shoots Melakon.
*** "[[Recap/StarTrekS3E24TurnaboutIntruder Turnabout Intruder]]": The series finale has Captain Kirk [[BodySnatcher body-swapped]] by a former lover, Dr. Janice Lester. She, in Kirk's body, takes command of the Enterprise, but starts to make several command errors and emotional outbursts that alert Spock to the irregularity. One of the errors she makes is mistreating Kirk-in-Lester in full view of Spock and [=McCoy=], attacking him in "[[SelfDefenseRuse self-defense]]", because at this point, everyone thinks the person who is Lester is still slightly mentally unstable (but improving). Lester-in-Kirk puts her former body on trial for attempting to escape, as well as Spock, for attempting to free Kirk-in-Lester; furthermore, her plan eventually expands to the intention of executing all of the individuals (on grounds of treason and mutiny) who have discovered or deduced that "Kirk" is not who "he" claims to be, which is slowly growing in number.

*** Subverted once, then played straight in "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E19FrameOfMind Frame of Mind]]", once as a story for an in-universe play, the second time as the actual episode plot: In the first instance, in a ship-board play, Cmdr. Riker is playing a frazzled asylum patient who is seemingly being abused. Riker's character thinks that he has made enough progress to finally go home and leave the asylum. The doctors there (one being played by Lt. Cmdr Data) drug him (also seemingly) whenever he shows a glimmer of independent thought. Later in the episode, Riker starts to seemingly have hallucinations that suggest that he is not actually a commander aboard a starship, and that he has been delusional in a similar mental asylum this whole time, with an equally-abusive staff.
*** A variation in "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E3ManOfThePeople Man of the People]]": An ambassador, Ves Alkar, and his mother come aboard the ''Enterprise'' to be ferried to a mediation between warring factions on a planet-of-the-week. His mother is extremely bitter and bellicose towards other women, and continuously claims that Alkar is not who he appears to be. Alkar tries to brush it off as her being ill. When she later dies of ostensibly old age, Dr. Crusher does an analysis on her, and discovers that she was actually in her ''thirties'' when she died, and was actually ''not'' his mother at all! Unfortunately, Alkar has already performed a ceremony that links his mind with Troi's, allowing him to use her as a receptacle for all of his negative emotions and thoughts, accelerating her aging. As the episode progresses, Troi becomes much like Alkar's "mother", proving that his "mother" was completely right.
** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': Played completely straight in "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS7E15Workforce Workforce]]". At the start of the episode, the crew of Voyager is working at an alien power plant, seemingly not realizing or knowing who they actually are, or having any complaints of where they work. Tuvok regains his memories for a short while, and tries to convince the rest of the crew working there who they are, but is taken away to be reprogrammed under the guise of being affected by a mental condition known as Dysphoria Syndrome. The governmental doctor running the whole operation has abducted the crew, as well as other planetary passers-by, to use as what amounts to slave labor during a worker shortage. When one of the medical workers realizes that there is too much of a coincidence of a large amount of people being affected by Dysphoria Syndrome, and that they just happened to find enough workers to fulfill the quota of the shortage, they try to notify the doctor of their findings. Unfortunately, the doctor is too deeply entrenched in political power to be exposed. Thankfully, only when the remaining crew of Voyager and several deprogrammed crew members hatch a plot to overload the system and beam themselves away is the plot revealed and the doctor deposed.

** "[[Recap/StargateSG1S3E14Foothold Foothold]]": A variation; the SG-1 team returns from a planet and finds that there seems to have been a chemical leak on one floor of the SGC base that requires a temporary quarantine. In the infirmary for post-mission checkup, but breaking from routine, the team is sedated. Teal'c awakens due to his resilience from his Goa'uld symbiote, and discovers a horrifying revelation: the SGC base has been compromised by an army of aliens. When he is taken to be processed, Teal'c fakes being unconscious, then knocks out the guard who takes him to the holding cell. He frees Samantha Carter, and when their escape is detected, Teal'c lets Sam go, so he can buy time for her to make it. Later, Teal'c awakens in the infirmary, restrained seemingly because the chemical leak caused him to hallucinate and go berserk. When Sam tries to notify Col. Maybourne about the infiltration and meet in Washington, D.C., he breaks security protocol by checking the SGC behind her back. Daniel and Jack arrive, convincing her that she has seemingly been affected by the chemical leak as well. During their flight back to Colorado, it's revealed that there has legitimately been an infiltration when "[=O'Neill=]"'s [[SpotTheThread image fritzes out of alignment.]]
** "[[Recap/StargateSG1S4E11PointofNoReturn Point of No Return]]": Martin Lloyd, a later-recurring character, calls the SGC with detailed accurate information about the entire Stargate Project operation, when no classified information has ever been leaked about it, and also claims that he is not from Earth. It's discovered that he's also a rather meek and unstable conspiracy theorist, and has also been prescribed antipsychotic and antidepressant medications, lending credence to the the theory that he's only imagining that he's an alien. He is later vindicated when he realizes that he had taken a wrong turn in looking for his spaceship, and indeed, with [=O'Neill=] and Teal'c, find a buried escape pod not of Earth design in a field. It's also revealed that Lloyd's doctors are actually of the same race that he is, and were prescribing him the medicines to silence him.
** "[[Recap/StargateSG1S4E10BeneaththeSurface Beneath The Surface]]": A group of new workers at a power and heating plant are revealed to be SG-1, but their memories have been erased and replaced with new ones. The plant is subterranean, providing heat and power for the alien city above. However, neither knows of the other's existence. The city assumes their power is generated by willing workers or machines, and the workers themselves have been convinced that the arctic conditions outside the city's dome have overwhelmed civilization, leaving them the only survivors to prevent themselves from succumbing to the elements. When any of the workers starts to regain their memories, they are taken to the infirmary and diagnosed with "night sickness", and their memories erased once again. The only ones who know of the facade are the Administrator of the city and the office workers under him, who are being intimidated into silence and compliance.

* ''VideoGame/{{Riven}}'': Gehn, tyrannical ruler of the decaying world of Riven, is holding bookwriter artisan Atrus' wife, Catherine, hostage. One of the reasons he is doing this is not only to keep Catherine from forming an active rebellion (which is only dormant/intermittent at the moment) to overthrow him, but he has also started to believe that Catherine has gone insane, regarding herself as a religious savior/deity. (He is believing this either out of blatant denial, or out of the ironically-actually-delusional effects of the amphibian extract that he smokes in his pipe.)

Pay no attention. This trope isn't feeling well. It needs care.

*** "[[Recap/StarTrekS2E21PatternsOfForce Patterns of Force]]": A Federation cultural scientist, John Gill, breaks the Prime Directive by introducing a pre-warp urbanized planet to Nazism, and takes over as a ''Furher''. The original intent was to bring the planet out of their dark age, without the sadism and racism, but one of the members of the Nazi party, Melakon, found the idea of absolute power too enticing, so he became TheStarscream and had Gill heavily drugged, but kept as a figurehead to allay any suspicion. When Kirk and the away team are able to meet up with a resistance cell, they discover that Gill has set up a "FinalSolution" attack against another planet. Later, when they find and meet with Gill at the Chancellery's[[note]]Main Headquarters[[/note]] television broadcasting center, they realize that his pre-attack speech makes no real sense; it's a bunch of tyrannical platitudes strung together, cluing them into the drugging. They then sneak into the broadcasting booth and desperately try to get him to call off the attack. When Gill finally fights through and starts to speak on-his-own and off-schedule, Melakon tries to play Gill's odd timing as being tired and ill. Unfortunately for Melakon, Gill has just enough strength to call off the attack '''''and''''' reveal Melakon as the traitor, who then takes one of the soldiers' automatic weapons and fires into the broadcasting booth to silence him. In retaliation, one of the rebels shoots Melakon.
*** "[[Recap/StarTrekS3E24TurnaboutIntruder Turnabout Intruder]]": The series finale has Captain Kirk [[BodySnatcher body-swapped]] by a former lover, Dr. Janice Lester. She, in Kirk's body, takes command of the Enterprise, but starts to make several command errors and emotional outbursts that alerts Spock to the irregularity. One of the errors she makes is mistreating Kirk-in-Lester in full view of Spock and [=McCoy=], attacking him in "[[SelfDefenseRuse self-defense]]", because at this point, everyone thinks the person who is Lester is still slightly mentally unstable (but improving). Lester-in-Kirk puts her former body on trial for attempting to escape, as well as Spock, for attempting to free Kirk-in-Lester; furthermore, her plan eventually expands to the intention of executing all of the individuals (on grounds of treason and mutiny) who have discovered or deduced that "Kirk" is not who "he" claims to be, which is slowly growing in number.

** A corrupt group home had cut a schizophrenic man off his medications because he witnessed the death of another resident and they wanted to make sure that no one would take him seriously if he tried to report it. Once the case is uncovered, the detectives inform the group home that they're not only on the hook for that death but also for a murder the schizophrenic man had committed because he wasn't medicated.
** When a boy was murdered by his foster mother, the only witness was his foster sister. The foster mother had the girl committed for supposedly being a danger to herself.
** The team discovers that a doctor intentionally faked a teenager's schizophrenia diagnosis, including using medication to induce symptoms, because she was taking advantage of him sexually.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'':
** "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E9DaggerOfTheMind Dagger of the Mind]]": On the Tantalus Penal Colony, a maniacal man, Simon Van Gelder, found in a shipping box, is later revealed to be one of the doctors, who had been treated with a mind-altering device called the "Neural Neutralizer", and just happened to almost lose his credibility when he also lost his mind from the device. The trope is played straight when it's revealed who forced the treatment on him, Dr. Tristan Adams, who tries to also silence Kirk with the device when he gets too involved in investigating the conspiracy.
** "[[Recap/StarTrekS2E21PatternsOfForce Patterns of Force]]": A Federation cultural scientist, John Gill, breaks the Prime Directive by introducing a pre-warp urbanized planet to Nazism, and takes over as a ''Furher''. The original intent was to bring the planet out of their dark age, without the sadism and racism, but one of the members of the Nazi party, Melakon, found the idea of absolute power too enticing, so he became TheStarscream and had Gill heavily drugged, but kept as a figurehead to allay any suspicion. When Kirk and the away team are able to meet up with a resistance cell, they discover that Gill has set up a "FinalSolution" attack against another planet. Later, when they find and meet with Gill at the Chancellery's[[note]]Main Headquarters[[/note]] television broadcasting center, they realize that his pre-attack speech makes no real sense; it's a bunch of tyrannical platitudes strung together, cluing them into the drugging. They then sneak into the broadcasting booth and desperately try to get him to call off the attack. When Gill finally fights through and starts to speak on-his-own and off-schedule, Melakon tries to play Gill's odd timing as being tired and ill. Unfortunately for Melakon, Gill has just enough strength to call off the attack '''''and''''' reveal Melakon as the traitor, who then takes one of the soldiers' automatic weapons and fires into the broadcasting booth to silence him. In retaliation, one of the rebels shoots Melakon.
** "[[Recap/StarTrekS3E24TurnaboutIntruder Turnabout Intruder]]": The series finale has Captain Kirk [[BodySnatcher body-swapped]] by a former lover, Dr. Janice Lester. She, in Kirk's body, takes command of the Enterprise, but starts to make several command errors and emotional outbursts that alerts Spock to the irregularity. One of the errors she makes is mistreating Kirk-in-Lester in full view of Spock and [=McCoy=], attacking him in "[[SelfDefenseRuse self-defense]]", because at this point, everyone thinks the person who is Lester is still slightly mentally unstable (but improving). Lester-in-Kirk puts her former body on trial for attempting to escape, as well as Spock, for attempting to free Kirk-in-Lester; furthermore, her plan eventually expands to the intention of executing all of the individuals (on grounds of treason and mutiny) who have discovered or deduced that "Kirk" is not who "he" claims to be, which is slowly growing in number.
* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'':
** Subverted once, then played straight in "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E19FrameOfMind Frame of Mind]]", once as a story for an in-universe play, the second time as the actual episode plot: In the first instance, in a ship-board play, Cmdr. Riker is playing a frazzled asylum patient who is seemingly being abused. Riker's character thinks that he has made enough progress to finally go home and leave the asylum. The doctors there (one being played by Lt. Cmdr Data) drug him (also seemingly) whenever he shows a glimmer of independent thought. Later in the episode, Riker starts to seemingly have hallucinations that suggest that he is not actually a commander aboard a starship, and that he has been delusional in a similar mental asylum this whole time, with an equally-abusive staff.
** A variation in "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E3ManOfThePeople Man of the People]]": An ambassador, Ves Alkar, and his mother come aboard the ''Enterprise'' to be ferried to a mediation between warring factions on a planet-of-the-week. His mother is extremely bitter and bellicose towards other women, and continuously claims that Alkar is not who he appears to be. Alkar tries to brush it off as her being ill. When she later dies of ostensibly old age, Dr. Crusher does an analysis on her, and discovers that she was actually in her ''thirties'' when she died, and was actually ''not'' his mother at all! Unfortunately, Alkar has already performed a ceremony that links his mind with Troi's, allowing him to use her as a receptacle for all of his negative emotions and thoughts, accelerating her aging. As the episode progresses, Troi becomes much like Alkar's "mother", proving that his "mother" was completely right.
* Played completely straight in ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'', "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS7E15Workforce Workforce]]": At the start of the episode, the crew of Voyager is working at an alien power plant, seemingly not realizing or knowing who they actually are, or having any complaints of where they work. Tuvok regains his memories for a short while, and tries to convince the rest of the crew working there who they are, but is taken away to be reprogrammed under the guise of being affected by a mental condition known as Dysphoria Syndrome. The governmental doctor running the whole operation has abducted the crew, as well as other planetary passers-by, to use as what amounts to slave labor during a worker shortage. When one of the medical workers realizes that there is too much of a coincidence of a large amount of people being affected by Dysphoria Syndrome, and that they just happened to find enough workers to fulfill the quota of the shortage, they try to notify the doctor of their findings. Unfortunately, the doctor is too deeply entrenched in political power to be exposed. Thankfully, only when the remaining crew of Voyager and several deprogrammed crew members hatch a plot to overload the system and beam themselves away is the plot revealed and the doctor deposed.

* Subverted once, then played straight in ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E19FrameOfMind Frame of Mind]]", once as a story for an in-universe play, the second time as the actual episode plot: In the first instance, in a ship-board play, Cmdr. Riker is playing a frazzled asylum patient who is seemingly being abused. Riker's character thinks that he has made enough progress to finally go home and leave the asylum. The doctors there (one being played by Lt. Cmdr Data) drug him (also seemingly) whenever he shows a glimmer of independent thought. Later in the episode, Riker starts to seemingly have hallucinations that suggest that he is not actually a commander aboard a starship, and that he has been delusional in a similar mental asylum this whole time, with an equally-abusive staff.

* ''Series/NipTuck'': One episode features an elderly man who comes to Sean and Christian to have a device removed from his body, claiming that it's a leftover from a time he was [[AlienAbduction abducted by aliens.]] Before they can begin the procedure, a young blonde woman and some men in white coats arrive; the woman explains that the man is her mentally addled father and the device is simply a medical scanner. The elderly man screams that she's a fake ("My daughter is dark-haired and fat!") accompanied by government agents disguised as doctors, but they lead him away before anything can be done, with him protesting all the while. At the end of the episode, Sean and Christian comment on the man and how sad it is that someone can become so delusional with age--and then [[RealAfterAll a heavyset brunette woman walks into the room]], asking if her father is out of surgery yet.

** The team discovers that a doctor intentionally faked a teenager's schizophrenia diagnosis, including using medication to induce symptoms, because she was having an illicit sexual relationship with him.

Due to the rather dark depths this trope can get into, '''''Administrivia/NoRealLifeExamplesPlease!!!!'''''

-->-- '''Michael Westen''', Episode "Shot in the Dark", ''Series/BurnNotice''

[[folder:Film - Live-Action]]

* ''Series/{{Psych}}'': In "Shawn Interrupted," Shawn goes undercover as a patient at a psychiatric facility to investigate Bernie Bethel, who Lassiter believes [[InsanityDefense is pretending to be insane to escape being prosecuted for his ex-mistress's murder]]. Shawn soon realizes that Bernie is slipping between lucidity and genuine insanity, and during one of his lucid moments Bernie tells Shawn that his arthritis is too severe for him to have strangled his mistress, but he was too ill during his trial to tell anyone. Shawn tries to get out to tell the SBPD what's happening but gets restrained by orderlies who don't realize he's undercover and telling the truth. Eventually Shawn is able to escape and prove that [[spoiler: Bernie's younger brother Daniel has conspired to have Bernie institutionalized so he can get access to his inheritance, with the help of a nurse who's been [[MedicationTampering manipulating Bernie's prescriptions so that he becomes psychotic]] and can't defend himself coherently.]]

Crosses over strongly with {{Gaslighting}} and CassandraTruth. Also crosses over with TheCloudcuckoolanderWasRight and the more malicious examples of MedicateTheMedium. Usually starts the investigation by the protagonists if they SpotTheThread. Can often involve MedicationTampering or ChemicallyInducedInsanity on behalf of the perpetrators. They may have the victim WrongfullyCommitted, possibly to a BedlamHouse, which in some cases will even be in on it, at which point a GoAmongMadPeople scenario will likely occur. If the perpetrators are themselves insane and powerful enough, they may [[BelievingTheirOwnLies believe their own lies that the character(s) in-question HAVE actually gone off the deep end and are raving lunatics.]]

Crosses over strongly with {{Gaslighting}} and CassandraTruth. Also crosses over with TheCloudcuckoolanderWasRight. Usually starts the investigation by the protagonists if they SpotTheThread. Can often involve MedicationTampering or ChemicallyInducedInsanity on behalf of the perpetrators. They may have the victim WrongfullyCommitted, possibly to a BedlamHouse, which in some cases will even be in on it, at which point a GoAmongMadPeople scenario will likely occur. If the perpetrators are themselves insane and powerful enough, they may [[BelievingTheirOwnLies believe their own lies that the character(s) in-question HAVE actually gone off the deep end and are raving lunatics.]]