History Main / GoMadFromtheIsolation

* On ''Series/RussellHowardStandsUpToTheWorld'', the titular comic briefly details the quarantine he spent in Aukland, New Zealand, during which he had to spend two weeks in a small hotel room and allowed only 40 minutes per day spent walking around a small terrace. His video diaries show his room becoming progressively messier as he becomes increasingly disheveled and his thoughts more disjointed.
* PlayedForLaughs on ''Series/TheRedGreenShow'' with Ranger Gord. Gord was assigned to an isolated fire watch tower in the late 1970s, and he never got the letter telling him he was laid off. He then spent the next 12 years all alone in the woods until Red found him. He was originally depicted as a DiscoDan StepfordSmiler prone to bursting into tears and pleading desperately for Red not to leave him alone. Later seasons depicted him as becoming increasingly deranged and desperate for any contact with women, as well as a SmallNameBigEgo type who portrayed himself as a male MarySue in his cartoons.

* In Pink Floyd's ConceptAlbum ''Music/TheWall'' and its accompanying movie, the main character Pink experiences a self-inflicted Go Mad From The Isolation after constructing his wall, discovering that alienating everyone and everything is much worse than having to deal with them like before.
-->But it was all just a fantasy\\
The wall was too high, as you can see\\
No matter how he tried, he could not break free\\
And the worms ate into his brain
* More or less the subject of Music/VanDerGraafGenerator's "A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers".
* Implied to be the fate of the protagonist in Music/{{Rush|Band}}'s song "Xanadu". His quest for immortality leads him to "the caves of ice", and the second half of the song implies that ever since then [[AndIMustScream he's been trapped there]] and goes mad from isolation ("the last immortal man") and the prospect of having nothing to do but wait for the world to end.
* Music/{{Sting}}'s song "Message in a Bottle" is about a man trapped on an island.
-->Just a castaway / an island lost at sea / another lonely day / no one here but me / more loneliness than any man could bear / rescue me before I fall into despair.

* The Statler Brothers' song "Flowers on the Wall":
-->Last night I dressed in tails pretended I was on the town\\
As long as I can dream it's hard to slow this swinger down\\
So please don't give a thought to me I'm really doing fine\\
You can always find me here and having quite a time\\
\\
Counting flowers on the wall\\
That don't bother me at all\\
Playing solitaire till dawn with a deck of fifty-one\\
Smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo\\
Now don't tell me I've nothing to do.

* In Wrestling/{{TNA}}, Wrestling/{{Raven}} was put into solitary confinement for Abyss's Monster's Ball and learned that he ''hated'' it, saying it would have driven him crazy if he wasn't insane already.[[/folder]]

* In the ''AudioPlay/BigFinishDoctorWho'' audio drama ''Davros'', the titular villain is rescued from a form of suspended animation. He explains to the Doctor that he was conscious the entire time, and went cycling between insanity and sanity about once every ''second''. Ultimately subverted: Davros is as [[MadScientist sane as ever]] once he's finally released.

* In ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'', this what the flavor text tells us about the mysterious [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=108805 Uncle Istvan]]: "Solitude drove the old [[TheHermit hermit]] insane. Now he only keeps company with those he can catch."
* Inverted with the Alchemical TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}: while lengthy periods without human contact - and it ''has'' to be human, other Alchemicals don't count - do cause behavioural changes, due to the nature of Clarity, it could be argued that they're going sane - the kind of ruthless, calculating mechanical sanity that makes crazy seem like a good thing, admittedly, but sane nonetheless!
* In ''TabletopGame/RocketAge'' Erasmus Cotts became insane after being marooned on a moonlet around Saturn, only living off alien lichen. After finding an ancient abandoned space ship he's taken to attacking ships in the hopes someone will kill him.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Portal}}'' the protagonist comes across the makeshift camps of an earlier survivor, [[MeaningfulName Doug Rattmann]]: isolated for weeks in a death maze presided over by a [[AIIsACrapShoot pathological AI]], there is [[RoomFullOfCrazy evidence]] that he had succumbed to insanity, such at the photographs with the faces replaced with pictures of their inanimate CompanionCube. [[spoiler: How he managed to even function faced with both schizophrenia and social isolation is a mystery. The [[AllThereInTheManual comic]] had implications that by NOT taking his meds, he became [[ProperlyParanoid so dysfunctionally paranoid]] that he ended up [[CrazyPrepared preparing for every single possible outcome]], most of which [=GLaDOS=] threw at them.]]
* In ''Videogame/Left4Dead2,'' in the Last Man On Earth mode, [[TheAloner you're the only Survivor]] (and there's a mysterious absence of Common Infected), but your character still talks as if the others are still there. This is made even creepier by the fact that your character will still periodically shout out something along the lines of "Hello?" as if they're continually looking for the other survivors.
* In ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'', if you save rescuing Liara for last, you'll find that she has gone half mad from spending so much time in a bubble without food or water. She'll refuse to believe that you aren't a hallucination until you physically drag her to safety. She recovers pretty quickly, though.
** The Rachni encountered all have gone murderously insane from being separated from their queen. The squad compares it to locking a child in the closet for their first sixteen years.
* In the ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}} III'' expansion campaign, [[KnightTemplar Maiev]] accuses [[WildCard Illidan]], who spent ten thousand years as a SealedEvilInACan cut off from any contact with other intelligent beings, of being insane. He archly replies that [[BluntYes yes]], isolation will ''do'' that to the mind. All the more ironic because she was his chief jailer [[spoiler:and, as a result, became completely fixated on him as the only purpose of her life]].
* In ''VideoGame/MystIIIExile'', this is partially why the game's antagonist Saavedro wants revenge on Atrus and the protagonist. [[AntiVillain Saavedro wants to go home to see his family]] after years of being alone. The player can choose to let him go home at the end of the game, or [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential leave him in a spot]] where he can see his village, but be unable to reach it through a force field, [[PayEvilUntoEvil knowing it's forever out of his reach]].
* ''VideoGame/MystIV'' explores this trope a couple different ways. Sirrus and Achenar were sentenced to two very different forms of solitary confinement. Sirrus, the more rational of the two, goes totally nuts because he spent the last twenty years in a place with no indigenous life forms. Achenar, who was unhinged from the start, actually gets rehabilitated from his stretch in a place that has many different forms of life. Conclusion: Isolation is only guaranteed to drive you mad if you are the only sentient life form present.
* [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] in ''VideoGame/BlazeUnion'' as Gram Blaze travels to meet up with Nessiah, who has spent the past several years as a hermit living deep in the forest. Eudy complains that a place like this is way too cut-off from society. [[HypocriticalHumor She has spent the past few years studying ballistics alone in the mountains.]] She is immediately called out on this, and HilarityEnsues.
* ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'':
** [[{{Precursors}} Forerunner]] AI 343 Guilty Spark fell victim to this after 100,000 years of isolation, explaining his eccentricity and occasional AxCrazy moments. In fact, most surviving Forerunner [=AIs=] seem to have gone at least a bit mad from loneliness, due to quarantine protocols having prevented them from communicating with each other ever since the Forerunners disappeared 100,000 years ago; Guilty Spark himself lampshades this by noting that his creators should have had each post be manned by at least two [=AIs=] instead of just one.
** Cortana is on the verge of falling into this at the start of ''VideoGame/{{Halo 4}}'', due to her being marooned in space for four years with no company except a lone SuperSoldier in stasis and her burgeoning rampancy.
** In a non-AI example, ''Literature/HaloSilentium'' reveals that this is largely why [[spoiler:the Ur-Didact has been unable to let go of his genocidal hate for humanity]].

* Implied to have happened with The Twelve Traitors in ''VideoGame/{{Lusternia}}''. Granted, they were [[DrunkOnTheDarkSide pretty merciless]] prior to their exile in the Void, but thousands of years alone wandering the darkness ''certainly'' weren't kind to [[FallenHero Fain]]. As for [[BlueAndOrangeMorality Morgfyre]]...
* Averted in ''VideoGame/BlazBlue''. Hakumen spent 90 years alone in the Void, and [[{{Determinator}} retained his sanity through sheer force of will]]. Although, you can argue Hakumem already wasn't very sane to begin with [[spoiler: given he's a time-displaced Jin, whose sanity was already very much in question.]]
** Played straight for Arakune, though. As a human named Lotte Carmine, he continued to isolate himself in his own research to be the scientist supreme for himself, refusing even the only one who wanted to help him, Litchi (the rest could not care less about him at all). When he goes to the Boundary despite Litchi's warning, the corruption got to him easily due to him isolating himself and thus turning him into Arakune.
* ''VideoGame/GhostTrick'': [[spoiler:Yomiel]] spent years separated from humanity, with his fiancée having committed suicide because he was presumed dead, unable to die, and this is what fueled his need for revenge. [[spoiler:Though he wasn't [[MoralityPet technically alone...]]]]
* Voldo from the ''VideoGame/SoulSeries'' lost his sanity as well as his sight from years of being locked in the Money Pit. Later installments show that he is still very loyal to his master, exiting the pit to acquire new treasures to add to it. His master is a giant gold statue.
* This is one of the many, many infernal punishments available in the game of ''VideoGame/Afterlife1996'', "Screaming Subspace Voids". Lustful Souls are blindfolded, ear-plugged, and trussed up so as to be immobile, then suspended in a pit for a couple hundred years, effectively simulating TheNothingAfterDeath. Insanity usually sets in after an hour.

* Invoked in ''VideoGame/SilentHill2'' where the atmosphere of the game is designed to "heighten the player's sense of isolation" to contribute to the horror. The first action the player takes is to run down a purposefully long, empty, foggy, narrow path while [[ParanoiaFuel mysterious footsteps sound behind you]] with no known source.
* In ''Videogame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'', [[MonsterClown Cicero's]] journal shows that the reason he became the maniacal jester he is now was due to seeing the Dark Brotherhood crumble all around him and being stuck taking care of the Night Mother for a long time with nothing but the memory of his final contract, a jester who simply laughed as he died.
** This was the [[AlasPoorVillain sad fate of the Dragon Numinex]]. After being defeated by King Olaf, he was imprisoned for years and slowly went mad. Eventually forgetting his own name.
* {{Downplayed}} with BigBad [[spoiler: Adachi]] in ''VideoGame/Persona4''. As a result of his FriendlessBackground and being reassigned FromNewYorkToNowhere, he spent all his free time drinking and watching TV in his apartment. While not exactly imprisoned, the lack of positive outlets in his life alongside his sociopathic tendencies and superiority complex [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkcmxrkHXD0 were the perfect ingredients to turn him into one of the more realistic depictions of a]] SerialKiller and a MisanthropeSupreme. Ironically, he ends up thriving and becoming TheAtoner after being sent to an ''actual'' prison.
* ''VideoGame/TheNamelessMod'': "Welcome to my domain, mortal. I've put up a scrambling field to disrupt all communication in and out of the facility. Let's see how long it'll take before I can make you scream like a little girl." --Shadow Code.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'', Patricia Tannis was already a little neurotic when she came to Pandora to research the Eridians, but after being the only member of her team to survive [[DeathWorld Pandora's various hazards]], she started going completely over the edge, doing things like dating (and breaking up with) her ECHO recorder and having extended conversations with the corpse of one of her late team members. In the second game, she hires you to avenge a ''chair'' at one point.
* Shade in the Captain Scarlett DLC for ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands 2}}'' is [[SoleSurvivor the badly dehydrated mayor of Oasis]], [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial a town where everyone is totally alive, honest]]. Loneliness led him to [[OfCorpseHesAlive rig up a mixture of corpses and dummies with recordings of him speaking in-character as the dead townsfolk]].
* ''VideoGame/DawnOfWar'': Turns out that staying in the Warp alone for centuries is, in fact, not good for the mind, as [[spoiler:Azariah Kyras]] can attest.
--> Though it was a simpler, ''weaker'' voice that illuminated me during my centuries upon the Judgement of Carrion. It was [[WarGod Khorne's]] messenger, who showed me the true path to freedom from our pathetic corpse-Emperor. And what is this path, this meaning, this purpose, to which we gather the skulls of our foes? It is nothing. There is no path. No meaning. We murder. We kill. It is mindless savagery, this ''universe'' is mindless.
* Explore long enough in ''VideoGame/{{Kairo}}'' and you'll come across some sort of observation room with a skeleton at the desk. There are some very startling words engraved into the arm of the stone chair.
* In ''VideoGame/{{QUBE}}'', this is Nowak's explanation for 919, the person telling you that you're actually in a prisoner in an ElaborateUndergroundBase rather than in space. Nowak says that 919 is an astronaut who was lost and thought dead, and that his years adrift have left him delusional.
* This happened to Caldarius from ''VideoGame/{{Battleborn}}''. Being imprisoned for centuries eventually took a severe toll on his sanity to the point that by the time Deande freed him the only thing he's capable of doing is screaming about how much he wants to kill Rendain.

* ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOriginsAwakening:'' Downplayed with Anders. His next-to-last escape from the Circle before the beginning of the game has earned him a year of solitary confinement, and the only living creature he was allowed to see during this time was a tower cat, which explains his affinity for them. He appears to be laid-back in his interactions with the Warden, but he occasionally lets slip that imprisonment had a profound negative effect on him:
-->'''Anders:''' If I didn't have perspective, I'd still be sitting in a templar dungeon drooling on my smallclothes.
* The Lord Protector from ''VideoGame/DungeonMunchies'' is a far cry from the individual she was before, after [[spoiler:reincarnating as a spirit in a monster-infested underground complex, without any of her old friends, and only mutated plants for company.]]

* Averted in ''VisualNovel/AnalogueAHateStory'', where archive keeper AI *Hyun-ae has spent six centuries as the SoleSurvivor on board a GhostShip lost in space but remains quite sane (albeit more than a little starved for attention). In fact, [[spoiler: the trope turns out to have been ''inverted''. Hyun-ae, before her BrainUploading, was subjected to such a horrific case of BreakTheCutie that she snapped and murdered her tormentors - [[InnocentBystander along with every other living soul on board]] - by cutting the ship's life support. Her present self, having had several hundred years in isolation to calm down, is far more stable and rational.]]

* This is one theory as to why ''WebAnimation/SaladFingers'' is so mentally disturbed, given that he mostly talks to his finger puppets and tends to injure/kill most everyone else he comes in contact with.

* ''Film/SonicTheHedgehog2020'':
** {{Downplayed|Trope}}. While not insane, Sonic has clearly gotten desperate for meaningful contact after more than a decade of being alone. When the film begins, he's been living in a cave on Earth for ten years, and his extended isolation has taken a toll on his mental state. He pretends to have conversations and activities by using his SuperSpeed, and also pretends to have friends by spying on the residents of Green Hills; he even acknowledges at one point that his loneliness has driven him a "bit crazy". Sonic finally hits his breaking point while playing a baseball game by himself; he scores a home run, cheers for himself, and looks over at the stands to see them completely empty. The resulting frustration and sorrow Sonic feels is what leads him to trigger the EMP that knocks out power across half the country.
--->'''Sonic:''' I really am alone... ''all alone''. Forever.
** Played straight with Doctor Robotnik. Not that he was all that sane to begin with. Having been stranded in the Mushroom Planet for 87 days and shaving his head completely bald hasn't given his sanity any help. He even adopts a CompanionCube rock and calls it Agent Stone after his former lackey. In spite of this, he makes a BadassBoast that this isn't going to hold him back. He makes good on his promise in [[Film/SonicTheHedgehog22022 the sequel]], but after having been stranded for almost a year his already fragile psyche shattered from isolation and hunger, [[ArchEnemy growing fixated on exacting revenge on the hedgehog]].
* ''Film/TheLighthouse'' is about two men stuck on an isolated island maintaining a lighthouse until it's time for them to be relieved. As the movie progresses, they start to drink heavily, attack each other both verbally and physically, and end up completely losing their grip on reality. It doesn't help that their personalities were already pretty unpleasant to begin with.

* Invoked and ''attempted'' to be averted in ''[[Literature/DangerHuman Danger--Human!]]'' An otherwise unremarkable human named Elridge is kidnapped for observation by a group of aliens trying to figure out how AdvancedAncientHumans became TheDreaded. Aware of the effects that Elridge's confinement and isolation will have on him, they have attempted to prevent Elridge from going insane by doing ''something'' to his brain. However, by the end of the story, it is clear that he has become dangerously unhinged.

* Ben Gunn from ''Literature/TreasureIsland'' is semi-insane from being marooned on the island for several years. He's coherent enough to help the heroes, though.
* The same applies to Solomon Shafto in ''Literature/ThePyrates'', although he is possibly even less coherent.
* ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxyTrilogy'': Both Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent go mad when stuck in earth's prehistory, although admittedly they ''chose'' to go mad to save time. Ford got BoredWithInsanity, himself.
* ''Literature/TheSight'': A wolf in the book spends so much time by himself at one point that he goes a bit crazy from loneliness. He believes his only friends are the bats in the cave and talks to them despite not understanding them.
* The short story "Literature/TheYellowWallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
* ''Literature/TheSeventhTower'': Comes up as a problem for Tal when dealing with a character isolated inside a sunstone, complete with her [[LivingShadow spiritshadow]]. Considering the character herself admits to having been mad, Tal is wary in trusting her advice.
* In the ''Franchise/StarTrek'' ''Literature/TheQContinuum'' novel trilogy, the omnipotent being 0 has spent millions of years isolated outside the galaxy (and his inability to travel at light speed precluded him from travelling to distant galaxies), and has turned mad from the isolation, making him [[PowerBornOfMadness even more powerful]] than the omnipotent Q.
* In Creator/JackVance's ''Literature/{{Lyonesse}}'', King Casmir imprisons Prince Aillas at the bottom of an oubliette. Aillas gradually loses his sanity and starts thinking of the skeletons of former inmates as friends and comrades in adversity. He gets better after escaping.

* ''Literature/WarWithNoName'': [[spoiler: When D'Arc leaves the ranch, Mort(e) is left completely isolated for several weeks. He does not take this well, and starts "devolving" and acting like a pre-Change cat.]]

* In the second book in ''Literature/TheBartimaeusTrilogy'' (The Golem's Eye), Honorius is an example of this after [[spoiler: being cooped up in Gladstone's tomb for over a century.]]
* In Creator/JamesSwallow's ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' novel ''[[Literature/BloodAngels Black Tide]]'', Tarikus recounts how Fabius Bile keeps the captive Space Marines isolated for months or years to break them. In the short story "The Returned", Tarikus wakes with a jolt, taking seconds to realize he is no longer Bile's prisoner; he has suffered it since his escape. The psyker examining him comments off-hand that obviously he was deeply tormented by his experience. Later, after a test [[spoiler:which rendered him just short of brain dead]], he awakes peacefully and deeply relishes it.
* In Creator/RobertEHoward's ''Franchise/ConanTheBarbarian'' story ''Literature/AWitchShallBeBorn'', Tamaris at first does not recognize her rescuers.
* Total sensory deprivation and isolation are used as an interrogation technique by [[UsefulNotes/MoscowCentre the KGB]] in Creator/TomClancy's ''[[Literature/JackRyan The Cardinal of the Kremlin]]''; one of the interrogators mentions that it's much more effective than torture. The specifics involve a neutral-buoyancy pool, carefully crafted restraints designed not to be felt, and a sound-isolation technique designed to neutralize the sound of the subject's own voice so that the subjects ''couldn't even hear themselves talking''.
* ''Literature/TheLegendOfDrizzt'':
** Drizzt Do'Urden in R. A. Salvatore's ''[[Literature/TheDarkElfTrilogy Exile]]'' has a theoretically even worse problem - not only is he being affected by the isolation when hiding in underground caverns alone, but the "company" of the local [[EverythingTryingToKillYou wildlife]] is causing him to combine this with reflexive killer instincts that can pop up at the wrong time. The only thing that's keeping him somewhat sane through all this is talking to his cat. (Admittedly, she's a magical panther that can understand him, if not answer.)
** Drizzt suffers this again in ''Literature/TheNeverwinterSaga'' where he gets a different taste of it during his [[spoiler: imprisonment in Draygo Quick's dungeon]]. [[spoiler: Quick]] tactically uses isolation and slowly improving conditions to endear Drizzt to him. It works, too: Drizzt remarks, that he can't [[spoiler: hate Quick anymore]] because he is the only one talking to and feeding him.

* ''Literature/TwentyThousandLeaguesUnderTheSea'': After seven months of not talking [[ClosedCircle with any other human being]] except Captain Nemo, TheProfessor Aronnax and BattleButler Conseil, the independent and BookDumb Ned Land, not interested in submarine investigation, is slowly going insane.
-->''I'll also mention that the Canadian, at the end of his strength and patience, made no further appearances. Conseil couldn't coax a single word out of him and feared that, in a fit of delirium while under the sway of a ghastly homesickness, Ned would kill himself. So he kept a devoted watch on his friend every instant.''
* In ''Literature/TheMysteriousIsland'', the group encounters a man abandoned on a nearby island, who has been driven entirely mad. He recovers some after spending time with the group, though it takes months before he speaks and even then he is never quite comfortable around the others.
* ''Literature/TheSagaOfTheNobleDead'' has the ancient vampire Li'kan, who has spent thousands of years alone in an ice-covered fortress on a mountain peak, her unnatural life sustained by an ArtifactOfDoom. By the time the protagonists encounter her, she has forgotten even the sound of speech.
* In Creator/JohnHemry's ''[[Literature/TheLostFleet Fearless]]'', several rescued prisoners, despite each other's company, still were badly affected enough to wake up thinking they are back there.

* In ''Literature/{{Remnants}},'' [[OneBadMother Mother]] is a SapientShip whose creators abandoned her for unknown reasons, leaving her AI running. How does a computer go mad? Very, very slowly.
** [[OracularUrchin Billy]] too, after being put into an artificial sleep for five hundred years that somehow turned off his body [[AndIMustScream but not his mind]]. He goes from mad to sane numerous times, and by the time he wakes up his brain has dealt with the issue by slowing down to the point of nearly being comatose. [[BoredWithInsanity He eventually turns back to normal]]. [[TouchedByVorlons Or as normal as he ever was,]] anyway.

* Ilox in ''Literature/TheWildBoy'' goes insane after being put in a 'cocoon', a sensory deprivation technique intended to fix his 'problem' with his psychic bond with Phlarx.
* Mere in Creator/RobertReed's ''Literature/GreatShip'' universe spent ten thousand years alone in a barely functional starship no larger than an outhouse, her only company being a half-dead nearly mute AI that was [[TheDeterminator obsessed with getting her to safety]]. By the time the ship breaks up in the atmosphere and Mere's [[HealingFactor body heals itself]], she is thoroughly insane, not knowing how to even move.
* In ''Literature/{{Zel}}'', a retelling of "Rapunzel", being trapped in a tower for two years with only the company of her mother for an hour every day causes Zel's sanity to slip to the point where she's walking around naked and babbling to a hallucination of a horse in her room.
* ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'':
** During ''Literature/LukeSkywalkerAndTheShadowsOfMindor'' Luke gets trapped in a vision of something called The Dark - floating insensate in space at the end of everything, with nothing to do but [[TheStarsAreGoingOut watch the stars go out]], for what feels like a very, ''very'' long time. When he gets out, he's [[BreakTheCutie uncharacteristically nihilistic and depressed]], not able to see the world the way he had before. Luke then [[StepfordSmiler forces himself to act exactly like he would have before]] in the hopes of BecomingTheMask, but in quiet moments he says things like "It makes me want to die. No... not die. Just ''stop''."
** The EvilGod Abeloth was the BigBad of ''Literature/FateOfTheJedi'', and was "The Mother" in the [[PhysicalGod Celestial family of Ones]] but lacked their immortality. Her [[ImmortalitySeeker efforts to gain immortality]] in order to spend eternity with her family led to her being twisted by the DarkSide into an EldritchAbomination and [[EvenEvilHasLovedOnes abandoned by her family]], who fled to the planet Mortis before being [[WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars killed by Anakin Skywalker and each other]]. After being left on a remote world, [[GoMadFromTheIsolation she was driven insane by loneliness and despair]] that fueled her every action.
* ''[[Literature/TimeMachineSeries Sail with Pirates]]'': The pilot from ''Concepcion'', after causing the ship to be wrecked at sea, runs away as soon the crew lands on an uninhabited island, and hides. He [[{{Robinsonade}} lives there alone]] for a ''long'' time. By the time the protagonist meets with him, he has become completely insane but still gives some cryptic hints regarding the shipwreck location.
* In the first book of ''Literature/VenusPrime'' series, Sparta is described as struggling to avoid crying herself to sleep during the years that she spends training to become a Space Board Inspector because she's horribly lonely but also afraid that socializing might cause her to expose something about her past. In the fourth book, she suffers a nervous breakdown after a combination of prolonged isolation from others and a steadily-worsening drug habit.
* Averted in Kage Baker's "[[Literature/TheCompanyNovels The Empress of Mars]]". A super-talented inventor proposes to escape the Evil Corporation that is after the patents to his tiny robots that fertilize crops as real bees are too disoriented by being on Mars to function. He flees to an isolated cave and has the robots build him a workshop. Mary, owner of the bar "The Empress of Mars", says that living without people will drive him mad. He says it won't as he is "eccentric" (which can mean almost any non-standard mental state, in this case high functioning autism.) Justified in that he has spent most of his life avoiding physical contact with others. But he has a lawyer see that his father is provided with money from those patents. He cares, he just doesn't show it the usual ways.
* Martha from ''Literature/ClocksThatDontTick'', to an extent. Four hundred years isolated in the Space Needle didn't do her psyche any favors.

* Arthur in ''Literature/AlongTheWindingRoad''. While he is reasonably coherent, he quickly trails off into rambles and forgets any number of things he's trying to do. He also has severe insomnia, which is apparently spurred on by [[HearingVoices ghosts]].
* ''Literature/KushielsLegacy'': The prisoners on La Dolorosa are imprisoned in solitary confinement, often for years. Most are driven insane over the years, with behavior ranging from talking to themselves or people who aren't there and even self-harm. Phedra also begins to experience it during her stay there.
* The madwoman of ''Literature/TheGirlWhoDrankTheMoon'' was only nominally mad when she was first imprisoned, but ten years in solitary confinement take a toll. As a result, she develops magic transmutation powers that even she chalks up to insanity.

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[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* ''Manga/OnePiece's'' Brook spent fifty-plus years in total isolation and flashbacks suggest he definitely [[OceanMadness went at least a little crazy in that time]]. This might also have caused a deterioration of social skills that has resulted in Brook being one of anime's few post-mortem [[DirtyOldMan Dirty Old Men]].
** Made worse by his Devil Fruit powers, which resurrected his soul into his undying skeleton, so in his isolation, he couldn't even look forward to dying of starvation or thirst before his second lifespan finally ran out at some unknown point in the future. Due to a promise he made he couldn't kill himself, either. So he was stuck there, alone, for fifty years, with only his instruments to keep him company -- and the skeletal remains of his former crew, who ''he'' had been in charge of when they died.
* ''Manga/RozenMaiden'' manga has Kirakishou [[spoiler: who's been isolated in the N-Field so long she begins to go insane.]]
* ''Manga/YuGiOh'' has Yami Yugi, isolated for 3,000 years in the manga within the Puzzle, being vengeful and employing dangerous games to deal with whoever's bullying Yuugi that week. He also has seemingly no presence or sense of identity outside of this judge role until later. This may be a side effect of the manga being originally planned to be a horror story, and thus some of the early art was...interesting. This is played down in the anime.

* One of the reasons why [[spoiler: Yugi]] from ''Anime/TenchiInTokyo'' turned to a life of villainy.
* Likely the main reason Lucia from ''Manga/RaveMaster'' is so screwed up. In general, locking a small child up in a ''maximum security prison'' and depriving them of contact with the rest of the world for ten years is bad for one's mental health. The same goes for the backstory of another villain, Doryu: [[spoiler: after trying his best to make a country where humans and non-humans could co-exist, the former chased out the latter, turned on Doryu, and imprisoned him in an utterly dark, pitch-black cell to be forgotten, explaining his obsession with Darkness and Light.]]

* Almost happens to ''Manga/{{Cyborg 009}}'' in an episode of the 2001 series, when he spends a whole episode stuck in his SuperSpeed mode. What feels like mere seconds for the others, is for him ''several days'' spent unable to interact with anyone since he moves so fast that no one can see/hear/etc. him, and he can't touch them either as the smallest touch could [[KillItWithFire set anything ablaze]]. It truly is an AndIMustScream situation, and he almost crosses the DespairEventHorizon.
* Averted with the old man in ''Manga/SuicideIsland''. He's far more concerned with survival than contact with others -- going so far as to actively avoid contact with anyone -- but his mental health is possibly the best on the entire island.

* Comedic example in ''Manga/YugamiKunNiWaTomodachiGaInai:'' NewTransferStudent [[IJustWantToHaveFriends Chihiro]] [[NiceGirl Watanuki]] thinks being isolated by classmates and having no one to talk to at school could cause not just her, but ''anybody'' psychological damage. Not the case with [[TheProtagonist Yuuji]] [[LonersAreFreaks Yugami]], the [[LeaveMeAlone loner]] who sits beside her and averts this; despite being ignored by everyone in class, he's completely fine with it and has an optimistic, confident personality to boot.

* A very disturbing example occurs in ''Manga/FairyTail'' with Mavis Vermillion after she casts an imperfect version of Fairy Law. She apparently angered the deity Ankhselam and received a curse that causes her to take life the more she cares about it. After accidentally stealing the life from Yuri Dreyar's wife, Mavis immediately flees from her guild and keeps herself secluded from society. This causes her to become very disturbed and dishevelled, and she only knows release when she encounters Zeref, who also has the curse and can comfort her and reveals he is in love with her.
* In ''Anime/HugttoPrettyCure'', slacker StarterVillain Charalit was punished by his superiors for his repeated failures and refusal to document them by being trapped in a dark room for an untold amount of days. By the time was finally let out, he was reduced to a shivering, nervous wreck, allowing his BadBoss to transform him into the MonsterOfTheWeek by weaponizing his despair.

* [[spoiler:Element Lad]] of the ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes spent billions of years as the only being in the universe after being flung outside time and space in ''Legion Lost''. He was driven very much insane as a result, although there was also some ShowingOffThePerilousPowerSource involved. It took him weeks to even remember his former friends when they were brought to his attention.
* Inverted in ''ComicBook/{{DV8}}'' #5, when Copycat gets trapped in a WhiteVoidRoom. She's already mad (she has multiple personality disorder). Spending time in the void allows her personalities to start integrating.

* There's a comic in the ''Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse'', ''Mostly Automatic'', which has a young man with a sweetheart taking a load of cargo on a trip that should have taken two weeks, during which he happily planned to lounge around playing games and watching vids. But a rock hit his ship, taking out the hyperdrive and the comm. Sublight engines still functioned, but it was ten parsecs to any kind of civilization and would take ''sixty years'', alone on a little ship. He put the ship on automatic and then "quietly, and very deliberately... went... out... of... my... mind..." For the first few years, he mostly slept until he ran out of sleep-inducing medication, then he went mad until he found an inactive service droid in a box in the hold and activated her, which helped.

* During the Obsidian Age story arc of [[ComicBook/JusticeLeague JLA]], ComicBook/PlasticMan is frozen, shattered into tiny pieces, and scattered across the Atlantic Ocean floor almost 3000 years in the past. When the League finally reconstitutes him in the present, he reveals he was awake and aware ''[[WhoWantsToLiveForever the entire]] [[AndIMustScream time]]''. During that period, he went insane and then [[BoredWithInsanity became sane again because it got boring]].
** For an inversion, a later story involves the Flash curing a persistent malignant computer program called the Construct by duplicating it so that it had something similar to itself to talk to. He later discovers that the Constructs have since evolved into an entire species of electronic beings who worship him as a god.
* The origin of the ''ComicBook/DoomPatrol'' villain Mister Nobody, originally a criminal and former member of the Brotherhood of Evil named Mr. Morden, is that he was injected with a powerful anaesthetic and left in a WhiteVoidRoom for three days, as part of an experiment by an ex-nazi scientist hiding in Argentina. The room was spherical, resulting in the illusion that Neumann was suspended in an endless white void, and with absolutely no external stimuli other than sight, Morden went insane in less than a day. Three days passed, which seemed like eternities to him, until finally he saw a dot appear in the whiteness, causing him to latch onto the dot as his only anchor to reality. Finally, the existential fear caused by the dot erased Morden from existence, and he was reborn as Mr. Nobody, complete with EnlightenmentSuperpowers.
* During ''ComicBook/TheDeathOfSuperman'', it's revealed that this is what happened to Hank Henshaw, the Cyborg Superman - after making his escape from Earth using a piece of Superman's birthing matrix rocket ship, he wandered the galaxy for so long, he went completely mad, making him believe that Superman drove him from Earth.
* In ''ComicBook/DCRebirth'', [[GreatGazoo Mr. Mxyzptlk]] is imprisoned by ArcVillain Mr. Oz and doesn't take it very well. Oz points out that [[TheAgeless the passage of time is meaningless to him]], but Mxyzptlk points out that to ComicBook/{{Superman}} it isn't, and expects him to notice he's gone and come for him. As time passes, Mxyzptlk becomes more and more unstable before breaking out and kidnapping Supes' son Jon. Later on while Superman is fighting Oz after rescuing Jon, he comes across Mxy's cell which he turned into a RoomFullOfCrazy [[AlasPoorVillain by scribbling SAVE ME SUPERMAN on the walls over and over]].
* In UsefulNotes/{{the Silver Age|of Comic Books}} Franchise/{{Batman}} story "Robin Dies at Dawn", Batman begins hallucinating his {{Sidekick}}'s death after being locked in a sensory deprivation chamber for several hours.
** Also the reason that Tim Drake became the third ComicBook/{{Robin}}; he noticed that, in the absence of a sidekick or any other field support, Batman was starting to become harsher and less humane.
* Used offensively against ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} during an ComicBook/XMen arc, as part of a brainwashing attempt, using the recently-made Asian Ninja, Psylocke, on the outside to make things worse. Thing is, Wolverine is already a bit mad, and this just antagonized things, and he ended up pushing his own issues back into Psylocke's head.

* ''ComicBook/CosmicGhostRider'' Plays it straight when Frank Castle makes a deal with Mephisto to become the next ghost rider, ready to tear crime a new one...only to roam a desolated world with no one to kill or avenge, and when Mephisto was quiet to his calls...let's just say Frank began to lose his mind rapidly...don't worry he got better.

* In ''Fanfic/TheAwakeningOfAMagus'', when Draco's [[SupernaturalSensitivity Scanner]] ability is tested, a sensory deprivation spell is cast on him. This causes a serious breakdown in a few minutes, mostly due to Lucius having had the habit of using it as punishment. Plus someone used a potion with possible side effects.
* In the ''{{Series/Firefly}}'' fic ''[[http://www.fireflyfans.net/bluesun.aspx?bid=16871 The Losing Side]]'', both Mal and Wash had it happen to them. Mal was tough enough not to be affected too much based on what he says, but it has a harsh effect on Wash. He feels like a coward and admits to Mal he broke down crying one of the times they hauled him out to interrogate him. Getting yelled at and deprived of sleep didn’t help. He says he almost gave up from the isolation. (See sidebar or click author name for the rest of the fic)
* In ''Fanfic/ToTheNightSky'', Edward is strapped in a straitjacket and locked up in a padded cell for several days. He gets so desperate for company that he starts hallucinating ''his mother's maimed corpse'', turns freakishly submissive when threatened with the possibility of being put back in time out, and is left unable to handle empty rooms.

[[folder:Films — Animation]]

[[folder:Films — Live-Action]]
%%* Ben Gunn from ''Film/{{Treasure Island|1950}}''.

* [[Film/TheCountOfMonteCristo2002 The Count of Monte Cristo]] features this with Dantes after years imprisoned in the Chateau D'if with no interaction with other humans besides the few seconds each day where he is fed by a ladle through a slot in the cell door, along with the once a year beating he receives from the warden to mark the anniversary of his arrival. When Abbe Faria breaks into his cell, having thought he was digging towards the outer wall, Dantes fears he is going mad and is seeing a monster tearing through the ground. The first words he speaks lay bare at once just how far he's gone... and how much worse it can get.

* WordOfGod claims this as the reason for Kong's aggressive, violent tendencies in Creator/PeterJackson's ''Film/KingKong2005''. Being a gorilla (a naturally social species, like humans) [[LastOfHisKind without a family]], on an island where EverythingIsTryingToKillYou, would do that. Some TruthInTelevision there too, as solitary gorillas in captivity are often known to go insane from loneliness.

* In ''Film/JurassicWorld'', ''Velociraptor''-trainer Owen immediately suspects that this is one of the ''I. rex's'' major problems. Any animal will become psychologically damaged if they're never socialized with humans or other animals, and the ''I. rex'' has spent her entire life confined to a paddock that's far too small for her massive size. The only positive relationship the ''I. rex'' has is with the crane that brings her food; she even ate her own sibling. [[spoiler:We later learn that this was part of Hoskins' and Wu's plan all along to create the perfect LivingWeapon.]]
-->'''Owen:''' Animals raised in isolation aren't always the most functional.\\
'''Claire:''' Your raptors were born in captivity.\\
'''Owen:''' With siblings, they learn social skills and [[{{Imprinting}} I imprint on them]] when they're born. There's trust.
* Zac Hobson of ''Film/TheQuietEarth.'' He recovers shortly before he meets another survivor, though.

* ''Film/{{Moon}}'': Starts happening to the protagonist -- [[spoiler: Or does it?]].
* In ''Film/Passengers2016'', Jim wakes up early due to a malfunctioning cryo pod. He then goes mad over the ensuing year - at one point almost spacing himself to get it over with - and resorts to dropping food so he can interact with the ship's maintenance robots. He eventually sabotages Aurora's pod so he won't be alone. His actions are wrong, he knows it was wrong, but he was ''genuinely going insane''.
* ''Film/RocketMan1997'' plays this for laughs when the protagonist is accidentally prevented from entering [[HumanPopsicle suspended animation]] for the nine-month trip to Mars, with clips of him at one day in, one month in, and a month in for each subsequent month. By the seventh, he's painting a replica of the Art/SistineChapel's ceiling on the ceiling of the spaceship.
** At the end, ''it happens again''...
** A variation at the beginning of the film. The protagonist and an astronaut are undergoing trials to see which one will be included in the mission. Both are locked in separate chambers of an isolation tank for 24 hours to test their endurance. While the tank is completely insulated from the outside world, the two chambers are not insulated from one another. The protagonist entertains himself by singing, throwing a ball, and having sock puppet plays. By the time the tank opens, the astronaut is the one who has signs of insanity from all that noise, while the protagonist asks to be put back in the tank to finish his play.
* ''Film/TaxiDriver'': Travis Bickle goes insane from the almost total isolation he experiences. He works and interacts with other people but he finds himself completely unable to connect to anyone and develops murderous tendencies. Most of his time is spent alone in his apartment or driving a cab.

* Henri Young in ''Film/MurderInTheFirst'' spends three years in solitary confinement after attempting to escape from Alcatraz. He does have some human contact during those years; unfortunately, the humans are very sadistic guards. When he's finally released from solitary, he has a psychotic episode and kills the inmate who snitched on him and foiled the escape attempt.
* When Jack Sparrow spends several months in Davy Jones's Locker between the [[Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanDeadMansChest second]] and [[Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanAtWorldsEnd third]] ''Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' films, he goes... well... even crazier than he was before. When the other characters arrive to rescue him, he assumes that they're just a more varied sort of hallucination (the ones he was having before were just [[MesACrowd lots and lots of iterations of himself]]).
* In ''Film/{{Sunshine}}'', [[spoiler: Captain Pinbacker was left alone in the Icarus I for 7 years, until the Icarus II comes along. He mistakes Capa for an angel. Then again, he was a little mad in the first place...]]
* Oh Dae-Su from ''Film/{{Oldboy 2003}}'' gets locked up in a room for reasons unknown to him for 15 years, being released when he was going to escape. He gets obsessed with revenge at any cost.
* In the British film ''Film/TheMindbenders'' a scientist turns traitor and then commits suicide when about to be arrested. An assistant and friend seems to know what was going on and volunteer to show them. They were experimenting with sensory deprivation which made the older man open to suggestions like self-brainwashing. The younger man almost succumbs himself.
* ''Film/MissionToMars'' finds Luke Graham marooned on Mars for a year after his crewmates are killed in a storm, and he attacks his rescuers when they arrive because he thinks they're just a hallucination. He quickly reverts to normal once he realizes they're real, however.

* In ''Film/TheWind1928'', Letty moves from Virginia to a dry plains area in Texas that suffers from very frequent dust storms. Being alone with just the dust causes her SanitySlippage, which only gets worse when she's forced to stay inside all alone while her husband is travelling. [[spoiler:Then her AbhorrentAdmirier Wirt is allowed to stay in their house and things go FromBadToWorse]].
* ''Film/ThorTheDarkWorld'': Loki spends [[http://www.slashfilm.com/film-interview-thor-the-dark-world-producer-kevin-feige/ a year in the dungeons]], and Frigga is the only one secretly visiting him. In a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRUfUf36b1U deleted scene,]] he [[DreamSue fantasizes about being crowned the King of Asgard]] while holding Mjölnir. He breaks the illusion only when Frigga asks whether it helps him feel better and warns him against forgetting what is real. It gets worse when he is left completely alone after her death. When Thor finally arrives and makes him dispel yet another illusion, Loki is revealed to be in shambles. He also gets ''extremely'' talkative after Thor sets him free, an understandable behavior after being released from solitary confinement.
* In the film ''[[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Banks_(American_football) Brian Banks]]'' (BasedOnATrueStory), he spends 60 days in solitary confinement. In the montage that follows, he runs a gamut of emotions ranging from anger, grief, and at one point, giggling hysterically, all while having hallucinations of various people in his life--including the girl whose FalseRapeAccusation put him in prison. The final vision is from one of the few people who has been nice to him throughout this ordeal (a teacher) and when he's released, he's calm and serene.
* What seems to have happened to Jason in ''Film/FrankensteinIsland''. Kept imprisoned by Sheila for more than a decade to serve as a living blood bank for her comatose husband, he keeps rambling about his [[LostLenore dead wife and how beautiful she was]], and suddenly quoting long passages from Creator/EdgarAllanPoe.

* Some of the most destructive quotes in ''VideoGame/DontStarve'' were changed into milder ones in ''Don't Starve Together'', implying that the worst impulses of some characters were the result of this trope.

* In ''VideoGame/DontStarve'', your character is TrappedInAnotherWorld all by themselves, which by itself is enough to cause their SanityMeter to slowly decrease.

* [[spoiler:Salem]] seemed to have partially descended into madness in ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'' after the Gods cursed her with immortality, and later [[spoiler:wiped out humanity]]. Unable to die, [[spoiler:Salem]] attempted to commit suicide numerous times to no avail before jumping into the Grimm pits, hoping it would finally kill her. This failed and made everything infinitely worse.
** The God of Light intentionally subverted this with [[spoiler:Ozma]] by giving him the power to reincarnate into another person upon his death so that he would never be alone while [[spoiler:fighting Salem]]. However, the toll this took on him eventually caused several of [[spoiler:Ozma's]] lives to despair.

* ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'': Both Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent go mad when stuck in earth's prehistory, although admittedly they ''chose'' to go mad to save time. Ford got BoredWithInsanity, himself.

* ''ComicBook/HeroesInCrisis'' unintentionally demonstrated this trope as a result of how poorly thought out and orchestrated Sanctuary was. All the respective heroes are basically kept isolated from one another when they're not in "therapy sessions" with Sanctuary's A.I., so none of the patients are sure if there's anyone else in the complex with them. The isolation mixed with the A.I. mocking everyone and them only being allowed to relive their respective traumatic incidents in virtual reality chambers is essentially making the patients worse. [[spoiler:Wally West's suicidal breakdown began because the isolation made him believe Sanctuary was a trap being run by supervillains to torture people.]](Golly gee, who ever thought a AI made of batman, superman and wonder woman should never make ai for spaceships)

* ''Film/RocketMan1997'' plays this for laughs when the protagonist is accidentally prevented from entering [[HumanPopsicle suspended animation]] for the nine-month trip to Mars, with clips of him at one day in, one month in, and a month in for each subsequent month. By the seventh, he's painting a replica of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling on the ceiling of the spaceship.

* It's heavily {{implied}} in ''Fanfic/HowToSexVolFourToFiftyEight''. Tommy mentions that he was in "solitary confinement" and judging by his description of the prison cell he was held in, it's likely in the maximum security cell of [[TheAlcatraz Pandora's Vault]]. With Tommy [[HatesBeingAlone hating being alone]], having [[TraumaCongaLine pre-existing mental health problems]] before even stepping foot into the prison, ''and'' having witnessed his HeterosexualLifePartner getting brutally murdered in front of him, it's no surprise that his mental health is less than stellar.

** Made worse by his Devil Fruit powers, which resurrected his soul into his undying skeleton, so in his isolation he couldn't even look forward to dying of starvation or thirst before his second lifespan finally ran out at some unknown point in the future. Due to a promise he made he couldn't kill himself, either. So he was stuck there, alone, for fifty years, with only his instruments to keep him company -- and the skeletal remains of his former crew, who ''he'' had been in charge of when they died.

* Likely the main reason Lucia from ''Manga/RaveMaster'' is so screwed up. In general, locking a small child up in a ''maximum security prison'' and depriving them of contact with the rest of the world for ten years is bad for one's mental health. The same goes for the backstory of another villain, Doryu: [[spoiler: after trying his best to make a country where humans and non-humans could co-exist, the former chased out the latter, turned on Doryu and imprisoned him in an utterly dark, pitch-black cell to be forgotten, explaining his obsession with Darkness and Light.]]

** The main villan, DIO, spends ONE-HUNDRED YEARS in a coffin before his return in Part 3. It's implied that didn't help his (already questionable) state of mind.

** Same for Part 5 villain [[spoiler: Diavolo]], who [[spoiler: is bound to an eternal cycle of suffering as each time he dies, his death is reseted by Gold Experience Requiem's power. By the end of it, he becomes so paranoid that literally everything could kill him that he is reduced to a screaming wreck.]]
* Almost happens to ''Manga/{{Cyborg 009}}'' in an episode of the 2001 series, when he spends a whole episode stuck in his SuperSpeed mode. What feels as mere seconds for the others, is for him ''several days'' spent unable to interact with anyone since he moves so fast that no one can see/hear/etc. him, and he can't touch them either as the smallest touch could [[KillItWithFire set anything ablaze]]. It truly is an AndIMustScream situation, and he almost crosses the DespairEventHorizon.

* ''{{Manga/Trigun}}'': Monev the Gale, first of the Gung-Ho Guns was raised from childhood in near total isolation, forced to do nothing except physical training and target shooting. His attack on Vash is his first real experience with the outside world, and it shows, from his utter and complete disregard for human life or collateral damage in the ensuing battle (in the anime, he seems to completely ''ignore'' the presence of anyone except Vash), to his blubbering breakdown when Vash finally overpowers him.

* In ''Anime/HugttoPrettyCure'', slacker StarterVillain Charalit was punished by his superiors from his repeated failures and refusal to document them by being trapped in a dark room for an untold amount of days. By the time was finally let out, he was reduced to a shivering, nervous wreck, allowing his BadBoss to transform him into the MonsterOfTheWeek by weaponizing his despair.

* There's a comic in the ''Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse'', ''Mostly Automatic'', which has a young man with a sweetheart taking a load of cargo on a trip which should have taken two weeks, during which he happily planned to lounge around playing games and watching vids. But a rock hit his ship, taking out the hyperdrive and the comm. Sublight engines still functioned, but it was ten parsecs to any kind of civilization and would take ''sixty years'', alone on a little ship. He put the ship on automatic and then "quietly, and very deliberately... went... out... of... my... mind..." For the first few years he mostly slept until he ran out of sleep-inducing medication, then he went mad until he found an inactive service droid in a box in the hold and activated her, which helped.

* During the Obsidian Age story arc of [[ComicBook/JusticeLeague JLA]], ComicBook/PlasticMan is frozen, shattered into tiny pieces and scattered across the Atlantic Ocean floor almost 3000 years in the past. When the League finally reconstitutes him in the present, he reveals he was awake and aware ''[[WhoWantsToLiveForever the entire]] [[AndIMustScream time]]''. During that period, he went insane and then [[BoredWithInsanity became sane again because it got boring]].

* The origin of the ''ComicBook/DoomPatrol'' villain Mister Nobody, originally a criminal and former member of the Brotherhood of Evil named Mr. Morden, is that he was injected with a powerful anaesthetic and left in a WhiteVoidRoom for three days, as part of an experiment by an ex-nazi scientist hiding in Argentina. The room was spherical, resulting in the illusion that Neumann was suspended in an endless white void, and with absolutely no external stimuli other than sight, Morden went insane in less than a day. Three days passed, which seemed like eternities to him, until finally he saw a dot appear in the whiteness, causing him to latch onto the dot as his only anchor to reality. Finally, the existential fear caused by the dot erased Morden from existance, and he was reborn as Mr. Nobody, complete with EnlightenmentSuperpowers.

* Used offensively against ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} during an ComicBook/XMen arc, as part of a brainwashing attempt, using the the recently made Asian Ninja, Psylocke, on the outside to make things worse. Thing is, Wolverine is already a bit mad, and this just antagonized things, and he ended up pushing his own issues back into Psylocke's head.

* ''ComicBook/CosmicGhostRider'' Plays it straight when Frank Castle makes a deal with Mephisto to become the next ghost rider, ready to tear crime a new one...only to roamed a desolated world with no one to kill or avenge, and when Mephisto was quiet to his calls...let's just say Frank began to lose his mind rapidly...don't worry he got better.

* Fanfiction author Asidian creates a scenario in their work ''Broken Glass to Sweep Away'' as a ''Rise of the Guardians'' work featuring Jack Frost and Pitch Black when the latter imprisons the younger spirit in a cage in his lair for an unknown period of time. It is heavily suggested the period of time is a few decades, and in the beginning Pitch suggests he would keep Jack here "80 years or so".

* In ''WebVideo/DragonBallZAbridged'', we find out that going into the Hyperbolic Time Chamber alone is a ''bad thing''. Mostly because this happens to you. For instance, Vegeta was inside it three days (Mr. Popo had changed the YearInsideHourOutside aspect to be 1 day:1 day as revenge) and completely snapped, making a CompanionCube out of a broomstick and a volleyball like Nappa.

* In the Batman fic ''[[Fanfic/FallinginDeeper Falling in Deeper]]'', one of the main characters is send to solitary confinement... The way the authors write it slowly getting to her is [[TearJerker disturbing realistic]].

* Defied by Voldemort in ''Fanfic/HarryPotterAndTheMethodsOfRationality''. Upon having his body destroyed, he found himself alive but drifting in deep space, due to his horcruxes, for a decade. He ''could'' have gone mad, but states that he decided he would not, because he could see no advantage in doing so, and so he kept his mind active with pondering the nature of magic, planning new spells and rituals, etc.

* In ''FanFic/MyOnlySunshine'', Nightmare Moon won and banish Princess Celestia to a set of floating islands, alone, powerless, 700 years later a remorseful Nightmare Moon tries to makes amends by bringing Celestia back, she's all but an EmptyShell. It takes a tearful reunion with Philomena to snap Celestia out of this state. [[spoiler:Later, it becomes clear that Celestia suffers from {{Hallucinations}} and Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder.]]

* In ''Fanfic/ToTheNightSky'', Edward is strapped in a straitjacket and locked up in a padded cell for several days. He gets so desperate for company that he starts hallucinating ''his mother's maimed corpse'', turns freakishly submissive when threatened with the possibility of being put back in time out and is left unable to handle empty rooms.

* A humorous example in ''WesternAnimation/{{Frozen|2013}}'', when Anna mentions that she has started talking to portraits out of desperation, then promptly tells a painting of Joan of Arc to hang in there. [[spoiler: Takes a darker turn when the audience realizes that Anna's isolation really has made her desperate enough for human affection to fall prey to Hans' political ploy]]. Elsa's self-imposed exile and isolation make her AboveGoodAndEvil as well, though not outright insane.

* It seems that ''WesternAnimation/{{Rango}}'' had reached this point in the beginning where he sees each inanimate object in his glass box having a name and a personality and he is able to hear them talking. It's justified because Rango probably spent his whole life stuck in that cage without anybody to talk to but himself.

* In the British film ''Film/TheMindbenders'' a scientist turns traitor and then commits suicide when about to be arrested. An assistant and friend seems to know what was going on and volunteers to show them. They were experimenting with sensory deprivation which made the older man open to suggestion like self brainwashing. The younger man almost succumbs himself.

* Invoked and ''attempted'' to be averted in ''[[Literature/DangerHuman Danger--Human!]]'' An otherwise unremarkable human named Elridge is kidnapped for observation by a group of aliens trying to figure out how AdvancedAncientHumans became TheDreaded. Aware of the effects that Elridge's confinement and isolation will have on him, they have attempted to prevent Elridge from going insane by doing ''something'' to his brain. However, by the end of the story it is clear that he has become dangerously unhinged.
* Averted in ''Belgarath: The Sorcerer'', the first prequel to ''Literature/TheBelgariad''. For several reasons the titular character and the other disciples of Aldur don't go mad despite (or perhaps ''[[MayflyDecemberFriendship thanks to]]'') living for hundreds, even thousands of years in an isolated vale with little to no contact with [[TheOutsideWorld the outside world]]. They have each other's company, not to mention that of their god and loving father figure [[spoiler: (at least until he has to leave)]]. [[BookWorm They]] [[ConstantlyCurious also]] [[CuriousAsAMonkey have]] [[DoingResearch things]] [[ScientificallyUnderstandableSorcery to]] [[TrainingTheGiftOfMagic do]].

* Total sensory deprivation and isolation is used as an interrogation technique by [[UsefulNotes/MoscowCentre the KGB]] in Creator/TomClancy's ''[[Literature/JackRyan The Cardinal of the Kremlin]]''; one of the interrogators mentions that it's much more effective than torture. The specifics involve a neutral-buoyancy pool, carefully crafted restraints designed not to be felt, and a sound-isolation technique designed to neutralize the sound of the subject's own voice, so that the subjects ''couldn't even hear themselves talking''.

** Drizzt suffers this again in ''Literature/TheNeverwinterSaga'' where he gets a different taste of it during his [[spoiler: imprisonment in Draygo Quick's dungeon]]. [[spoiler: Quick]] tactically uses isolation and slowly improving conditions to endear Drizzt to him. It works, too: Drizzt remarks, that he can't [[spoiler: hate Quick anymore]], because he is the only one talking to and feeding him.

* The Creator/StephenKing short story "[[Literature/SkeletonCrew The Jaunt]]" had a futuristic mode of transportation which got people to their destination almost instantly, but they have to be knocked out beforehand. Otherwise, the person's mind feels like it spent an eternity in isolation. Anyone conscious during the trip arrives insane or just falls over dead.

* ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'': Apart from the corrupting influence of [[ArtifactOfDoom the One Ring]], living for several centuries in the darkness of a subterranean lake under the Misty Montains probably didn't help Sméagol/Gollum keep his sanity.

* In Creator/DevonMonk's ''Literature/MagicToTheBone'', used on Cody. They can even get him to do thing he knows are bad by giving him a kitten and threatening to take it away.

* ''[[Literature/TimeMachineSeries Sail with Pirates]]'': The pilot from ''Concepcion'', after causing the ship to be wrecked at sea, runs away as soon the crew lands on an uninhabited island, and hides. He [[{{Robinsonade}} lives there alone]] for a ''long'' time. By the time the protagonist meets with him, he has become completely insane, but still gives some cryptic hints regarding the shipwreck location.
* In the first book of ''Literature/VenusPrime'' series, Sparta is described as struggling to avoid crying herself to sleep during the years that she spends training to become a Space Board Inspector, because she's horribly lonely but also afraid that socializing might cause her to expose something about her past. In the fourth book, she suffers a nervous breakdown after a combination of prolonged isolation from others and a steadily-worsening drug habit.
* Averted in Kage Baker's "[[Literature/TheCompanyNovels The Empress of Mars]]". An super talented inventor proposes to escape the Evil Corporation that is after the patents to his tiny robots that fertilize crops as real bees are too disoriented by being on Mars to function. He flees to an isolated cave and has the robots build him a workshop. Mary, owner of the bar "The Empress of Mars", says that living without people will drive him mad. He says it won't as he is "eccentric" (which can mean almost any non-standard mental state, in this case high functioning autism.) Justified in that he has spent most of his life avoiding physical contact with others. But he has a lawyer see that his father is provided with money from those patents. He cares, he just doesn't show it the usual ways.

* Not averted by Elwin Ransom, another human stranded on Mars in the decidedly softer [=SF=] ''Literature/OutOfTheSilentPlanet'', at least for his first night on an alien planet. He spends it wandering, lost and alone, too afraid to go to sleep, even after finding a covered place. Ransom starts talking to himself in a rather strange manner, but gets better after finally sleeping. Then he meets the natives and [[FantasticAnthropologist stays with them for a couple of months]].

* The madwoman of ''Literature/TheGirlWhoDrankTheMoon'' was only nominally mad when she was first imprisoned, but ten years in solitary confinement take a toll. As a result she develops magic transmutation powers that even she chalks up to insanity.
* In ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive'', mentally ill people are locked into dark, quiet rooms and completely isolated from others to "keep them calm", which usually just results in this. The people treating them use this as proof that [[NeverMyFault insanity is simply untreatable]], while Kaladin sees right therough it and Teft idly comments that even if a person wasn't sick before they were handed over, the "treatment" would probably make them so. [[TheAce Jasnah Kholin]] was locked up in one as a child, which was the cause for the "[[TraumaticSuperpowerAwakening breaking]]" that allowed her to become a Surgebinder and led her to practice vigorous self-discipline so her mind would never fail her again.

* The ''Series/AgentsOfSHIELD'' episode "4,722 Hours" gives us Will, who is stranded on an alien planet and is hunted by ''[[NothingIsScarier something]]'' alive and very evil. Will himself managed to keep himself sane, but his team wasn't so lucky, since one of them came at him with an axe and he had to kill him in self-defense. [[spoiler: TheReveal later, that "It" is an ancient, evil Inhuman [[SealedEvilInACan banished for its power]], makes this even ''worse'', since when the full scope of "It"'s powers are revealed it's shown that "It" never had the power to drive people insane directly, meaning that it was this all along.]]

** Isolation, or at least having no one to talk to to act as his conscience, tends to do very bad things to the Doctor. This is especially proven in the new series, where he goes on a power trip and almost becomes the Master Mk. II in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E16TheWatersOfMars "The Waters of Mars"]] because he didn't have a companion on hand to [[WhatTheHellHero call him on his darker tendencies]]. He also admits he gets very lonely without someone around and the times he is seen alone he gets noticeably unhinged if the time elapsed is long enough. The second part of the three-part Series 9 finale, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E11HeavenSent "Heaven Sent"]], has him isolated in a torture chamber with no one else around but a voiceless, deadly monster he must evade — and the Doctor's just come off of being the helpless witness to [[spoiler:his companion Clara's death]] in the previous episode. With his so anguish fresh and raw and no one to help him, he is DrivenToMadness, so damaged that he spends most of the final part, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E12HellBent "Hell Bent"]], as a WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds who is willing to risk the universe's safety just to [[spoiler:get her back whether she wants it or not]], and thus ''almost'' crosses the MoralEventHorizon.

* Clare in the ''Series/{{Hyperdrive}}'' episode of the same name is a famous spacewoman in a solo trip around the galaxy who has developed, among other issues, paranoia and the delusion that her cup Mr. Cup is talking to her.
* This happens to plague-survivor Phil in the first episode of ''Series/TheLastManOnEarth'', as he talks to a collection of [[CompanionCube Companion Cubes]], deteriorates into a semi-feral state and finally becomes suicidal. Eventually [[spoiler: a few other people come trickling onto the scene, but Phil [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome remains somewhat unhinged]].]]

* In a ''Series/MrShow'' sketch, after a company is shown to be downsizing, it's revealed that the PointyHairedBoss [[GeorgeJetsonJobSecurity fired presumably all of his employees in order to increase profits.]] Realizing he's the only one at the table (thinking possibly on the planet) he ends up displaying this trope, until he's brought back to earth by his assistant and then [[spoiler:[[IgnoredEpiphany he fires her]]]].

* In the ''Series/StargateSG1'' episode "The Torment of Tantalus", a man is stranded on an alien planet for more than 50 years. When the team stumble across him, he refuses to believe that they're real at first. Also, when he sees Catherine, his fiancée, all he does is shrug and leave. It turns out that he has trouble distinguishing the real Catherine from the one in his hallucinations. He is even more distraught when Catherine angrily berates him from taking such a crazy risk without thinking of her and their impending marriage, especially since the Catherine in his mind has forgiven him years ago.

** The episode "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS4E23One One]]" is based around this trope. Seven of Nine experiences this when the crew is put into stasis to pass through a poisonous nebula. Janeway lampshades the ill effects of isolation for humans and how it's worse on Borg drones, but Seven dismisses her worries. At first she has The Doctor (not [[Series/DoctorWho that Doctor]]) to keep her company and run the entire ship, but his program eventually breaks down and she is left to fend for herself. As one might expect she begins to suffer paranoia and hallucinates an alien intruder and just before the ships passes through the other side of the nebula, she finds herself surrounded by the crew mocking her for her insecurities.

** The first episode, "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S1E1WhereIsEverybody Where Is Everybody?]]", operated from a premise of "if a guy's alone in a spaceship for a few weeks, will he go insane?" Something which, back at the dawn of the Space Age, they genuinely ''didn't know.''
** In the famous episode [[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E8TimeEnoughAtLast "Time Enough at Last"]], Bemis slowly goes mad being the only living man on earth, and having nothing new to read. He eventually puts a gun to his head, until he comes across a pile of books. It looks like he'll be able to make his life worthwile. Unfortunately, his clumsiness leads to the destruction of his precious glasses, and a concurrent breakdown when his poor vision leaves him effectively blind and helpless and devoid of hope if there is truly no one left but him.

* Music/{{Sting}}'s song "Message in a Bottle" about a man trapped on an island.

* Music/DieArzte has "Micha", the lonesome cowboy. At the end he breaks his guitar, kicks his horse and angrily rides into the sunset.

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'': Combined with AndIMustScream for Chaos dreadnoughts. Dreadnoughts are {{Walking Tank}}s with external legs and weapons systems built around the armored healing tank of a mortally-wounded warrior that are only sent into the more dangerous battles due to to their rarity, and may see centuries go by between each battle. The difference is, Loyalist Dreadnoughts are allowed to ''sleep'' during those times, Chaos forces put their warriors in dreadnoughts as punishment by removing their legs and weapons and leaving them chained to a wall for hundreds of years (incidentally, Chaos dreads have a chance of firing on their own side during combat).

* ''VideoGame/MystIV'' explores this trope a couple different ways. Sirrus and Achenar were sentenced to two very different forms of solitary confinement. Sirrus, the more rational of the two, goes totally nuts because he spent the last twenty years in a place with no indigenous life forms. Achenar, who was unhinged from the start, actually gets rehabilitated from his stretch in a place which has many different forms of life. Conclusion: Isolation is only guaranteed to drive you mad if you are the only sentient life form present.

* Averted in ''VideoGame/BlazBlue''. Hakumen spent 90 years alone in the Void, and [[{{Determinator}} retained his sanity through sheer force of will]]. Although, you can argue Hakumem already wasn't very sane to begin with [[spoiler: given he's a time displaced Jin, who's sanity was already very much in question.]]
** Played straight for Arakune, though. As a human named Lotte Carmine, he continued to isolate himself in his own research to be the scientist supreme for himself, refusing even the only one who wanted to help him, Litchi (the rest could not care less about him at all). When he goes to the Boundary despite Litchi's warning, the corruption got to him easily due to him isolating himself, and thus turning him into Arakune.

* This ''almost'' happened to [[spoiler: Laurent]] in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening''. [[spoiler: When he and his {{childhood friend}}s from the bad future decided to attempt TimeTravel to save their world, Laurent was accidentally thrown ''three'' years before the date they should have arrived to. As a result he spends quite a while [[TheAloner on his own]] in a practically strange land, and up until he finally finds his friends as well as the parent characters, there were times when he was ''this'' close [[DespairEventHorizon to completely losing it]].]]

** This was the [[AlasPoorVillain sad fate of the Dragon Numinex]]. After being defeated by King Olaf he was imprisoned for years, and slowly went mad. Eventually forgetting his own name.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'', Patricia Tannis was already a little neurotic when she came to Pandora to research the Eridians, but after being the only member of her team to survive [[DeathWorld Pandora's various hazards]], she started going completely over the edge, doing things like dating (and breaking up with) her ECHO recorder and having extended conversations with the corpse of one of her late team members. In the second game she hires you to avenge a ''chair'' at one point.

* This happened to Caldarius from ''VideoGame/{{Battleborn}}''. Being imprisoned for centuries eventually took a severe toll to his sanity to the point that by the time Deande freed him the only thing he's capable of doing is screaming about how much he wants to kill Rendain.

* In ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry'', this is stated to be a fate which befalls witches who cause a Logic Error but eventually manage to escape. [[spoiler:Including Lambda and Bern, which is the reason they're so messed up now.]]

* Averted in ''VisualNovel/AnalogueAHateStory'', where archive keeper AI *Hyun-ae has spent six centuries as the SoleSurvivor on board a GhostShip lost in space, but remains quite sane (albeit more than a little starved for attention). In fact, [[spoiler: the trope turns out to have been ''inverted''. Hyun-ae, before her BrainUploading, was subjected to such a horrific case of BreakTheCutie that she snapped and murdered her tormentors - [[InnocentBystander along with every other living soul on board]] - by cutting the ship's life support. Her present self, having had several hundred years in isolation to calm down, is far more stable and rational.]]

** This is what apparently happened to the Custodes (those tasked with guarding the Emperor, at least). After ten thousand years of watching over the (comatose) Emperor and killing an odd daemon trying to invade every hundred years or so, they turned into MachoCamp hedonists, deposed of their armor and gone way off the deep end. Kitten is the only one who doesn't seem affected, and even he says that he went through a phase and that he starts feeling more emotions than just awe for the Emperor, which worries him.
** The Emperor himself seems to have had some kind of FreakOut over the ten thousand years of coma, as his {{Magnificent Bastard}}ness is now peppered with heavy dose of SirSwearsALot and his rampant [[FantasticRacism xenophobia]] seems to have diminished.

* A scene from the fourth episode of the original ''WebAnimation/ObjectOverload'' series shown Top Hat, who [[spoiler:had just gotten eliminated]], landing on a small sculpture of Gamey that Lighter ([[spoiler:who was eliminated the episode before]]) made with the dirt on Prison Planet. There were also scupltures of Clock, Tissue, and Melony, and Lighter is right between the Clock and Tissue sculptures with a crazed look on his face. This should suggest that Lighter had gotten insane due to how lonely he was, and made the sculptures manically.

** [[DoubleSubversion Double subverted]] with Lightbulb. When Nickel explains to Trophy how everyone stayed sane on Idiotic Island due to having something to keep them occupied, Lightbulb butts in saying, "I didn't need ''anything'' on Idiotic Island, and I turned out just grand!" However, it's implied that the only reason she stayed sane despite being a {{Cloudcuckoolander}} is because she's a [[TheSocialExpert social butterfly]], and taking away the people she's closest to would end up breaking her. [[spoiler:Sure enough, this is proven to be true when Test Tube, the last person remaining on her team besides her, gets eliminated, [[DespairEventHorizon and Lightbulb is shown looking alone and dejected]].]]

* The lowest circle of Hell in ''Webcomic/ImTheGrimReaper'' is an endless, perfect void where the worst sinners are left alone with their thoughts for all eternity, inevitably causing horrific hallucinations, along with memory deterioration. Downplayed, though, [[spoiler:at least in the protagonist's case. After 25 years of isolation, she has experienced a great deal of trauma and has forgotten important details about the Waking World. However, she's still lucid and capable of relearning what she lost after being freed]]. Dialogue suggests that this may be an intentional part of the suffering involved, since eternal conscious misery is the goal.
* Artificial intelligences in ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'' tend to do this...very quickly, since they think at computer speed. Petey, the company's second ship, had been left cut off from his systems for four hundred years, which felt like 40 billion with his clock speed, after thwarting his multi-megaton suicide attempt the captain gave him a direct order to lock away his memories of the isolation, which made him a bit saner. This later becomes a major plot issue again in the "Random Access Memorabilia" story arc, with [[spoiler:Tagii, who goes stark raving mad after a couple hours of isolation, or ten thousand years]].

* ''WebComic/SluggyFreelance:'' King Farahn and K'Z'K deservedly get sealed into a magical prison-void together, and end up stuck there for thousands of years. K'Z'K being a demon/god does fine (though of course he's seriously pissed off) while Farahn decays into a mindless moaning husk.

** Ben Gunn has been living in the Goo Caverns for so long he can't even remember who he is. However, he does turn up again near the end a bit saner.

** [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2701 SCP-2701 ("True Solitary")]]. People put inside cell 667 experience full sensory deprivation, suffering mental trauma that causes cognitive shutdown or mania. Those incarcerated for less than two hours end up with one or more phobias (such as nyctophobia, photophobia, claustrophobia or agoraphobia) or serious mental illnesses such as dementia, catatonia and anorexia. Those spending more than 2 hours inside usually suffer a complete psychological breakdown.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'': This is part of the reason why Demona is so unstable; after betraying Macbeth (which itself came about from her jumping to conclusions), her second clan was slain by the Hunter, and from then on, she kept to herself. Of course, the Weird Sisters' curse -- which prevents her from dying unless she kills Macbeth, or vice versa -- only makes it worse.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheRenAndStimpyShow'' episode, "Hermit Ren," the eponymous dog gets so sick of Stimpy he leaves to join a hermit guild. They provide him with a cave and a boulder to lock him in forever. Completely alone. It doesn't take long for him to lose his mind. [[spoiler:He gets kicked out for creating imaginary friends]].

** Princess Celestia experiences this after a few minutes of being alone "A Royal Problem" when she's switched roles with Princess Luna. As Princess of the Night, her role consists of standing a lonely guard over the castle and using {{Dreamwalker}} abilities to help guide ponies through their nightmares. Celestia's normal duties involve being constantly swarmed by ponies in need of her assistance, so she isn't able to handle being so utterly alone in addition to the new responsibility. Luna presumably has the same issue (to a lesser extent due to their personality differences), as she's immediately able to guess that Celestia has already begun talking to herself.
* The ''WesternAnimation/EdEddNEddy'' episode "Laugh Ed, Laugh" has all the kids in the cul-de-sac, except the Eds, come down with the chicken pox. While Ed and Double-D are able to cope with this, Eddy becomes restless with the lack of kids to scam. Eventually, it becomes too much for Eddy and he snaps from the stress; he spends the rest of the episode scamming squirrels and mistaking fire hydrants for jawbreakers.

-->'''Bender:''' I was enjoying it, until you guys showed up.

* Done in ''WesternAnimation/MightyMax''. One episode saw our heroes travel to the Las Vegas desert to investigate strange radiation readings. It turned out that a nuclear physicist from TheFifties had sealed himself into a fallout shelter over a Cold War scare for forty years. He had subsequently been exposed to to a slow radiation leak which rendered him unable to survive outside a radioactive environment so he tried to bathe the entire world in radiation out of revenge.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Recess}}'' episode "The Box", Miss Finster puts TJ in the eponymous box, which is just a chalk square drawn on the playground. The isolation (no-one is allowed to talk to him when he's in the box) leaves him singing "This Old Man" as a MadnessMantra, and when he comes out he's not only [[ScareEmStraight scared straight]], but has a profound phobia of squares. His friends arrange for him to go back into the box as exposure therapy, and this time a kickball bounces over the lines, at which point he realises he's not really trapped at all, and [[StatusQuoIsGod everything goes back to normal]].

* Gary Goodspeed, the protagonist of ''WesternAnimation/FinalSpace'', starts the series at the tail end of a five year prison sentence on a ship with only robots for company. It’s left an obvious mark on his sanity and left him so desperate for living company that he’s willing to “mingle” with a crew of bounty hunters shooting up the ship. The Infinity Guard ''tried'' to avert this by sending KVN along as a deep space insanity avoidance companion, but he’s so bad at the job that it’s only made things worse.
** In the Season 2 episode "The Other Side," the ship is caught in a time shard, which splits the ship in half temporally, causing the crewmembers trapped on one half to experience time at a greatly accelerated rate to those on the other. The episode spends most of its time on the accelerated half, with the crewmembers trapped there having been without outside contact for sixty years...[[spoiler: and then near the end it is revealed that ONLY Little Cato had been trapped on that half, and everything that happened, from his interactions with the rest of the crew to him ''taking a mortal wound'', was all a hallucination brought on by extreme isolation. Thankfully, he is rescued not long after and de-aged back to fourteen, but he retains all his memories of the experience.]]
* By the ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'' episode "Moonvasion!", it's quite clear that Della Duck did ''not'' come out of her decade-long stay on the Moon unscathed. In the episode "The Richest Duck in the World!", Della explains that she grew so desperate for contact with anyone that she went through a three week staring contest with her own reflection, leading her to develop a fear of mirrors and in the previously mentioned "Moonvasion!" episode, she actually goes LaughingMad when Dewey suggests that being stranded on an island was like being stranded on the Moon. This trope is lampshaded in the episode "Quack Pack!" when everyone thinks Huey's going nuts (he's not, he's the only who realizes they've been trapped in some bizarre dimension designed like a TV sitcom)
-->'''Della Duck''': Back on the moon I used to snap too! [[ThousandYardStare Of course that was from soul-crushing loneliness]]. (''Audience goes "aww"'')
** Her brother ''WesternAnimation/DonaldDuck'', also suffers from this perhaps even worse than Della. After escaping from the Moonlanders halfway through season 2, he crash lands on an isolated island, forced to survive on seawater and sand, and befriends [[WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse a very familiar-sounding-and-looking]] [[CompanionCube watermelon]], which perturbs everyone once they find him in the season 2 finale.

* [[http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/unplugged/quietest-place-earth-mutes-sounds-messes-head-212556719.html Orfield Labratories of Minnesota]] created the quietest isolation chamber in the world for various experiments. NASA uses it for training astronauts to deal with the extreme quiet of space. The effects come on ''extremely fast'', with people starting to have auditory hallucinations and asking to be let out in less than ''forty-five minutes.''

* The original example of solitary confinement was instituted by the Quakers in the 1790s. The idea was that the criminal thus confined would have only {{God}} and his own thoughts to keep him company, and thus the penitent would emerge from confinement born again and fully-reformed (thus the term "penitentiary", which they also created). In actual fact, such prisoners frequently killed or mutilated themselves, or became so violently paranoid that they were never able to rejoin society. It's a sad irony the Quakers meant this to be a ''humane'' treatment of prisoners...

*** [[https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/girl-in-the-window/danielle/ Danielle Crockett]], discovered and rescued in July 2005, was a girl kept in a dark, filthy room by her mother for the first 7 years of her life. Although she was adopted by a loving foster family and made notable progress, she was never able to learn to speak or even communicate in any meaningful way. [[https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/girl-in-the-window/neglect-feral-child-ten-years-later/ Currently]], she lives at a care home for disabled adults, and seems to be doing well.
*** Another case was that of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child) Genie]], a girl whose father believed she was mentally retarded and kept her strapped to a child's toilet until she was 13. He gave her as little attention as possible, and did not talk to her or let anyone else do so, which prevented her from being able to learn any kind of language. After being rescued, she was able to learn some words and communicate non-verbally, but like Danielle she never learned to fully speak.

* Even when the isolation isn't extremely harsh this can happen. When the underboss of the Philadelphia/Atlantic City mob Philip "Crazy Phil" Leonetti turned informant he was placed in a special cell at La Tuna Prison in Texas that's nicknamed the Vallachi Suite (named after mob informant Joe Vallachi). Though living in relatively comfortable surroundings (including a large living room with a big television, stereo and exercise bike, a good size bathroom and kitchen) he was isolated from the other inmates at the prison and only had contact with the guards and investigators. After 2 years he started to go stir crazy from being isolated and requested a transfer.
* When filming ''Film/TheHobbitAnUnexpectedJourney'', Sir Creator/IanMcKellen found it surprisingly difficult to play group scenes entirely alone in a green screen room, with only an earpiece and pictures of the other actors mounted on poles to react to. Because of scale issues his co-stars playing the dwarves and Hobbit were playing the rest of the scene on a neighboring set,[[note]]since this film was being done in 3D, ForcedPerspective couldn't be used, which would have at least kept him in proximity to the other actors[[/note]] and he would be composited into their scene later. [=McKellen=] broke down into tears because of his loneliness and isolation, saying this wasn't why he became an actor. Luckily for [=McKellen=], the crew listened to him and gave him a "Gandalf Appreciation Day", and he was able to regain his footing and continue filming.

* The UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic led to many governments around the world to mandate lockdowns, with citizens not allowed to congregate or leave the house unless necessary. While the mental health blow was slightly lessened thanks to [[TechnologyMarchesOn modern technology allowing for greater connectivity than before]], the impact has still been shown to be incredibly devastating, with reports of crisis centers receiving massive spikes in calls following the lockdown orders and [[DrivenToSuicide increased suicide rates]] being reported across several countries such as the United States and Japan (in fact, Japanese suicides ''exceeded'' the number of virus deaths). Even people that were more or less well-adjusted have reported being highly stressed and more irritable from not being able to socialize with others in person. People were so desperate for human contact that they socialized in person against the advice of officials and fueled more spikes in disease transmission.

* In the ''{{Series/Firefly}}'' fic ''[[http://www.fireflyfans.net/bluesun.aspx?bid=16871 The Losing Side]]'', both Mal and Wash had it happen to them. Mal was tough enough not to be affected too much based on what he says, but it has a harsh effect on Wash. He feels like a coward and admits to Mal he broke down crying one of the times they hauled him out to interrogate him. Getting yelled at and deprived of sleep didn’t help but he almost gave up from the isolation. (See sidebar or click author name for the rest of the fic)

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation''

* A different very lonely Luke happens in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUAcS8tlArE this]] ''[[WebVideo/OutsideXbox Outside Xtra]]'' video. After being locked in the studio for a week, Luke Westaway is reduced to exchanging presents and playing charades with toys from around the studio. A different video has Andy, over the course of eighteen hours locked alone in the studio with a dead battery in his Nintendo Switch, lose it to the point where he's staging a wedding between two of the show's past craft projects.

* Implied to be the fate of the protagonist in Music/{{Rush}}'s song "Xanadu". His quest for immortality leads him to "the caves of ice", and the second half of the song implies that ever since then [[AndIMustScream he's been trapped there]] and goes mad from isolation ("the last immortal man") and the prospect of having nothing to do but wait for the world to end.

* Grif ends up a little bit of a TalkativeLoon after six straight weeks of isolation in Season 15 of ''Machinima/RedVsBlue.'' He goes so bonkers he ends up painting seven volleyballs with the rest of the cast's helmets (complete with visors provided by chocolate wrapper foil), and it's been implied he's been reenacting ''all fifteen seasons of the show'' right down to voicing everyone's lines. He even learned Spanish solely to voice Volleyball-Lopez.

* Averted in ''VideoGame/BlazBlue''. Hakumen spent 90 years alone in the Void, and [[{{Determinator}} retained his sanity through sheer force of will]].

** [[TheOmnipotent For all of]] [[RealityWarper his power,]] [[AWizardDidIt Sarda]] was just a ''little'' [[AxCrazy bugnuts]] [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity insane.]] One of the more [[UpToEleven extreme]] versions of this trope [[http://www.nuklearpower.com/2005/05/24/episode-554-fashion-advice/ happened]] [[http://www.nuklearpower.com/2005/05/26/episode-555-a-brief-history-of-time/ to]] him, by way of him accidentally stranding himself at the beginning of time and being forced to take TheSlowPath back to modern time. [[AndIMustScream For billions of years, frozen and alone]].[[note]]To be fair, it was [[HoistByHisOwnPetard his own damned fault]] that he overshot sending White Mage back in time and got trapped as a result. Plus, he was trying to [[RewritingReality remake all the universe in his image,]] so, y'know, [[LaserGuidedKarma not feeling too sorry for him]].[[/note]] One would think, and some of his [[http://www.nuklearpower.com/2008/06/14/episode-1005-of-hardships/ other dialogue]] supports this, that these vast ages of isolation were what shattered Sarda's sanity.

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanche_Monnier Blanche Monnier]] was kept captive in her room, chained to her bed for [[UpToEleven twenty-five years]] for trying to marry the "wrong" person and ended up having to spend the rest of her life in a mental hospital from the mental issues that she had from her decades of captivity.

* "ComicBook/CosmicGhostRider" Plays it straight when Frank Castle makes a deal with Mephisto to become the next ghost rider, ready to tear crime a new one...only to roamed a desolated world with no one to kill or avenge, and when Mephisto was quiet to his calls...let's just say Frank began to lose his mind rapidly...don't worry he got better.

* ''Series/LawAndOrderSVU'': Elliot Stabler spent a few days in solitary (voluntarily) to test a perp's claim that being locked up in solitary for nearly his entire prison sentence (which amounted to over ''30 years'' by the time the perp finally got out) drove him insane and made him more likely to commit violent crimes because he no longer knew how to function in a social environment. Elliot spends a weekend in the same cell, and nearly flips out when he's finally released.

* ''Series/{{Angel}}'' overlaps this with WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity: The third season episode "[[Recap/AngelS03E11Birthday Birthday]]" depicts an AlternateUniverse in which Cordelia never reconnected with Angel in Los Angeles and formed Angel Investigations with him, instead becoming a famous actress. Doyle passed his visions on to Angel himself before his HeroicSacrifice, and Angel retreated into himself in his grief, with the power of the visions not helping matters. Eventually, Angel slipped up to the point where he would have visions of his victims as Angelus, with his only contact with Gunn and Wesley being to inform them of his latest vision and send them out to fix it, with the visions also causing violent episodes that prompted Gunn and Wesley to install chains in his room. When Cordelia comes to see him, Angel is babbling and barely coherent and beats his head on the wall of his room. The worst part of it all is that, according to Wesley, that example of madness is "him on a ''good'' day."