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6th Jun '13 10:02:12 PM greatpikminfan

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Becoming "grimdark" was because she asked the magic cueball a question with an eldritch answer, and it by itself didn't do much to her becides give her some powers and forced her to speak in lovecraftian language. Also getting rid of writting that makes it look like a point-in-time snapshot of the comic, since this occured over two years ago.

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16th May '13 9:20:22 AM Tauros113

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11th May '13 5:28:32 AM memememememe

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8th May '13 1:17:46 PM TiggersAreGreat

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This page has gotten so big that splitting into sub-pages would make it easier to work with. Don't panic, you'll find the examples in the sub-pages listed.

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[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* ''VisualNovel/HigurashiNoNakuKoroNi'' has this occur several times, almost once an arc, and often bloodily.
* The [[WhenTheyCry sister series]], ''VisualNovel/UminekoNoNakuKoroNi'', reveals in the fifth arc that [[spoiler:Natsuhi]] has slowly been losing it since [[spoiler:Kinzo died]] ''two years'' before the story begins.
** Arc 3 of ''Umineko'' also has [[spoiler:Eva/Eva-Beatrice]] ''really'' losing it, first after [[spoiler:finding the gold]] and then after [[spoiler:Hideyoshi is killed.]] By the end of the arc, she's gone completely [[AxCrazy apeshit]] and [[spoiler:shoots Battler]].
* By the end of ''Anime/SerialExperimentsLain'', most of the characters, major ''and'' minor, including to some extent, Lain herself.
** Hell, it's implied to happen all over the world.
---> '''Newscaster:''' Lets all love Lain! Lets all love Lain! Lets all love Lain ''[=LainLainLain!!!=]''
* Happens quite a few times in ''Anime/CodeGeass'', with results ranging from a HeroicBSOD to [[LaughingMad Insane Laugh]]... [[spoiler: to attempted hallucinogenics use. And attempted murder-suicide, on a couple occasions.]]
** Not to mention the final arcs of each season, though the second one is more ambiguous, depending on your opinion of Lelouch's logic (hint: [[spoiler: either bringing the world to it's knees and united in mutual suffering then assassinating ''yourself'' is a good plan, or Lelouch is mentally unbalanced. Or both.]]), the first is clearly [[spoiler:a plan to force someone to shoot you, then blaming them for it, with no obvious measures to limit the likelihood of dying.]] Not to mention Lelouch's attempt to [[spoiler: trap himself and his father in a giant chamber, devoid of food, dooming them both to starvation, if not for the insufficient explosives.]]
** One particularly notable incident from ''Anime/CodeGeass'' is when [[spoiler: Nina goes full on {{Yandere}}, to the point of showing up with a nuke to kill Zero, even though it would likely take everyone around with it, even her friends. She sounded beyond unhinged at the time, wild-eyed and shouting with grief and anger. Thankfully, it was defective...but then Nina switched to working on AppliedPhlebotinum {{fantastic nuke}}s. Oy.]]
* ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann'' has Simon going AxCrazy while fighting enemy mechas, locking himself on his room almost 24/7, and spending all his time carving statues [[spoiler:of Kamina]] out of stone. Luckily, he finally does a 180° flip.
* Makoto in ''Anime/RahXephon'' teeters on the edge until his grand scheme [[HoistByHisOwnPetard bites him in the ass]], at which point he takes the thrilling plunge into insanity.
* An entire episode of ''Manga/ElfenLied'' is dedicated to the AxCrazy protagonist Lucy's childhood, in which we get to see just how she got so unstable and murderous through this trope.
* In ''Anime/FullmetalAlchemist'', Scar's older brother is revealed to have suffered this. The combination of his lover's death, failing to revive her through human transmutation, and the imposing threat of a war on his home eventually pushed him over the edge. Using his own body, he planned to create a Philosopher's Stone out of Ishval's people during the massacre. He wandered out onto the battlefield ''completely naked'' with AxCrazy eyes and tears streaming down his face as Scar watched in horror. It didn't end well.
* In ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'', Ichigo exhibited some Sanity Slippage [[spoiler:when his SuperPoweredEvilSide ''really'' flipped out and completely stomped Ulquiorra. Uryu tried to stop Ichigo from further slashing his body; he received a sword to the [[http://mangavolume.com/index.php?serie=bleach&chapter=bleach-353&page_nr=11 stomach]] for his trouble]].
* In ''Anime/RomeoXJuliet'', after witnessing [[spoiler:his father Titus's death]], [[spoiler:Mercutio]] quickly starts losing it. [[spoiler:And he ends up killing the murderer, Lord Montague, through quite the KarmicDeath.]]
* ''Manga/SoulEater'':
** Professor Stein goes completely insane as a result of Medusa's plans. [[spoiler:He got better]], but still the entire collection of scenes showing his descent into madness is creepy.
** Sort of applies to Soul Eater as well, [[spoiler:once he started using the black blood.]]
** The entire cast is constantly teetering on the edge of this trope. Madness functions as TheDarkSide in the ''Soul Eater'' universe, with characters falling into madness becoming evil and others resisting the temptation to madness. One of the major villains is someone who slipped so far into insanity that he became an EldritchAbomination.
** The manga-verse now holds that he's apparently insane because he's an EldritchAbomination personifying a kind of madness. Same point reveals that [[spoiler:Death the Kid]] is the next in line for slipping.
* In ''Anime/{{Gankutsuou}}'', we get this when [[spoiler:the Count of Monte Cristo watches Albert whom he had grown very fond of, leave his ship to witness the start of the Count's revenge on Albert's father.]] At first [[VillainousBreakdown he sobs desperately]] and then he breaks out into [[LaughingMad hysterical laughter]]. And from then on, he's out there, madly pursuing his revenge. [[spoiler:Andrea Cavalcanti]] also does this, going from creepy to outright deranged by the end of the series. And let's not forget [[spoiler:Danglar's DeathByMaterialism]], preceded by a good amount of madness...oh, and [[spoiler:Fernand Mondego, who snaps to the point of shooting his wife and son]]. Or Héloise de Villefort. Yeah, this show is pretty much filled with the trope.
* Gyagu Manga Biyori has the tale of the son and father who wanted to hire a tutor (and chose her more for the sake of [[DirtyOldMan her looks]] than the help she would give), but take many days to realize that they were tricked (Of course, like everything else, it is [[ParodiedTrope done in such a way that you have to laugh]]). At first they just look depressed when she doesn't show up, then their hands start bleeding because they clench their fists so hard and are beating the walls... their explanation for her absence is that they don't have a welcoming enough feeling in their home. Cut to them dressed as clowns as the father keeps stabbing a rock-hard cake while shouting "She won't come!" several times, [[LaughingMad mixed with laughter]]... It becomes an InvertedTrope when they then grab a hold of themselves and they work their way to becoming pure levitating Buddhists.
* ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'':
** Itachi displayed [[VillainousBreakdown this]] during his fight against [[spoiler:Sasuke]], while claiming that [[spoiler:his true plan was to get Sasuke to awaken his Mangekyo Sharingan so he could use his eyes to replace his own]], and suggests this is his true self. [[spoiler:It actually isn't, as Sasuke later discovers.]]
** Sasuke plays it straight, though. As if deciding to murder everyone in the Leaf Village weren't enough, he outright hits the floor in chapter 480 and the few after it. He's basically been reduced to a homicidal maniac who will kill anyone if they become the least bit inconvenient to him.
** Orochimaru went through this in his backstory, but managed to conceal it enough that he'd already been kidnapping people for depraved experiments for ages when Sarutobi finally worked it out. Nagato went through something more like a HeroicBSOD that resulted in a MadnessMakeover to Pain, but there was enough of a time spread that he definitely had time to devolve gradually. As {{Madness Makeover}}s go, wearing your murdered friend's corpse as a puppet avatar is pretty near the top.
** Gaara qualifies for this from his flashbacks. As a kid he was initially sweet and misunderstood. Then his father started sending people he loved to assassinate him. Fast forward to his early teens, and he's a homicidal maniac talking to sand as though it's his dead mother. Luckily he recovered.
** Kabuto lost quite a bit of sanity after [[spoiler: Orochimaru died]].
*** His backstory reveals that he suffered a significant dose of this when [[spoiler:he was nearly killed by his mother figure, who in turn didn't recognize him]]. Increasingly unsure of his own identity after years as a spy, only Orochimaru's intervention stopped him from cracking.
* [[spoiler:Ikuya Asano]] from ''Anime/TheTwelveKingdoms'' falls into this due to him getting closer and closer to the DespairEventHorizon as he's TrappedInAnotherWorld.
* ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'' has a cast that display their loss of sanity in different ways... some a little more disturbing than others.
** ''End of Evangelion'' decides to do away with the incremental slips and jumps right off the edge thanks to [[EldritchAbomination the ritual to awaken Lilith]] leaving [[GoMadFromTheRevelation Shinji a shrieking]] [[FreakOut broken mess]].
* [[{{Yandere}} Kaede]] from ''VisualNovel/{{Shuffle}}''. In the anime version, anyway.
* Sekai and especially Kotonoha in ''VisualNovel/SchoolDays''.
* ''VisualNovel/OokamiKakushi'': Issei in the few episodes he appears in until he [[spoiler:dies in episode 5]].
* Light Yagami from ''Manga/DeathNote''
* Dilandau Albatou from ''Anime/VisionOfEscaflowne'' is a subverted example. He was already kind of AxCrazy to begin with, but after Van [[spoiler: slashed Dilandau's face with a sword in a CurbStompBattle]], Dilandau's already fragile state of mind [[FromBadToWorse went downhill from there]].
* In ''Manga/SteppingOnRoses'' (''Hadashi de Bara wo Fume''), [[spoiler:Nozomu, who at first seems like a really NiceGuy gradually becomes more and more of a psychotic Yandere as the series goes on.]]
* In episode 7 of ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'', we can see [[spoiler:Sayaka]] breaking down ''fast'' as she fights a witch. Why? [[spoiler:Because a friend of hers had just told her that, in one day, she was going to confess to the boy Sayaka loved.]] That was just the last straw, though. [[AwfulTruth Other factors]] certainly [[BreakTheCutie helped]].
* In ''Anime/GregoryHorrorShow'', the HellHotel can only be found by people who have already begun to slip a little (the first guest [[spoiler:may have been going mad with boredom from his monotonous life,]] and the second guest [[spoiler:starts to slip when her best friend marries her ex-boyfriend]]). Prolonged exposure to it breaks the guests more and more. [[spoiler:Both protagonists have completely lost their sanity by the end of the series.]]
* ''Anime/WeissKreuz'':
** Youji Kudou begins slowly losing his mind after [[KillTheOnesYouLove killing his would-be love interest]] before she could kill him first (although close scrutiny will reveal a few hints of it beforehand, such as a manga scene where he mistakes Omi for her after waking up from a nightmare). Before it's over, he's nearly killed several one-night stands and had several long conversations with the woman's ghost.
** Ken Hidaka doesn't fare much better: starting with the two-part OVA ''Verbrechen ~ Strafe'', he finds himself [[BloodKnight enjoying the act of killing]] more and more, goaded along by having to fake killing his teammates and having to ''actually'' [[KillTheOnesYouLove kill his girlfriend]] when she turns into a target. He manages to avoid falling so far as to start killing people on his own time, but in the RadioDrama ''Fight Fire With Fire,'' set after Weiss has been dissolved, he tries to convince Aya to become the new [[MissionControl Persia]] so that he'll have someone to tell him who he can kill.
* ''Manga/{{Gintama}}'': Yamazaki has one in an episode where he's running a stake out and can only eat anpan and milk. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK4M8nZ4HQc Watch it here.]]
* Quite a few characters in ''Manga/PandoraHearts'' go through this at one point or another, like Leo after [[spoiler: Elliot's death]] or Oz when he goes into LoveMakesYouCrazy mode for Alice. (He gets slapped out of it by Gil).
* ''Manga/MiraiNikki'': Yukiteru. [[AxCrazy Yuno]] doesn't count because that would imply that she was sane to begin with.
* Mima and Rumi of ''Anime/PerfectBlue'' both experience this. Mima gets better but Rumi [[GoMadFromTheRevelation doesn't]].
* Koharu Mutsuki ''Manga/KoharuNoHibi'' acts more {{Yandere}} as the story progresses as a result of her love for Akira.
* In ''AudioPlay/SaintBeast'', Zeus becomes increasingly insane as the series progresses.
* ''Manga/TriGun'':
** A bit in-continuity, but mostly during the [=SEEDs=] flashback, after [[MuggleFosterParents Rem]] gets [[TheMessiah Vash]] and [[OmnicidalManiac Knives]] out of the medbay where they learned the awful truth and promptly attempted to starve to death. Vash persists in wanting to die and hating humans, [[SelfMadeOrphan stabs Rem in the side]] in the course of a fight over a fruit knife he [[DrivenToSuicide hopes to use on himself]], and for a really awful moment, he '''[[SlasherSmile smiles]]'''. Then he breaks down crying, patches her up, and things start to be okay again.
** Notably, Knives didn't get this. Knives went promptly and utterly over to [[GoMadFromTheRevelation mad from the revelation]], and acted like he'd blocked it out and was perfectly okay right up until enacting Plan KillAllHumans.
** Legato also devolves steadily and horribly over the course of Maximum--yes, he was already bonkers, but after [[BigBad Knives]] [[MadLove breaks his spine]] he falls apart rapidly. Though he doesn't get less dangerous--after all PeoplePuppets are his specialty.
* Happens to Jeremy in ''Manga/ACruelGodReigns''. He could also have some possible MadnessMantra, at one point repeating "Hallelujah" over and over again while [[spoiler: Greg ties him up between his bed posts in a very crucifix-type manner and whips/rapes him.]] Jeremy also [[spoiler: laughs at the news of Greg's death (which he caused), tries to seduce his uncle, and plays mind games with Ian]] and generally seems unhinged the further the story goes.
[[/folder]]

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[[folder:Film]]
* Francesco Dellamorte-Dellamore in ''Film/CemeteryMan'' - this is, in fact, the whole plot of the film.
* Zac Hobson in ''Film/TheQuietEarth'' begins suffering this when he realises that he may very well be the last human being alive. After the GoodTimesMontage, he begins dressing in women's clothes; he fills his garden with cardboard cutouts of celebrities; he fires his shotgun wildly at televisions; he declares himself President of the World and gives his [[NewEraSpeech inaugural address]] to the cutouts. [[FromBadToWorse And then the power goes out]], leaving Zac standing on his balcony, in total darkness and utterly insane. He gets [[BoredWithInsanity better]].
* Eric in ''Film/KillingZoe'' wasn't exactly the sanest person to begin with, but doing copious amounts of heroin, murdering several people, and setting off some explosives cause him to become batshit insane. As further proof, one of his favorite threats towards the end are "I'll fuck your bitch up the ass and give her AIDS!"
* Stéphane in ''Film/TheScienceOfSleep'' always had rather odd and confusing dreams and ImageSpots to help his cope with reality... by the end of the film he's unable to tell the difference between the two. While it doesn't go all the way to the end he holds shades of this.
* Happens to Komodo in ''Film/WarriorsOfVirtue'' after he [[spoiler:kills Master Chun]]. Although he was pretty zany from the start, he seemed to drop a few notches after the event.
* Although Trevor Reznik from ''Film/TheMachinist'' had been acting odd ever since [[spoiler:he kills the boy]], when he starts harassing and assaulting everyone around him in a paranoid conviction that they are all out to get him you can tell he has finally completely cracked.
* Mike in ''DeepEnd'' suffers this, mostly courtesy of Susan. The entire plot of the movie is Mike becoming her StalkerWithACrush -- except it's rather ''hard'' to [[WhatDoesSheSeeInHim understand why, considering]] [[TheVamp her personality]] -- and in the end [[spoiler:his sanity finally snaps completely and he kills her.]] Given how she treated him throughout the entire movie, it's hard to sympathize with her.
* [[spoiler:Gordon]] in ''{{Session 9}}'', although whether it's insanity or some sort of supernatural possession is left deliberately ambiguous.
* The main character in ''Film/IAmLegend'' suffers the beginnings of sanity slippage, asking a mannequin to talk to him because he promised his dog he'd ask, then breaking down in tears because the mannequin does not answer. It's even worse in the deleted scenes/uncut version. When he drives past the mannequin [[spoiler:trap]] the head of the mannequin actually ''moves'', and when he wakes up [[spoiler:after being saved from his suicidal assault]], he first sees the people in his house as his own wife and daughter [[spoiler:who had died years earlier.]]
* This trope is the whole point of ''Film/BlackNarcissus.'' All of the nuns find their flaws and emotional weaknesses slowly becoming more and more exaggerated. Things are worst with Sister Ruth, none too well to begin with, who turns into a StalkerWithACrush, and winds up [[spoiler: dying a DisneyVillainDeath when she attempts to murder her superior, Sister Clodagh.]]
* In the classic ''Film/TheTreasureOfTheSierraMadre'', Dobbs becomes increasingly unhinged as greed and paranoia brought on by GoldFever sets in, eventually leading him to try to murder everyone in his group.
* Ursula of ''Disney/TheLittleMermaid''. While not a good character, she was sane and composed during most of the film. However, when she transforms into Vanessa, its implied that she lost quite a bit of sanity (to the point of becoming a borderline AxCrazy) when turning into her, as she talks to her mirror in a manner similar to a schizophrenic, emits a psychotic grin when throwing a pin at a mirror's head with enough velocity to knock the mirror back, and most certainly kill a person had that been a human being, not to mention her cackling.
* Harvey Dent in ''Film/TheDarkKnight'' screaming in silent agony in the hospital after realizing that [[spoiler: Rachel died]]. From there his Sanity Slippage is evident, especially following SelfDemonstrating/TheJoker's disturbing HannibalLecture on him.
* [[{{Yandere}} Alex Forrest]] in ''Film/FatalAttraction'' grows increasingly unhinged the more Dan Gallagher tries to distance himself from her, until she reaches the point where she's willing to boil his daughter's bunny in the pressure cooker, kidnap her, and then try to knife his wife to death.
* Jafar in ''Disney/{{Aladdin}}''.
* In ''The Assassination of Richard Nixon'' Samuel Byck (who was a real person) experiences this. Initially he just seems like a slightly delusional loser, but eventually he [[spoiler:plans to hijack a plane and fly it into the white house. Not to mention his intentions of killing his boss before that.]]
* In ''Cross of Iron'' Steiner goes through this as he's recovering in hospital. Even more so [[spoiler:in the ending when he goes into a laughing fit in the middle of battle after Captain Stransky asks him how to reload his firearm.]]
* The documentary ''Touching The Void'' is about the two climbers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates in their attempt to climb the Siula Grande mountain. After Joe Simpson has had his rope cut, and has been days without food or water, he eventually becomes delirious; as he presumes himself to be close to death, the song 'Brown Girl in the Ring' by Boney M gets stuck in his head, which is a song that he hates.
* In Creator/WernerHerzog's ''Film/HeartOfGlass'', the death of a foreman glassmaker has deprived a 18th century glass factory of the secret recipe for red glass. The movie is driven by the factory owner, threatened by bankruptcy, progressively losing his already weak grasp of sanity.
* In ''Film/MulhollandDrive'' all it took to send the mentally unstable protagonist over the edge was some knocking on the door.
* ''{{Film/Repulsion}}'' is about a troubled young woman stumbling deeper and deeper into madness.

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[[folder:Music]]
* Songs about going insane are quite common, actually. Many examples at SanitySlippageSong.
* "Stan" by Music/{{Eminem}} shows the story of a fanboy with a seriously screwed-up life and a downward spiraling sanity. The video starts with Stan bleaching his hair just like Eminem's, then Stan starts writing letters to him every so often in his room all plastered with posters of Eminem, then he sends Eminem a ''really pissed off'' letter complaining about how he missed Stan and his brother at a gig. When his pregnant girlfriend scolds him for wasting his day on watching Eminem, that's the final straw on the back, and he ends up tearing all his posters, tying his girlfriend in his car's trunk, and driving off a bridge.
** Then Eminem sends back a letter, and starts by apologizing for how long it's taken him to finally respond. Trippin'. Best part: In his response letter, Eminem decides to cite a story he heard on the news about a guy who drove his car off a bridge with his pregnant girlfriend in the trunk, in the hopes that it'll get Stan to calm down a bit. Then Eminem realizes ''the news story was about Stan''. "Damn," indeed.
* The Music/NineInchNails album ''The Downward Spiral'' is a ConceptAlbum that's about ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: the gradual destruction of an unnamed man, from the beginning, to [[spoiler:his suicide]].
* The Violent Femmes' "Country Death Song" is pure American Gothic: rural guy goes mad from isolation and boredom, [[spoiler: throws his little daughter down a well]], then broods over his guilt till...you can probably imagine.
* Music/PinkFloyd's ''Music/TheWall'' chronicles a man slowly alienating himself from the world, causing his mind to collapse on itself until finally what's left of his sanity stages an intervention and forces him to actually ''deal'' with his problems.
** The band's previous albums, ''Music/TheDarkSideOfTheMoon'' and (especially) ''Wish You Were Here'', were inspired by the real-life sanity slippage of former bandleader Syd Barrett, who had become impossible to work with. "''Now there's a look in your eyes / like black holes in the sky''". His former bandmates reluctantly dropped him and felt guilty about it ever after. The two albums were enormously successful, but the subsequent non-stop grind of touring to unappreciative audiences caused Roger Waters to suffer a sanity slippage of his own, which directly inspired ''The Wall''. Which was an even more enormous success!
* By Music/CoheedAndCambria's third album, the author in the frame story of their sci-fi epic has started talking to a bicycle and making both death threats and declarations of love to the ex-lover for whom he wrote the story. In the previous albums the author was not a significant character, and the only real sign of his instability was the fact he was writing the kind of material you can make a Prog Rock ConceptAlbum out of.
* ''Music/{{Gorillaz}}'': Both Murdoc and [[TheWoobie 2D]] show signs of this as of phase 3, rambling and gibbering like never before. 2D seems a bit sharper than earlier chapters, though, while Murdoc's just gotten bolder and more malevolent.

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[[folder:Literature]]
* Johnny Truant and Zampano in ''Literature/HouseOfLeaves''.
* Gollum and Denethor in ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings''.
** Isildur after he gets the Ring.
* Jack Torrance in ''Literature/TheShining''. Creator/StephenKing stated his book was about a normal man who goes crazy, and that Creator/StanleyKubrick's [[Film/TheShining film]] was about [[Creator/JackNicholson a crazy man]] [[AxCrazy who goes absolutely bonkers]].
* Stephen King loves this trope. ''Literature/BagOfBones'' and the short story ''The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet'' are about men who clawed their way back from the brink of insanity. The short story ''The Jaunt'' is about a machine that causes insanity if it is used incorrectly.
* Roland goes through this in the first third or so of ''Literature/TheWasteLands'' due to [[spoiler:the paradox he created by preventing Jake's (first) death in ''Literature/TheDrawingOfTheThree''. He gets better after being reunited with Jake.]]
* Rand Al'Thor of ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' certainly seems to inhabit this trope over the course of at least seven {{Doorstopper}}s. More pressures, more sacrifices and mistakes, more obvious signs of mental instability. After he is [[spoiler:almost captured by legendary psychopathic torturer Semirhage and forced to almost kill Min]] he snaps completely. He adopts DissonantSerenity and engages in more and more questionable deeds. After [[spoiler:almost killing his own father, willingly, out of misplaced rage and paranoia, followed by a bit of fatalist StrawNihilist monologuing on the site of his death in a previous incarnation 3,000 years earlier]] he seems to be showing signs of addressing the slippage though.
* The narrator from ''TheMothDiaries''. Possibly.
* Everyone in ''TheRepublicOfTrees'':
** Alex: [[spoiler: becoming a PsychoForHire for whoever holds the power - though truth be told, he just needed a little push ]]
** Isobel: [[spoiler: completely breaking down from Joy's MindRape - which we get to read in painful detail... except the "therapy reports" are written completely in newspeak.]]
** Louis: [[spoiler: getting more and more lost in his vision of the Revolution, overlooking obvious flaws until everything collapses around him ]]
** Joy: [[spoiler: a meek girl with self-image problems, using her intelligence to get to power and ending a KnightTemplar. Then she realises that she could actually have a boyfriend and it drives her completely {{Yandere}} over a couple of chapters.]]
** Michael, the most notable, being the narrator: over a couple of chapters [[spoiler: he suffers severe head trauma, discovers alcohol, discovers that the girl of his dreams is a slut and what's worse, she only started an affair with him to get back at his brother... he starts hearing voices, having memory gaps...]] By the end of the story he is so broken, that when he discovers what [[spoiler: he is now a boyfriend to a {{Yandere}} and they just murdered his ex in cold blood ]], he decides to just roll with it.
* The narrator of ''Literature/TheYellowWallpaper''. Understandable, when you're locked in the attic for months, almost totally deprived of outside interaction.
** Of course, a popular theory is that the "attic" in question is actually a room in a mental hospital, and that the narrator is already insane when the story begins.
* Very common in Creator/HPLovecraft's work, most notably in "The Rats in the Walls" and "A Shadow Over Innsmouth." Of course, considering the [[CosmicHorrorStory type]] of stories he wrote, it's understandable.
* ''Literature/WarriorCats'': [[spoiler:Hollyleaf]], and to a [[BreakTheCutie lesser extent]], her brothers.
* Most ''Literature/{{Redwall}}'' books have at least one villainous character go through this.
* Alicia [=DeVries=] of ''Literature/InFuryBorn'' suffers this throughout the second half of the book due to [[DemonicPossession being possessed]] [[LastOfHisKind by the last of]] [[ClassicalMythology the Greek Furies]]. Culminates when she discovers the identities of the [[TheMole traitors]] within [[spoiler: the [[TheEmpire Imperial]] [[StandardSciFiFleet Fleet]]]], and subsequently goes [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge batshit crazy]]. Fortunately, she is [[IKnowYoureInThereSomewhereFight stopped]] [[spoiler: [[MoralEventHorizon from ramming a space station with nine thousand innocents]] and TheBigBad aboard]] by the Fury and her [[SapientShip ship's AI]] in a BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind.
* Dr. Seward in his appearance in ''Literature/AnnoDracula''. You have to give him a little insanity though; it's an AlternateHistory of ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'' where instead of the EarnYourHappyEnding situation of rescuing Britain from a supernatural evil while losing (only) your fiancée and an American friend, he lives through a {{Diabolus Ex|Machina}} [[KillEmAll Kill 'Em]] [[TheVirus Or Corrupt 'Em]] scenario.
* In the original ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'', Jonathan Harker and Renfield experienced this thanks to the Count. Harker recovered; Renfield, not so much.
* In ''Literature/DiaryOfAMadman'', the eponymous diary details the descent of Poprishchin descent into madness, starting with his delusion that [[SpeaksFluentAnimal he can understand dogs and their letters.]]
* Alfred Lambert in ''Literature/TheCorrections''.
* Happens to a few characters in ''ThePaleKing'', most notably David Cusk and [[spoiler: Lane Dean]].
* In Max Barry's ''Literature/MachineMan'', the main character, Dr. Charles Neumann, suffers from this. While not quite 'normal' to begin with, after [[spoiler: he's replaced both legs and one hand with Better Parts, he starts talking to them and referring to himself as "we"]].
* Jaimy in the ''Literature/BloodyJack'' series. Early in ''My Bonny Light Horseman'', he receives a head wound in battle that doesn't get treated for weeks because he's in a French prison. As the series progresses, you can see him slowly spiraling down to his HeroicBSOD in ''The Mark Of The Golden Dragon''.
* In ''Literature/ThereseRaquin'', the more time passes, the more Thérèse and Laurent are haunted by memories of Camille, and the crazier they become.
* Lydia in ''Caught In The Act''.
* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'': While [[spoiler:Cersei]] had never been completely grounded, she wasn't completely off her rocker either. Over the course of the fourth book, though, in response to [[spoiler: the [[DiedInYourArmsTonight death]] of her [[ParentalFavoritism firstborn]] [[MyBelovedSmother son]] and shortly afterward her father as well]], she starts losing it, seeing enemies in every corner and ordering people [[ColdBloodedTorture tortured]] willy-nilly.
* The Bursar of Unseen University used to be quite sane, up until the appointment of Mustrum Ridcully to Archchancellor wore away at his nerves. His sanity ''really'' took a dive in Discworld/ReaperMan, when ancient wizard Windle Poons rose from the grave. In fact, it's so bad that the medication he's given is specially designed to make him ''hallucinate sanity''.
* Duane Hoover in Creator/KurtVonnegut's ''BreakfastOfChampions'' gradually loses his sanity throughout the novel and is pushed over the edge when [[spoiler: he takes a Kilgore Trout short story as the truth and believes he is the only real person on Earth]].
* ''Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse'': [[Comicbook/XWingSeries Lara Notsil]], former Imperial agent Gara Petothel, slowly goes through one as she [[BecomingTheMask becomes the mask]] after infiltrating Wraith Squadron. It turns out that Imperial Intelligence was... ''[[{{Understatement}} lax]]'' in concerning themselves with what would happen to an agent after having so many different identities swirling around in their head. She manages to never show it, but some of her inner dialogue is downright depressing as she fights between her two[[spoiler: /three]] different identities in order to stay with her Squadron.
** Another [[Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse Star Wars EU]] example is Palpatine from DarkEmpire. Pre-Endor Palpatine had been scarily sane, but the ordeals of death, {{Body Surf}}ing, and the natural mental instability of clones leads him further down the slope throughout the course of the story.
** In Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy, Joruus C'Baoth was always insane, but generally did a good job keeping that fact concealed. His control slips drastically by ''The Last Command.''

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[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* ''Series/{{Dexter}}'' wrestles with Sanity Slippage during the second season of the series.
* Half the fun of ''Series/{{Farscape}}''.
* One of the tie-in bits of promotional material for the ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' movie ''Film/{{Serenity}}'' is a short series of films called the "R. Tam Sessions," which depict River's [[MindRape traumatic]] time at the [[SchoolForScheming Academy]]. It starts off with River being a happy, eager girl who really wants to learn and push herself to her limits, but as the series progresses, she is shown slipping into madness due to the Academy's experiments. The series ends with River killing the man who has been interviewing her by shoving a pen through his throat (who, for those of you playing at home, was played by Creator/JossWhedon).
* During Volume 4 of ''Series/{{Heroes}}'', Sylar's [[AxCrazy already-unstable psyche]] takes a dramatic turn for the worse when he acquires the ability to shapeshift and starts to lose his sense of identity after using it repeatedly.
* Although it's never shown, during ''Series/{{Mash}}'''s finale, after witnessing a traumatic event, Hawkeye begins to not-so-subtly show signs of a breakdown. Like being convinced one of the anesthesiologists was attempting to suffocate his patient with the gas mask, or crashing a jeep through the mess tent. . Little indications of a stressful work environment.
* [[CloudCuckooLander Reverend Jim Ignatowski]] from ''{{Taxi}}'' was actually a Harvard freshman and ExtremeDoormat called James Caldwell, but after he ate a "funny brownie" (at his girlfriend Heather's insistence) and his life totally changed, starting from [[NoodleIncident using finger-paint on his term papers]], while he thought that "Ignatowski" spelled backwards was "Star Child" [[spoiler: when it was "Ikswotangi"]].
** OnlySaneMan Alex fell into this whenever he ''really'' got over the edge. In an early episode, Alex was given some pills he thought that were aspirin, but these were actually "uppers". Their effects are practically immediate, with Alex talking ''very'' fast and singing "Bye-Bye, Love" after waving goodbye to the rest of the gang when he goes to see Mr. [=McKenzie=]. Later he ripped Louie's cage with his bare hands and threatened Louie because of his refusal to listen to him about re-hiring Bobby.
*** This was once PlayedForDrama in a late episode when Alex was informed by his doctor that [[HeroicBSOD his dog didn't have too much time left]]. He then got stuck between the "denial" and the "anger" stages of the FiveStagesOfGrief for most of the episode.
* Simon Bellamy from the British sci-fi series ''Series/{{Misfits}}'' is a painfully shy and intense introvert (and convicted arsonist) who has been bullied and ignored all his life; it's hinted from the onset that he's teetering on the verge of mental breakdown. As the series continues he accidentally becomes party to murder, is magically imbued with the power of {{invisibility}} (which, awesome as it sounds, greatly heightens his growing sense of alienation and his unhealthy tendencies towards voyeurism) and [[spoiler:inadvertently causes the death of Sally - a woman he was starting to fall in love with.]] During the final episode of Season 1, the full extent of his sanity slippage is magnificently depicted as he [[spoiler:casually munches on some left-over pizza while gazing serenely at Sally's corpse, which he has propped up in a large freezer.]] He got better though.
** Series one also shows Sally the probation worker go through a (arguably milder) version of this. Tony, the previous probation worker was her fiance and she spends the whole season trying to prove that the gang is behind his mysterious disappearance. (and she's right about it), though she spends most her time stalking the misfits and by the end became completely obsessed by this.
* The Master from ''Series/DoctorWho'' has always been rather unstable, try as he might to hide it under his veneer of a MagnificentBastard. However, this takes a turn for the worse in [=NuWho=], when he complains of a persistent drumming in his head, getting even worse [[spoiler:after returning from the dead in the Specials Season]]. The main question is whether or not the drumming is real, making the Master even crazier [[spoiler:(It is, turning out to be part of a GambitRoulette by the Lord President of Gallifrey to free Gallifrey from the time-locked Time War)]]. With this revealed, fans speculated on how bad the drumming was during the Master's previous incarnations.
** Hell, the Doctor himself gets one - Waters of Mars, anyone? [[spoiler:[[AGodAmI Time Lord Victorious]]]]
* Avon of ''Series/BlakesSeven'' fame, during the show's fourth and final series. The final straw comes with [[spoiler:Blake's (apparent) betrayal]]. Considering what he's been through, the only wonder is it didn't happen sooner.
** Also Travis, who starts off as cruel and obsessive, but rational, and ends up as a homicidal maniac who sells humanity out to alien invaders just to get a chance to kill Blake.
* Several survivors of the ZombieApocalypse in ''Series/TheWalkingDead'' begin experiencing this from SurvivorGuilt or just the stress of dealing with the PrimalFear day in and day out.
* Major Zod of ''Series/{{Smallville}}'''s 9th Season started out bad and only got worse from there.
* From ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', antagonist [[MagnificentBastard Dukat]]. He starts off as a scheming, megalomaniac, yet charming villain, gets gradually worse, especially in season six, until it all finally boils down to [[MoralEventHorizon this]]: "I should've killed every last one of them! I should've turned their planet into a graveyard the likes of which the galaxy had never seen! I should've killed them all."
** Faked--''probably''--by Sisko in ''For the Uniform''. He even slips into the Joran [[TranquilFury voice]]. 
* [[TroubledButCute Eli]] [[DarkAndTroubledPast Golds]][[EmoTeen worthy]] of ''Series/{{Degrassi}}'' started to become this in the most recent season. First, he reasonably starts to become a little suspicious when a former bully keeps trying to talk to his girlfriend Clare, then he becomes [[CrazyJealousGuy even more possessive]] of her to the point of being controlling, and she responds by saying she needs some space and that they should take a break. How does Eli deal with this? [[spoiler: [[ManipulativeBastard He crashes his car in an attempt to get Clare back]]]] of course!
* Many a character in ''Series/{{Oz}}'' undergoes this, especially Beecher in season 2 after taking a level in badass. He gets better.
* [[spoiler:Walter White]] from ''Series/BreakingBad'' display this at the end of "Crawl Space" {{laughing ma|d}}niacally after realising that [[spoiler: Gus Fring is going to kill his family and Skyler gave his money to Ted Baneke.]]
* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'''s season seven does this to [[spoiler:Sam across most of the season,]] culminating in ''The Born-Again Identity''.
* Several examples in ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''. Faith, portrayed as not the most stable of individuals to begin with, begins by trying to rape Xander to death and it goes downhill from there. After Tara's death Willow thinks nothing of killing her friends if they get in her way of vengeance, before deciding that destroying the world would be a MercyKill. Even Buffy herself is prone to this: the stress of each season finale seems to bring out the worst in her (such as trying to drive her friends away, fleeing from Sunnydale, thinking she can't let anyone close out of fear of getting hurt, then [[FromBadToWorse It Gets Worse]], oh boy [[DrivenToSuicide does]] it [[DestructiveRomance ever]] get [[TookALevelInJerkass worse.]]
* ''Series/{{Survivor}}'' has some contestants who seem to have gone a little nuts during their time in the wilderness:
** ''Survivor: Amazon'' had Matthew who freaked out his teammates by beginning to very meticulously sharpen the machete every day while staring creepily out into space, and Butch who suddenly gained a firewood fetish and forced his teammates to stockpile all the wood they could find which ended up burning their camp down when said massive woodpile caught fire.
*** Butch and the firewood. Even Matt thought that was a little messed up.
** ''Panama'' had Shane who made the genius decision to quit a 3-pack smoking habit literally hours before getting on ''Survivor''. Cue him yelling at his tribemates every single opportunity he got, treating a hunk of wood like a Blackberry, and looking more and more like a crazed animal the longer he stayed out there.
** ''Heroes vs. Villains'' saw Russell get hit hard with this trope. Parvati [[ItSeemedLikeAGoodIdeaAtTheTime thought it would be just peachy]] to keep a hidden immunity idol from him just to see him squirm. Once she handed them to Jerri and Sandra to nullify all of the Heroes' votes for the former, the DisasterDominoes began. For ''both'' sides. 
* ''Series/MysteryScienceTheatre3000'': more than a few experiments produce temporary insanity in the crew of the Satellite of Love through sheer force of SuckinessIsPainful.
* Morgana from ''{{Series/Merlin}}'' starts out pretty sane, but after she [[FaceHeelTurn goes evil]] she starts going off the edge. She is encouraged by her sister to isolate herself from everyone nonmagical, and when her sister dies becomes obsessive about gaining her revenge. During the TimeSkip between seasons four and five, [[GoMadFromTheIsolation she was locked at the bottom of a well and didn't see the light for two years]], which has damaged her beyond all repair. Even Mordred goes from idolizing her to being frightened by how unhinged she is [[spoiler: and stabs her in the back when she tries to kill Arthur]].

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[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* A daily occurrence in ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' and ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''; living in an endlessly terrible CrapsackWorld will do that. Witches/psykers are especially vulnerable to Slippage, thanks to the source of their powers being the home of TheLegionsOfHell.
* Also appears in WarhammerFantasyRoleplay, it has a mechanic for going insane and lists quite a nice amount of mental illnesses for which your character can suffer
** As befits its source material, GaidenGame ''TabletopGame/DarkHeresy'' has mechanics by which players can go insane.
* ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'' is famous for introducing the SAN attribute, which drops a little each time the players encounter a monster or cast a spell, or something.
* Everyone in ''TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness'', from normal humans to blood-hungry vampires to reality-bending mages, has a KarmaMeter. As you slide down the slippery slope, you tend to become a little more unstable with each step, until finally, humans are reduced to raving lunatics, vampires and werewolves go nuts and become meat-hungry animals, mages and changelings fly off the deep end and lose the ability to separate reality from fantasy, and prometheans lose hope of ever becoming humans.
* The ''TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness'' also has sanity-slipping {{Karma Meter}}s, though not all splats have them.
* The fan-made ''World of Darkness'' game ''TabletopGame/GeniusTheTransgression'' is unique in that players start out insane by nature of their [[MadScientist profession]], and as they lose Obligation start unconsciously [[RealityWarper altering reality]] to fit their delusions.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'' loves this trope:
** The Solars gradually experience this as they become more and more godlike, from both the Great Curse and general detachment from humanity and less powerful divine beings.
** Being close to a Primordial War survivor in the First Age can be dangerous, humiliating, and bad for your physical, mental, and social health.
** Also happens to Infernals. They have access to Yozi Charms. Everything the Yozis are, is made of Charms. Most of the Yozis are insane, and their Charmsets tend to be arranged so that the good stuff with no drawbacks is padlocked by something with benefits that makes you a little crazier. The best example of this is Kimbery, who has an entire Charm tree (built on ThePowerOfHate) locked behind something that permanently skews the sanity of its user to be either more naive or more vindictive, depending on the chosen variant.
* In ''TabletopGame/FadingSuns'', Psychics and Theurgists are prone to "Urge" and "Hubris" respectively.
* Characters in ''TabletopGame/EclipsePhase'' are very hard to [[DeathIsCheap kill permanently]] due to [[BrainUploading cortical stacks and backups]], fortunately for [[KillerDM GMs]] there's a mechanic called "stress points" that can cause psychological disorders or permanent catatonia if the PC lets them accumulate.
* Any KillerGameMaster worth the title can put this into ''any'' game.

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[[folder:Web Comics]]
* Jack from ''Webcomic/GunnerkriggCourt''. He started off as a pretty normal guy, then he briefly got pulled into a DarkWorld and saw some ''very'' unpleasant things. Since then he became increasingly antisocial, paranoid (at one point he starves himself because he's convinced the Court has laced his food with nanobots to track him) and amoral (compare his treatment of the Laser Cows to his treatment of the Guard Robot). [[http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Jack_Progress_7447.jpg Heck, even his appearance became worse over time.]] Fortunately, now that [[spoiler:the whitelegs is out of his head,]] he's gotten almost back to normal. Oh, and [[spoiler:[[TheCuckoolanderWasRight he was right about the food]].]]
* Vaarsuvius spent most of "Don't Split The Party" undergoing this in ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick''. [[spoiler: They ultimately recovered.]]
* Jin of ''Webcomic/WapsiSquare'' suffers from a bad case of this after [[spoiler:destroying the calendar machine. It was actually built at least partially for the purpose of keeping her sane.]]
* ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}''--
** Karkat starts getting shades of this after a particularly brutal TraumaCongaLine. [[spoiler: Two of his friends were murdered in from of his eyes, two others are on killing sprees, he's dragging his newly-blinded friend's body (and accidentally drops him down some [[RunningGag stairs]], and he gets a message from his girlfriend, pronouncing the details of another murder - and when he tries to contact her, one of the AxCrazy trolls responds, hinting that she's been killed.]]
--> There. Good as new, best friend! It's like it never happened. No one can ever blame you for dropping him down the stairs now. Stairs? What stairs! Ha ha ha!
** And now Rose is showing signs of it too, now that [[spoiler: her mother's died.]]
--> "This is because, as is [[CallBack now painfully obvious to anyone with a brain]], you have basically [[spoiler:gone completely off the deep end in every way. You have officially gone grimdark.]]"
* ''Webcomic/GarfieldMinusGarfield'': With no cat to give him sarcastic remarks, Jon Arbuckle slowly descends into madness. Examples include [[http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/post/27473059 smushing ice cream cones into his face]], [[http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/post/40406640 dressing up for a date... that's in three weeks]], ''[[http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/post/78032638 jumping in the streets wearing a party hat]]'', [[http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/post/81381173 chasing cars in the manner of dogs]], [[http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/post/503880743/try-g-g-in-book-form breaking]] [[http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/post/26654167 down]] sobbing at the most random times, [[http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/post/30759171 Madness Speak]], and, finally, [[http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/post/69159474 being sent to a Mental Hospital]].
* ''Webcomic/BittersweetCandyBowl'' has Lucy having a mental breakdown when Michael falls off a rock bridge while saving her.

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[[folder:Theater]]
* Blanche in ''Theatre/AStreetcarNamedDesire'' as well as the film adaption with VivienLeigh.
* ''Theatre/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet'' does this with its eponymous character via [[SanitySlippageSong "Epiphany"]].
* The title characters in ''Creator/WilliamShakespeare'''s ''Theatre/{{Macbeth}}'' and arguably ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}''.
* The title character of ''ThePhantomOfTheOpera'', though your mileage may vary on how sane he was to begin with. But he's definitely completely off the beam by the end, determined to have Christine at all costs, even if he has to blackmail her into marriage by threatening to kill her lover.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* (Some of) The characters in ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts}}'' whose minds you enter, but especially the ones in the asylum levels.
* This is a major gameplay element in ''VideoGame/CallOfCthulhuDarkCornersOfTheEarth.'' The "hero" is slowly going insane due to all the {{Eldritch Abomination}}s running around. This results in hallucinations, talking to himself, and hearing voices. The player can reduce the rate at which he goes insane by keeping him from being exposed to disturbing situations (this being a horror story based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, that's easier said than done). If it gets too bad, the hero may attempt suicide and prompt a NonstandardGameOver.
* ''VideoGame/YggdraUnion'' has [[spoiler:Nessiah]], who is quite clearly struggling to stay sane by the end of the game. Considering the [[TraumaCongaLine particularly brutal]] BreakTheCutie he was subjected to in the past (and [[WhoWantsToLiveForever how long he's had to live with the trauma]]), his Sanity Slippage is pretty understandable.
* ''VideoGame/EternalDarkness'' has this as one of its main gameplay mechanics with a "sanity gauge" that drops whenever enemies are encountered. Once it gets low, the ''[[NightmareFuel really]]'' [[MindScrew weird shit]] kicks in.
-->"This...isn't...really happening!"
* Sakura in ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight''. It's like everything anyone ever says to her is another stab at her self confidence. And then Shinji tries [[spoiler:to rape her one more time, and then he'll tell Shirou about it]]. Yeahhhh things kind of go downhill from there. [[spoiler:Oh, and she was already eating people in her sleep, passing out frequently and also quietly going crazy anyway.]]
** [[spoiler:She does get better, however]].
* ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'': If you're really kicking the crap out of another faction and refuse to accept their surrender, they send you increasingly-crazy messages until you kill them or otherwise stop the war.
* In the Creator/ParadoxInteractive RealTimeStrategy game ''VideoGame/CrusaderKings'', characters can occasionally become Stressed. In itself, this only causes a slight stat hit, but if left unchecked, Stress can further worsen into Depression, Schizophrenia, or outright Insanity, and once one of those hits, that character is locked in a vicious spiral of stat decay, personality instability, and possibly even murderous sociopathy until he or she finally dies or gets "Locked Up for Good!" (which is effectively the same thing).
* This shows up in ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'' through [[ApocalypticLog Patricia Tannis' logs]]. She starts out sane (if unenthusiastic) on Pandora and the combination of [[DeathWorld the world's environment]] and [[GoMadFromTheIsolation too much time alone]] pushes her from "Why do I have to be here?" to idle chitchat with someone pinned and dying under a stone pillar because she knows it's the last conversation she'll have with anyone for awhile to dating, then breaking up with, [[CargoShip her audio recorder]] (they're still friends though). All this occurs prior to the events of the game and by the time you meet her she's...[[CloudCuckoolander a bit off]].
** She also gives a dude named Crazy Earl an artifact to safeguard, and to seal the deal, some of her underwear as well. It was her idea too. Also, Baron Flynt punched her dog.
** Tannis explains in the sequel how she became a bit nutty and how the bandits came to be on Pandora. Her and several people used to work for the Dahl corporation and they were sent to Pandora to mine for minerals and do research studies. After a while, the corporation ditched everyone and left them to fend for themselves, causing many people who were normal and had decent lives to slowly grow insane and become bandits. While Tannis simply became just plain weird, she admits that what Dahl did left her and many others broken.
** Tiny Tina, world's deadliest 13 year old. The reason behind her total loss of sanity? [[spoiler:Flesh Stick (I'm not kidding, that's the guy's name), sold her and her parents to Handsome Jack, for his Slag experimentation. Her mother gave her a grenade and taught her how to use. What next? Handsome Jack used them as guinea pigs. Seeing her parents mutate due to slag, Tiny Tina ran away after putting the grenade to a good use.]] Ever since, she went a bit nuts... BURN ALL THE BABIES!!!!
* This is arguably the entire plot arc for Atris in ''[[VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic KotOR II]]''.
** And possibly for Bastila in the first game, though the final stages happened offscreen.
** In a somewhat stranger example, [[spoiler:Revan]] in ''The Old Republic''. [[spoiler:After three hundred years of being [[FateWorseThanDeath trapped in stasis]] and {{mind rape}}d by the Sith Emperor, (all the while subtly influencing him NOT to attack the Republic)]] he's broken out by a strike team..... Only to [[spoiler:immediately go to one of the remaining Star Forges in the galaxy (you know, the EldritchLocation]] he spent the better part of the first game trying to destroy?) and [[spoiler:attempts to build a robotic army that will wipe out all those in the galaxy that contain even a trace of the Sith gene in them-incidentally 97.8% of the Imperial population.]] Not that, given his situation, this isn't ''slightly'' justified.
* This plays out in reverse in ''VideoGame/TimeFcuk''. The protagonist is a HeroicMime, but due to the unusual nature of time and space in the game, he often gets radio messages from his past and future self. In the beginning, you're getting messages from what seem to be several future selves, ranging from a PerkyGoth to a ConspiracyTheorist to someone who's flat-out hallucinating. Towards the end, you can hear his early messages, when he was TheEveryman-- making it scarier, now that you know exactly how he'll be broken.
* This is the result of the third week of ''VisualNovel/CrossChannel'', the first week where Taichi knows [[spoiler:time is looping]] and has more of his deep psychological issues surface. If it wasn't for this and the broadcast he makes at the end of that week, this treatment of Kiri would be rather hypocritical and [[MoralEventHorizon unforgivable]].
* ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines'' featured a quest in which one has to "cleanse" a haunted hotel (much akin to ''Literature/TheShining''). Upon finding the diary of a woman whose ghost now lives in the house, one can read her tale of how her husband experienced one of these inspired by [[LoveMakesYouEvil romantic jealousy]], culminating in him [[spoiler: murdering her and her two children and killing himself]].
* Kefka in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI''. He was once a general, but he starts disobeying orders and has lost his rank by the time the game's narrative begins. And he just keeps getting worse from there, culminating in the development of a [[AGodAmI massive god complex]] and [[OmnicidalManiac an urge to destroy everything]].
* Fentible of ''VideoGame/StarshipTitanic'' suffers for these occasional, usually in mid conversation. The end result is mostly rudeness and forgetfulness. Thankfully he can be reset.
* In ''Schizophrenzy'', you play Private Investigator John K. Facey - a severe schizophrenic. Your sanity is represented by a sort of "health meter" and is constantly decreasing, with only your medication keeping you from going completely over the edge. Of course, even fully medicated you perceive yourself as walking on walls and hallucinate bizarre creatures.
* In ''VideoGame/TheSims 2'', if a Sim's aspiration meter bottoms out, they'll start doing crazy stuff related to their Aspiration:
** A Romance Sim will try to dance with a mop...
** A Popularity Sim will start talking to a puppet made out of a plastic cup...
** A Family Sim will cuddle a flour sack with a face drawn on it like it was a real baby...
** A Knowledge Sim will start talking to [[Film/CastAway a volleyball with a face painted on it]] wearing a mortarboard...
** A Pleasure Sim will [[LampshadeWearing put a lampshade on their head]] and dance around like an idiot...
** And a Fortune Sim will go out on the street and beg for money.
* ''VisualNovel/NineHoursNinePersonsNineDoors'' has [[spoiler: Clover, waking up and being forced into playing the Nonary Game. For a second time. She is fine over this. What gives her a dive in the deep end, is Snake's death. Apparent in the "[[MultipleEndings Axe]]" ending.]]
** [[spoiler: The [[WordOfGod author has suggested]] that something traumatic changed Akane in the previous Nonary Game, leaving her cold, vengeful and capable of eliminating everyone who gets in her way.]]
* ''[[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedI Assassin's Creed]]'' had mentions of Subject 16, who committed suicide after excessively prolonged Animus sessions caused mental breakdown due to the "Bleeding Effect," where the Animus subject may gain their ancestor's abilities but end up being unable to mentally distinguish themselves from the ancestor, though Desmond only ends up gaining his ancestor Altaïr's Eagle Vision ability. In ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedII'' this is deliberately invoked in an attempt to quickly train Desmond to become an Assassin, but along the way Desmond suffers visual hallucinations and experience (in his sleep) one of Altaïr's memories without being in the Animus. By ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedBrotherhood'' he's become an Animus-trained Assassin but the hallucinations have gotten more frequent, are now both visual and auditory (sight and sound) and may not even be from his ancestor Ezio's memories. On at least two occasions Desmond inadvertently refers to himself in the first-person when describing Ezio's actions, and later in the game an e-mail reveals that the other modern-day Assassins have heard Desmond screaming in his sleep.
** Just to [[FromBadToWorse make it worse]], Desmond is self-conscious of his own growing mental instability, at one point in ''Brotherhood'' wondering how long it'll be before he "[[RoomFullOfCrazy starts painting symbols on the walls]]" (referencing Subject 16).
* The ''VideoGame/ShadowHearts'' games, along with the usual HP and MP gauges, also feature a Sanity Gauge, as the characters are constantly fighting horrific and twisted abominations. If the Sanity of any character slips below zero, the [[HellIsThatNoise background music changes]] and the character goes berserk, attacking everything around them.
* Sergeant Michael Becket of ''[[VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon F.E.A.R. 2]]''. A combination of Alma's MindRape powers, [[spoiler: her actually raping him]], and being held captive by Armacham for nine months while being continuously tested and experimented on has driven him gradually insane by the time ''F.3.A.R.'' rolls around.
* ''[[VideoGame/DevilSurvivor Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor]]'' has an odd example of an ''[[AIIsACrapshoot AI]]'' apparently undergoing this. [[MadOracle The Laplace Mail]] starts out giving news from the future, but as the game wears on (and the protagonists [[ScrewDestiny repeatedly prevent its predictions from coming true]]), it starts to get glitchier and glitchier, first capitalizing random letters and eventually adding in weird symbols in place of them, changing its "Have a nice day" ending to "Have a nice ''death''", and finally spitting out an error message and discontinuing all together.
* [[spoiler:Pit]] of all people starts to go crazy in ''VideoGame/KidIcarusUprising''. [[spoiler:In chapter 23, he gets eaten by Hades after the 3 Sacred Treasures are destroyed in front of him. When he's eaten, [[GoMadFromtheIsolation he's isolated from the outside world]] and can't get into contact with Palutena. Only Hades can talk to him from the inside and constantly [[MindRape taunts him]] the whole dungeon.]] It gets to the point where [[spoiler:Pit starts talking to himself and acting like he's going crazy.]] Then there's [[spoiler:[[BreakTheCutie chapters 18-21]].]]
* Martin Walker, the main character of ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine'' spends most of the game slowly going crazy trying to justify what he did during the [[spoiler:white phosphorous incident]] to the point of [[spoiler:imagining entire conversations with the dead villain]] to somehow make it so that he was forced into his actions. The language he uses also gradually devolves from professional military expressions, to loud, insane {{Battle Cr|y}}ies consisting mostly of angry rambling and cursing of his enemies.
* The title character of ''VideoGame/{{Iji}}'' can experience this, depending on player actions/inactions. She becomes increasingly desperate and maniacal if her body count increases rapidly (going from crying [[ApologeticAttacker "I'm sorry!"]] to those she kills to shouting "DIE!"). She also swiftly goes completely unhinged if [[spoiler:Dan is killed]], even the [[AntiVillain final boss]] shows sympathy for her state.
* Matthew Baker from VideoGame/BrothersInArms follows this trope as the stress from losing squadmates and friends begins to pile up.
* All over ''Franchise/DeadSpace''. Alongside the [[ZombieApocalypse Necromorphs]], [[ArtifactOfDoom The Markers]] cause [[MindRape hallucinations, homicidal and suicidal ideation, paranoia, and a whole host of other pleasant symptoms]]. Most characters in the series are affect at least to some degree. [[spoiler: Including protagonist Isaac Clarke, whose deteriorating mental state was TheReveal in the original game and a major plot element in ''2'', where he had to find a way to stop his insanity before it made him kill himself.]]
* In ''VideoGame/BioShock'' anyone who is hooked on ADAM will slowly loses their sanity, as it destroys and rebuilds their physical and mental state. The best example is Dr. Steinman, in his audio diaries he becomes increasingly delusional, beleving he's talking to the Greek goddess Aphrodite, and spends most of his time doing surgery on other splicers to create his version of what is beautiful. 
-->'''Steinman:''' An intruder?! He's ugly! Ugly! Ugly! UGLYYYYYYYY!
* In ''VideoGame/DontStarve'', your character has a SanityMeter that slowly goes down if you neglect it. If it gets low enough, you start seeing flickering visions of shadowy monsters. Let it drop even lower, and various crazy things happen: the wild rabbits roaming the land become replaced with monsters made of hair called Beardlings, shadowy hands might reach out to snuff out your campfire at night as an OminousMusicBoxTune plays, and the shadowy monsters you see become more and more real until they ''[[YourMindMakesItReal come to life and try to kill you]]''.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* ''WebVideo/DoctorHorriblesSingAlongBlog'': Dr. Horrible becomes more evil when his love interest starts going out with his arch-nemesis (willing to kill), and really [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope goes off the edge]] when [[spoiler: he accidentally kills her.]]
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RidsxnnVTR4 Really]], it might [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wD_S2HaUBE as well]] be called [[SanitySlippageSong Sanity Slippage: The Musical vBlog]]
* LetsPlay/DeceasedCrab starts to ramble like LetsPlay/{{Raocow}} in the harder parts of his LetsPlay videos.
** His Let's Play of ''VideoGame/{{Eversion}}'' is his best example of pretending to lose his sanity due to the game's Nightmare Fuel. His blind run of [[PlanetHeck Hell Temple]] from ''VideoGame/{{La-Mulana}}'' is his best example of ''really'' losing his sanity due to the game's [[NintendoHard unrelenting cheapness]].
* Speaking of LetsPlay/{{Raocow}}, he goes in completely the opposite direction. Normally a TalkativeLoon, he becomes very... sane and quiet when levels start to grind at him. Some Let's Plays have nothing but angry ranting.
* For that matter, any LetsPlay of ''VideoGame/IWannaBeTheGuy''.
** Or an unsuspecting LetsPlay of VideoGame/KaizoMarioWorld. LetsPlay/ProtonJon has a particular epic breakdown playing Special 2
* The [[LetsPlay/SonicTheHedgehog2006 epic LP]] of ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2006'' by LetsPlay/{{pokecapn}}, LetsPlay/{{Medibot}}, Kung-Fu Jesus, [=IlluminatusVespucci=] and John Condit. They played the entire game in less than two days, playing almost non-stop, with only one of them sleeping at any point. Most involved are mildly CloudCuckoolander-ish to begin with, but as the game progresses, their commentary is filled more and more with non-sequiturs and {{Cluster F Bomb}}s. A quarter of the way through, they've ordered and consumed copious amounts of General Tso's chicken because it's "full of ideas" (and thus, eating the chicken will ''give them'' ideas. It makes perfect sense!). Halfway through, one of them ironically blares out an a cappella version of [[VideoGame/MegaMan Flashman's theme]] at random moments. Three quarters of the way through, they [[ThatOneLevel get stuck in the last level]], and over the two hours it takes them to beat the level, they can be heard cycling through the FiveStagesOfGrief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance). By the end, one of them is reciting song lyrics in Shatner-esque spoken-word renditions, including "Rocketman", "Fast Car", and finally "[[Music/MichaelJackson Thriller]]" over the final boss fight. When combined with the slow, melancholic choiral music used in the later stages, it borders on [[TearJerker being strangely touching]], depending on your mood.
** It didn't help any that, besides Medibot, none of them got any sleep. Even Medibot didn't get much; the portions of the LP where he's missing don't add up to much more than a catnap or two (and he apparently went home for those, cutting the sleep time further).
* On a similar note, the LetsPlay/FreelanceAstronauts attempt at beating ''The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time'' (master quest version) descends into this between the forest and fire temple. Ferr begins making jokes about the gilded age and Maxwell gets the group stuck inside of a fire maze. The group had also been attempting a "Fantasy Race" with the ''Lord of the Rings'' trilogy, further compounding the insanity. 
* During Creator/LittleKuriboh's LP of ''Duke Nukem Forever'', he gets stuck for one hour on a boss battle over the Hoover Dam. As time and deaths pile on, LK talks about random subjects, goes through many of his character voices, jumbles words together and repeats them ad nauseum. The last straw happens in [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuzmrPXS7vM Part 26]] (at 13:00), when he's unable to complete a quick time event needed to kill the boss despite tapping frantically on the buttons (turns out he was tapping the buttons ''too fast for the game to notice''). This makes him laugh maniacally.
-->'''LK:''' [QTE fails and he's thrown to the ground] Are you kid-- Are you-- ... ({{laugh|ingMad}}ter) ''Why does-- Why-- Why does-- things not-- Why-- Why do things not do thing why are things in the''... '''things?!'''
** He then spends [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNFVhqUM4Sk most of Part 27]] babbling incoherently about mushrooms, badgers, and barrels.
-->'''LK:''' I may have lost my sanity... thank you game... for taking sanity...
-->'''Duke:''' Killing you is as easy as breathing.
-->'''LK:''' I have five rocket... Did he say killing you is as easy as breathing? What-- '''''it's not!''''' If this is how difficult breathing is ''BREATHING IS THE HARDEST THING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD!'' ... ''Mushroom style...'' I'm doing this Mushroom Style. Mushroom style all over the place. Mushroom. Badgerbadgerbadgerbadger. Gimme the mushroom!
* Pitchfork, the writer of the [[http://socksmakepeoplesexy.net/index.php?a=patff Rise and Fall of Final Fantasy]] series of articles, spent the last four years playing though each ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' game and writing the articles, [[{{Determinator}} a rather impressive feat on its own]]. The zenith was, of course, at ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' and ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' (the former of which got a score of [[RankInflation six out of five]]), but with each progressive game afterwords, he became more divided in his opinion. Then came ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI'', which was his first time playing an MMORPG. So not only did he not know what to expect from it, but he didn't realize at first how unrealistic it was to try to "beat" it. His "Vana'diel Diary" gives us quotes like "I refuse to admit that I am not having fun," and he tears the disclaimer given by Square Enix upon logging on ("'THAT BEING SAID, WE HAVE NO DESIRE TO SEE YOUR REAL LIFE SUFFER AS A CONSEQUENCE.' Bullshit. Vicious, brazen mendacity. Like a tobacco company printing "we have no desire that you should develop a dependency while enjoying the smooth taste of our product" on the side of cigarette packs."), and at the end of that, he begs that someone tell him that not all [=MMOs=] are like it. In his ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' article, he says that the ''FinalFantasy'' under Square is gone forever, leaving only a {{Cash Cow|Franchise}} FranchiseZombie by Square-Enix. ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX2'' seemed to have completely broken his brain ("...so whenever Yuna equips the Songstress job, she not only dons Lenne's clothes but allows Lenne's thoughts and emotions to diffuse throughout her own, causing god this is so stupid why am i"), and ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'' caused him to quit the series entirely.
* ''WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall'': Sometimes, the terrible quality of the comics he's reviewing sends Linkara over the edge, usually with [[SanitySlippageSong the soundtrack of]] TheWurzels' "I've Got A Brand New Combine Harvester" (In particular, ''DoomsIV'', ''ComicBook/AmazonsAttack'', and ''[[TheCloneSaga Maximum Clonage]]'').
--> Oh, I've got a brand-new combine harvester, and I'll give you the key
-->C'mon now, let's get together in perfect harmony. I've got twenty acres, and you've got forty-three
--> 'Cause I've got a brand-new combine harvester, and I'll give you the key!
** "Look at the pretty bunny! Look at the pretty bunny... *Breaks down crying*
* Common in ''Franchise/TheSlenderManMythos''. For specific examples--
** [[spoiler: Evan and Alex]] from ''WebVideo/EverymanHYBRID'', Logan from ''Blog/JustAnotherFool'', Zeke Strahm from ''Blog/SeekingTruth'' (but he gets saner, [[AlternativeCharacterInterpretation possibly]]) and Damien of ''Blog/DreamsInDarkness'. Quite a kettle of fish, is it not?
** ''WebVideo/MarbleHornets'' is essentially made of this and nightmare fuel. Any character that is in front of the screen for several episodes is shown to become either paranoid to the point of obsession (Alex and Jay) or homicidally insane (Masky).
** In her stay at the hotel, Jessica also appears to succumb to this when she realises that something is wrong.
* As events progress and he finds himself in increasingly dangerous situations, Gordon in ''Machinima/FreemansMind'' is showing increasingly common bouts of uncontrolled rage and paranoia, which is impressive considering [[SociopathicHero his original personality]]. This was perhaps most clearly demonstrated in episode 29, when he threw a grenade at a large pile of explosive crates.
-->'''Gordon:''' I ''HAVE'' TO BLOW EVERYTHING UP! IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO PROVE I'M NOT CRAZY!
* May be a result of playing ''VideoGame/KaizoMarioWorld'' without save states.
* In ''Roleplay/WeAreOurAvatars'', [[@/HilarityEnsues Hilarity]], [[SuperOCD comedically]]. [[@/SapphireFlame Sapph]], [[ShellShockedVeteran not]] [[DrunkWithPower so]] [[WhatHaveIDone comedically]]
* Kevin Low from ''Roleplay/NewGamePlusTheRpg'', after countless slights against him, begins to believe the world is against him, as he begins to slip even more, he starts to have spans of time where he wishes vengeance upon his friends. "He smiles at the twitching bloodied body, he knows she is still alive, but he wants her to suffer. She has become a proxy for every single person who hurt him, every situation bent on beating him down. and now they all are suffering. and it pleases him."
* WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic went through one during his review of ''Film/TheNeverendingStory 3''. He started the review feeling scared and hateful towards the film as he does towards most films he thinks that are horrible, then in the middle of his review he goes off on an unusually long (for his standards) ClusterFBomb rant over the CharacterDerailment of the Rock Biter, and by the end of his review [[spoiler:he [[LaughingMad insanely laughs]] while leaving his house to buy a crowbar, goes on a primitive rampage on the DVD with said crowbar, and tops it off with fucking the DVD]].
** PlayedForDrama in ''WebVideo/ToBoldlyFlee'', as his guilt over losing Ma-Ti gets his suicidal tendencies into gear and makes him think that even Internet laws are all his fault.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/user/hamsteralliance#p/u/83/gqIscuzmABY This]] LP of Super Meat Boy. Hamster seems relatively okay most of the time until he starts dying a lot. Then he devolves into swearing, flailing, laughter that really just says "kill me now" and incoherent gibberish.
* Mr. Anime, he was originally just a guy who reviewed anime until he went crazy and went on a killing spree killing his family and his teacher.
** Note this is not a joke or an in-universe thing. He actually did so. Worst part is that a month before he did so her released a video that said that he was planning something big.
* Lanipator's let's play of Amnesia Justine. He plays through the entire game an goes for a 100% completion to get the Easter Egg. After many, many deaths (you have to start from the beginning if you die), he gets to the end of the game and he doesn't seem to get the Easter Egg. [[spoiler: He did get it, but he didn't know it. He later expressed this revelation with a comment which was 90% F-bomb.]] After that, he starts over, kills all the prisoners laughing like a madman and yelling at the characters in the game, and stands next to the last prisoner so that they could die together. Then, when the screen goes black, the words [[spoiler: rebel for life appear]].
* WebVideo/TheNostalgiaChick snapped completely around "Sleepless In Seattle vs. When Harry Met Sally", kidnapping WebVideo/ToddInTheShadows, tying him to a chair and her twisted mind calling it a date. You wouldn't think it was possible, but she's only got worse from there.
* Ever since he moved from his bookcase to a bar, WebVideo/AskThatGuyWithTheGlasses's sanity has been falling apart. Of course he was never sane in the first place, but it's almost sad to see him go from a WickedCultured chessmaster to a JadedWashout who breaks into tears randomly. (So essentially he's now an evil version of Critic.)
* This happens to a ''book'' in Wiki/TheWanderersLibrary story [[http://wanderers-library.wikidot.com/of-the-metabible Of The Metabible]]. The Metabible, a godlike entity over which wars have been fought, is an impossibly long book. As you read farther it begins to get more and more incomprehensible, and by the millionth page it's completely broken and begging for somebody to read it. [[spoiler: The last page of the book separates itself from the Metabible and forms a second one. It's implied it eventually goes through the same process.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* [[MagnificentBastard Azula]] in the finale of ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender''. Her slippage began with [[spoiler:Mai and Ty Lee's [[HeelFaceTurn betrayals]] a couple episodes]] earlier. When Ozai told her to remain in the Fire Nation as Fire Lord, she became increasingly more paranoid. She acted on the paranoia, then began hallucinating, and eventually had a VillainousBreakdown.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "Springfield Up" contains a very swift summary of how doctor/lawyer Eleanor Abernathy went off her rocker and became the town's yowling cat lady.
** Frank Grimes learns the hard way in "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS8E23HomersEnemy Homer's Enemy]]" that being the OnlySaneMan in a CrapsackWorld is not conducive to one's long term health.
** Homer himself does so in ''The Shinning'' segment of "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS6E6TreehouseOfHorrorV Treehouse of Horror V]]" when the cable stops working and they run out of beer. 
--->'''Homer''': No TV and no beer make Homer something something...\\
'''Marge''': "Go crazy?"\\
'''Homer''': '''''Don't mind if I do!!''''' (''proceeds to go crazy'')
* ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory''. Buzz ''really'' doesn't take realizing he's a toy well.
-->'''Buzz Lightyear:''' YOU SEE THE HAT?! I AM MRS... ''NESBITT''! ''(laughs maniacally)''
* PlayedForLaughs on ''WesternAnimation/JimmyTwoShoes'', when Jimmy is left the only person in Miseryville awake while everyone else is in hibernation. He slowly begins to go crazy.
* WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants and Mr. Krabs try to keep their sanity when they believed they killed the health inspector. [[spoiler:Turns out that the inspector is still alive, and the Krusty Krab passes inspection.]]
** In "Pickles", [=SpongeBob=]'s life takes a turn for the chaotic after a JerkAss customer claims that he forgot the titular condiment. By which we mean he tries to cook his bicycle and hangs the toaster on his front door.
** Poor Squidward. In between being the entire ocean's ButtMonkey and victim to the constant shenanigans of his next door neighbors, [=SpongeBob=] and Patrick, it's no wonder he's been shown to break down into a sobbing wreck or fits of maniacal laughter when the AmusingInjuries and ever-present failures prove too much to handle. In "Squid's Day Off" Squidward tricks [=SpongeBob=] into running the Krusty Krab all by himself while he takes a day off, but he keeps imagining [=SpongeBob=] destroying the Krusty Krab and repeatedly goes back and forth to and from his house. While taking a bath he hallucinates [=SpongeBob=] is watching him and runs off to the Krusty Krab wearing only bubbles.
** [=SpongeBob=] frequently has Sanity Slippage to the point that you wonder whether he's exactly sane to begin with...
--->''(from "Stuck in the Wringer")''\\
'''Patrick:''' Hey, whatcha watchin'?\\
'''[=SpongeBob=]:''' ''(watching static on TV)'' My favorite show. ''(the TV dies)'' Ha, ha, I love that part!
** Mr. Krabs goes crazy when the squeaky noise of the rubber boots he gave Spongebob becomes too much to bear.
** In "Clams" after Mr. Krabs loses his millionth dollar we see him slowly go completely insane. The cut back to Mr. Krabs, who begins giggling maniacally [[EyeScream and tears his two eyes out, using them as a jumprope]] is genuinely disturbing.
* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': The FanNickname for this is "Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Syndrome", given that a pony failing to live up to their special talent (symbolized by their cutie mark) is the most common cause of ponies going nuts. (It's worth pointing out that in all of these cases, the insanity was cleared up by the end of the episode with ThePowerOfFriendship.)%% NOTE TO EDITORS: Please leave the mention of the fandom term for searchability.
** In [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS1E25PartyOfOne "Party of One"]], [[GenkiGirl Pinkie Pie]] thinks her friends are avoiding her because they're sick of her parties. Her normally curly hair goes straight, she [[CompanionCube makes her own party guests]] out of things like a sack of flour and a pile of rocks (whom she holds conversations with), her colourful persona becomes noticeably darker, as if it's under a shadow, and the normally insufferably cheerful pony becomes cranky, miserable, and borderline paranoid schizophrenic, all the while sporting a SlasherSmile. Her slippage even comes complete with {{Creepy Circus|Music}} [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cy9gNE_vIE Music]] (which has a disturbing resemblance to the {{leitmotif}} of a certain personification of chaos).
** In [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS1E26TheBestNightEver "The Best Night Ever"]], [[ShrinkingViolet Fluttershy]] snaps at the Grand Galloping Gala due to all of the animals running in fear from her. After her increasingly desperate methods fail, she goes into full blown {{Yandere}} mode, unleashing animal-based chaos with the line [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwp60eYuie0 "You're... going to LOVE MEEEE!"]].
** In [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS2E1TheReturnOfHarmonyPart1 "The Return Of Harmony Part 1"]] and [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS2E2TheReturnOfHarmonyPart2 "Part 2"]], the [[CorruptTheCutie discorded mane ponies']] misbehavior becomes worse as the episode progresses.
** [[{{Adorkable}} Twilight Sparkle]] goes through a complete psychotic break in [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS2E3LessonZero "Lesson Zero"]]. Convinced that she's about to fail her duty to Princess Celestia, her mane goes disheveled, her teeth grind, her eyes becoming unfocused, she [[TalkingToThemself talks to herself]], and she starts [[TeleportSpam teleporting at random]] while undergoing a complete nervous breakdown. It culminates in an (unintended) mass hypnosis of Ponyville that requires the Princess herself to intervene, furious at her student for abusing her powers.
*** Keep in mind that all those examples happened in ''five consecutive episodes''.
** In [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS2E19PuttingYourHoofDown "Putting Your Hoof Down"]], Fluttershy's assertiveness [[GoneHorriblyRight works a little too well]], resulting in her [[TookALevelInJerkass taking multiple levels in Jerkass]] and becoming increasingly violent, paranoid and aggressive to the point that she reduces Pinkie and Rarity to ''tears''.
** Princess Luna experiences this a thousand years before the time of the series. Literally consumed with [[GreenEyedMonster jealousy and anger]] towards the ponies rejecting [[TheSacredDarkness her beautiful night]] in favour of Celestia's day, she [[FaceHeelTurn transforms into]] [[SuperpoweredEvilSide Nightmare Moon]] and tries to enact [[TheNightThatNeverEnds eternal night]] in a stubborn attempt to ''force'' the ponies to love her, showing that even a [[PhysicalGod Physical Goddess]] isn't immune to CMFIS. In [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS2E4LunaEclipsed "Luna Eclipsed"]] she runs the risk of having to bear these insecurities all over again when the ponies begin to reject her once more, but fortunately Twilight is there to help.
** Before [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS3E12GamesPoniesPlay "Games Ponies Play"]] aired, people were expecting another "Twilight goes crazy" episode. They were likely surprised when this trope was {{averted|Trope}} for that episode.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'' episode "Pretty, Pretty Dresses" Bill is very lonely and depressed, and finally loses it when Hank destroys the gifts he'd been saving for his ex-wife Lenore in case she ever came back. He starts wearing her old clothes she'd left behind and talks in a falsetto voice, believing that he himself is Lenore; eventually Hank is able to break him out of it and gets him to get over Lenore.
* In ''Disney/TheLionKing 1 1/2'', during a scene approximately taking place during Scar's VillainSong in the original movie, Timon is on the verge of cracking in his "dream home" quest...
-->'''Timon:''' ''(comes across a steam vent)'' Hey! This is home sweet home, baby! Home-- ''(gets sent into the air a bit by the eruption)'' Ha ha! Steam! Ha ha! Steam is good. Steam is--is--is water. Whoo! Gotta have water. You know, for the dream home. Steam home, dream home! Steam, steam, steam.
* More or less the plot of ''WesternAnimation/{{Wakfu}}'''s StartOfDarkness prequel episode.
* The Christmas episode of ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' shows that, centuries ago, before TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt this happened to an antique collector by the name of Simon Petrikov after he made the mistake of wearing a cursed artifact. A thousand years of sanity slippage later, the man he was is completely gone, and what remains only knows himself as [[spoiler: The Ice King]].
* Ren of ''WesternAnimation/TheRenAndStimpyShow'' frequently falls into this. Stimpy sometimes does too. And boy is it [[NightmareFuel/TheRenAndStimpyShow creepy]].
* ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'': DaffyDuck seems to fall victim to this a lot. A perfect example occurs in ''Duck! Rabbit! Duck!'' after he gets shot by Elmer Fudd one too many times:
-->'''Daffy:''' ''(hysterical)'' Shoot me again! I enjoy it! I love the smell of burnt feathers! And gunpowder! And cordite! I'm an elk -- shoot me! Go on, it's elk season! I'm a fiddler crab -- why don't you shoot me?! It's fiddler crab season!
** In ''WesternAnimation/TheLooneyTunesShow'' not only Daffy, but everybody is liable to get bonkers (after all, it's a mostly CrapsaccharineWorld/ StepfordSuburbia full of {{Cloudcuckoolander}}s). As an example, Porky has turned from an apparently wealthy JerkJock in high school to a middle-class burn-out prone to suffer this [[spoiler:so frequently that it gets in BlackComedy and even "DudeNotFunny" territory]]; and Bugs didn't act like himself after he started consuming "Spargle" (being PlayedForLaughs).
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'' has this happen almost OncePerEpisode to the unfortunate soul the Warners decide to be their "special friend". Most of the time [[AssholeVictim they deserve it]], though.
** Slappy Squirrel suffers this in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo Clock" after being forced to watch talk shows.
* Candace from ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'' quite often suffers this. Though it's not [[CloudCuckooLander like she's all there to begin with]].
* Meg Griffin from ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' quite frequently out of a desperation for love and affection.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'': From [[WesternAnimation/TheRugratsMovie the movie]], Tommy totally snaps and almost pours mashed bananas on Dil, knowing the monkeys will be attracted to it. It's thundering and raining the whole time, and Tommy just starts acting more and more crazy as he starts ranting about how much Dil has ruined his life.
** In ''[[ItsAWonderfulPlot Chuckie's Wonderful Life]]", Chaz goes insane in a world without his son.
** Stu also loses it when he's forced to take care of Angelica after she pretends to have broken her leg.
* Harleen Quinzel, who would later become Harley Quinn, in the ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' episode "Mad Love".
* Dib of ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'' isn't that stable to begin with (being one of the handful of reasonably intelligent people in a CrapsackWorld [[SurroundedByIdiots full of idiots]] will do that), but over the course of the series becomes increasingly desperate, paranoid, and manic, and [[TalkingToThemself talks to himself]] with greater frequency.
* Though Justin Hammer already was a RichInDollarsPoorInSense PsychoticManchild from the start in ''WesternAnimation/IronManArmoredAdventures'', he gradually loses the little sanity he has left over the course of the series.
* While the Red Guy from ''WesternAnimation/CowAndChicken'' isn't exactly sane to begin with, he ends up having a complete mental breakdown in the episode "I Scream, Man" as a result of taking a job that he despises: as an ice cream man. Predictably, he ends up in a mental clinic.
-->'''Red''': AAAAAHHHH!!!!! I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!! I don't have any ice cream! Not one, so! EVER! I don't even like ice cream, OR KIDS! It says "Eye Screem" on my truck, not "Ice Cream"! Get it? 'cause I SCREAM!!! Look at me. (screams while spinning in circles) SCREAMING IS MY HOBBYYYYYY!!!!!! (gets hit on the head by a policeman).
* Louise on ''WesternAnimation/BobsBurgers'' [[CloudCuckoolander was never exactly the sanest kid around]], but in "Earsy Rider" she has a mental breakdown after her bunny ears are stolen. [[spoiler:It gets even worse when she thinks they've been destroyed.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime'' showcases [[BigBad Megatron]]'s slow descent into (further) homicidal madness. Doping using the blood of [[{{Satan}} Unicron]] certainly hasn't helped, but he's clearly slipping even without it. It becomes most clear when he get the Dark Star Saber, whereupon he starts shouting about how he'll tear this world apart (despite the fact that doing that dooms the entire universe).
[[/folder]]

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5th May '13 10:14:37 AM kingofkatamari

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* In ''VideoGame/BioShock'' anyone who is hooked on ADAM will slowly loses their sanity, as it destroys and rebuilds their physical and mental state. The best example is Dr. Steinman, in his audio diaries he becomes increasingly delusional, beleving he's talking to the Greek goddess Aphrodite, and spends most of his time doing surgery on other splicers to create his version of what is beautiful. 
-->'''Steinman:''' An intruder?! He's ugly! Ugly! Ugly! UGLYYYYYYYY!
* In ''VideoGame/DontStarve'', your character has a SanityMeter that slowly goes down if you neglect it. If it gets low enough, you start seeing flickering visions of shadowy monsters. Let it drop even lower, and various crazy things happen: the wild rabbits roaming the land become replaced with monsters made of hair called Beardlings, shadowy hands might reach out to snuff out your campfire at night as an OminousMusicBoxTune plays, and the shadowy monsters you see become more and more real until they ''[[YourMindMakesItReal come to life and try to kill you]]''.

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* Jackson Georges from ''ExMachina'', Mayor Hundred's former NSA handler fits this trope. In flashbacks the reader is shown how the cryptic shard that Mitchell found when he got his powers slowly drives Jackson to levels of extreme paranoia. He develops an unfounded contempt for Mitchell, claiming that without Mitchell's appearance and the mystery of the shard, he could have foreseen and prevented 9/11. He becomes obsessed with protecting his family from dirty bombs and the like, buying a HazmatSuit and making tally marks on the wall to represent god knows what. It's clear he's a step away from the deep end. Darkly subverted when [[spoiler:in desperation to save their failing marriage, his wife breaks into his work shed and steals the shard. A few seconds near a TV are enough to drive her completely and utterly insane, leading her to kill her daughter, husband, and dog. She even chops off her own arm with the shard itself. It was an incredibly jarring and brutal twist on the slow burn of paranoia the reader had been witnessing for months.]]

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* Jackson Georges from ''Comicbook/ExMachina'', Mayor Hundred's former NSA handler fits this trope. In flashbacks the reader is shown how the cryptic shard that Mitchell found when he got his powers slowly drives Jackson to levels of extreme paranoia. He develops an unfounded contempt for Mitchell, claiming that without Mitchell's appearance and the mystery of the shard, he could have foreseen and prevented 9/11. He becomes obsessed with protecting his family from dirty bombs and the like, buying a HazmatSuit and making tally marks on the wall to represent god knows what. It's clear he's a step away from the deep end. Darkly subverted when [[spoiler:in desperation to save their failing marriage, his wife breaks into his work shed and steals the shard. A few seconds near a TV are enough to drive her completely and utterly insane, leading her to kill her daughter, husband, and dog. She even chops off her own arm with the shard itself. It was an incredibly jarring and brutal twist on the slow burn of paranoia the reader had been witnessing for months.]]

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* On a similar note, the LetsPlay/FreelanceAstronauts attempt at beating The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (master quest version) descends into this between the forest and fire temple. Ferr begins making jokes about the gilded age and Maxwell gets the group stuck inside of a fire maze. The group had also been attempting a "Fantasy Race" with the ''Lord of the Rings'' trilogy, further compounding the insanity. 
* During LittleKuriboh's LP of ''Duke Nukem Forever'', he gets stuck for one hour on a boss battle over the Hoover Dam. As time and deaths pile on, LK talks about random subjects, goes through many of his character voices, jumbles words together and repeats them ad nauseum. The last straw happens in [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuzmrPXS7vM Part 26]] (at 13:00), when he's unable to complete a quick time event needed to kill the boss despite tapping frantically on the buttons (turns out he was tapping the buttons ''too fast for the game to notice''). This makes him laugh maniacally.

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* On a similar note, the LetsPlay/FreelanceAstronauts attempt at beating ''The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time'' (master quest version) descends into this between the forest and fire temple. Ferr begins making jokes about the gilded age and Maxwell gets the group stuck inside of a fire maze. The group had also been attempting a "Fantasy Race" with the ''Lord of the Rings'' trilogy, further compounding the insanity. 
* During Creator/LittleKuriboh's LP of ''Duke Nukem Forever'', he gets stuck for one hour on a boss battle over the Hoover Dam. As time and deaths pile on, LK talks about random subjects, goes through many of his character voices, jumbles words together and repeats them ad nauseum. The last straw happens in [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuzmrPXS7vM Part 26]] (at 13:00), when he's unable to complete a quick time event needed to kill the boss despite tapping frantically on the buttons (turns out he was tapping the buttons ''too fast for the game to notice''). This makes him laugh maniacally.

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