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| 10 | %% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1428952812052044200 |
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| 15 | [[quoteright:350:[[Webcomic/RareCandyTreatment https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d53e8aced63df61b3d196b4a51ac58bc.png]]]] |
| 16 | [[caption-width-right:350:[[Franchise/{{Pokemon}} Medicham is confused!]]\ |
| 17 | [-[[https://www.deviantart.com/bummerforshort/art/Mindblowing-269980563 Full comic]] used with permission.-]]] |
| 18 | %% |
| 19 | ->''"In the dark I like to read his mind\ |
| 20 | but I'm frightened of the things I might find."'' |
| 21 | -->-- ''Til Tuesday'', "Voices Carry" |
| 22 | |
| 23 | {{Alice|AndBob}}'s life is going swell until she gains the ability to [[{{Telepathy}} read minds]]. She becomes very distraught when she discovers that the vast majority of the people around her have rather disturbing thoughts, thoughts better left unread. Her friends are only using her. Her lover has been cheating since day one. People she passes in the street are brimming with barely-contained malice and pain. [[AllMenArePerverts Every random guy she meets]] [[DirtyMindReading wonders what she looks like naked]]. Most likely, all of the above and more. |
| 24 | |
| 25 | Much like the time she went on TV Tropes, Alice's [[PowerAtAPrice gift]] has [[BlessedWithSuck ruined her life]]. She might opt on never using her powers in hopes of not alienating herself any further. If she's really unlucky, she [[PowerIncontinence won't be able to turn her power off]]. In this case, Alice will probably end up becoming a [[BreakTheCutie jaded misanthrope]], a doleful hermit, or maybe just [[TheWoobie really depressed]]. It's certainly understandable that Alice may wish to [[IJustWantToBeNormal remove or disable her powers somehow.]] |
| 26 | |
| 27 | This trope is a prime example of HumansAreFlawed. In more extreme examples, this trope might be evidence of a CrapsackWorld, and you can expect [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters people to act like assholes]] as well as think like them. A villain may start out with this trope, and then go on to contemplate TheEvilsOfFreeWill. |
| 28 | |
| 29 | DirtyMindReading is a SubTrope. |
| 30 | |
| 31 | See Also: UnhappyMedium, BlackBugRoom, and some types of InsanityImmunity. See PsychicStatic and PokeInTheThirdEye for cases where the target deliberately dredges up disturbing mental images to mess with the mind-reader. May intersect with TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow if the read thought is ''really'' terrible. |
| 32 | |
| 33 | Can be related to PowerIncontinence. |
| 34 | |
| 35 | See also: MySkullRunnethOver |
| 36 | ---- |
| 37 | !!Examples: |
| 38 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 39 | |
| 40 | [[folder:Anime & Manga]] |
| 41 | * ''Anime/BoogiepopPhantom'': Yoshiki, a high school student, gains an incontinent ability to hear people's thoughts in episode nine, "You'll Never Be Young Twice". He promptly discovers that all of his friends dislike him, only sticking around to leech his money. He then [[MoreThanMindControl gives his mind away]] to a bad guy out of desperation. |
| 42 | * ''Manga/CherryMagicThirtyYearsOfVirginityCanMakeYouAWizard'': Adachi really doesn't enjoy being able to read ''every'' thought random strangers who bump into him have. And when he finds out what Kurosawa tends to think about him, he's horrified at first. But he slowly learns to appreciate the power for its pragmatic value and him being able to see how earnest Kurosawa's feelings for him are leads to him deciding he might just give a relationship with Kurosawa a try. |
| 43 | * ''Anime/CodeGeass'': Mao's Geass makes him an example of this trope. Lelouch calls out C.C. on this, seeing as she gave him the ability in the first place and let him roam around going nuts from hearing the base thoughts of everyone around him. |
| 44 | * ''Manga/CrayonShinChan'': The minor character of the boyfriend of Shin's babysitter is a telepath (although she doesn't know this); it's mainly used for throwaway jokes where he laments being able to read his neurotic girlfriend's mind while she thanks God he can't hear all the crazy things she thinks and worries about. |
| 45 | * In ''Anime/GhostInTheShellStandAloneComplex'', reading minds is usually harmless, but reading the mind of a suicidally depressed rape and abuse victim held in captivity for 16 years since she was 10 (her daughter is ''at least'' 10 years old) is ''not'' recommended. |
| 46 | * ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureDiamondIsUnbreakable'': |
| 47 | ** When famous manga artist Rohan Kishibe finds out that two of his teenage fans, Koichi and Hazamada, have tracked down where he lives, he uses his [[FightingSpirit Stand]] Heaven's Door to read their minds, hoping to find new material for his manga ''[[ShowWithinAShow Pink Dark Boy]]''. Upon reading Hazamada's mind and finding out that (among other things) he attempted to rape a classmate and chickened out, Rohan is thoroughly revulsed. |
| 48 | ** Later weaponized by [[BigBad Yoshikage Kira]], whose Stand, [[HavingABlast Killer Queen]], later gets [[spoiler:an evolved form called "Bites The Dust"; this new bomb attaches to a host, activates whenever anyone tries to get information on Kira from the host, and then rewinds time by an hour, with only the host aware of it. We first see it used to kill Rohan when he tries to read the mind of Hayato Kawajiri, the son of a man whose identity Kira had stolen to hide from the heroes.]] |
| 49 | * A ''Anime/KnightHunters'' doujin rewrites Schuldig and Omi's confrontation to have Omi fighting Schuldig's mind reading abilities by first imagining Schuldig in a Tutu... followed closely by a Schuldig/Reiji Takatori romantic scene. Schuldig ends up begging for mercy while Omi threatens to imagine even more vivid scenarios. |
| 50 | * ''Manga/KotouraSan'': Haruka Kotoura, the title character, is a victim of this trope enough to make this trope to be played in ''several'' ways in a single episode. |
| 51 | ** In the beginning, she was socially shunned because of this trope-- it didn't affect her sanity, but she was InnocentlyInsensitive enough to blurt out whatever she read. As a result she was treated as a freak or even a ''compulsive liar'', and she caused her own ParentalAbandonment because she blurted her parents were cheating towards each other. |
| 52 | ** After she had become a BrokenBird in her teens, she {{invoked|trope}} this trope to drive people away, as she thought she'd [[DoomMagnet bring harm to anyone she cared about]]. |
| 53 | ** The DownerBeginning was ended by a {{subver|tedtrope}}sion of this trope; as she saw Manabe has no contempt for her, unlike everyone else. This subversion persists as Manabe is so honest that the invocation above doesn't work at all. |
| 54 | ** {{Discussed|Trope}} later in episode 1, when Manabe admired her powers... |
| 55 | --->'''Haruka:''' You idiot. There's nothing cool about it, you idiot... You don't know anything! You don't know how it feels to look into other people's minds! |
| 56 | * ''Manga/MedakaBox'': Yukuhashi Mizou has this problem. It nearly drove him mad until he met Miyakonojou Oudo. [[spoiler:His abnormality is the opposite of Mizou's and can block his, along with do other truly insane things.]] |
| 57 | * ''Manga/NegimaMagisterNegiMagi'': Whenever Nodoka uses her artifact in any situation that's not very serious, she tends to learn things she really wishes she hadn't. Not ''terrible'' things, but very awkward. First she tries it on herself and realizes she's a CovertPervert. Later she tries testing out some new equipment she got and learns that she accidentally set up a love triangle among some new friends. [[spoiler:And after that when she tries reading Negi's mind when he's gone berserk the diary pages literally go black with rage and hatred. Since she presumably still had on that equipment, imagine what horrible things she must have heard.]] |
| 58 | * ''Anime/NightHeadGenesis'': Naoya's mindreading powers give him a lot of grief, and it doesn't help that 90% of people in the anime are either evil or [[CrapsackWorld traumatized beyond repair]]. Particularly horrific visions cause him to hallucinate for hours, even days, on end. When he experiences his visions, they are also capable of rebounding off to the people surrounding him, leaving more room for judgement and ridicule. Even touching objects can trigger unfortunate visions. His older brother spends ''a lot'' of time looking after him. |
| 59 | * ''Manga/PsychicSquad'': Shiho has the ability since birth. At the beginning of the series, she is somewhere around 12 and pretty much despairs of humanity. Made even worse by some of the ways others use her powers; her ''own father,'' the police chief, has her read evidence in murder investigations, meaning she has been exposed to visions of horrible killings and corpses. She is a tad morbid and disturbing as a result. |
| 60 | * Anime-only ''Manga/RanmaOneHalf'' character Satori has the power of mind reading. When he visits the Tendo house, he tries to prove it by reading [[MoneyFetish Nabiki]]'s mind first, but he gets terrified by almost drowning in money. Then he reads [[DirtyOldMan Happosai]]'s mind, it's unknown what he saw but he faints with a nosebleed. When he regains consciousness, he complains that this family is so weird. |
| 61 | * In ''Manga/SchoolRumble'', Yakumo's ability to see the thoughts of people who are infatuated/in love with her (As text floating in the air) generally only makes her miserable. She gets asked out/confessed to/propositioned by boys all the time, but is put off by what they ''really'' want (except for Hanai, who actually thinks what he says, but he puts her off in other ways). Even worse, she can't read the guy she's actually interested in, because he's one of the few guys she knows who is ''not'' infatuated with her. The exceptions are her sister, whom she can read the mind of and cares very deeply for, and a cat she adopted, whose thoughts are unintelligible because they're still in cat. |
| 62 | * ''Manga/SgtFrog'': One chapter has [[TokenGoodTeammate Dororo]] interrupt his team-mates' scheming to protest a particularly underhanded plot, only to be met with stunned silence. He promptly whips out a mind-reading [[GratuitousNinja ninja art]] and uses it on the other members to see what they think about him. The answer sends him right into his CornerOfWoe. |
| 63 | * ''Manga/ShamanKing'': |
| 64 | ** This is part of the reason main antagonist Hao went batshit insane and became a WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds. An accident left him with a very dangerous ability, Reishi ("Reading the Heart"), that he could not control. The negative emotions and thoughts of others constantly overwhelmed him and, since he was unable to turn his Reishi off, the deluge of negativity eventually drove him to become the Shaman King so that he could create a Shaman only kingdom on earth. |
| 65 | ** Anna also had a powerful Reishi ability as a child. By the time she first met Yoh in person, it was causing her to accidentally manifest demons when she was around other people. She lost her Reishi powers not long after that meeting, sealing it herself after [[spoiler:Matamune [[HeroicSacrifice sacrificed]] himself to help Yoh defeat the [[WakeUpCallBoss Oo-Oni]] created by Anna's Reishi]]. |
| 66 | * ''Manga/SPYxFAMILY'': This is a major source of comedy (and conflict). Anya Forger can read minds, and is often reading the minds of her adopted parents, a secret agent and a professional assassin. The latter's thoughts are often [[NightmareFuelStationAttendant incredibly disturbing]], such as Anya asking for a dog and seeing her mother's ImagineSpot of [[BlackComedy Anya being killed by one]] -- ''twice''. |
| 67 | %%* This is the theme of the one shot ''Tell Me A Lie'' by Gosho Aoyama, better known as the creator of ''Manga/CaseClosed''. |
| 68 | * In ''Manga/YuYuHakusho'', the mind-reader Murota seems to have no problem with his telepathic powers... until he reads the mind of Sensui [[spoiler:and his other six personalities]], after which he has a severe nervous breakdown before being taken out by one of Sensui's henchmen. |
| 69 | [[/folder]] |
| 70 | |
| 71 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 72 | * ''ComicBook/AltHero'': Soulsight can glimpse moments of people's past and feel their resulting pain. "Poor bastard", remarks Martel. It could be worse, though: at least he [[NonIndicativeName can't actually see people's souls]]. |
| 73 | * In ''ComicBook/DeadpoolKillsTheMarvelUniverse'', when Professor Xavier tries to read Wade's mind, the revelation of them not only being fictional characters but ones made to suffer endlessly for the entertainment of others immediately causes him to go brain-dead. |
| 74 | * Mind████ from ''ComicBook/{{Empowered}}'' not only lives most of the time on a space station to avoid getting headaches from reading other people's minds, but admits to being tired of reading the filthy minds of lunatics. Interestingly inverted in the way her telepathy scuppered her romance with [[spoiler:Sistah Spooky]]; instead of being unable to have a romance because she had full access to all her partner's most unpleasant thoughts (as is normal for this trope), her partner was too self-loathing to believe that anyone who could see through her facade would be capable of truly loving her. Mind████ herself thinks the partner's mind is very sexy, and does deeply love the "beautiful mess" she is beneath her mask. |
| 75 | * ''ComicBook/{{Fables}}'': Kay [[spoiler:has the ability to see every evil deed someone has done by looking at them. He uses this on Gepetto. [[MindRape He probably shouldn't have]]]]. |
| 76 | * ''ComicBook/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy2008'': Mantis winds up reading the mind of a Zom, an undead cyborg created by the Badoon. She's horrified to discover there's still some of the original being's mind left. |
| 77 | * ''ComicBook/{{Irredeemable}}'': Survivor promises amnesty to any supervillain who helps rebuild the world after the damage Plutonian has inflicted. To make sure their HeelFaceTurn is genuine, he has telepath Burrows look into their heads. The one vision we see involves a swarm of rats tearing Burrows apart and forcing their way down his throat. Later Survivor tells Burrows to look into a supervillain's head and predict his next move. [[NothingIsScarier We don't know what he saw]], but it makes Burrows flee the room and hang himself. |
| 78 | * ''ComicBook/JLA1997'': In one issue, the Star Conqueror has 99% of Earth's population locked in a deep sleep, trapped in a dream where they serve it. As the Conqueror has [[StarfishAliens evolutionary similarities to marine life]], ComicBook/{{Aquaman}} tries to use his telepathy on it. He starts to go mad the deeper he goes, mumbling things about how small and meaningless an ocean is compared to the bottomless depths of the cosmos, until the other Leaguers snap him out of it. This seems to be Creator/GrantMorrison's rejoinder to the "Aquaman could mind-control [[Literature/CthulhuMythos Cthulhu]]" meme. |
| 79 | * ''ComicBook/MartianManhunter'': |
| 80 | ** Once or twice in various continuities. Like the time he met a thing called IT and nearly went into a coma. Or the time he read ComicBook/{{Superman}}'s mind when he was controlled by Mageddon and nearly went into a coma. Or the time he read the mind of a nihilistic teenager and had to leave the planet in order to perform a Martian psychic cleansing ritual. |
| 81 | ** In ''ComicBook/FiftyTwo'', Black Adam does this to the Manhunter all by himself. |
| 82 | ** Then there's the time he tries to rewire [[Characters/BatmanTheJoker the Joker]]'s mind to include sane thought patterns and damn nigh gives himself a stroke with ''two minutes'' of effort. Of course, ''the Joker's'' mind would give anyone nightmares. It does work, it just doesn't last. |
| 83 | ** Another one in ''Martian Manhunter'' #23 is when J'onn is in his P.I. alter ego John Jones and tries to scan Jim Corrigan a.k.a. ComicBook/TheSpectre. While J'onn doesn't sense anything amiss when he's talking to Corrigan (though they are bonded and essentially the same person, they also have very distinctly different personalities), when he tries to do a simple mind scan (i.e., just a quick read of surface thoughts, nothing invasive), the image of the Spectre putting on his GameFace appears and J'onn almost has an aneurysm. Let that be a lesson: if you're a telepath with strong mind-reading powers, ''don't'' try to read the mind of a guy who's also the host for the embodiment of God's own wrath. |
| 84 | * If ComicBook/SimonDark reads the mind of his vile opponents with foresight and cold detachment he's able to rationally shift through the intel he's given and push aside the emotions and other bits that would send him off-kilter, but when he does so in a panic it can temporarily overwhelm him and knock him flat on his back with far more ease than a physical attack. |
| 85 | * ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'': In one of the Darth Maul comics, Maul is sent on a mission to destroy all the leaders of the galaxy-spanning crime organization Black Sun. After all of the remaining leaders and the head are at the safest stronghold, he begins butchering their elite mooks with his lightsaber, his bare hands, a blaster, and the Force. The last one he fights before he kills most of the crime lords is a telepathic alien who tries to read his mind, but Darth Maul is so infused with the dark side of the Force the telepath either dies or goes into a permanent state of shock, complete with black blood dripping from his nose. |
| 86 | * ''ComicBook/{{Stormwatch}}: Team Achilles'' member Avi Barak learns this when he first joins the team. His power, called "inductive telepathy", lets him see the true answers to whatever questions he asks someone. When he encounters Jukko, whose entire body is covered with scars, he asks on impulse what happened to him. He suffers a near-fatal seizure from the instant download of all of Jukko's traumatic memories, and in later issues, continues to have nightmares about them. Jukko himself could be said to qualify, as his power is hyper-empathy, which results in him feeling the pain of every being within a four mile radius. |
| 87 | * ''ComicBook/SupergirlCosmicAdventuresInThe8thGrade'': When ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}'s {{Jerkass}} duplicate is crystallized, Kara can briefly "hear" her thoughts...whose nature elicits an "Ew" from Kara. |
| 88 | * In ''Wandering Star'', Cassie quotes Madison in describing what it's like to be psychic: "It's like being locked alone in a room. Next door they begin to kill someone. You can hear everything. The screams. The sobs. The pleading. And you can't do a thing. All you can do is listen." |
| 89 | * ''ComicBook/WonderWoman'': |
| 90 | ** ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'': Gail Young has frequent freakouts and meltdowns due to her overhearing an overwhelming number of thoughts and not being able to tell who they're coming from not get a coherent read on them. It doesn't help that she's in frequent contact with Priscilla Rich, who often has murder on the mind. |
| 91 | ** ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1987'': Angelica Wallis was overwhelmed and needed outside help to keep herself steady when she used her telepathy on a petrified Hippolyta. |
| 92 | * ''ComicBook/XMen'': |
| 93 | ** Jean Grey had this problem early on after her mutant ability surfaced. She still deals with this problem, although she's much better at coping with it. The problem early on is that [[PowerIncontinence she didn't know how to turn it off]]. |
| 94 | *** Her [[ComicBook/AllNewXMen time-displaced teenaged self]] suffers this even ''worse'', because her telepathy manifested far earlier than it did originally, giving her even less control. It's also not helped that she is a bit of a busy-body who hasn't developed the ''restraint'' from popping into people's minds uninvited. |
| 95 | *** In the opening of one comic, her inner monologue concerns the unpleasantness of hearing people's thoughts. One guy politely gives her directions while thinking, "Please walk up and down my naked chest in stiletto heels." |
| 96 | *** In ''ComicBook/UltimateSpiderMan'', Spider-Man meets Jean Grey and she compliments him on being one of the first guys who, upon waking, [[SchmuckBait doesn't picture her naked]]. She then has to revise her statement. What follows is seven panels of awkwardness as Spider-Man tries to '''[[ThoughtAversionFailure stop]]''' thinking of her naked. |
| 97 | ** Emma Frost, as revealed in [[ComicBook/EmmaFrost her origin comics]], did not have a fun time of things when her telepathic powers first manifested. Over the course of three books, she realizes her brother is secretly gay and in a relationship with an illegal immigrant, kisses her teacher because she hears him thinking about how beautiful and smart he thinks she is (this leads to her dad getting him fired), is able to win just enough money gambling to get her new boyfriend's loan sharks to demand interest on his debts ([[spoiler:which leads to the boyfriend's death and her kidnapping, though she does manage to escape with her own ransom]]), finding out that her college roommate, who she had an actually healthy friendship with, was in love with the same teacher she kissed before, [[spoiler:and sees that her next roommate used her own psychic powers to make her little half-sister murder their parents]]. That's not even going into her constantly reading people's minds to see how secretly anti-mutant they are. |
| 98 | ** Psylocke once remarked to Havok that she made every effort not to read others' minds... the problem was shutting out the psychic background noise. |
| 99 | ** Rogue isn't a mind-reader, but she can absorb people's memories, which can be very discomforting. When this happens with individuals of the totally evil Dire Wraiths, the bad guy race from the series ''ComicBook/RomSpaceKnight'', Rogue [[VomitIndiscretionShot becomes physically sick on-panel]] on two separate occasions. |
| 100 | ** The villain Gamesmaster reads minds. ''All'' minds. ''Everywhere''. And he ''can't turn it off'', so is ''constantly'' bombarded with the thoughts of ''billions'' of people throughout the world. He orchestrated the deadly "games" of the Upstarts in order to distract himself from all the thoughts he's bombarded with. [[StalkerWithACrush He becomes obsessed]] with ComicBook/{{X 23}} because her mind is so quiet. |
| 101 | ** ComicBook/{{Gambit|MarvelComics}} once memorably ensured that his thoughts were free of telepathic eavesdroppers by imagining the Blob naked. |
| 102 | ** David Alleyne, a.k.a. Prodigy, telepathically downloads all the information from the minds of those around him. This ranges from technical knowledge like advanced science and magic, and extremely personal habits like sex activity and how someone prefers to wipe. |
| 103 | [[/folder]] |
| 104 | |
| 105 | [[folder:Comic Strips]] |
| 106 | * ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'': |
| 107 | ** As seen in [[http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1993-05-19/ this]] strip, reading Dilbert's thoughts apparently either terrified or infuriated the two-headed telepath he was dating; maybe both. |
| 108 | ** In [[https://assets.amuniversal.com/b41139206d6401301d80001dd8b71c47 this]] strip, the Pointy Haired Boss is talking about how the company with whom they are merging is made up of mental giants who can read employees' minds and torture them mentally if they dislike what they find. Wally is not terribly frightened despite having just witnessed a demonstration of the latter ability. |
| 109 | --->'''Dilbert:''' Are you worried?]\ |
| 110 | '''Wally:''' Nah. If they read my mind, they'll all go blind. |
| 111 | ** A later comic where Catbert does indeed go blind from reading a paper readout of Wally's mind seems to prove him right. |
| 112 | ** As the author Scott Adams noted in one of his annotated ''Dilbert'' compilations, he's glad women don't know what men are really thinking. |
| 113 | * ''ComicStrip/{{Nodwick}}'': A rare villain-reading-the-hero's-mind example of this occurs when the comic spoofs ''Film/DungeonsAndDragons2000''. Damodar tries to read Piffany's mind instead of Marina's, and being bombarded with the IncorruptiblePurePureness of her thoughts is [[TooSpicyForYogSothoth far more than he can handle]] and he hastily lets her go. |
| 114 | [[/folder]] |
| 115 | |
| 116 | [[folder:Fan Works]] |
| 117 | * ''[[https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/absolution-worm-au.375877 Absolution]]'': When Amy asks why Tattletale doesn't seem to be squicked out by the possibilities of Amy's full biokinetic power, Tattletale starts describing some of the dirty secrets she's been able to deduce just by glancing at the people around them, from the hot dog salesman who doesn't properly wash his hands and has caused multiple disease outbreaks, to the security guard who's a serial rapist when he finds someone vulnerable hanging around, to the woman who distributes child pornography online. |
| 118 | -->'''Lisa:''' That's what I like about you, Amelia. You know you're not a good person. Nobody is, really. But despite everything, you still want to be. |
| 119 | * ''Fanfic/AtTheEdgeOfLasglen'': Thranduil is a powerful telepath who is something of a captive audience to the thoughts of humans around him...whether he likes it or not. The more exposure he has to humans, the more he wishes the ability came with an 'off' switch. |
| 120 | * ''Fanfic/TheBridgeMLP'': |
| 121 | ** It is said that anyone who tries to read Monster X's mind ends up passing out screaming, after seeing [[SuperpoweredEvilSide Kaizer Ghidorah]]. |
| 122 | ** Mothra Lea goes into screaming convulsions when she reads Xenilla's memories and discovers [[spoiler:he's inherited the memories of the Mothra family line, and she gets a first-hand look at Bagan wiping out her ancestors.]] |
| 123 | * ''Fanfic/TheConversionBureauTheOtherSideOfTheSpectrum'': Apparently, it's for the best that nobody looks into a Newfoal's mind. The complex lattice of spellwork governing their minds is [[TakeOurWordForIt apparently so horrifying]] to see directly that it left TCB!Fancy Pants vomiting and suffering nightmares for the better part of a week when he went on a JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind of one. |
| 124 | * ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3641075/1/Cruel Cruel]]'': In ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'' canon, the angel Arael [[MindRape looks into Asuka's mind and traumatizes her]]. Here, it looks into Gendo's mind instead and is DrivenToSuicide by what it discovers. Knowing what an utterly loathsome person Gendo is, the NERV staff and [[EvenEvilHasStandards even his superiors]] in SEELE find themselves empathizing with the angel. |
| 125 | * ''Fanfic/DiariesOfAMadman'': Navarone deliberately invokes this when Shining Armor tries to read his mind, resulting in the good captain on the floor screaming in terror. |
| 126 | * ''Fanfic/{{Domoverse}}'': Glitch's [=ESPer=] defense strategy sets up his mind with shocking thoughts for [=ESPers=] to read. [[spoiler:He altered his brain to have a small section of it constantly and loudly remembering a Hentai video he watched.]] |
| 127 | * ''Fanfic/DownToAgincourt'' features a new psychic who can't control her mindreading and [[PowerIncontinence doesn't know how to turn it off]]. No individual mind is too terrible, but she can "hear" anyone who's in her range, all the time, and gets migraines -- though she has not, as yet, had a PsychicNosebleed. |
| 128 | * ''Fanfic/{{Eleutherophobia}}'': Tom is mortified at the idea that Jake might've seen some of his most intimate memories that [[PuppeteerParasite Temrash]] brought up time and time again. |
| 129 | * ''Webcomic/FeralnetteAU'': Hawkmoth tries his usual spiel with Marinette. To his horror, she's strong enough to force the channel he's opened back and peek into his own mind. |
| 130 | * ''Fanfic/{{FREAKINGENSOKYO}}'': Satori discovers this the hard way when she reads the protagonist's mind, and promptly uncovers his memories of [[RuleThirtyFour steamy Touhou porn]]. |
| 131 | * ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12957273/4/Harry-Potter-and-The-Cursed-Power-of-Mad-Love Harry Potter and The (Cursed) Power of (Mad) Love]]'': After Snape read Ginny's mind (especially her obsessive thoughts about Harry), he ''begged'' Dumbledore to obliviate him. After Dumbledore read Snape's mind to see just what was so bad, they ''both'' got obliviations from Madame Pomfrey. |
| 132 | * ''Fanfic/HarryPotterAndTheNightmaresOfFuturesPast'': |
| 133 | ** Harry tries to use Legilemency on Luna and finds that her mind is in complete chaos. |
| 134 | ** When Snape is using Legilemency on Ginny, Luna gets between the two of them, so that Snape is now reading Luna's mind. It has similar results as Harry's attempt, but more dramatic. |
| 135 | * ''Fanfic/InfinityTrainBoilingPoint'': Boscha has the ability to [[{{Psychometry}} look into the memories of someone by touch]], and both times she uses it (one on Lapis, one on [[spoiler:Chloe]]), what she sees causes her to ''flip out''. |
| 136 | * ''Fanfic/InheritanceWorm'': Tattletale likes to mislead people about her super-intuition power by claiming to read minds. However, when Weaver invites her to do so, Tattletale doesn't get further than, "Well, you’ve clearly--" before Weaver cuts her off and concludes that she isn't a mind-reader after all. |
| 137 | -->'''Weaver:''' If you were, you would have recoiled in disgust and likely need years of therapy to get over what the chorus just ran through my head. |
| 138 | * ''Fanfic/KillThemAll'': Taylor eventually gains the power to read minds and is further disillusioned with humanity due to how petty and filthy most people are in their private thoughts. She finds people like [[spoiler:Fred Rogers and Captain America]] to be breaths of fresh air because they are genuinely kind and noble, inside and out. |
| 139 | * ''Fanfic/{{Legion of Lawndale Heroes}}'': (''WesternAnimation/{{Daria}}[=/=]ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes''): Cadet David Allen Farrington -- one of the uber-powerful 'Class Five' psionics at the [[AcademyOfAdventure U.S. Academy of Extranormal Studies]] -- is seen by most of the people around him, as well as the Legionnaires, as a JerkWithAHeartOfJerk. This comes into focus when you realize that his primary power is not ''telepathy'', ''[[TheEmpath but empathy]]''... and that not only [[HearingVoices can he feel the emotions of everyone around him]], but (except for when he [[BroughtDownToNormal takes a power-suppressing drug]]) [[BlessedWithSuck has been able to do just that since he was a week old.]] |
| 140 | * In the short ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'' FanFic ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12674696/2/The-Mind-s-Eye The Mind's Eye]]'', Jaune discovers his semblance is reading minds. It's all fun and games until [[spoiler:he tries reading the mind of a Grimm, bringing him face-to-face with a very ticked off ''[[HumanoidAbomination Salem]]'']]. [[DarkFic Things go downhill from there]]. |
| 141 | * In Maldoror's ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamWing'' AU fanfiction ''[[http://raygunworks.net/maldoror/monsters.html Monsters]]'', the pilots are vampires, werewolves, and so on. Except for Quatre who (as in the series) is an empath. The "steady diet of fear, greed, lust, anger, and the occasional nugget of happiness" makes him the most scarily psychotic of the lot. |
| 142 | * In ''Fanfic/MyHeroAcademiaUnchainedPredator'' (''VideoGame/Doom2016'', ''VideoGame/{{Darksiders}}'' & ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia''), Ragdoll attempts to use her Quirk to locate the Slayer on I-Island. Instead of getting his location, she found out [[GoMadFromTheRevelation about the Slayer's eternal war with Hell.]] |
| 143 | --> '''Ragdoll''': [[FreakOut IT CAME FROM HELL!]] '''[[GoMadFromTheRevelation IT CAME FROM HEEEEEEEELLLLLL!!!!]]''' |
| 144 | * PlayedForLaughs in the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' fanfic ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5092454/1/ Need to know]]''. Ron suddenly starts hearing people's thoughts and is understandably horrified to learn that, among other things, [[HoYay Harry and Draco secretly fancy each other]]. |
| 145 | * ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/872646/1/bOne_b_bFlew_b_Into_The_bCoocoos_b_Nest One Flew Into the Coocoo's Nest]]'': Fred debunks the possibility of he and George having TwinTelepathy with this trope: |
| 146 | -->We can't read each others minds, or anything; but, even if I could, I wouldn't want to. Stepping into the mind of George Weasley would be like wearing clothes made out of bacon and climbing into the den of a half-starved werewolf, singing at the top of your lungs: ' ''My trousers are made of pork products! Dinner's served! Come and get it!'' ' Oh yes, like ''that's''' healthy... |
| 147 | * ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11032690/1/Pareidolia Pareidolia]]'': |
| 148 | ** When he's chided by the Rikudo Sennin for his actions, such as letting Naruto die, Kyuubi retorts that after centuries of sensing only hatred wherever he went, he started returning said hatred onto the world. |
| 149 | ** Brought up years later by the reborn Naruto who uses Ninshu to make Temari and Tayuya fully understand him and each other. Tayuya is upset when he stops because she ''understood'' while he was doing it but Naruto insists that it's only good for friends and would be a disaster if done to a group of strangers or enemies. |
| 150 | * In ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9552519/19/Reboot Reboot]]'', Severus wants to create BrainBleach after a look into Dolores Umbridge's mind. |
| 151 | * ''Fanfic/TheSmurfsThatCanonForgot'': ''Smurf Village Upturned'' offers a variant when Brainy and Vanity are given the power of Insight, enabling them to see the souls of their fellow Smurfs. Brainy flips back and forth between regarding his newfound ability as overwhelming and wanting to be able to see, process and retain even ''more''... as well as wishing he could see ''himself''. Vanity, meanwhile, ''was'' granted Insight for himself along with Brainy and everyone else, and becomes completely absorbed with admiring himself... as a defense mechanism, as he quickly decides that this power is horribly invasive and doesn't wish to intrude on anyone else's privacy. |
| 152 | * ''Fanfic/SorrowfulAndImmaculateHearts'': In "Unpaid Internship", J'onn J'onzz refuses to read Batman's mind to satisfy the Flash's curiosity, partly because it would be unethical and partly because "exploring Batman's mind is extremely unpleasant. I would prefer to be able to enjoy the rest of my day." |
| 153 | * In ''[[Fanfic/StarWarsVsWarhammer40K Star Wars vs Warhammer 40K]]'', Jedi have learned that it is best to ''never'' try tapping into the minds of the Sisters of Battle due to the more direct mental link they have with the Emperor of Mankind. The way it breaks those who have done so has forced them to have memories erased to save them from permanent mental damage. |
| 154 | * ''Fanfic/ThisBites'': |
| 155 | ** This is the distinction for Apis's Whisper-Whisper Fruit compared to other SpeaksFluentAnimal abilities: hers is explicitly telepathy-based. Projecting more...visceral thoughts falls under this trope, and it's what allows her to keep her larger beasts—particularly her dragon friend Lindy—in line. |
| 156 | ** When Popora uses his powers to refresh Cross's memory in Chapter 60, he reveals and relives his memory of [[spoiler:Ace's death in the War of the Best]]. Cross wakes up in a tearful TroubledFetalPosition, and Popora is [[ManlyTears stoically sobbing]]. |
| 157 | * ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2229939/1/Thoughts Thoughts]]'': After Harry suddenly gains the ability to read minds, he discovers that all of Ron's thoughts about him are derogatory. |
| 158 | * The ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' fanfic ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/27657847/chapters/67678225 The Tresine Troubles]]'' has a terrorist group use telepaths to take over key personnel for a coup and later, hijacking the Enterprise. Said telepaths are all mostly untrained teenagers (or in their early twenties) and are clearly run to the ground by the strain put on them. Spock, a much better experienced and trained telepath, warns them directly that they are close to burning out. Unfortunately, the telepaths in question are more than willing to attain martyrdom. |
| 159 | * ''Fanfic/UltimateReImaginings'': Emma has Joey try to read the minds of a group of people to help him control his powers, but he gets distracted by one person's thoughts and renders the exercise ineffective. |
| 160 | * ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/27736435 Zero Context: Taking Out the Trash]]'': Marc Maddhouse floods his own mind with images of everything crass and vulgar he wished he could do to the telepathic Callista. Said target, previously established to be overly conservative, wails and reacts as if she were in actual pain. Marc's later attempt at using this tactic against her fails, however. |
| 161 | [[/folder]] |
| 162 | |
| 163 | [[folder:Film -- Live-Action]] |
| 164 | * In ''Film/AvengersAgeOfUltron'', Wanda is absolutely horrified when she is able to read Ultron's mind and discovers his plans to wipe out humanity. |
| 165 | * Subverted in ''Film/{{Dredd}}''. The villainous Kay tries to use this on [[{{Telepathy}} psychic]] cop Anderson, hoping that his mind would break hers. It appears to work at first... only for Anderson to show she's in complete control of his mind. |
| 166 | * In ''Film/FantasticBeastsTheCrimesOfGrindelwald'', American Queenie has a breakdown in the middle of Paris because she's being drowned out by a cacophony of gibberish she can't understand because it's in French and not English. |
| 167 | * ''Film/{{Hereafter}}'': George can read people's minds and/or communicate with their dead relatives by touching their hands, and this is ''not a good thing at all''. Imagine accidentally discovering the girl who you've been flirting with [[spoiler:was sexually abused as a child by her father]]. BlessedWithSuck, indeed. |
| 168 | * ''Film/MenInBlack'': While no actual mind-reading occurs on screen, it's mentioned that human thought is so primitive, it's considered an infectious disease. |
| 169 | * In ''Film/Serenity2005'', the Operative believes this to be the reason for River's insanity, or at least a major part of it, that she was driven crazy by the secrets she inadvertently picked up from the Alliance Parliament. It's also the reason the mere presence of Reavers is enough to send her into a HeroicBSOD until the film's climax. |
| 170 | * A variation occurs in ''Film/StarTrek2009'' when Kirk mind-melds with [[spoiler:the Spock from the original timeline. Spock blames himself for the destruction of Vulcan]], and thus is feeling huge amounts of grief, guilt, and overall pain. Since Vulcan emotions are stronger than humans', and emotional transference is an effect of the mind meld, Kirk is overwhelmed and left stumbling around in a daze for a few seconds. |
| 171 | * ''Film/WhatWomenWant'': |
| 172 | ** Nick starts this way once he's given the power to read women's minds from a freak accident. Although later on in the film it dawns on him that he can use this power to manipulate women's emotions even more than he did before without the ability, at first, he's definitely a little anxious and eventually winds up at his former marriage counselor's work building. |
| 173 | --->'''Marriage counselor:''' This is phenomenal! You can hear inside my head. Why on earth would you want to get rid of such a brilliant gift?\ |
| 174 | '''Nick:''' Well... for starters... most of the women I know think I'm an asshole...\ |
| 175 | '''Counselor:''' ''[thinking]'' ''That's what I thought when I first met ya.''\ |
| 176 | '''Nick:''' Doc, would you please give me a break here?! |
| 177 | ** Played straight elsewhere as he discovers that, after reading the mind of one of his dates, she was perfectly willing to commit suicide if he rejected her. He wound up lying and claiming he was gay because he could tell from her thoughts this was what she preferred to believe. |
| 178 | ** He also discovers from the same woman, that his lovemaking abilities are nowhere near as good as he'd like to believe. She spends most of the time that they're having sex either thinking "I don't like that, why is he doing it?", or wondering about what's on television or what she's going to have for dinner. After a brief freakout in the bathroom, however, he does successfully turn the evening around and reads her mind to find what she really ''does'' like in bed, and proceeds to send her into a state of blissful delirium. |
| 179 | * In ''Film/WhenEvilCalls'', a student who is failing an exam wishes he could read the mind of the smart kid sitting next to him. He gets his wish, but discovers that the boy whose mind he is reading is panicking about the possibility of receiving TheBGrade. The boy is so stressed that [[DrivenToSuicide he commits suicide]] by driving pencils up his nose into his brain -- and the first student is still reading his mind when this happens! |
| 180 | * ''Film/XMenFilmSeries'' |
| 181 | ** ''Film/XMenDaysOfFuturePast'': When Charles was in between 9 and 12 years old, he was HearingVoices and wasn't aware that he was telepathic, so he had assumed that he was going mad from an acute mental illness. His past self is so broken that it's torture for him to be bombarded by the thoughts of others, and he uses a serum designed by Hank to block out the ceaseless "chatter" in his head. [[spoiler:In order to visit his future self]], Xavier has to go through Wolverine's mind, which is full of traumatic memories; it's a pretty shocking experience for him. Likewise, when he attempts to use Cerebro, all he can sense is people crying out all over the world in loneliness and pain. |
| 182 | ** ''Film/XMenApocalypse'': Jean Grey loathes being "trapped inside [her] own head" because of her telepathy, and Xavier understands her anguish because he was also haunted by other people's suffering, pain and secrets in the past. When Scott asks Jean, "How do you know what [Alex] felt?", her face is somber when she gloomily replies, "I know how everybody feels." Professor X momentarily stuns Apocalypse on the astral plane by letting his enemy hear the inner voices of hundreds of minds that are within Charles' psychic range. |
| 183 | [[/folder]] |
| 184 | |
| 185 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 186 | %%* One short story features a black businessman who frequently harangues the people around him. When a scientist appears with a helmet that he claims can allow you to read minds he promptly tries it on and starts hearing just how much people hate him, either for his behavior or his race. Worse the helmet burns out leaving him permanently stuck hearing the thoughts of everyone around him driving him insane due to being unable to cope with reality being far harsher than the fantasy he'd lived that people liked him. Eventually, he commits suicide in the asylum they place him in (no surprise there, given what kind of thoughts he got bombarded with ''there'').%%This example has been commented out for not identifying the work from which it originates. Do not uncomment it without adding the work. |
| 187 | %%* A similar story features a crooked businessman who's cursed with gradually increasing empathy with and sensitivity to others' pain, past and present. At first, he is able to ignore it, but eventually it becomes such a horror he steals a boat and rows to a buoy several miles from the shoreline. He's caught by police, sedated and sent to a brand-new mental health facility... which was built on a former slaughterhouse and site of an illegal dogfighting ring. The story ends just as he starts waking up.%%This example has been commented out for not identifying the work from which it originates. Do not uncomment it without adding the work. |
| 188 | * In ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'', many species are capable of "thought-speak," a form of willing telepathy, but Leerans read minds automatically even if the subjects don't want them to. Though this is normal for them, the Animorphs found it disturbing when they morphed into Leerans and suddenly could hear each other's neuroses. Luckily, they figured out how to shut it off. |
| 189 | * ''Literature/{{Blindfold}}'' has the entire justice system on the human colony of Atlas based on a telepathic caste of people called Truthsayers and the premise that they're always right and truthful. Truthsayers touch the accused and scan his or her mind in order to determine guilt or innocence. A Truthsayer's verdict is final and cannot be appealed (there is no higher authority). However, given the kind of minds they scan, Truthsayers have to undergo years of training (from early childhood) in order to detach themselves from crawling around minds of murderers (they don't deal with lesser crimes). The book's main story arc involves a young female Truthsayer who, after crawling around in the head of an insane mass murderer (who believes in the rightness of his brand of justice), is ''extremely'' disturbed. Her next scan is of a young dockworker who was caught next to the body of his supervisor (wrong place at the wrong time). However, the dockworker still felt intense guilt over failing to submit his paperwork on time, and this, coupled with her previous experiences, resulted in her declaring him guilty. She did finally realize she was wrong a few days later, but too late for the poor kid who has already been sent to an orbital facility from where no one returns. |
| 190 | * In the ''Literature/CallahansCrosstimeSaloon'' story "Two Heads Are Better Than One", a telepath suffers from a severe case of PowerIncontinence: he has no control at all over his telepathy, so when it activates he senses the ''entire contents'' of any mind within a certain radius -- all the thoughts, all the emotions, all the hidden secrets that grow and fester in a sealed skull. It's enough to drive a man mad, and nearly does exactly that to him. One time it's so bad he tries to bash his own head open with a rock, just to make it stop. |
| 191 | * The ''Literature/ChaosWalking'' trilogy has this in the form of the Noise germ, which basically means that any thought (in the form of words, fragments of sentences, or even pictures) flows from the mind of the thinker, and is out there for anyone to hear/read/see. Todd, the main character, even comments that Noise can have 'texture' and 'color', reflecting the emotional state of the thinker. This is where the series gets its title, and the constant flow of Noise is understandably difficult to cope with. Also, in an even darker twist, [[spoiler:the fact that only men produce Noise led to much paranoia and hatred between the sexes in the early years of settlement on the new world, to the point that the men of Prentisstown slaughtered all of the women unlucky enough to stay]]. |
| 192 | * {{Subverted|Trope}} in ''Literature/TheDemolishedMan''. Police Prefect Lincoln Powell is an Esper, one of a small minority who can read minds. His boss the Commissioner is prejudiced against Espers, so in order to try to soften the prejudice, Powell tells the Commissioner how lucky he is that he can't read minds, because of this trope. Of course, Powell is lying, since he doesn't read minds except on invitation (or unless he suspects criminal acts), and Powell actually finds much to love in every mind. |
| 193 | * ''Literature/{{Deryni}}'': In ''The King's Justice'', Kelson questions Gorony and Loris telepathically after they're captured. Gorony was an enthusiastic inquisitor, and Kelson likens reading Gorony's mind to "taking a swim in the castle middens in the summertime". When it's Loris' turn, Kelson finds "[r]eading Loris was even more loathsome than reading Gorony had been"; Loris gave explicit instructions to Istelyn's executioners and reveled in their grisly work, and he engaged in inquisitions and burnings in many outlying areas of the kingdom prompted by his "long-standing and unreasoning hatred of the Deryni". |
| 194 | * Richard Jeperson, agent of the ''Literature/DiogenesClub'', developed psychic powers at school, where he was horrified to discover that many teachers fantasized about killing the boys. He soon realized that [[BewareTheNiceOnes the ones to really be wary of were the ones who didn't]], since they had the same frustrations, [[StepfordSmiler but no safe release for them]]. |
| 195 | * In Creator/TimothyZahn's ''Literature/DistantFriends'' series, telepaths coming closer than 20 miles apart experience insanity, identity confusion, and pain. If they continue approaching each other, the strain kills them. Two of these telepaths have fallen in love. One of the two commissions a gizmo that blocks the telepathy so that he can be with his beloved; unfortunately, the inventor turns out to be a villain, tricks him into a chase ending at the beloved's house, then holds the telepathic pair hostage by threatening to turn off the machine. |
| 196 | * ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'': |
| 197 | ** It is not recommended to read the mind of a supernatural unless you specifically want to fry your own brain. |
| 198 | ** It is also not recommended to read a mortal's mind without permission, unless you want to [[OffWithHisHead lose your head.]] Not because of the mind-reading, but rather the angry, sword-wielding Wardens who know too well this kind of thing will [[ThisIsYourBrainOnEvil almost inevitably turn you into an out-of-control psychopath]]. |
| 199 | ** If you are a wizard, you have to be careful about making extended eye contact with anyone who has a soul. Otherwise, a Soul Gaze will be triggered, which exposes you to a visual representation of that person's soul and vice versa. Gazing into a sufficiently nasty Soul (or when using 'Sight', like when Harry 'looks' at the Skin Walker in ''Literature/TurnCoat'') is an extremely traumatic experience that can ''never'' be forgotten since the memory of a Soul Gaze will never fade. |
| 200 | ** [[spoiler:Molly]] gets the worst of it. As her magical power grows, so does her sensitivity to the thoughts and emotions of beings around her -- humans, various evil supernaturals, and {{Eldritch Abomination}}s. It gets so bad that by ''Literature/ColdDays'', she can barely stand to be in a crowded room. |
| 201 | * The protagonist of Creator/RobertSilverberg's ''Literature/DyingInside'' can read other people's minds, and he is unable to function in society because of it. |
| 202 | * The main character's wife in ''Literature/{{Frameshift}}'' by Creator/RobertJSawyer can read minds due to a frameshift mutation. She developed a dislike of men because of the disgusting things they think about doing to her, and married the protagonist partially because he thinks in his first language (French), and she can't understand his thoughts. |
| 203 | * In ''Literature/{{Gone}}'', Orsay has the ability to see people's dreams if they go to sleep near her. One of the people she reads in this way is [[AxCrazy Drake]]. Made even worse by the fact that Drake noticed her presence in the dream and finds her in the real world shortly thereafter. |
| 204 | * In ''Literature/GracelingRealm'', mind readers tend to be terribly lonely and unhappy people as a result of this. |
| 205 | * ''Literature/TheHanSoloTrilogy'': Bria is devastated after she uses glitterstim to read HighPriest Teroenza's mind as Han urged, confirming his claim that [[ScamReligion her entire religion is a lie]]. Even as he outwardly acts pious while leading prayers, Teroenza really is thinking only very selfish, callous things. |
| 206 | * ''Literature/HarryPotter'': |
| 207 | ** Harry's late father, James, used to have a bitter teenage rivalry with Harry's least favorite teacher, Snape; naturally, Harry disregards every single thing Snape says about his father being a pompous JerkJock. In ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix'', Harry uses a MemoryJar called a Pensieve to see a memory Snape put in. [[BrokenPedestal To Harry's horror]], the memory shows James acting like a self-absorbed jackass and humiliating Snape for no reason. It ends with Harry's own mother, Lily, coming to Snape's defense and [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech telling James that he's a miserable person who absolutely disgusts her]]. Harry is so shocked that he begins to wonder how the two of them ever wound up HappilyMarried. |
| 208 | ** In ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows'', Harry sees more of Snape's memories and discovers the necessary but rather startling information that [[spoiler:he's actually one of [[BigBad Voldemort]]'s {{Soul Jar}}s, and [[BigGood Dumbledore]] wants him to basically let Voldemort kill him. This one ends up being subverted since Snape didn't know that Harry could possibly survive thanks to his blood running through Voldemort's veins and therefore Harry didn't learn that either until later]]. |
| 209 | * ''Literature/HeraldsOfValdemar'': |
| 210 | ** Characters with untrained [[PsychicPowers Mindspeech or Empathy]] find themselves here by way of PowerIncontinence. Unless one learns (or is taught) how to shield out thoughts/emotions, one can easily be driven to madness or hermitage by the sheer weight of other people's thoughts everywhere, especially in a city. |
| 211 | ** Young Vanyel Ashekevron from the ''Literature/LastHeraldMageTrilogy'' spent a lot of time pre-TraumaticSuperpowerAwakening laying on the ObfuscatingStupidity so his father wouldn't learn he was gay, including staging a homophobic "attack" on his Herald lover. Later, after his lover commits suicide and all Van's potential Gifts are laid uncontrollably open, he finds out that most of the other Heralds fell for that act completely and despise him. Most would never have ''said'' so and some wouldn't have even thought it consciously, but his Mindspeech is so strong that he scrapes up every half-thought they had about him. Even the Herald set to watch him is not only unsympathetic but homophobic to boot. |
| 212 | * Jeremy Bremen from Creator/DanSimmons' ''The Hollow Man'' suffers this as soon as his wife dies, who was the only other telepath he had met. Being around large crowds of people makes him suffer horrible migraines, considering his ability is the equivalent of watching thousands of television shows at once in 3D at full volume with no way to turn it off. The only people who he can be around with no negative effects to him are those who are mentally deficient or psychotic. |
| 213 | * In ''Literature/{{Horns}}'', while Ig can't actually read minds, his new power does cause people to tell him their dark thoughts and desires, which leads to him discovering a ''lot'' of unpleasant secrets being kept by his friends and family. |
| 214 | * Mahnahmi from the ''Literature/HumanxCommonwealth'' series was born a telepath, fully aware of the thoughts of everyone around her. As it happened, she came into the care of a certain fellow by the name of Conda Challis, who was probably in the running for the Most Depraved Person of the Commonwealth award. Among the least of the things she learned was that he intended to use her as a torture/sex slave when she grew up. This, understandably, permanently warped her psyche and drove her to [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds utter nihilism]]. |
| 215 | * ''Literature/InheritanceCycle'': |
| 216 | ** The protagonist Eragon brings this trope up in the second book, claiming to be "uncomfortable with the idea of prying into people's secrets ... secrets that they have every right to keep to themselves". He shortly thereafter learns to use this power for good. |
| 217 | ** Elva, however, was cursed with the ability to sense the pain of everyone around her. Her 'range' so to speak, is several dozen miles, and the effects of it nearly drive her insane -- and she's been enduring this since she was a baby (which wasn't that long ago, as she matured rapidly). |
| 218 | * Inverted in the ''Literature/JackBishop'' novels. Alexandra Courtney is freaked out and horrified when she ''can't'' read minds, as immune types come across as zombies to her. |
| 219 | * Literature/JakubWedrowycz uses this to protect himself from nosy telepaths and possessive demons -- the {{squick}}y [[NoodleIncident things he has among his memories]] will make anyone or [[HorrifyingTheHorror anything]] [[BrownNote back out in panic]]. |
| 220 | * One of the original trope setters here is the short story "Journeys End" (sic) by Karen and Creator/PoulAnderson, in which a male and a female telepath discover each other after a lifetime of loneliness. In their eagerness, they open themselves completely to each other, [[spoiler:only to recoil in loathing from their own personal failings, quirks, and oddities, which they can see reflected in each other's minds]]. |
| 221 | * ''Literature/KinosJourney'': This is the entire plot of the first story, in which one country has developed a technology to allow its citizens to read one another's minds. This becomes so unbearable that they all move out to the countryside and stay out of each other's "mental ranges". |
| 222 | * In the ''Literature/KnownSpace'' story "The Soft Weapon", the [[CatFolk cat-like]] alien Kzinti have a telepath who they use to eavesdrop on their human prisoners. Nessus instructs the crew to think of eating delicious raw salads, which disgusts the meat-eating Kzinti so much that they can't continue to read their minds. |
| 223 | * In ''Literature/TheLicaniusTrilogy'', Augurs are able to read minds at great personal danger to themselves. It's possible to get lost and die if they lose themselves in another's memories. Additionally, if an Augur tries to forcefully read someone's memories, it can render the target brain-dead. |
| 224 | * The young-adult book ''Literature/TheLiesTheyTell'' tells the story of a young girl who develops telepathic abilities after a blow to the head. She has some upsetting experiences, but eventually learns how to block out thoughts, and manages to discover a corrupt politician's dastardly plot. |
| 225 | * This is pretty much what did in the Martians in ''Literature/TheMartianChronicles''. While they were perfectly fine being telepathic by themselves, the sheer novelty of thoughts emanating from the first handfuls of human explorers were enough to drive them completely insane, resulting in the rapid downfall of their civilization and the destruction of the entire species. |
| 226 | * In ''Literature/MephistoInOnyx'', Rudy Pairis is a telepath who has yet to encounter a mind that doesn't make him want to vomit. Unfortunately, he frequently finds himself in situations where he is tempted to reach out and touch some mind. The story gets rolling when a friend he can't turn down asks him to read the mind of a convicted serial killer to prove him innocent. It doesn't go well from there. |
| 227 | * Witnesses in ''Literature/{{Nevermoor}}'' can't literally read minds, but they can see colors and lights that no one else can, which reveal things about the world around them. For example, Jupiter sees a black cross over someone's heart and knows they've just lost a loved one and are in mourning, or he sees someone with a smaller, second shadow following them and knows they have problems with their younger sibling. The problem with this is that seeing everyone's secrets, emotions and insecurities all the time is a lot of information to process, and incredibly stressful, to boot -- especially in highly populated cities like Nevermoor -- and it can cause psychosis if allowed to go unchecked. Most Witnesses are said to live out in rural areas where there aren't too many people, or wear eyepatches to act as a filter. Jupiter can handle it, but it took him many years of practice and training. |
| 228 | * ''Literature/{{Paprika}}'': Getting stuck inside other people's fantasies is dangerous enough, but it's even worse when [[spoiler:the wall between reality and fantasy begins to erode and one of the users of the MacGuffin dies, creating a psychic black hole]]. |
| 229 | * In the ''Literature/PointHorror'' story "The Ring", a girl acquires a cursed ring that enables her to read the minds of everyone around her and is soon driven insane when she discovers how much her family and "friends" really despise her. [[spoiler:In the ending, the ring returns to TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday where the girl bought it, and is purchased by a woman whose husband is about to kill her to claim on the insurance. When the original victim reads the minds of her three-year-old half-brothers, she hears that they love her -- so perhaps the ring wasn't that evil and everyone really did hate her. What a cheery little tale!]] |
| 230 | * Scott and Jamie from ''Literature/ThePowerOfFive'' don't like to read minds for exactly this reason. |
| 231 | * [[PlayingWithATrope Played with]] quite a bit in Brendan Rizzo's [[http://www.fictionpress.com/s/2881798/1/Reading "Reading"]]. The telepath's abilities have caused her to become a misanthrope, but since she has always been able to read minds, she actually considers it a benefit, as it allows her to know people's [[HumansAreFlawed true nature]]. |
| 232 | * ''Literature/TheRedemptionOfAlthalus'': |
| 233 | ** Leitha was born with the ability to read minds. Unfortunately, the bad guys know this from the beginning, and from the moment that she joins the group, the bad guys constantly throw horrible and disturbing thoughts at her to try and break her. This is made worse because the bad guys range from a chaotic evil cannibal to a lawful evil warlord wannabe, and just their ordinary thoughts would be bad enough. |
| 234 | ** Even an ordinary person's mind is deeply disturbing at times: Leitha herself states that most humans are much closer to animals than they would ever like to admit, and given that she's a rather beautiful woman, from men she tends to get [[DirtyMindReading horribly perverse thoughts]], while from women she tends to get [[GreenEyedMonster spiteful and jealous thoughts]]. |
| 235 | * In ''Literature/TheRestaurantAtTheEndOfTheUniverse'', the Belcerebons of Kakrafoon Kappa were found to be in contempt by the Galactic Tribunal for smugly living lives of peaceful contemplation. As a punishment the Tribunal inflicted a terrible social disease upon them: telepathy. Now in order to hide their thoughts they either have to babble endlessly about meaningless topics like the weather or play host to a concert by plutonium rock band 'Disaster Area'. |
| 236 | * Literature/SandmanSlim once notes two ways to block out mind readers: PsychicStatic or taking the intruder for a ride. Nosy telepathic guard gets to experience some choice memories from literal Hell and is left curled on the ground bubbling and crying. |
| 237 | * In ''Literature/TheSiranthaJaxSeries'', March the telepath knows the worst of everyone around him, and hardly bothers to hide his contempt for them. He knows when they lie either to others or to themselves. In fact, the main reason for his attraction to Jax is that she doesn't lie and there's no disconnect between what she's thinking and what she's saying. |
| 238 | * ''Literature/TheSookieStackhouseMysteries'': The eponymous Sookie, who can't turn off her powers. She is forced to read the minds of people and see the dark underbelly of her town. Highlights include finding out abusive relationships, a woman who is married to a man but is actually a closeted lesbian, a teacher who has dark thoughts about abusing her students, and the nasty things people say about Sookie herself. Sookie never had control of her powers until she found Bill and the other supernaturals. She is pretty much the personification of this trope. |
| 239 | * {{Inverted|Trope}} in ''Literature/TheStarsMyDestination'' with Robin the reverse telepath, or "telesend". Instead of reading minds, she constantly projects ''her'' thoughts to everyone around her, whether she wants to or not. |
| 240 | * ''Franchise/StarTrek'': |
| 241 | ** Some of the early [[Franchise/StarTrekExpandedUniverse expanded universe]] works imply that Vulcans [[HatesBeingTouched do not like to be touched]] -- especially by more emotional species -- because [[TouchTelepathy such physical contact is often enough for Vulcans to pick up on the thoughts and feelings of the person who initiates contact]]. |
| 242 | ** In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' novel ''Metamorphisis'', in an alternate timeline, mixed-species-with-some-Vulcan-ancestry Sdan remarks that even before Surak's reforms, most Vulcans were reluctant to kill others, as it would mean feeling the thoughts, pain, and fear the other would feel before dying. |
| 243 | ** In the ''TNG'' novel ''Q-in-Law'', Deanna Troi is revealed to be somewhat envious of her mother due to Lwxana's ability to erect strong telepathic shields that eliminated telepathic background noise. While Deanna was able to erect similar shields, her lesser telepathic abilities made erecting such shields something of an effort for her. |
| 244 | * In ''Literature/{{Strata}}'', the protagonists find themselves having to deal with a rather annoying demon. Having had enough of it, Marco (a Kung, i.e., a tightly wound ball of violent impulses ''barely'' held together by a thin veneer of civilization) confronts the demon: "I hear you can read minds? Then ''read mine''." The demon is utterly terrified and perfectly docile afterwards as long as Kin (the sole human in the team) promises to protect it from the alien monstrosity... |
| 245 | * Amusingly subverted with Gary [[spoiler:and Cindy's]] daughter, Leia, in ''Literature/TheSupervillainySaga'', as everyone tries to watch their thoughts around her due to the fact that she's a small child. Leia responds that as a small child, she doesn't understand most of what she reads and isn't affected by it anyway. |
| 246 | * In the ''Literature/SwordOfTruth'' book ''Stone of Tears'', Zedd heals a badly wounded seer. To do that, he must first enter her mind. The pain of the wound itself is described as mild once he manages to get past [[PrescienceIsPredictable the seer's visions]]. |
| 247 | * In ''Literature/TheTalesOfAlvinMaker'', Peggy's ability to see into people's hearts doesn't bother ''her'' very much, but the fact that she knows all the deepest secrets of everyone she encounters makes other people very uncomfortable, and her being a LittleMissSnarker doesn't help much. She eventually gets lessons in social skills that include practicing ''not'' automatically reading everyone's mind; when it's all done, she's [[SheIsAllGrownUp all grown up]] and extremely popular. |
| 248 | %%* A short story in the magazine ''Teen Ink'' had this as the premise. |
| 249 | * The short story "Through Other Eyes" by Creator/RALafferty involves a scientist who's spent his entire life wondering whether everyone experiences things the same way he does -- whether what he calls red really looks to others like what he calls blue, whether roses smell as sweet, and so on. He builds a machine to translate the thoughts in one mind to another, and uses it on a woman he considers himself to be in love with. Through it, he learns that she sees the world as a place of vileness and horror; that (as she herself later says) every time a bird flies by she thinks of what's gurgling in its stomach -- and she [[NightmareFetishist glories in it]]. [[spoiler:Later on, she absolutely ''smashes'' him mentally by convincing him he has the worse worldview -- her world is twistedly beautiful, and his is utterly dead, lacking in any sort of romance or wonder. At the story's close, he's almost ready to sell the device to the public -- but first, he's modifying it so it lies to the user, making the subject's thoughts seem less different than they really are, because true understanding is just too horrible.]] |
| 250 | * In ''Literature/TheTommyknockers'', an entire town becomes mind-linked to each other as an alien ship causes them to mutate. It's implied that this effect is part of what makes the creatures evil -- or at least callous and careless; they are forced to hear each other's petty gripes and trivia 24/7. |
| 251 | * ''Literature/ToRidePegasus'': This is one of the reasons why the Registered Talents tend to move into the large isolated and insulated estate established for them. Living in one of the crowded, high-rise residence blocks drives them to distraction. |
| 252 | * Somewhat {{inverted|Trope}} in ''Literature/Touch2017''. Caspar doesn't necessarily like [[TheEmpath his power]], finding it [[DirtyMindReading uncomfortable]] or [[MySkullRunnethOver overwhelming]] at times, but he notes that finding truly "bad" people is harder than you might expect. |
| 253 | -->''"Like, I can tell there's a robber in a shop, but I can see [[DrivenToVillainy how desperate he is for money]]. Or I can tell you about the teacher who has dirty feelings about kids in his class, but I can also feel how guilty it makes him, and I can tell from the kids around him that he hasn't done anything. [[HumansAreFlawed It's... complicated]]."'' |
| 254 | * In ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga'', Edward Cullen's telepathy is strongly hinted at as one of the reasons he's so alone prior to Bella's coming to Forks. He's rich, handsome, smart, strong, and wanted by every woman who comes in contact with him (it seems), but he ends up falling in love with a rather dull, uninspiring, self-described plain girl whose distinguishing feature is the fact that ''he can't read her mind''. |
| 255 | * In ''Literature/VeryBadDeaths'' and its sequel ''Very Hard Choices''. the telepath Zandor "Smelly" Zudenigo is so painfully sensitive that in college he avoided bathing, so his body odor would keep other people out of his physical range for mind-reading. Later in life his range has expanded, and he has to live as a hermit on a remote island. |
| 256 | * The third ''Literature/WaysideSchool'' book has Wendy Nogard, a woman born with an extra ear hidden on top of her head that allows her to listen in on thoughts. Once she revealed her ear to a love interest, but then heard him think that she was an ugly freak. She then became a misanthrope who enjoyed making people miserable, until one day she heard the pure love of a newborn baby, which restored plenty of hope in her. |
| 257 | * In ''Literature/WildCards'', a villainous telepath tries to read and control [[RidiculouslyHumanRobot Modular Man's]] mind, not knowing his true nature. The last we see of him he's in an asylum, capable of nothing but reciting endless strings of 1s and 0s. |
| 258 | * In ''Literature/TheWorthingSaga'', [[LossOfIdentity other people's memories feel just as real as one's own]]. Jason Worthing is a virgin, but in his memory, he's been involved in "acts he did not think his neighbors had enough imagination to invent". At the story's opening, he's never killed, but he clearly remembers killing a man in a riot. All the worst aspects of humanity are a part of him. |
| 259 | * ''Series/TheZackFiles'' book ''Zap! I'm a Mind Reader'' is basically all about this (at least until he overhears what sounds like someone planning a murder) -- he learns that his father hasn't gone to the dentist in years, some of the kids in his class haven't changed their underwear in a week, and a creepy lady in his apartment building has a crush on his dad. |
| 260 | * ''Literature/TheZeroStone'': In order to convince a Patrol officer that he's innocent of the crimes he's accused of, Murdoc Jern is mentally joined to the officer by his companion Eet. It's extremely uncomfortable for both men. |
| 261 | * A major danger for the Tines from ''Literature/ZonesOfThought'', who are all sort of mini-{{Hive Mind}}s (usually about 3-8 Tines per each individual pack) that "think" by transmitting their thoughts as sound among packmates. Because of this, the notion of personal space means having enough distance (usually about 20' or more) where they can whisper politely among themselves and yell at normal conversational levels to chat with other packs, as being closer means the packs' thoughts will muddle together making coherent thought impossible without intense concentration. Such mental discipline is especially crucial during close combat, as weaker-minded packs will break down into animalistic "singletons" under such proximity to another pack. |
| 262 | [[/folder]] |
| 263 | |
| 264 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 265 | * ''Series/TheFortyFourHundred'': In "Voices Carry", Gary Navarro, a baseball player who disappeared in 1973, is unable to cope with his telepathic powers. He hears every thought of every person around him and can't filter any of them out. As such, he becomes increasingly unstable. NTAC gives Gary an anti-psychotic drug called haloperidol which quietens the thoughts in his mind. However, when he is goes undercover in the 4400 Center, the drugs are confiscated and the voices return. Gary blows his cover when he bursts into Jordan Collier's office demanding the return of the haloperidol. In "The New World", Gary tells Diana that he eventually learned to control and harness his power and he now thinks of it in the same way as he does his other senses. |
| 266 | * ''Series/BabylonFive'': Pretty much every teep ever. |
| 267 | ** Reading the minds of dying people is implied to be even worse than other cases, because the mind reader can be "dragged" down together with the dying person and lose part of themself across the barrier to the great beyond in the process. Bester, the series's resident creepy Psi Cop, specialized in deathbed scans... one too many of these are implied to have made him the cheerful fellow that he is. |
| 268 | ** Played for laughs when Talia gets into an elevator with Garibaldi, then shortly afterwards hits him, implied to be for a dirty thought that crossed his mind (intentionally or accidentally is unknown). |
| 269 | --->'''Garibaldi:''' ''[bending over in pain]'' I think I'm in love. |
| 270 | ** There is a severe shortage of telepaths willing to work in the area of criminal justice despite the high demand for it. Crawling around in the brains of murderers and rapists is nobody's idea of a good time. |
| 271 | ** Telepaths have to go out of their way to generate internal PsychicStatic to [[BlessedWithSuck keep themselves from being overwhelmed]] by the barrage of thoughts being projected by the mundanes all around them. Methods described range from repeating nursery rhymes or EarWorm songs to visualizing a protective wall built around them to keep the white noise out. Sometimes, this isn't enough, as certain people's thoughts are louder than others. Garibaldi is evidently a particularly difficult man to ignore in this fashion. One annoyed telepath points out the {{irony}} of a paranoid man who distrusts telepaths insisting on broadcasting his every thought at full blast. |
| 272 | * This happens to Buffy in the ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' episode "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E18Earshot Earshot]]". The problem more arises from being overloaded with hearing people's thoughts, as opposed to being shocked at what people are truly thinking, though she is surprised to learn that AllMenArePerverts. |
| 273 | -->'''Buffy:''' ''[to her mom]'' [[ParentalSexualitySquick You had sex with Giles?]]... On the hood of a police car?!... ''Twice?!''\ |
| 274 | '''Xander's internal monologue:''' [[ThinkUnsexyThoughts Four times five is thirty. Five times six is thirty-two...]] Naked girls... Naked women... Naked Buffy! Somebody stop me!\ |
| 275 | '''Random guy in the hallway:''' Buffy's so beautiful... ''[she pauses, flattered]'' I mean, look at that body. God, I'd love to shove her against that locker right now and-- ''[Buffy hurries away]'' |
| 276 | * Parodied in ''Series/ChappellesShow'' as "[[Film/WhatWomenWant What Men Want]]". A woman walks into an [[UncomfortableElevatorMoment elevator]] full of men, [[AllMenArePerverts who all start thinking incredibly perverse things]] about her... [[DirtyKid including a little kid]], much to her disgust. However, the end of the sketch seems to imply that they were all deliberately {{troll}}ing her. |
| 277 | * ''Series/TheCollector'': The Devil doesn't exactly take well to hearing the pain and evil thoughts of [[TheOmniscient everyone in the universe]]. |
| 278 | * ''Series/DoctorWho'': In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E9Hide Hide]]", the Doctor explains that empaths tend to be both extremely compassionate and extremely lonely. |
| 279 | * ''Series/FantasyIsland2021'': In "Girlboss, Interrupted", the episode's guest Courtney gets mind-reading powers. She isn't pleased at how many people insult her in their thoughts, and some off. |
| 280 | * ''Series/{{Firefly}}'': |
| 281 | ** River is distraught by the thoughts of shipmates in "[[Recap/FireflyE14ObjectsInSpace Objects in Space]]", experiencing several upsetting emotions. It doesn't help that she's only getting fragments, so that she hears Simon thinking about the loss of his old life and career, making her feel guilty even though he neither holds her responsible nor regrets rescuing her -- he just misses it sometimes. |
| 282 | ** Subverted in one instance: when River reads Jayne's mind, she sees what appears to be [[spoiler:regret for trying to sell her out to the Feds]]. It's surprisingly sweet considering that he's spent the whole series trying to get rid of the Tams. However, in the same scene, she also gets [[HiddenDepths a brief peek]] at [[BewareTheNiceOnes the Shepherd's thoughts]]. |
| 283 | * In ''Series/{{Fringe}}'', one of the child subjects in the [[SuperSerum cortexiphan]] trials conducted by William Bell and Walter Bishop became a telepath. When Walter found out, he had him kicked out of the trials for fear of the boy finding out the truth about the program. It turns out that he is unable to shut off this ability or even put up some sort of a mental screen. He reads the mind of anyone within 50 feet. When they find him next, he has grown up and lives alone far away from anyone. They only people he can't read are his fellow cortexiphan subjects. Of course, this is far from the only life Walter has ruined with his experiments. |
| 284 | * In one episode of ''Series/GilligansIsland'', a special type of seed gives the castaways mind-reading powers which lead to arguments and division. Luckily, the effects are temporary, and Gilligan, [[SmartBall in one of the smartest moves he would ever make]], burns the bush that produces the seeds so it will never happen again. |
| 285 | * An octopus-like [[OurWerebeastsAreDifferent Wesen]] in ''Series/{{Grimm}}'' can steal people's memories with his tentacles. It clearly takes its toll on the guy. Then he accidentally tries to read a Grimm's mind, which is apparently a bad idea. The last we see him, he's screaming in a jail cell, constantly reliving all the ways she's killed Wesen. |
| 286 | * ''Series/{{Hannibal}}'': While it may not be a traditional kind of mind-reading, Will Graham's empathizing puts him in serial killer's mindsets to catch them for the FBI. His mind and sanity deplete as a result of killing people in his head in the place of the killer, to know how they think. No one ever said getting into murderers' heads was good for you... |
| 287 | * This happened to ''Series/{{Heroes}}''' Matt Parkman when his ability first manifested. Most of the people whose minds he touched were thinking about what a loser he was, and how he didn't know his wife was cheating on him. |
| 288 | * Kelly from ''Series/{{Misfits}}'' develops the power of telepathy, which only heightens and exacerbates her personal insecurity as she is frequently judged harshly by the people she encounters -- while she is a genuinely kind and sensitive person, she's something of a rough diamond who uses her abrasiveness and slightly gaudy appearance to mask her low self-esteem. Her power causes her to break up with her fiancée, and generally hear a lot of things she'd rather not about the way people see her. Also, she tends to hit or shout at people whose thoughts particularly offend her (making her look entirely mad, of course) and she frequently embarrasses others when she blurts out their secrets without thinking, so really her power sucks for just about ''everyone'' involved. |
| 289 | * Emma in ''Series/MutantX'' is an empath but later "evolves" to a more powerful version. One of her new abilities is full-blown telepathy, although she tends to block out people's thoughts unless necessary. In one episode, she is forced to use all her abilities to keep their CoolPlane hidden from an army looking for them. She warns Jesse that she will be unable to block out other people's thoughts, as all her concentration is required for the "psychic cloak" and asks him to think happy thoughts. Then he accidentally glances at her low-cut cleavage, and she frowns at the unavoidable thought in his head. |
| 290 | * In ''Series/MyHero2000'', George gains mind-reading powers, and is soon shocked at the twisted thoughts within the minds of the human race. |
| 291 | * In ''Series/NoOrdinaryFamily'', Daphne's power is mind reading. She is initially overwhelmed, but learns to control it. Similar to the Buffy example above, it had more to do with the volume of thoughts than what she was hearing. She ends up helping her father fight crime, against her mother's wishes, become elected to student council and makes a guy like her. Eventually, her powers progress and she is able to control thoughts. |
| 292 | * ''Series/ResidentAlien'': Asta is unhappy about TalkingAnimal Octopus's telepathic presence in her mind. So is he. |
| 293 | -->'''Octopus:''' You think I like it in there? It's darker than the woods in a Creator/TimBurton movie. |
| 294 | * ''Series/SeaQuestDSV'': |
| 295 | ** One episode involves three psychics being brought in to aid the [[TheFederation UEO]] in negotiating with other maritime nations after the discovery of the Library of Alexandria on the ocean floor. One of them is determined to prove that using psychics in this manner is a bad idea by deliberately giving false information to [[TheCaptain Captain Bridger]] (e.g., that the Libyan ambassador is bluffing when he isn't). His daughter (one of the other two psychics) admits to Bridger that she was once asked to go into the mind of a criminal, and she's still suffering the aftereffects. She also discovers that Bridger himself has latent PsychicPowers and even tries to train him a bit in using them. This is the last we hear of his powers, though. (It's also strange that foreign dignitaries would agree to the presence of psychics, unless they don't believe in their powers.) |
| 296 | ** Dr. Wendy Smith comes aboard later and also has a high psi-factor. She doesn't use it much, though, mostly for psychiatry. |
| 297 | * ''Series/StargateSG1'': At the climax of Season 8, the Replicators attempt to use Daniel Jackson's mind as a conduit to the knowledge of the Ancients. This works, but as it turns out, even the entire Replicator collective is incapable of processing that much information... Daniel replies that the knowledge is ''infinite'', so only a non-corporeal being could possibly make sense of it. This drain on the Replicators' processing power actually allows Daniel to briefly reverse the mental link and ''freeze the Replicators'', slowing their invasion and giving everyone else some much-needed breathing room. |
| 298 | * ''Series/Stargirl2020'': After Dr. Henry King became a ProfessorGuineaPig thanks to his mind-expansion experiments, he started hearing other people's thoughts, accompanied by headaches. Many of those thoughts were base and vile, so eventually he concluded that people are monsters. This led to him becoming the supervillain Brainwave. After his son Henry Jr. starts manifesting these abilities, many of the thoughts he hears are the same. Courtney tries to convince him that those are just surface thoughts of people who are scared, and if he looks deeper, he will find love and kindness. Henry expresses doubt. |
| 299 | * The ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS3E20TinMan Tin Man]]" has Tam Elbrun, a Betazoid who has had his ability from birth, resulting in PowerIncontinence (most Betazoids develop telepathy [[PubertySuperpower during puberty]], and are able to control it). He was quite relieved when he met Data, who had no (organic) mind to read. |
| 300 | * ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'': The Vulcan Mind Meld is serious business because of the danger involved for both parties in the meld. Spock only tries this as the last resort, and every time, the toll it takes on him is clearly shown. |
| 301 | ** In "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E25TheDevilInTheDark The Devil in the Dark]]", Spock feels incredible mental pain when he first tries to establish a Vulcan Mind Link with the Horta. He tells Kirk that she's in agony -- she was seriously injured by the earlier phaser blast. He does better on the second try, probably because the creature is more trusting, and he might be using Vulcan mental disciplines to get past the pain. |
| 302 | ** He also felt a brief surge of pain and shock in "[[Recap/StarTrekS2E22ByAnyOtherName By Any Other Name]]" when he looked into the minds of the Kelvans and saw their true, horrific forms. Understandable, as the Kelvans are non-humanoid beings whose thought process is completely alien to that of humans. |
| 303 | * In the ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' episode "[[Recap/SupernaturalS06E06YouCantHandleTheTruth You Can't Handle the Truth]]", the MonsterOfTheWeek magically forces everyone in earshot of its victim to practice [[BrutalHonesty unedited honesty]] in order to provoke this effect. The victims are DrivenToSuicide. |
| 304 | * Toshiko Sato of ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' gains telepathy in "[[Recap/TorchwoodS1E7GreeksBearingGifts Greeks Bearing Gifts]]". She races home hurt and angry after hearing the petty thoughts of her co-workers. On the other hand, it does help her stop a man from killing his ex-wife and kid in a MurderSuicide. At the same time, Jack is an utter blank to her, resulting in a NothingIsScarier situation. However, during the episode's climax, it's revealed that he may have suspected something and [[PsychicBlockDefense deliberately blocked out his mind]], only letting carefully-selected thoughts slip to let Tosh know what to do. Given his past as a Temporal Agent, this could be part of his training. Alternatively, it could very likely be because he was changed when the Bad Wolf entity made him immortal in ''Series/DoctorWho''. |
| 305 | * ''Series/TrueBlood'': |
| 306 | ** Sookie hears a great deal she doesn't want to, and people treat her as if she is stupid because her power makes her behave oddly. She was also a twenty-five-year-old virgin since hearing what guys really thought was a big turn off, and she only lost her virginity when she did because vampiric minds can't be read. |
| 307 | ** Telepaths in the show hate hanging out with normal humans -- both Sookie and the bellhop-telepath in Dallas have actually mentioned their preference for the vampire community because of their power out loud, on-camera. |
| 308 | * ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S2E16APennyForYourThoughts A Penny for Your Thoughts]]", Hector B. Poole discovers how petty and self-centered the people around him can be when he becomes inexplicably psychic. It's not as bad as some cases [[spoiler:(and it helps him get the girl, Helen Turner)]], but he's still relieved when his newfound power vanishes. Moreover, the point is made that thoughts aren't always an accurate gauge of people's real intentions. For instance, he overheard his co-worker Mr. Smithers thinking of getting revenge on the bank that employed him by robbing it wasn't really angry and determined enough to carry out his plan, having had that thought ''everyday'' at closing for years, but never following through. |
| 309 | [[/folder]] |
| 310 | |
| 311 | [[folder:Music]] |
| 312 | * The subject of Music/PeterGabriel's "Here Comes the Flood" from ''Music/{{Car}}''. The inspiration was from a dream Gabriel had where "the psychic barriers which normally prevent us from seeing into each others' thoughts had been completely eroded producing a mental flood. Those that had been used to having their innermost thoughts exposed would handle this torrent and those inclined to concealment would drown in it." |
| 313 | %%* Music/TomSmith's FilkSong "I Wish I Couldn't Read Her Mind", naturally enough (and the Christine Lavin song that inspired it, "Good Thing He Can't Read My Mind", though more hypothetically in that case). |
| 314 | %%* Music/{{Hawkwind}}'s song "Psi Power" is all about this trope. |
| 315 | * Music/Hinatazaka46's "See Through" is about the difficulties that come with having the power to [[TitleDrop see through]] minds. |
| 316 | [[/folder]] |
| 317 | |
| 318 | [[folder:Roleplay]] |
| 319 | * Zia from ''Roleplay/DawnOfANewAgeOldportBlues'' gains telepathy from the MassSuperEmpoweringEvent, and is quick to learn all the downsides to it. Other people's thoughts frequently overwhelm her and are often lewd or rude, if not downright disturbing (such as Daigo sending her a mental image of a corpse that he drained all the blood from). |
| 320 | * In ''Roleplay/DCNation'', [[http://community.livejournal.com/dc_nation/116814.html?view=509294 Mento was recently revealed to be a decent telepath,]] even without his helmet. However, he hadn't any ability to ''block out'' thoughts. Rita (his wife) and The Chief knew, but he never thought to say it to anyone else. Worse, his brief superheroing career was with ComicBook/DoomPatrol, a group of BlessedWithSuck superheroes with dubious acceptance among not only the community they served, but the superheroing community as well. |
| 321 | * Alyssa Montrove of ''Roleplay/ReEvolution'' gains the ability to read minds, but she [[PowerIncontinence can't turn it off]] and the strain and disorientation takes its toll on her sanity. |
| 322 | [[/folder]] |
| 323 | |
| 324 | [[folder:Tabletop Games]] |
| 325 | * ''TabletopGame/TheDresdenFiles'': While there aren't any formal rules associated with mind-reading, the section on the Third Law of Magic heavily invokes this trope as one reason why breaking said Law is a bad idea -- especially with regard to any nonhuman targets (technically not covered by the Law) that a human would-be mind reader might be tempted to try his or her trick on. An actual soulgaze (see above under Literature) does explicitly automatically involve a mutual psychic attack. |
| 326 | * ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'': |
| 327 | ** ''TabletopGame/IsleOfTheApe'': The party can end up inside the mind of the mad god that created the island. Characters can quickly go insane there if they don't get out fast, but it's also the only source of hints for getting past some of the extremely deadly obstacles. (This module is ''TabletopGame/TombOfHorrors'' levels of unfair, easily wiping out even expert groups.) |
| 328 | ** ''TabletopGame/{{Planescape}}'': Reading a fiend's mind is dangerous. Even the lowliest of manes has experienced and caused more pain and suffering than most mortals can dream of, and trying to look into a demon's thoughts can drive a man insane from the horrors he sees there. |
| 329 | ** ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'': You do NOT want to make telepathic contact with fiends or aberrations. Doing so can drive your character insane from contact with a mind so alien. Making telepathic contact with a Darklord can cause all sorts of mental stress, though not outright madness. |
| 330 | ** The Detect Thoughts spell can backfire nastily on the caster if it's used on an extremely intelligent person or creature. Similarly, a proactive person who has survived powerful fear magic can turn their mind into a lethal BrownNote for anyone who tries to read it. |
| 331 | * ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}: Psionic Powers'' has rules for letting a psi trap an attacker inside her mind. More mundanely people with Anti-Psi can make their mind such a void that when people try to read it that the abyss gazes back into them. |
| 332 | * ''TabletopGame/LeviathanTheTempest'': The eponymous Leviathans are {{Eldritch Abomination}}s straight out of Lovecraft, with tremendous psionic might. Needless to say, trying to read their minds has a serious risk of backfiring and leaving the telepath mad or [[TheRenfield a Beloved]]. |
| 333 | * ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'': |
| 334 | ** Every psyker who's tried to plumb the HiveMind of a Tyranid swarm has either ended up absolutely, incurably insane or experienced fatal seizures. |
| 335 | ** The Scourged used to be a Loyalist Chapter named the Seekers of Truth more or less reserved for Inquisitorial service. The Chapter Master prayed regularly for the ability to tell truth from lies to better carry out their duties. Unfortunately, [[GodOfEvil Tzeentch]] granted his prayer, and from then on they heard every lie being spoken ''across the Imperium'' (to give an example, the '''entire''' Imperial Creed, THE state religion of the Imperium, is essentially a lie. It was written by one of the Traitor Primarchs before he turned and goes in ''direct'' violation of the [[StopWorshippingMe wishes]] of their GodEmperor, who [[FinalSolution reacted]] VERY badly to being worshipped as a God). They went insane and fell to Chaos ''very'', '''very''' quickly, and their battlecry is now "THE LIES, THE LIES!". |
| 336 | ** ''TabletopGame/DarkHeresy'': Using any telepathy power on any character who has more [[SanityMeter insanity points]] or [[KarmaMeter corruption points]] than yourself may lead to 'spillage' and having the telepath gaining a few of their own. Playing a telepath quickly leads to the character either becoming the craziest, most corrupt member of the team, or learning to only use them on people you already know to be pure. |
| 337 | ** The psyker John Grammaticus once had a brief glimpse of what lay beneath the Emperor's appearance. Just ''remembering'' what he saw during that nanosecond of psychic contact later in life makes him pale. |
| 338 | [[/folder]] |
| 339 | |
| 340 | [[folder:Toys]] |
| 341 | * Kongu finds this out after activating his [[MaskOfPower Mask of telepathy]] in ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}''. It's also implied that Orde's psionic powers have made him very impatient with other people, as he is able to know exactly what a person is going to say before they say it, and he often appears frustrated when he then has to endure the actual conversation that he's already heard. |
| 342 | [[/folder]] |
| 343 | |
| 344 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 345 | * Exploited in ''VideoGame/Afterlife1996'' where one of the punishment structures you can build in hell is "Telepathy Towers", a city where everyone suffers from this. The description notes that the fact that most souls in there are driven insane often leads to a feedback loop, as that makes their minds an even worse read. |
| 346 | * In ''VideoGame/AncientDomainsOfMystery'', using mindcraft powers on any undead will cause injury to your character, due to backlash from the horror of reading an undead mind. (This can be problematic, since mindcraft powers go through walls and a zombie could be lurking on the other side.) Using mindcraft on a corrupted creature will cause you to get [[TheCorruption corrupted]]. |
| 347 | * ''VideoGame/AyakashiRomanceReborn'' features Aoi, a Satori Seer (Ayakashi who can look into a person's heart), as one of the love interests. He thinks everyone has darkness in their hearts, and being naïve to the ways of the human society, he is quite terrified of looking into people's hearts. He is quite cynical because of this. |
| 348 | * Sister Psyche of ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'' is one of the world's strongest psychics. But her powers are so strong she can't help but hear the surface thoughts of everyone around her. Her skimpy costume does not help cultivate altogether pleasant thoughts from local teenage boys... |
| 349 | * ''VideoGame/DawnOfWar 2'' has a group of powerful psychics on board Gabriel Angelos's ship who weren't even trying to read the Tyranid HiveMind, just push back its influence on [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace the Warp]] so their ship could get back home safely. Only one survived even that ''indirect'' contact with the Hive Mind. [[spoiler:In his bad ending in ''Chaos Rising'', the mental scars from that effort make it much easier for a daemon to possess him and force his betrayal.]] |
| 350 | * In ''VideoGame/FragileDreamsFarewellRuinsOfTheMoon'', [[BigBad Shin]] tries to [[OmnicidalManiac end what's left of humanity]] because of this. [[spoiler:However, at the very end, it's revealed that the experiment which granted him the ability to pick up on the selfishness and hatred in the human psyche was flawed and incomplete. He loses the will to fight upon realizing that [[CuteGhostGirl Sai]] loved him deeply, and he simply didn't sense it.]] |
| 351 | * ''VideoGame/GodOfWarI'': After he saves her, the Oracle of Athens reads Kratos' mind to see the man he truly is... and is horrified to discover that Athena's chosen "hero" is/was a brutal, bloodthirsty Spartan warrior who committed all manner of atrocities. |
| 352 | -->'''Oracle:''' By the gods! Why would Athena send one such as you? |
| 353 | * Comes up briefly in ''VideoGame/GoldenSunDarkDawn''. Sveta demonstrates her mind-reading power and then talks about how she'd rather not use it unless necessary, since [[FantasticRacism reading minds full of hate for beastmen caused her father to hate humans]]. Karis mentions that her father Ivan isn't as fond of his own telepathy these days as [[MindOverManners he used to be]], and she's grateful she didn't inherit them. |
| 354 | * ''VideoGame/LiesOfP'': [[BigBad Simon Manus]] was born with the ability to read minds. He came to hate how [[BitchInSheepsClothing most people's true thoughts and feelings were so radically different from how they acted in public]], culminating in his desire to [[GodhoodSeeker become a god]] and create a world free of lies, where no one would be able to hide their true colours. This is also why he fell in love with Sophia, as she was the only person he had ever met who really ''was'' as pure and good on the inside as she was on the outside. |
| 355 | * ''VideoGame/MetalGear'': |
| 356 | ** ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'' has [[PsychoForHire Psycho Mantis]]. He states in his FinalSpeech that as a kid, he was unable to shut off his powerful {{telepathy}} (learning that his father hated and likely wanted to kill him), and that looking too deep in too many minds of {{Serial Killer}}s drove him off the deep end. Apparently, he still can't completely shut off his powers, since he asks for his mask back to block the voices out, and complains about "how everyone thinks of only one thing". He even controls Meryl a minute earlier and makes her behave like some sort of a caricature, a sex-crazed meat puppet. |
| 357 | --->'''Psycho Mantis:''' In my lifetime I've read the pasts, presents and futures of thousands upon thousands of men and women... and each mind that I peered into was stuffed with the same single object of obsession: That selfish and atavistic desire to pass on one's seed. It was enough to make me sick... every living thing on this planet exists to mindlessly pass on their DNA. |
| 358 | ** In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidVThePhantomPain'', it's shown to have been even worse for him, as he read the minds of [[AlreadyMetEveryone Naked Snake, Venom Snake, Colonel Volgin]], and [[BigBad Skull Face]] with their malice and lust for revenge wreaking havoc on his psyche and turning him into an EmotionEater. |
| 359 | * At one point in ''VideoGame/MortalKombatX'', Takeda tries taking a peek inside Ermac's head. Seeing as how [[MindHive there's something around ten thousand souls in there]], he nearly has an aneurysm from the overload. |
| 360 | * Lucario's Pokédex entry in ''[[VideoGame/PokemonUltraSunAndUltraMoon Pokémon Ultra Moon]]'' has this to say: |
| 361 | -->Lucario reads its opponent's feelings with its aura waves. It finds out things it would rather not know, so it gets stressed out easily. |
| 362 | * In ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts}}'', cracking open one of the mental vaults in the mind of Sasha Nein reveals that as a young boy, he [[spoiler:ran away from home after reading his father's mind and [[PrimalScene seeing some things]] about [[MissingMom his late mother]] that would be rather traumatizing to a growing boy]]. |
| 363 | ** ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts 2}}'': [[spoiler:Ford ''intentionally'' turned his mind into an insane deathtrap in order to erase a secret that could have resurrected the greatest psychic villain of all time; he knew that his home, ''an organization built around psychic powers'', would eventually and accidentally re-discover what he wiped from his mind - ''if he didn't shatter it first''. As a result, anyone who enters his mind gets traumatized [[EverythingTryingToKillYou by the sheer amount of stuff trying to kill them]].]] |
| 364 | * ''VideoGame/SamAndMaxFreelancePolice'': |
| 365 | ** In "Situation: Comedy" from ''Sam and Max Save the World'', Hugh Bliss reads Max's mind and comments that what he read was "unspeakably depraved", whereupon Max says he's right. |
| 366 | ** In [[VideoGame/SamAndMaxTheDevilsPlayhouse the third season]], it's ''Max's'' turn to read the dankest recesses of peoples' minds. |
| 367 | * ''Franchise/StarCraft'': |
| 368 | ** In ''VideoGame/StarCraftI'', the first time Sarah Kerrigan and Jim Raynor meet, halfway through updating him on the situation we have this exchange. |
| 369 | --->'''Kerrigan:''' Captain Raynor, I have finished scouting out the area, and -- you pig!\ |
| 370 | '''Raynor:''' What? I haven't even said anything to you yet.\ |
| 371 | '''Kerrigan:''' Yeah, but you were thinking it.\ |
| 372 | '''Raynor:''' Oh, yeah, you're a telepath. |
| 373 | ** Becomes a BrickJoke in ''VideoGame/StarCraftIIHeartOfTheSwarm''. |
| 374 | ** In the book ''Liberty's Crusade'', the reporter Michael Liberty meets Kerrigan and learns that she's a telepath. He immediately things how great such an ability would be for someone in his line of work, but Kerrigan picks up on the thought and tells him that it really wouldn't be. |
| 375 | * ''Franchise/TouhouProject'': |
| 376 | ** Satori Komeiji is widely feared and hated because of her powers (and her [[MindOverManners lack of discretion about them]]). However, she is still liked by animals that can't speak, and by animal youkai who befriended her as non-speaking animals. The non-predator kinds, of course. Predators like her too, but in the way mind-reading makes it nightmare fuel to poor Satori. |
| 377 | ** Her younger sister, Koishi, hated this so much she closed off her mind reading third-eye. This came with a whole bunch of side effects like immunity to mind reading, the ability to read and mess with people's ''sub''conscious mind, and, unfortunately, also left her unable to read ''her own'' mind which has resulted in her becoming [[EmptyShell devoid of feelings and thoughts]].[[note]]A good number of fan works tend to ignore this, however.[[/note]] |
| 378 | [[/folder]] |
| 379 | |
| 380 | [[folder:Visual Novels]] |
| 381 | * In ''VisualNovel/DaCapo'', Kotori actually does like her mind reading ability. However... |
| 382 | ## It lets her know people only see her as the school idol and not as a fallible person. |
| 383 | ## She now knows that they're extremely critical. |
| 384 | ## Too much exposure to others makes her physically ill. |
| 385 | ## Situations like when she accidentally mentions she used to bathe with her sister in front of Junichi are extremely embarrassing, apparently. |
| 386 | * ''VisualNovel/ScienceAdventureSeries'': |
| 387 | ** ''VisualNovel/ChaosHead'' has [[spoiler:Kozue]], a young girl who is forced to hear the thoughts of people in her general vicinity without any control over it and is unable to shut them out, which makes her go crazy to a fair degree mentally. |
| 388 | ** ''VisualNovel/ChaosChild'' has [[spoiler:Hinae Arimura]], who can also sense the emotions and feelings of people she interacts with and is able to tell how they feel about her at any time, which makes her very uncomfortable, and she struggles to form any genuine connections with people as a result of this. |
| 389 | [[/folder]] |
| 390 | |
| 391 | [[folder:Webcomics]] |
| 392 | * ''Webcomic/{{Archipelago}}'': Accomplished hypnotist [[SmugSnake Vaniji Ralo]] avoided this by simply brainwashing people, no mind-reading involved... except [[https://web.archive.org/web/20210411204252/http://www.archipelagocomic.com/comic/?id=777 when he encountered a mind]] that [[MindRape fought back]]. |
| 393 | -->'''Raven:''' Broke into the wrong brain, didn't you? [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} He]] looks all frail and frightened, but he has a mind that will swallow you up before it lets you take over. Take it from me, more powerful minds than yours have tried. |
| 394 | * Karl from ''Webcomic/FreakAngels'' has taken to wearing a TinfoilHat to block his telepathic link to the rest of the group, because their communications tend to be immature infighting, {{Seinfeldian Conversation}}s, and bragging/complaining about their sex lives, all of which pretty much annoys and/or disgusts him. |
| 395 | * In ''Webcomic/{{Gaia}}'', [[http://www.sandraandwoo.com/gaia/2011/11/04/the-red-hall-003/ Alissa is "shocked"]] that magical genius Lilith can't read minds, but she then points out it might be a good thing to not know what runs through the heads of men thinking about Lilith. |
| 396 | * A problem for both Vriska and Aranea Serket in ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}''. They go to extreme lengths in order to get attention and be admired, because they can sense the thoughts directed towards them. Vriska also says this is why she never tries to control Karkat's mind: she certainly ''could'', but she hates being in contact even for a second with his acerbic, hate-filled psyche. |
| 397 | * ''Webcomic/TheLastDaysOfFoxhound'': |
| 398 | ** Psycho Mantis's loathing of all humanity and ''especially'' the human sex drive comes from his incredibly strong mind-reading: without his mask, which serves as either a PowerLimiter or a MagicFeather, he reads ''everyone's'' minds, which is both debilitating (because it overwhelms him with a torrent of mental "noise") and traumatising (because so much of that mental noise is about sex). Just the ''thought'' of experiencing that causes psychic wolf Berthold to feel [[SympathyForTheDevil some measure of pity for Mantis, monster though he is]]. |
| 399 | ** [[http://www.doctorshrugs.com/foxhound/comic.php?id=67 Weak telepath Eddie]] discovers that Sniper Wolf has been replaced by Decoy Octopus by picking up Octopus's surface thoughts about no longer having testicles, making the experience awkward and unpleasant for both of them at once. |
| 400 | * Jigsaw Forte from ''Webcomic/LastRes0rt'' suffers from this, [[http://www.lastres0rt.com/2007/11/among-the-blind-the-one-eyed-man-is-insane/ to the point of having a panic attack when a crowded room gets all abuzz.]] Daisy can bring Jigsaw [[http://www.lastres0rt.com/2009/01/i-bet-she-would-love-some-earplugs/ pretty close to the brink when she panics, too.]] It gets worse when she discovers that she has a hard time telling the difference between what she hears and ''what she reads'', causing her to mix the two up and respond to information she's not even supposed to know. |
| 401 | * ''Webcomic/MousouTelepathy'': Ayako Nakano can see people's thoughts (and apparently can't prevent it). While some of her grief comes from being aware of other people's ugly thoughts and double standards, most of it stems from her classmate Toda Hayato, who has a crush on her... along with a very lewd imagination. |
| 402 | * In ''Webcomic/NobodyScores'', the broadcast inanity of [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Jane Doe]]'s thoughts [[http://nobodyscores.loosenutstudio.com/index.php?id=374 is fatal]] to virtually everyone subjected to them. |
| 403 | * In ''Webcomic/TheNonAdventuresOfWonderella'', Intelli-Ape [[http://nonadventures.com/2012/01/14/the-kong-and-short-of-it/ comes to this conclusion]] after making the mistake of prying too deeply into [[StepfordSmiler Wonderita]]'s mind. |
| 404 | * At one point in ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'', Durkon is held prisoner by an evil negative energy spirit that's going through all his memories. Durkon can't actually break free, but if the spirit taunts him too obnoxiously, he can punish it by forcing it to relive memories of him being sick. |
| 405 | -->'''Evil Spirit:''' Biology is disgusting! I don't know how the living can live like that!\ |
| 406 | '''Durkon:''' Ye've na ev'n seen half tha gross stuff ''skin'' can do yet! Yer gonna love tha extended pus-squeezin' montage I got lined up! |
| 407 | * A strip from ''Webcomic/RareCandyTreatment'', which serves as the page image, has a Medicham attempting to read the mind of a Shiftry using Nasty Plot. It doesn't go well. |
| 408 | * ''Webcomic/ASofterWorld'' [[http://asofterworld.com/index.php?id=281 281]]; "I thought a psychic girlfriend would see the real me. And she did. I just didn't think she'd call the police." |
| 409 | * In ''Webcomic/StringTheory2009'', Dr. Schtein only invades Phineas' mind in order to stun him in a fight, but then has to take a moment to recover from absorbing the memories of a sadistic, psychopathic SerialKiller. |
| 410 | * In ''Webcomic/StrongFemaleProtagonist'', Patrick, a former supervillan, received his telepathy at a young age, the trauma motivated him try and take over the world as a teenager after coming to the conclusion that the world was not worth saving. |
| 411 | * A more positive, but still awkward, version in ''Webcomic/ThinkBeforeYouThink'', a romance about an involuntary telepath. One of the difficult situations that arises: when he overhears a stranger contemplating suicide, how can he be the friend she needs without seeming unfaithful to the girl he's dating? |
| 412 | * In ''Webcomic/TwoKinds'', the dragon Princess Reni reads Trace Legacy's mind to verify his identity. During this, she gets flustered when she comes across memories of him being intimate with Flora. Later, Nora detects her intrusion on his memories. |
| 413 | -->'''Nora:''' You know, young one, it's rude to pry. |
| 414 | * Early in ''Webcomic/VoldemortsChildren'', [[spoiler:Harry discovers that he is a Legilimens]]. Unfortunately, this trope is in full force. |
| 415 | [[/folder]] |
| 416 | |
| 417 | [[folder:Web Originals]] |
| 418 | * Brought up in ''WebVideo/AfterHours'' when discussing what the best individual superpower would be. |
| 419 | -->'''Katie:''' I only get to hear like three percent of what people are thinking and I already hate almost everyone. If I could read minds, I'd probably just end up knocking motherfuckers out. |
| 420 | * One story in ''Blog/BadTwoSentenceHorror'' is about a person who could read minds when making physical contact with someone. When he shakes hands with his future boss, [[AmbiguousSituation whatever the boss was thinking]] was so unspeakably vile that he started [[TearsOfBlood bleeding from his eyes]]. |
| 421 | * In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3QR1OMJMo0 a 2016 short]] by ''WebAnimation/DorklyOriginals'', a Haunter uses Dream Eater on a sleeping Pikachu, only to find its dreams rather racy, including sexual fantasies with its trainer and a Tentacruel. |
| 422 | * In Episode 37 of ''WebVideo/DragonBallZAbridged'', Piccolo tries to reach Gohan telepathically. Instead, he gets Vegeta [[TheFightingNarcissist thinking about looking at himself naked as a Super Saiyan]], Tien singing "Cat Loves Food" in his mind, then trying to reach King Kai, [[BrickJoke only to get interrupted by]] Creator/GeorgeTakei. |
| 423 | * In ''Literature/{{Elcenia}}'', Hearers go mad from [[PowerIncontinence constantly]] reading the minds of ''inanimate objects''. |
| 424 | * In Episode 7 of ''WebVideo/HellsingUltimateAbridged'', Zorin is trying to MindRape Seras, only the first "repressed memory" she digs into is one of [[ItMakesSenseInContext her being sensually fed blood by Integra]]. Zorin decides to just leave that memory behind, stating that it "needs context". She's also disturbed when she tries to enthrall a Wild Geese member with illusions of his loved ones and the illusion that ''works'' is [[spoiler:Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog with a GagPenis erection]]. |
| 425 | * In one of ''WebAnimation/LevelUP'''s "literal Franchise/{{Pokemon}} moves" [[https://youtu.be/3uW166yY7D4 videos]], Medicham uses Mind Reader on Mr. Mime and learns Mr. Mime's [[EmbarrassingBrowserHistory Google search history]]. |
| 426 | * In ''WebVideo/MyLittlePonyTheMentallyAdvancedSeries'', Zecora's curse gives Fluttershy the ability to read minds. She insists that it's this trope while everyone else bitches that she got the cool power. |
| 427 | * PlayedForLaughs when WebVideo/TheNostalgiaChick tries copying the technique from ''Film/WhatWomenWant'' above to read the minds of men. She kidnaps WebVideo/ToddInTheShadows as usual and actually falls over in frustration when she finds out that [[Creator/AllisonPregler Lupa]] is the ''only'' thing that exists in his brain. AllMenArePerverts, apparently (not that she isn't). Also, they all think the exact same word over and over. |
| 428 | * ''Literature/RaisingAngels'': All rooms in Mind Hall are singles and the room doors come standard with a very hardy lock. Being capable of reading the minds of man is apparently not conductive to a good nights sleep. Telepathics are stated to be a paranoid lot. |
| 429 | * The fanart of ''WebVideo/TwitchPlaysPokemonRed'' [[http://25.media.tumblr.com/07a92b24f91b56fda8a15e84505b3645/tumblr_n1hwosBvSV1su6eopo6_1280.gif depicts the]] [[http://imgur.com/5SXZ7Rd unpleasantness]] of reading a MindHive. |
| 430 | * ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse'': |
| 431 | ** Phase uses this to his advantage when dealing with Fubar and others attempting to read his mind: In the case of Fubar, [[CoolAndUnusualPunishment he focuses hard on the sweet serenades]] of Music/BritneySpears. |
| 432 | ** Eldritch takes this one further, by turning her brain into a minefield of bad memories. And she's got plenty of them. |
| 433 | [[/folder]] |
| 434 | |
| 435 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 436 | * In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/DextersLaboratory'', the reverse of this trope happens. Dexter invents a machine that lets him read people's mind, but it backfires and instead causes everyone to read ''his'' mind. And since he literally can't keep his thoughts to himself, everyone can hear exactly what he thinks of them. |
| 437 | * In a variation on this trope, in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Duckman}}'', a New Age spiritualist decides to try and read Duckman's aura, which she describes as his essence, the very nature of his soul. She then runs away, shrieking in absolute horror. |
| 438 | * In ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'', Timmy wishes to get mind-reading powers, but unfortunately, his fairy-obsessed teacher figures that out and exploits this trope by getting everyone to stand around Timmy and think, causing the banal thoughts of everyone around him to overload his head. |
| 439 | * In the fourth ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' movie, "[[Recap/FuturamaM4IntoTheWildGreenYonder Into the Wild Green Yonder]]", Fry suddenly gains mind-reading abilities and is soon overwhelmed by the random brain-chatter of everyone around him. After he figures out what's going on ([[TheDitz and realizes he isn't invisible]]), a mind-reading hobo gives him a TinfoilHat to block the brainwaves. |
| 440 | * In an episode of the US Acres side of ''WesternAnimation/GarfieldAndFriends'', aliens give Orson the pig a device that gives him the power to read minds ("How did you know I wanted the power to read minds?" Orson asked, and quickly realized it was a stupid question). He uses it to topple a corrupt game show, but then throws it into a river because it's a power he decides he doesn't want. The episode closes with the alien on his ship in the company of another alien, who is concerned that the Earthling would not know what to do with it. The alien who gave the device to Orson then turns on the viewscreen and they remotely observe Orson throwing the device into the river, and the episode ends with the alien who gave it to him saying "See? He knew exactly what to do with it." |
| 441 | * Parodied in ''WesternAnimation/HeManAndTheMastersOfTheUniverse2002'' when Teela briefly gains telepathic powers and is driven up the wall by learning just how [[SurroundedByIdiots crazy and bizarre all her friends really are]]; the first thing she hears is [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Ram-Man]] casually wondering if he could knock over the building they’re in by head-butting it, and it only goes downhill from there. |
| 442 | * ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'': |
| 443 | ** J'onn J'onzz goes through this from time to time. In "[[Recap/JusticeLeagueS2E3And4TabulaRasa Tabula Rasa]]", he is forced to read the thoughts of an entire city. The effect is... disillusioning, to say the least. While he isn't surprised by the hatred, the pure and constant [[ItsAllAboutMe selfishness]] of people almost makes him leave the team because he is so disgusted by it, and [[HumansAreFlawed wonders why he should even help them]]. He [[RestoredMyFaithInHumanity regains his faith in humanity]], though, [[RousseauWasRight when he stumbles upon a search party looking for a little girl in the woods]] and "hears" all the thoughts concerned purely with helping a lost little kid. Even the ones who aren't even related to her only care about finding her. |
| 444 | ** Invoked by Batman in "[[Recap/JusticeLeagueS2E5And6OnlyADream Only a Dream]]" when almost the entire League is incapacitated by a DreamWalker villain. Batman is the last of them to keep himself awake, and warns the bad guy that [[DarkAndTroubledPast his mind is not a nice place to be]] -- as in, even a hostile intruder would take damage from the kind of thoughts Bruce lives with all the time. |
| 445 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPandaLegendsOfAwesomeness'' episode "Mind Over Matters", Tong Fo tries to acquire his father's mind reading power, but Po accidentally gets it instead. Po at first thinks it's awesome, until he learns from Master Shifu that Tong Fo's father went insane from it. Sure enough, Po doesn't know how to turn off the mind reading and is almost driven to madness, to the point where he goes to Tong Fo for help. Tong Fo complies...only to reveal that the process to remove the mind reading power involves melting Po's brain. Thankfully, the Fearsome Five are able to save Po and destroy the power before that happens. |
| 446 | * In ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'', Adrian Graye attempts to sift through Gus' thoughts to find the location of the Looking Glass Graveyard, only for Gus to unconsiously cast a spell in self defense that causes anyone who gets near him to relive all their worst memories on repeat. Graye is rendered catatonic from the experience and he's still pretty shaken up from it a week later. |
| 447 | * ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'': |
| 448 | ** In "[[Recap/RickAndMortyS3E8MortysMindBlowers Morty's Mind Blowers]]", Rick gives Morty a device allowing him to hear the thoughts of animals, and he is horrified to learn that the world is controlled by a secret cabal of squirrels. When a few squirrels catch on to Morty's powers as a "Dolittle", he is suddenly chased through the streets by dozens of squirrels. |
| 449 | ** In "[[Recap/RickAndMortyS4E4ClawAndHoarderSpecialRicktimsMorty Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktims Morty]]", after Jerry returns with a cat that can talk for unexplained reasons, Rick performs a mind-scan to learn its secret. Immediately both Rick and Jerry are disgusted and horrified by seeing the truth, demanding the cat leaves while the both of them continue freaking out. |
| 450 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeries'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeriesS1E14TheSlaverWeapon The Slaver Weapon]]", the cat-like alien Kzinti have a telepath that they use to eavesdrop on their human (or half-Vulcan) prisoners. Spock instructs the crew to think of eating delicious raw salads, which disgusts the meat-eating Kzinti so much that they can't continue to read their minds. |
| 451 | * The ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsRebels'' episode "[[Recap/StarWarsRebelsTheSiegeOfLothal The Siege of Lothal]]" has a variant. [[spoiler:When Ahsoka Tano uses a Force connection to reach out to the mind of the hotshot pilot who is attacking the ''Ghost'', she learns firsthand that not only is this the Sith Lord Darth Vader, but also that, deep down, Vader is her former mentor Anakin Skywalker. The combination of this shocking revelation and the sheer power of the Dark Side veiling Vader's mind causes Ahsoka to scream and then faint. When she wakes up, she denies knowing anything about the Imperial pilot, and it's made clear to the audience that she's lying and deeply in denial about it.]] |
| 452 | * In ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice2010'', when Martain Manhunter tries to enter the Joker's mind, it ends with him doubling over in pain. |
| 453 | -->'''Joker:''' Scary in there, isn't it? |
| 454 | [[/folder]] |
| 455 |
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