| 1 | %% |
| 2 | %% |
| 3 | %% |
| 4 | %% |
| 5 | %% This list of examples has been alphabetized. Please add your example in the proper place. Thanks! |
| 6 | %% |
| 7 | %% |
| 8 | %% |
| 9 | %% |
| 10 | %% |
| 11 | ->''"In that direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives a Hatter: and in that direction," waving the other paw, “lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they’re both mad."''\ |
| 12 | ''"But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.''\ |
| 13 | ''"Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."''\ |
| 14 | ''"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.''\ |
| 15 | ''"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."'' |
| 16 | -->-- '''Creator/LewisCarroll''', ''Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland'' |
| 17 | |
| 18 | It may be some [[CloudCuckoolander quirky ideas]], the meddling of a CorruptCorporateExecutive or other villain, [[MedicateTheMedium having noticed something]] InvisibleToNormals, an attempt to dodge jail by getting a jury to call {{insanity|Defense}}, or just a good old fashioned screw-up, but somehow a reasonably sane character undergoes severe therapy, often in an [[BedlamHouse asylum]]. |
| 19 | |
| 20 | Despite their relative normality, they struggle to convince the therapists of the fact. And the more they struggle, the closer they get to lunacy itself, [[FisherKingdom sometimes becoming indistinguishable from the others around them.]] |
| 21 | |
| 22 | This can be a one-off, or a background for a villain (and in some cases may cause MotiveDecay), or a normal who's cut through the {{Masquerade}}. If it's a main character, it's a good reason for writers to examine their motives through the critical psychiatrist's eyes, and see what makes them tick. |
| 23 | |
| 24 | If a character undergoes this long enough, they may be "cured" of their "delusions" [[TenMinuteRetirement rendering them useless or troublesome]] until their friends can bring them back, or they may [[TheMadHatter revel in their madness]] while doing what they did before, possibly with psychobabble. Or they may just end up AxCrazy. |
| 25 | |
| 26 | Different from a CuckooNest plot, as the asylum reality is emphatically real, and not in conflict with anything else that happens. Can be combined with ThroughTheEyesOfMadness. |
| 27 | |
| 28 | A sub-trope of WrongfullyCommitted, something that will indubitably go hand in hand together. See also MistakenForInsane and HadToComeToPrisonToBeACrook. |
| 29 | ---- |
| 30 | !!Examples: |
| 31 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 32 | |
| 33 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 34 | * ''ComicBook/{{Batman}}'': |
| 35 | ** Professor Milo is supposed to have been committed to Arkham Asylum while under the influence of madness gas, and then failed to convince the wardens he was sane. |
| 36 | ** At least two other Franchise/{{Batman}} stories have used the same idea; in ''Batman Villains: Secret Files And Origins'' a man accused of murdering his family is locked in Arkham as an excuse for the story to give us a tour of the place, and Dr. Arkham gets the news that he was innocent just as he goes AxCrazy. In ''ComicBook/ArkhamAsylumLivingHell'' Warren White, a CorruptCorporateExecutive guilty of stock fraud, makes the mistake of pleading insanity in a Gotham court and is sentenced to Arkham Asylum, where the abuse of his fellow inmates drives him over the edge. |
| 37 | ** Actually, it's a fairly accepted fact that if you aren't crazy going into Arkham, you're sure as hell crazy coming out. |
| 38 | ** Batman has also taken advantage of this. He once put Ra's Al Ghul in Arkham with a prescription for heavy medication to keep him in check. He also did this to a black ops agent who helped frame him (Bruce Wayne) for murder on secret orders from the [[PresidentEvil president]]. The last time the agent is seen he is ranting that he's not crazy, [[YouHaveToBelieveMe he's a secret agent who framed Bruce Wayne on confidential orders from the president]]. The doctors don't believe him. |
| 39 | * In "Out of My Mind," from the Creator/ECComics title ''Crime Suspense Stories'', a woman feigns episodes of violent insanity so that when she finally kills her husband she's committed to a hospital, where she plans to gradually "get better," and inherit her husband's fortune upon discharge. However, the constant ice-water baths and ravings of her fellow patients soon drive her to the brink of madness for real. When she finally confesses her ruse to her supervising physician, [[spoiler: her husband's brother, he reveals that he knew she'd been feigning insanity the whole time and thus intends to keep her there indefinitely]]. |
| 40 | * In Creator/AlanMoore's ''ComicBook/FromHell'', [[spoiler: Annie Crook]] suffers a particularly nightmarish version of this trope after [[SheKnowsTooMuch she becomes privy to certain secrets that Queen Victoria would rather keep under wraps]]. [[spoiler: She's dragged to an insane asylum by Victoria's goons...then [[UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper William Gull]] makes her ''authentically'' insane by surgically removing her thyroid gland, turning her into a gibbering lunatic who's fully incapable of spreading the Crown's secrets.]] |
| 41 | * Todd Casil, from the ''ComicBook/JohnnyTheHomicidalManiac'' Spinoff ''ComicBook/{{Squee}}!'' was sent to an insane asylum by the end of his series, despite being one of the few sane characters ever presented in the comic. It is implied he quickly escaped somehow, however. |
| 42 | * ''ComicBook/{{Tintin}}'': |
| 43 | ** In "[[Recap/TintinCigarsOfThePharaoh The Cigars of the Pharaoh]]", Tintin is committed (he really wanted to commit two other guys who were under the permanent influence [[ChemicallyInducedInsanity of a drug]], but the BigBad had a letter faked which claimed that ''Tintin'' was the mad one, and dangerous too. Oh, and that he would insist that it wasn't him but his friends who were really crazy.) |
| 44 | ** In "[[Recap/TintinTheBlackIsland The Black Island]]", [[MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate Dr. J.W. Müller]] plots to send him to an insane asylum he works at, and inflict him a "special treatment" that will make him genuinely insane. And he implies it's not the first time. |
| 45 | [[/folder]] |
| 46 | |
| 47 | [[folder:Fan Works]] |
| 48 | * ''Fanfic/{{Bird}}'': One of the running themes is that most of the patients are not actually ''insane''. Sveta being a chief example. However, all of them are dangerous, and many do have psychological problems they are dealing with. Being locked up in an asylum with the actual crazy ones does not do any favors for the ones that are sane, however. |
| 49 | * Sweets goes into an asylum to help solve a murder in the ''{{Series/Bones}}'' fic [[https://m.fanfiction.net/s/10336574/1/The-Psychologist-in-the-Institution “The Psychiatrist in the Institution.]]”. He endures shock therapy torture and drugs and ends up in bad shape and nearly insane by the time he’s rescued. The rest of the team has to work fast to help him recover before he’s placed in another hospital for his own good. Ig wouldn’t have been another evil place but the others know it would take him from the people he’s most comfortable with and deal a setback to recovery. |
| 50 | * Music/SpiceGirls [[RealPersonFic RPF]] fic, ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/21828973 Just Taken]]'', Melanie was sectioned thanks to her eating disorder. Melanie tried to explain that she was already at a place of safety, which was another hospital because she and her friends were injured in a violent fight against a group of hoodlums. While some of the nursing staff were aware of this, most still went though with the psychological examination. |
| 51 | [[/folder]] |
| 52 | |
| 53 | [[folder:Film — Animated]] |
| 54 | * Disney's ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'' movie has Belle's father being imprisoned in the asylum because Gaston wants him out of the way so that he can try and marry Belle. |
| 55 | [[/folder]] |
| 56 | |
| 57 | [[folder:Film — Live-Action]] |
| 58 | * In ''Film/TwelveMonkeys'', the protagonist (a man from the post-apocalyptic future sent back in time to try to prevent an unprecedented disaster) can't function in modern society and is quickly institutionalized, where his claims of being a time traveler from the future don't really help. He spends much of the rest of the movie more than half convinced that his memories of time travel are just a fantasy. |
| 59 | * Mob Boss Carmine Falcone does this in ''Film/BatmanBegins''. After getting beaten up by Batman and found at the scene of a crime by police, he's facing serious jail time for the first time, despite usually being untouchable by the law. So while in jail he cuts his wrists in a fake suicide attempt, so that he will be taken to [[BedlamHouse Arkham]] and can go for the insanity defense. [[OriginalPositionFallacy He believes he can blackmail the head shrink, Dr. Crane, into backing him up]]. Unfortunately, Crane has concocted something that creates pure terror, and a dose of this leaves Falcone insane ''for real''. |
| 60 | * In ''[[Film/{{Borsalino}} Borsalino & Co.]]'', Volpone makes Siffredi out to be a mentally ill person and Siffredi is locked up in an asylum. |
| 61 | * In ''Film/BroncoBilly'', John Arlington, Antoinette Lily's husband, is jailed in an asylum. This was arranged by Edgar Lipton to spare him the electrical chair. |
| 62 | * In ''Film/CrazyPeople'', Emory is sent to a mental institution after he flips out after finding out that his fiancé has taken most of his things and left him. And embraces their madness! |
| 63 | * In ''Film/ACureForWellness'', Lockhart starts to hallucinate as he undergoes the 'treatment'. He accuses Dr Volmer of gaslighting him, though it's not certain to what extent this is true. |
| 64 | * In ''Film/Europe51'', Irene's family deals with her new class consciousness and desire to help the poor by...locking her up in an asylum. |
| 65 | * ''Film/{{Frances}}'': While she's definitely suffering from substance abuse, she's not nearly as mentally ill as her fellow patients...at least, not until she's been trapped there a while. As Frances puts it, "If you're treated like a patient, [[BecomingTheMask you're apt to act like one]]." |
| 66 | * In ''Film/LeGendarmeANewYork'', Cruchot consults a shrink because he sees her daughter everywhere in New York whereas she is supposed to be in France. The therapy makes him a little crazy. |
| 67 | * ''Film/{{Good Guys Wear Black|1978}}'' (1978). Creator/ChuckNorris' character tries to force a corrupt politician to resign, but the politician reveals that their only witness (his aide) is incommunicado in the psychiatric ward after 'going insane'. So Chuck makes the politician disappear permanently, and a news report (arranged by his CIA friend) states that the politician has resigned and will be replaced by the aide once he gets out of the hospital where he's having a 'routine medical checkup'. |
| 68 | * ''Film/TheHandmaiden'': Fujiwara's plan is to commit Hideko to a mental institution after their wedding in order to have her money free and clear to split with Sook-hee. Flashbacks reveal that Hideko's uncle would threaten to send her to an institution when she was a child and did not fully submit to his control. [[spoiler: It is Sook-hee who is actually sent to the institution as part of Fujiwara and Hideko's joint plan, but she is freed in only a few days as part of ''her'' and Hideko's plan.]] |
| 69 | * In ''Film/Holocaust2000'', Robert gets committed to an asylum after trying to kill Angel upon him confirming that he's the Antichrist. |
| 70 | * In the Sam Neill movie ''Film/Hostage1992'', a British agent mentions that due to a section of the Mental Health Act, he can be forcibly admitted to an institution and undergo compulsive drug therapy as well, with only members of his immediate family allowed access -- he only has an ex-wife, who doesn't apply as family. His ex is aghast and asks if ''he'' did this to others, causing the agent to respond coldly, "They were the enemy..." |
| 71 | * ''Film/KidnappingCaucasianStyle'': After being committed, Shurik tries to enlist the help of two other patients to escape. The gesture he makes is suggesting to share a bottle of vodka among three of them (a common proposal and practice in USSR - that's why he wiggles three fingers). The two patients look at him in annoyance and tell him that it's a sin to make fun of sick people - because they are all locked up in asylum with no alcohol shops (obviously). Shurik insists he is serious, but he has to purchase it in town, so they eventually help to catapult him on Edik's truck. |
| 72 | * The wonderfully quirky French film ''Film/KingOfHearts'', in which the madmen become the sane people in an abandoned, war-torn town. |
| 73 | * In ''Film/KPax'', the main character "prot" claims to be an alien who is able to travel through light rays. Believing him insane, he is handed over to a New York hospital psychiatric ward. During the film, he is revealed to have uncanny skills and knowledge, and also while under hypnotic regression he seems to remember traumatic events that happened to a man named Robert Porter. By the end of the film, prot announces it's time for him to depart from the planet, leaving behind his catatonic body. The film [[GainaxEnding leaves the viewer wondering]] whether prot really was an alien who took Porter as a human host or whether he really is just an insane man whose catatonia is a result of being forced to confront his delusions. ([[Literature/KPax The novel]] that the movie is based on has two sequels that confirm his alien origins.) |
| 74 | * In ''Film/LeLion'', Léo Milan is locked up in a mental hospital. He pretends to be a spy who is stuck there because he was in the way of powerful people. His psychiatrist eventually buys his story. [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] in the end, when it is revealed that Léo Milan is actually a madman. |
| 75 | * In ''Film/Mandibles2021'', Agnès is thought to be crazy because she says that she saw a giant fly. Moreover, she is thought to have devoured the little dog. So she is brought to a psychiatric hospital in an ambulance. |
| 76 | * In ''Film/MermaidDown'', a mermaid's [[BrokenAngel tail is cut off]], and she's placed in a psychiatric institute with patients and staff who think she's an insane, catatonic human. |
| 77 | * In ''Film/OneFlewOverTheCuckoosNest'', [=McMurphy=] pretends insanity because he figures a stint in a mental hospital will be easier than the prison farm sentence he was going to get; he finds himself indefinitely detained in an institution ruled by the sadistic Nurse Ratched. [[spoiler:He ends up getting lobotomized as punishment for angrily strangling her when she had caused another patient to kill himself.]] |
| 78 | * At one point late in ''Film/TheOracle'', the attempts on Jennifer's life end up getting her put in the nuthouse. Granted, by the time the museum chase is over, she's in hysterics, so the museum guard does the only thing he can do for her at this point: call the men in white coats. |
| 79 | * This is part of the premise of ''Film/{{Quills}}'', based on the real-life incarceration of the Creator/MarquisDeSade in Charenton Asylum. The Marquis' substantial wealth had allowed him to be committed rather than executed and to enjoy a substantial level of material comfort. But once the new administrator takes over and starts depriving the Marquis of his possessions and basically begins torturing him as a form of "therapy", Sade's mental state rapidly deteriorates. |
| 80 | * In ''Film/RevengeOfThePinkPanther'', Inspector Clouseau gets taken to an insane asylum while DisguisedInDrag, and tries to convince the cops that he's actually Jacques Clouseau, Europe's greatest detective. Another patient retorts that ''he'' is Europe's greatest detective... [[NapoleonDelusion Hercule Poirot]]. It doesn't help that the news has mistakenly reported that Clouseau has been assassinated. |
| 81 | * ''Film/{{Shock}}'': Dr. Cross persuades Paul to allow him to care for Jamet at his sanitarium. Inside the facility, Nurse Jordan, Dr. Cross's lover, aids in keeping Janet sedated and disoriented. Dr. Cross and Elaine first decide to make Janet forget the incident, but then they decide to discredit her proclaiming Janet insane. |
| 82 | * In the 1963 film ''Film/ShockCorridor'', written and directed by Samuel Fuller, a reporter gets himself committed to an asylum to solve the death of an inmate and (he hopes) win the Pulitzer Prize. It doesn't end well. |
| 83 | * ''Film/ShutterIsland'': When Teddy finds Solando, she explains to him that she was declared insane to lock her away while she actually was of sound mind. And the same seems to be happening to Teddy. |
| 84 | * Sarah Connor in ''Film/Terminator2JudgmentDay'' was definitely more insane after spending years in a mental asylum (attacking the psychiatrist) than she was before (merely believing in the Terminators). Although it is possible that her experience in the first Terminator set her a path which leads her to violence, including trying to blow up a computer factory. It's also possible that knowing what she knows about the future [[GoMadFromTheRevelation addled her brains a bit]]. Based on what we see, it's clear that she was subjected to sexual abuse by the staff and another mistreatment by her therapist. |
| 85 | * In ''Film/TheWolfman2010'', Lawrence gets locked in an asylum for ranting that he's a werewolf. He'd previously been committed as a boy, to help him suppress the trauma of his mother's death, [[spoiler: because he'd been ranting (quite truthfully) that his ''father'' was a werewolf and had killed her.]] One of his psychiatrists makes the grave mistake of showing him to colleagues when the moon is about to get full, in hopes of showing his delusion when he doesn't transform. It doesn't end well for them. |
| 86 | [[/folder]] |
| 87 | |
| 88 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 89 | * ''Literature/AllSouls'': This is what happens to Davey. While he did have mental issues, his time in the mental hospital only made it worse. |
| 90 | * In Philippa Gregory's ''Literature/TheBoleynInheritance'', Jane Boleyn pretends to be mad to escape being executed for treason. Later chapters suggest that she, already self-deluded, has finally gone over the edge. To no avail, sadly, as the King has changed the law to accommodate her death. |
| 91 | * The catch behind ''Literature/CatchTwentyTwo'' is that you can only be removed from flight duties because of insanity. Only someone who was sane would try to prove they were insane to stop being sent on missions. |
| 92 | * There is an interesting example in Creator/HGWells' short story, "The Country of the Blind". The eponymous society believes that the protagonist, the OnlySaneMan, is insane with his talk of sight, and thus propose to cure him by gouging out his eyes. |
| 93 | * Susanna Kaysen's auto-biographical book ''Literature/GirlInterrupted'' is an interesting exploration of this trope. It's debatable how mad we'd consider her today, but she was certainly adversely affected by her experience in the asylum, as were other inmates. On the other hand, it helped her get over her borderline disorder. |
| 94 | * Ana is ''Literature/TheGlimpse'', leading to the realisation that they aren't so different. |
| 95 | * Played with in ''Literature/InFuryBorn''. After the attack on Matheson's World, when Allie starts displaying unusual behavior (on account of having one of the Greek Furies in her head), she is placed in a mental hospital. She then decides to play up her apparent insanity in order to hide the fact that she ''isn't'' insane, so she and the Fury can escape and start their RoaringRampageOfRevenge. |
| 96 | * Gabriel García Marquez once wrote a short story titled "I Only Came to Use the Phone", about an actress who, after a car accident, ends in a nearby mental institution to ask for a phone to call her husband but is confused for a patient and is interned. She tries to convince the doctors of her sanity, but she is systematically ignored and treated as another crazy. When her husband and her agent finally find her, she has been rendered totally insane by the mistreatment and must remain in the institution, this time for real. |
| 97 | ** A similar premise was expanded 5 years later by Torcuato Luca de Tena in his novel ''Los Renglones Torcidos de Dios'' (The twisted lines of God) where this time a detective Alice Gould (an AliceAllusion) checks herself into a mental institute after having made arrangements with the director of the hospital that she will be released when her investigation was complete having created a false medical history file for her. However, the psychiatrist she spoke to happens to be on leave and never broke her cover to anyone else so she is stuck there until he returns to prove her innocence. After a number of hope spots crushed including her contact claiming he had never heard of the cover story she still keeps her resolve and makes friends with both the inmates and the staff to the point that many are convinced of her sanity. Finally, the staff and inmates stage a coup demanding that the director be fired for negligence to realize her sanity. When a new director is brought in to the Hospital she does her due diligence on the case and [[spoiler:the truth finally comes out: her "fake" medical file is actually completely true, she was abused and abandoned by her husband and taken in by a friend, the same friend who first took her to the hospital at the beginning of the novel and he was also the doctor who wrote the ''very real'' medical file. The detective story is just an extremely detailed delusion she created for herself that managed to fool everyone around her.]] |
| 98 | * Creator/FredricBrown's "Come and Go Mad" involves a character who had once [[NapoleonDelusion believed he was Napoleon]] being returned to an asylum to uncover a conspiracy. In fact, he really ''was'' Napoleon, having been body-swapped by the real conspirators--red and black ''ants'' who have secretly manipulated all of human history. He [[GoMadFromTheRevelation goes mad from the revelation]], is given electroshock therapy and is sent home from the hospital "cured"--though in fact he now has the delusion that he is not Napoleon, but a salesman. |
| 99 | * In ''Literature/OneFlewOverTheCuckoosNest'', [=McMurphy=] pretends insanity because he figures a stint in a mental hospital will be easier than the prison farm sentence he was going to get; he finds himself indefinitely detained in an institution ruled by the sadistic Nurse Ratched. [[spoiler:He ends up getting lobotomized as punishment for making a nuisance of himself.]] |
| 100 | * ''Literature/PhryneFisher'': Turns out to be what happened to Alicia Waddington-Forsythe in ''Death at Victoria Dock'', as her stepmother sent her to be institutionalized by a Freudian who assumed her experiences with incest — including her brother sleeping with her stepmother — were part of an Oedipus complex. |
| 101 | * British spy Literature/{{Quiller}} hides (as a self-committed patient) in a mental institution from a hitman who's stalking him in ''Quiller's Run''. He doesn't go crazy, but the atmosphere of the place does put him on edge, so he engages in a reckless gambit -- deliberately revealing his location so the hitman will come there, so Quiller can tackle him on territory he knows. |
| 102 | * The protagonist of ''Literature/TheSerialKillersClub'' insists this isn't the case. After all, unlike the other club members, he hasn't killed anyone who wasn't trying to kill him. Of course, if any of them realize this, he has to bump them off, so his body count [[NeverOneMurder grows higher and higher]] as the club membership dwindles--and his thought processes grow more and more skew. |
| 103 | * ''Literature/ShutterIsland'': When Teddy finds Solando, she explains to him that she was declared insane to lock her away while she actually was of sound mind. And the same seems to be happening to Teddy. [[TomatoInTheMirror Or is it?]] |
| 104 | * ''Literature/TheStringOfPearls'': According to the book's narration, many of the lunatics in Fogg's madhouse were merely eccentric or quirky - or even were perfectly sane but had someone in their life who wanted to be rid of them - before being committed, but the dismal conditions and cruel treament they faced drove them to actual madness. Sweeney Todd has Tobias locked away to prevent him from letting anyone know what he'd witnessed in the barber shop, and by the time Tobias manages to escape and reach safety, he's in a state of intense delirium and emotional shock. |
| 105 | [[/folder]] |
| 106 | |
| 107 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 108 | * [[IntrepidReporter Lana Winters]]' story on ''Series/AmericanHorrorStoryAsylum'' has her infiltrating the titular BedlamHouse to research the Bloody Face killer. She gets caught, and Sister Jude has her locked up in order to silence her from revealing the inhumane conditions inside, using [[LipstickLesbian her homosexuality]] ([[DeliberateValuesDissonance the show is set in]] TheSixties) as a figleaf to justify it and blackmailing her 'roommate' (who worked as a schoolteacher and risked losing her career if she'd been outed) into signing off on it. |
| 109 | * An episode of ''Series/{{Colditz}}'' involved one of the [=POWs=] pretending to be mad in order to be invalided out. Perhaps not surprisingly, after keeping up the pretense for months he really ''does'' go mad. This was an adaptation of a genuine Colditz escape. Unlike the fictional version, the officer that tried it both succeeded in getting sent home and was still relatively sane when he was. |
| 110 | * As part of a scheme JR Ewing had himself committed in ''Series/{{Dallas}}''; it didn't work out so well. |
| 111 | * A variant happened to Sierra's original personality, Priya Tsetsang in ''Series/{{Dollhouse}}''. She spurned the advances of a doctor, so he had her put in the asylum and put on enough drugs to drive her insane, then had her sent to the Dollhouse so he could hire her. |
| 112 | * In ''Series/DueSouth'', in the episode "Hawk And A Handsaw"[[note]]A literary allusion to Hamlet[[/note]] Fraser goes undercover in a mental hospital in order to investigate a string of suspicious suicides there. He gains admittance via [[SarcasticConfession turning up in his Red Serge uniform and telling the absolute truth about who he is and how he ended up in Chicago.]] |
| 113 | * ''Series/TheEqualizer''. In "The Last Campaign", a politician's aide [[YouKnowTooMuch who discovers her boss is involved in blackmail]] is placed in a mental institution after a faked drug overdose. [=McCall=] gets a friendly psychiatrist to commit him ("Someone I suspect you have wanted to commit for a very long time.") for 24 hours observation so he can make contact. Another of [=McCall=]'s friends, also posing as a patient, is placed in there as a bodyguard. Which is necessary as the politician has planted his own man among the staff, giving her doctored injections to drive her permanently crazy (and when this plan fails, arrange a more permanent suicide). |
| 114 | * ''Series/FatherBrown'': In "[[FatherBrownS2E2 The Maddest of All]]", Father Brown [[PlayingSick feigns insanity]] to be admitted into an asylum for an independent investigation into a murder case which turned out to be [[DisneyDeath not as simple as it first appeared]]. |
| 115 | * In ''Series/TheFlyingCestmir'', Cestmir's father is mistaken for insane and committed, because his son sometimes poses as him. Cestmir's adult form (caused by one of the magical flowers) looks like his father. Cestmir is a weird boy as it is, and with his cloudcuckoolander pre-teen behaviour, he just can't successfully pass for a sane adult. |
| 116 | * Invoked in ''Series/TheKilling''; Sarah is committed by the owner of a casino she had been harassing, who claims she was found threatening to jump off the roof. Their intention is to get her locked away for a few days so her cowboy investigation won't screw up an upcoming mayoral election which the casino has a large stake it. |
| 117 | * ''Series/MissionImpossible''. In "Committed", a corrupt state Governor has put the wife of a crime boss in a mental institution on an isolated island because she witnessed a murder, and IMF is tasked with delivering her to the trial before she's been driven insane. |
| 118 | %%* ''Series/{{Monk}}'' episode "Mr. Monk Goes to the Asylum" |
| 119 | * In the ''Series/{{Psych}}'' episode "Shawn, Interrupted", Shawn goes undercover in a mental institution in order to determine if a suspect is faking insanity in order to evade a murder conviction; it turns out that he’s not, that receiving proper treatment and medication helps him greatly, and that he was framed for the original murder. |
| 120 | * ''Series/{{Smallville}}'': |
| 121 | ** In the episode "Asylum", Lionel Luthor doses his son Lex with psychotropic drugs then commits him to a mental hospital, ordering Lex's memory erased via electroshock therapy, to stop Lex from investigating Lionel's shady dealings. While investigating Lex's sudden strange behaviour, [[ComicBook/{{Superman}} Clark Kent]] is forced to reveal his powers ''right in front of Lex'' to save Lex's life, then flees to avoid detection, leaving behind Lex who insists he saw Clark [[YouHaveToBelieveMe stop a car with his own hands]], seemingly further "proof" of his insanity. Lex is finally released once the electrotherapy has erased all his memories of what he had witnessed and he is no longer claiming Clark has superpowers. |
| 122 | ** A later episode has a Phantom Zone prisoner trying to take over Clark's body by trapping Clark in a mental simulation where everything that has happened in his life up to this point is actually a series of hallucinations that has led to him being committed over the delusional belief that he's an invincible alien. |
| 123 | * In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Frame of Mind", Riker has a role in a play as a character whom this happens to, but then it turns into a CuckooNest as play and reality start mixing, and Riker has to convince himself he's not insane. It turns out Riker is on a mission (which he's preparing for during the course of the play) during which he's captured by aliens who are using a MindProbe; his fantasy is a coping mechanism so he'll keep his sanity. |
| 124 | * An episode of ''Series/Stingray1985'' is featuring Ray on an undercover mission in a mental hospital after one of the doctors working there recruits him. As soon as he arrives he has to find out that she is actually a patient .. [[spoiler: but her reports were true and he has to stop Russian spies from interrogating a scientist who is a patient there.]] |
| 125 | * In ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'', Dean and Sam check themselves into an asylum (to hunt a murderous monster). Subverted by the fact that they actually begin to lose their minds. A wraith did it, and they get their minds back. |
| 126 | * An episode of ''Series/{{Threshold}}'' had a man who had been locked up in an insane asylum after killing his entire family when he was 12. After Threshold investigates, they discover that his family had been [[TouchedByVorlons infected by an alien artifact]], and given the circumstances, what he did was actually justified. His current mental instability is the result of having been in an asylum and on drugs for so long. He doesn't actually get released due to a need to keep up the {{Masquerade}}, but he is transferred to a better facility where he won't be put on drugs. |
| 127 | * ''Series/Tracker2001'' has this in “The Long Road Home”. Cole gets himself committed by wandering around in his underwear like when he first arrived on Earth. He wants to collect a fugitive inhabiting a patient but also hopes to find out what the guy knows about a recently found alien artifact. But he has to lower the guy’s medication to do it and it results in the guy getting aggressive and giving Cole truth serum just as he’s about to leave. Cole has to fight off the doctors and get outside to save Mel before the fugitive attacks her. |
| 128 | * ''Series/{{Wiseguy}}''. Undercover agent Vinnie Terranova spends an episode in the psychiatric ward after someone alters his hospital file to make it look like he's a violent inmate. While there he ends up confronting his guilt over having betrayed mob boss Sonny Steelgrave. |
| 129 | [[/folder]] |
| 130 | |
| 131 | [[folder:Music]] |
| 132 | * Music/{{Supertramp}}'s Asylum. The singer's protests against being called insane do nothing for him, as he is sent to an asylum, and by the end of the song, he believes he's dying. |
| 133 | [[/folder]] |
| 134 | |
| 135 | [[folder:Tabletop Games]] |
| 136 | * In the uncompleted, web-released ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'' supplement ''Van Richten's Guide To The Mists'', the chapter on outlanders (= people from other game-settings) has a scene in which a cleric from an outlander adventuring party pleads for his former comrade-at-arms to help free him from a mental asylum. Unfortunately, her therapy to rid her of her "delusion" that she'd come from another world has apparently worked: she refuses to help him escape and expresses the hope that he'll soon be "cured" like she was. |
| 137 | [[/folder]] |
| 138 | |
| 139 | [[folder:Theatre]] |
| 140 | * ''Theatre/ArsenicAndOldLace'': Mortimer Brewster spends the whole play worried he might have inherited his family's tendency to madness, while also trying to deal with his crazy younger brother and his murderous maiden aunts and older brother. In the end, Mortimer has discovered he's not related by blood to the Brewsters, but [[SanitySlippage he's gone a bit crazy anyway]]. |
| 141 | * In ''Theatre/TheDuchessOfMalfi'', the Duchess's brothers attempt to drive her insane with the help of half-a-dozen genuine madmen. Done right, it's a seriously disturbing scene. But then, what do you expect from John Webster? |
| 142 | * ''Theatre/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet'': |
| 143 | ** Johanna is sent to [[BedlamHouse Fogg's Asylum]] by Judge Turpin when her plan to elope with Anthony to get away from the DirtyOldMan is discovered. The movie doesn't dwell much on Johanna's mental or emotional state, but the stage play has her playing up her rather [[TheOphelia Ophelia-like state]] during the asylum sequence. |
| 144 | ** It's also revealed in the climax by Mrs. Lovett that Lucy Barker, after she was raped by Judge Turpin and drank the arsenic to try to kill herself, was sent to BedlamHouse (the ''actual'' one) instead of the hospital, which, along with the effects of the arsenic, drove the woman quite insane, leaving her as the crazed Beggar Woman. And Mrs. Lovett knew about this all along and didn't tell Sweeney about it until after he had killed her and recognized her just now. Needless to say, Sweeney does not take it well. |
| 145 | * ''Theatre/TwelfthNight'': Poor, poor Malvolio. Because he's a dark-clad, self-possessed puritan who frowns upon drinking and music, the woman he works for naturally thinks he's gone insane when he shows up wearing bright yellow stockings and obnoxiously flirting with her. Actually, he received [[LoveLetterLunacy a fake love letter]] that told him she'd love him better if he did these things. The servants who were in on the plot promptly chain him up in a dark room (the standard treatment for madmen back in the day) and mess with his mind by sending "the curate" (actually a CourtJester in disguise) to talk nonsense to him in the hopes of making him "sane." By the end of most productions, he's pretty much gone off the deep end. |
| 146 | [[/folder]] |
| 147 | |
| 148 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 149 | * In between ''VideoGame/BioShock1'' and ''VideoGame/BioShock2'' during the "Something in The Sea" advertising campaign, Mark Meltzer calls Detective Benny Stango and tells him he's going to kill himself. Benny, who up to this point has blamed Mark for his daughter's disappearance and vowed to bring him to justice, [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold freaks out and tells Mark to calm down]] as he goes to protect Mark from himself. However, the mental breakdown was a trick to get into Tollevue Hospital, where he could talk to Orrin Oscar Lutwidge, a man who knew information that Mark needed about Rapture. Benny was ''pissed'' when he figured out that Mark faked it. |
| 150 | * ''VideoGame/TheDarknessII'' has a confusing sub-plot that makes it look like the protagonist is actually in an insane asylum and the events of the game are nothing more than his delusions. Revealed to be a [[spoiler: BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind]]. |
| 151 | * ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion'': [[MadGod Sheogorath]]'s realm, The Shivering Isles (sometimes called [[MeaningfulName Madhouse]]), is basically a gigantic free-roam asylum and all of its residents are self-functioning inmates with at least some quirky mental disorder (even it's relatively mild or even slightly beneficial; creativity is one of Sheogorath's spheres, after all). One person though, a beggar named Uungor, believes that he's sane and that he's there by mistake. The thing is that he's so obsessed with escaping the Isles and proving/retaining his sanity that he's convinced that everyone is an agent of Sheogorath's trying to break him, and that anything that happens to him is part of a trick to make him lose his mind, proving that he really isn't right in the head. |
| 152 | * The DLC story for ''{{VideoGame/Outlast}}'', entitled "The Whistleblower'', starts off with the player character getting thrown into the Mount Massive Asylum and also [[GotVolunteered volunteered]] for the Morphogenic Engine Program because he sent an email out to Miles Upshur in order to blow the place wide open. Thankfully all ends well, however, and he's able to escape in the chaos when everything starts going horribly wrong for the asylum's owners. |
| 153 | * An orderly at a madhouse in ''{{VideoGame/Psychonauts}}'', named [[FamousAncestor Fred Bonaparte]], attempts to get through to a more reserved inmate by playing a strategy board game with him. However, after losing to the "madman" numerous times, the genetic spirit of Napoleon Bonaparte within him gets fed up and [[NapoleonDelusion attempts to take over his body]], causing the orderly to become an inmate himself. |
| 154 | * In ''VideoGame/{{Sanitarium}}'' the PlayerCharacter starts in the titular asylum, even though he may not be quite insane. |
| 155 | * In ''VideoGame/SecondSight'', the protagonist (and the LoveInterest) is drugged to make them appear insane and locked away to keep them from revealing a conspiracy (as they have PsychicPowers). Luckily they get better after the drugs have worn off. Unlike many uses of this trope, at least one psychiatrist seems angry with the way the protagonist is treated (albeit because the drug used is experimental having been tested on monkeys, rather than actually believing that they're really sane) and can be heard complaining to the orderlies about it. |
| 156 | * ''VideoGame/TheSims2'' fans created a SelfImposedChallenge based on this concept, called the Asylum Challenge. The player creates an ill-equipped BedlamHouse and fills it with inmates, only one of whom they are allowed to control-- [[SurroundedByIdiots the rest]] run on their [[ArtificialStupidity infamously inept free will]]. |
| 157 | [[/folder]] |
| 158 | |
| 159 | [[folder:Visual Novels]] |
| 160 | * ''VisualNovel/CorpsePartyCrossFear'' opens with Kaori stuck in a mental hospital. Nobody believes her stories about the cursed school, and she's regarded as a violent patient for losing her temper with the staff. |
| 161 | [[/folder]] |
| 162 | |
| 163 | [[folder:Webcomics]] |
| 164 | * In ''Webcomic/CollegeRoomiesFromHell'', Marsha is committed to a psychiatric hospital for being AxCrazy (she is). While there, the doctors also convince her that her boyfriend Mike is in love with April (he isn't), and that he doesn't have a tentacle in place of his left arm (he does). Upon finding out this last fact, Mike issues the ultimatum "All right, whoever's in charge here, I wanna have a little chat about the nonexistence of my tentacle!" |
| 165 | * ''Webcomic/LastRes0rt'' has the players attacking a ship that they later discover is an asylum to {{Deprogram}} members of the Church of the Endless. The Doctor in charge, Gabriel, is perfectly willing to accept that the players are "sane", [[spoiler:except for Jigsaw, who's currently disguising her aura to appear Endless (and lacks the proper skill to change this.)]] This doesn't stop him from enforcing a 72-hour hold on the players, though -- the only exception is Daisy, who has an advance directive that gives her a bit more leeway. [[{{Unishment}} Of course, given the show...]] |
| 166 | [[/folder]] |
| 167 | |
| 168 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 169 | * This happens to Batman in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'', which lets him solve the Scarecrow's plot, but for a time messes up his mind. |
| 170 | * Fry in the ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' episode "Insane in the Mainframe", and the same asylum pops up in "Bender's Game". After a security camera catches him involved with a bank-robbing robot, Fry is committed to "The HAL Institute for Criminally Insane Robots", which as the name suggests is a [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots mental asylum for defective robots]], where he has a surprisingly difficult time convincing the psychiatrists that he's sane ''or even human''. The robot therapist tells Fry that because it's an institution for robots, and he's a patient there, then Fry must logically be a robot. He is allowed to leave after he gets cured of his "delusion" of being human. The asylum even has a robotic [[Literature/AliceInWonderland mad hatter]]. Played for rather dark laughs. |
| 171 | * One episode of the would-be-a-cult-show-if-people-remembered-it series ''WesternAnimation/GodTheDevilAndBob'', Bob is arrested while painting over a billboard; at first the arresting officer ignores Bob's claim of "God told me to," but then the Devil starts an argument with Bob in the back of the squad car and gets Bob committed. One of the most touching moments on the show was when God came to visit Bob and all the other inmates could see him too: "The innocents of the world usually can." |
| 172 | * Happened in ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'' to Boomhauer. He fell asleep while intertubing and wound up in Austin. What happened was that he went around, in a speedo, covered in algae, while [[TheUnintelligible talking.]] He winds in a Mental Hospital for a Psych Hold. He calls Dale to bust him out, but Dale being ...Dale sneaks into the mental hospital to break him out. Problem is that now he can't get back out and the orderlies won't believe him. So they call Bill to get them out... Who then realizes he has a lot of issues and checks himself in for help. They then call Hank who, [[OnlySaneMan not being an idiot]], talks with the staff, explains the situation, then tells them that 1) Boonhauer's Psych Hold period has elapsed so he's free to go 2) Dale was never supposed to be there in the first place and 3) Bill voluntarily checked himself in so he's free to leave whenever he feels he's ready... except that his insurance won't cover his stay. |
| 173 | * In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' Homer gets committed after letting Bart fill out his psychiatric tests (which he was taking in the first place because he wore a pink shirt thanks to Bart putting his red hat in the wash). {{Shout Out}}s to ''Literature/OneFlewOverTheCuckoosNest'' [[HilarityEnsues ensue]]. |
| 174 | [[/folder]] |
| 175 | |
| 176 | [[folder:Real Life]] |
| 177 | * A well-known psychology experiment by David Rosenhan in 1973 was to send people to present themselves to psychiatric hospitals with minor complaints, drop the complaints after they've been committed and see how long it takes to get out. The average was 19 days, and most were diagnosed with schizophrenia. The Rosenhan experiment was later accused of being actually a giant hoax, but there's no way of knowing how many people get put away and are ''never'' revealed to be sane. |
| 178 | * After the experiment was published, another psychiatrist indignantly retorted that Rosenhan's findings surely weren't representative of the profession at large, and challenged Rosenhan to send some sane impostors ("pseudopatients" was the term Rosenhan used) to his own hospital. Rosenhan agreed, and a month later the psychiatrist wrote to him saying that he was fairly sure that several of his patients were impostors sent by Rosenhan. Of course, Rosenhan hadn't sent any. |
| 179 | * Reporter Nellie Bly is known for, among many other things, spending time in hospitals including mental hospitals, to investigate the conditions there. She notes the conditions in some are so horrific there nothing, save torture, would be more guaranteed to truly drive a person insane. [[http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/bly/madhouse/madhouse.html The full report is here]] |
| 180 | * Ken Kesey, author of ''Literature/OneFlewOverTheCuckoosNest'', spent some time in mental institutions and taking psychotropic drugs as research for his novel. |
| 181 | * Italian author Luciano De Crescenzo told this story in his autobiography: He and a team of other guys were working at the film ''The 32nd of December''. The location they were filming at was the park of Rome's biggest mental institution. The director advised one worker named Panciera to burn some leaves to create smoke they needed for a visual effect. Panciera sat in a ditch to avoid showing up on camera. When they had finished the scene, they forgot about Panciera and left. Half an hour later, two wardens found him. Following dialogue ensued: |
| 182 | -->'''Warden:''' What are you doing? |
| 183 | -->'''Panciera:''' I'm making smoke. |
| 184 | -->'''Warden:''' And why are you doing that? |
| 185 | -->'''Panciera:''' Because the director wants so. |
| 186 | -->'''Warden:''' Which director? |
| 187 | -->'''Panciera:''' Well, him of course! (Gets out of the ditch, to see that everyone's gone.) |
| 188 | -->'''Wardens:''' (take him): So, which director? |
| 189 | -->'''Panciera:''' Of the movie! |
| 190 | -->'''Warden:''' Of which movie? |
| 191 | -->'''Panciera:''' The 32nd of December! |
| 192 | * There's an ongoing story about a man who faked insanity to get himself committed, and how all his later attempts to secure release have been in vain. In an interview, one of the staff doctors argues just ''how'' sane could someone be to ''try'' and have himself locked up. |
| 193 | * According to a [[Creator/{{BBC}} Radio 4]] documentary, a diagnosis of psychopathy is especially hard to shake off, given that the first thing everyone knows about psychopaths is that "they look just like anyone else". In addition, they're known to be intelligent and good at manipulating people, leading doctors to be wary of trusting anyone thought to be a psychopath. As a result, there are violent criminals who relied on an insanity defense and ended up spending longer in psychiatric care than they ever would have in prison. |
| 194 | * Many totalitarian governments have reportedly dealt with troublesome citizens by slapping them with a diagnosis and shipping them off to be 'rehabilitated'. The Soviet Union even came up with its own made-up illness -- 'sluggish schizophrenia' to apply to dissidents. |
| 195 | ** In the antebellum and Civil War American South, the physician and pseudoscientist Samuel A. Cartwright invented made-up illnesses he called "dysaesthesia aethiopica" and "drapetomania" as pretexts for imprisoning and torturing free Black Americans and those who escaped slavery. |
| 196 | * One humorous example was a person was touring a mental hospital when an orderly pulled him into a group doing a walk. The person knew that they wouldn't believe him so he played along. It was afterwards when they did a headcount they realized that they had one extra person and let him go. |
| 197 | [[/folder]] |
| 198 |
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/context.php
FollowingContext Main / GoAmongMadPeople
Go To
- Show Spoilers
- Night Vision
- Sticky Header
- Wide Load
