People going mad from the revelation in movies.
- In Apocalypse Now, Kurtz refers to it as "a diamond bullet right through [his] forehead", his epiphany that rules and morality had no place in war, and indeed, the fewer the better. Once he realized his special forces were no match for the VC killer instinct, he abandoned his principles and cobbled together his own, unique "unit" out of the worst of the worst.
- The entire point of the movie π is that this happens when you try to find the ratio that rationalizes pi, predicts the stock market, and is also the true name of God.
- Jack Nicholson's Joker loses his mind the instant he sees his new perma-grin in Batman (1989), stumbling into the street giggling insanely.
- In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, while Lex Luthor was already psychotic, what he learns from the Kryptonian ship sends him completely off the deep end.Lex: But the bell's already been rung. And they've heard it, out there, amongst the stars. Ding dong, the God is dead. The bell cannot be unrung! He's hungry! He's found us. And he's coming! Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding. Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding...
- While it wasn't shown due to the Continuity Reboot, this was to be the fate of The Riddler as well. After joining the Legion of Doom he manages to successfully solve the Anti-Life Equation. However, since it serves as mathematical proof that life is meaningless, he's Driven to Suicide soon after.
- By The Babadook's own admission, "I'll soon take off my funny disguise; take heed of what you've read. And once you see what's underneath, you're going to wish you were DEAD!"
- Bird Box: Seeing the creatures causes humans and animals to kill themselves (or in the case of the deranged, force others who haven't looked into doing so).
- Bram Stoker's Dracula: Keanu Reeves' Jon Harker seems to have an episode of this when Dracula feeds his brides. He gets better.
- Contact has a more benign and temporary version, when Ellie Arroway travels through the wormhole and perceives a celestial event so beautiful and magnificent that she is rendered a babbling, weeping mess."No words... No words... They should have sent a poet..."
- Creepshow. After watching two people get eaten by the thing in "The Crate", Dex Stanley raves and giggles when he appears at Henry's house. He gets better.
- Dark Angel: The Ascent: One of the two detectives investigating the vigilante killer has the bad luck of finding out Veronica's true nature in a frightful vision the demon girl projects in his mind. He's a shivering wreck for the rest of the film and promptly calls off the investigation. Later the mayor suffers this as well. He then publicly confesses his sins on television, resigns, and says he's going to live out his days in contemplation at a monastery (presumably for repentance so he doesn't endure Hell in the hereafter).
- In Dark City (1998), detective Eddie Walenski is driven mad by the revelation that the City and everyone's identity is being mercilessly torn apart and remade by aliens, repeatedly. He compulsively draws spiral shapes on the walls of his room, refuses to acknowledge his wife's identity, and rounds off the evening by jumping in front of a train.
- This trope, mixed with Hyperspace Is a Scary Place, is essentially the plot of Event Horizon. The test run of the titular ship's hyperdrive sent it beyond the edge of the universe where the crew experienced something that can only be described as Hell. When the rescue crew watches the video logs on the now deserted ship after it returned from the journey they see the former crew engaging in various deranged acts of graphic self-mutilation after the madness of the place took them over.
- The Field Guide to Evil: What happens to Gentry in "The Palace of Horrors". Henry, who was behind Gentry and only saw the king in shadow, goes mad for several months and remains mentally fragile for the rest of his life. Gentry never exits the king's chamber.
- In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the Crystal Skull itself contains immense psychic power and knowledge, which turns Harold Oxley into a gibbering lunatic and almost Indiana Jones as well. Though he regains his sanity once the skull is returned to Akator.
- The Aliens at the climax also have incredible knowledge, which reduces the knowledge-hungry Soviet agent, Irina Spalko, to madness and then dust.
- During the ending of In the Mouth of Madness, after witnessing the collapse of human civilization in a rising tide of madness and mutation, John Trent cracks when he discovers that the nightmarish book that did the deed was just a novelisation of everything he did in the last few days. He finds this out by watching the film adaptation.
- Prior to this, Linda Styles discovers that Reading Ahead in the Script is not a good idea when the "script" is a horror novel. She completely breaks and becomes one of the villain's crazed minions, because that's the role she's written to have. Then she gets RetGoned.
- In I Shot Jesse James, Robert Ford completely loses it when he learns that his Love Interest Cynthy is leaving him for his rival John Kelley.
- In The Matrix, Morpheus suggested that adults freed from the Matrix have an exceptionally hard time adjusting to the real world, which is why they normally don't free people after they reach a certain age. A character remarked "We're gonna kill him. You understand that?" and "He's gonna pop!" on two different occasions regarding Neo reeling from The Reveal.
- The Monster Club: On the night of the engagement party, Angela is caught robbing the Shadmock's safe and screams that she could never love him. Heartbroken, the Shadmock whistles and destroys Angela's face. Her boyfriend is driven insane and locked away in an asylum upon seeing her.
- When the mummified corpse of Imhotep comes back to life in original The Mummy (1932), the archeologist who saw it went insane."He went for a little walk! You should have seen his face! HAHAHAHA!"
- Parodied in National Lampoon's Class Reunion, in which the Axe-Crazy Walter got that way when he was set up for a masked tryst by his classmates, only to discover that the girl they'd recruited to hook up with him was his own twin sister.
- In Next of Kin (1982), Linda is clearly in an emotional state during and after The Reveal that her Evil Aunt Rita is responsible for the strange deaths at the retirement home and may have also been responsible for the death of her mother.
- In Oldboy (2003) Oh Dae-su discovers the girl he had sex with was his daughter, madness and cutting out his tongue followed.
- Implied with Father Brennan in The Omen (1976). It turns out he was a former follower of Satan who freaked after witnessing Damien's birth. When Robert Thorn and Keith Jennings go to Brennan's residence, they find the walls plastered with crucifixes, pages of the Bible and other religious artifacts.
- A comical example in the short horror film OI (i.e. Original Idea). Any who hear the idea conceived by the protagonist die after trying to process it, as it cannot be linked to any existing concept: the brain eventually overheats with explosive results. The only other character who does not die in result goes mad from the experience and commits suicide.
- The Fourth Mistress in the movie Raise the Red Lantern was pushed over the edge when she saw the dead body of the Third Mistress after her execution.
- Implied to be the case in RoboCop 2, with the two Robocop II prototypes note which both graphically killed themselves during their demonstrations. The given explanation by Dr. Faxx is that Murphy's past psychological profile - Irish-Catholic work ethic, intense devotion to duty and willingness to sacrifice himself for the good of others, lets him face the nature of his existence as a cyborg without putting a bullet through his head.
- The Stone Tape. The scientists question a man who used to play in the castle as a boy. He breaks down and reveals how a friend was accidentally trapped in the haunted room during a game of dare."He made out it spoke to him...and then the Others came."
"Can I meet him?"
"What for? He don't remember. They took him up the County, you know. They put him right. They can do that. He don't care a button he just la-a-a-ughs all the time!" - In the Slasher Movie Terror Train, poor Kenny finds out his designated "date" for the evening sitting in the bed is actually a corpse set there by his med schooler "friends". It drives him insane, leading him to get institutionalized and returning after couple of years to exact revenge upon everyone involved.
- Loki from Thor after discovering he is a Frost Giant. While he was already a bit unstable to start with having allowed a few Frost Giants into Asgard for "a bit of fun" (and to discredit Thor), this was what truly tips him over the edge.
