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Cameron Vale ponders and bleeds.
I, I must remind you that the, uh, scanning experience is usually a painful one, sometimes resulting in nosebleeds, earaches, stomach cramps, nausea.
Purely mental battles are hard to show with special effects. Sure, you can have the characters sweat, strain, or show veins swelling on their forehead. But when a character with Telepathy or other Psychic Powers pushes them to the limit, or when a character is under mental attack, nothing quite exemplifies the true state of affairs like a thin trickle of blood oozing from their nose.
Exactly how much damage this implies varies from place to place. Exaggerated versions of this include blood from the eyes, or eyes and nose simultaneously. Within nodding distance of Truth In Television, as rupture of the capillaries inside the nasal membranes is a recognized (albeit rare, and usually only seen in people already in poor health) symptom of dangerously high blood pressure, such as that caused by extreme emotional stress, physical strain, or — presumably — intense psychic effort. Sudden nosebleeds under stress have been known to precede strokes.
An early example of the trope was the film adaptation of Stephen King's Firestarter, where it was used in place of the original book's far-less-visible "tiny cerebral hemorrhages". However the first actual depiction can be found in the film Scanners (pictured above) (1981), which came out a few years prior.
Polite Dissent, a comics blog written by a physician, regularly provides examples of Psychic Nosebleed Zen.
Only occasionally related to Blood From The Mouth.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- In Akira, the new, weaker psychics developed and employed by the Big Bad Tetsuo tend to have this. Tetsuo, and the other more powerful psychics, won't get any such ill effects.
- Manga example, In Gantz, the psychics Sakata and Sakurai get a slight nosebleed when they use their psychic abilities. This is explained as using these abilities pushes their bodies past limits that just shouldn't be pushed, resulted in wearing out their insides in a process that's exactly like aging: although they always appear to be the same age, their bodies are becoming that of old men by using these abilities. Of course, considering the Old Man character that's the Hero's Right Hand Man, this might not be a BAD thing, per se.
- Oh, but it gets better. Later on, when Sakata holds back an enormous alien at the risk of his life to give Sakurai and Reita a chance to escape, he bleeds from the nose, mouth, eyes and ears. Ouch.
- In Naruto, after using his Amaterasu Sharingan technique, one of Itachi's eyes begins to bleed profusely and becomes extremely bloodshot.
- In 1999 Subaru has blood coming from his ears after going within Kamui.
- A common occurrence in Psyren. Psychicers commonly have nosebleeds after they either develop or exhaust their abilities.
- In Weiss Kreuz Gluhen, Shimojima develops a nasty nosebleed while Berger is using his Psychic Powers to force Shimojima to drive his car out of control. The nosebleed abates when Berger stops.
- In Mahou Sensei Negima when Haruna's artifact is used to defend from a massive attack on all sides, she is knocked unconcscious and recieves a slight head injury from the feedback received from her artifact.
Comic Books
- Max Lord, of the Justice League Of America, had a small nosebleed whenever he used his metahuman "push" ability.
- Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman of the Fantastic Four, frequently does this. In recent times it happened in both the movie and the recent Civil War storyline.
- The Fantastic Four comic has quite a few examples cropping up from time to time. Any character that suffers psychic stress seems prone to the Psychic Nosebleed.
- Marvel Boy/Justice also got nosebleeds when overusing his psychic powers.
- Jean Grey and Rachel Summers from X-Men. Hardly surprising, since the second is the first's time-travelling daughter from an alternate future.
- Cable (Jean's Clone's time-traveling son from this reality) partially subverted this by bringing himself back from the dead without any problems.
- Usually, though, he suffers psychic nosebleeds when doing things like inadvertently mind-controlling a continent's worth of people, saving airborne continents from crashing after gravity comes back into effect, or beating up the cosmically-powered Silver Surfer in an attempt to burn out his own powers.
- Another X-Men example, in the Marvel Age: Emma Frost comics, she constantly gets severe nosebleeds as her abilities are awakening.
- The villain Saturn Queen from the Supergirl comics.
- Sophie, one of the Stepford Cuckoos from New X-Men, suffered a psychic nosebleed before her death while using Cerebra (the upgraded version of Cerebro). This was a combination of several factors; she wasn't a strong enough psychic to control Cerebra, and was on the mutant-power-boosting drug "Kick" in order to do so. Combined with her inexperience with the machine, it's somewhat unsurprising that it led to her death.
Film
- The 80s movie version of Dune involved a scene in which several Bene Gesserit (psychic witches) cried blood when Paul drank the Water of Life.
- Scanners not only invented this trope, it pushed it farther than anyone has since, where it shows that enough psychic energy not only causes noses to bleed, but veins to pop leaks, eyes to bulge and even pop out, and, in one famous scene, an entire head to explode.
- In The Fifth Element, anyone in the presence of the great evil thing soon bleeds from the scalp, whether it's about to plow through your space ship or just calling you on the phone.
- This troper was always confused as to whether that stuff was blood or not because it's clearly brown not red. It looked more like wet tar or warmed-up molasses (though this troper and his friends have always affectionately referred to it as brain diarrhea). At first I thought maybe it was just the lighting or something and it's actually dark red. But just after the aforementioned scene where the death-planet calls someone (Zorg) up on the phone and gives him a case of brain diarrhea, Zorg wipes his forehead and from the smear you can clearly see that it's some kind of dark brown liquid goo. Was it intended to be blood but they just screwed up the special effect? Is it like in Psycho where they used chocolate sauce to simulate blood because it looked better on camera, but they just forgot to re-color it in post?
- Wasn't that his wig melting?
- Though the cause was not psychic, Johnny Mnemonic also bled from the nose to make his purely mental strain more evident.
- In The Ring, characters experience a nosebleed whenever the Curse's influence grows particularly strong.
- In the 2005 Fantastic Four, Susan Storm aka Invisible Woman, suffered a nosebleed when she formed a force field around the ensuing "supernova" her brother Johnny Storm aka The Human Torch created to defeat Dr. Doom.
- The original The Butterfly Effect movie did this every time Evan came back from changing the past. The nosebleed was from his brain cramming in more information about everything since his change, and near the end of the movie he's actually being hospitalized because of it.
- Resident Evil Apocalypse had this at the end. Security guard nosebleeds and dies.
- In Let The Right One In, something similar to this happens when vampires enter without being invited. Well, more like the start bleeding from... everywhere.
Literature
- In The Bible, Jesus sweats blood while in the garden of Gethsemane.
- Despite the frequent use of Psychic Powers in Fingerprints, only one psychic nosebleed ever occurs: when a character attempts to use their power on a group of guards who are psychic-blocked. All of the psychics suffer other varying side-effects from overuse of their powers, though.
- In Simon R Green's Deathstalker series, Espers and the Maze People have this happen rather often, when pulling off big time abilities.
- In the Star Wars Expanded Universe novel Death Star, a marginally Force-Sensitive stormtrooper called Nova Stihl is hit hard by the destruction of the prison planet Despayre, the Death Star's first test. Nova woke up screaming and felt like he had heard a million people cry out, all at once, as they were killed. Shortly afterwards the Death Star destroys Alderaan. For that, Nova was awake, but he was knocked unconscious and woke up with a nosebleed and intense muscle tremors. Poor conflicted bastard.
- This troper always figured he'd actually hit his head while unconscious, though - note that Obi-wan didn't exactly fall over from Alderaan. (The destruction of a Hapan fleet in another book, however, makes Teneniel Djo miscarry).
- Of course, Obi-Wan wasn't physically on the Death Star when it happened. Nova was a lot closer to it.
- In the Kingmaker, Kingbreaker books, those forced to perform the Weather Working suffer from this.
Live Action TV
- This happened to telepathic cop Matt Parkman in the first season of Heroes.
- Also happened to Angela Petrelli in the second season, when she (unsuccessfully) resisted Matt's mental assault.
- Plus Peter Petrelli in the second season finale.
- And Hiro Nakamura, plus a psychic ear bleed, a burst vein in his eye, and fainting.
- Just about everyone who had been Touched By Vorlons in the miniseries Taken did this. In fact the series ended with the super psychic girl giving all her fellow abductees nosebleeds to push out the small transistors that the aliens had placed in their brains, to prevent future re-abductions.
- Babylon 5, the obvious source of Touched By Vorlons, has Lyta Alexander, who winds up with bleeding eyes. Bleeding, black-socketed, empty eyes.
- A variant: when Lyta forces Bester out of her mind in the fourth season, he reacts as if punched in the jaw.
- Similarly, various psychic characters in The 4400 have had nosebleeds when using their powers.
- And of course, we can't forget the ever-lovin' trope-hoggin' Star Trek Voyager, where Kes had been known to give the crew PsychicNosebleeds (usually under Evil Influence).
- Cancelled sci-fi television show Threshold has Carla Gugino's character getting nosebleeds every time she even remotely hears the alien signal - EVEN when she's talking on a phone to a friend on a quiet private plane, and neither the friend nor the audience can hear the signal being played on the plane.
- In the fifth season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Willow gets some of these after using a teleportation spell on Glory.
- In Deep Space Nine, when Kira allows one of the Prophets to take her body to fight a Pah Wraith (in the body of Jake Sisko), the exertion gives her a Psychic Nosebleed.
- In the episode The Muse, Jake experiences a Psychic Nosebleed (twice) while having his creativity eaten by the titular muse.
- In that episode, the muse was not eating his creativity, but rather stimulating his creativity to feed on his mental energy. Jake retains his creativity, becoming a writer on his own and examples of previous hosts show that they all made numerous advances or creations in their fields before death. Essentially, the muse is a psychic vampire.
- In Global Frequency, the man causing the radiation outbursts is shown bleeding from his eye in his first scene.
- A later example from the same series had people whose minds were being taken over by an alien meme-virus bleeding from the eyes, and possibly from the nose as well (it's been a while since this troper has read the series).
- Lost uses whenever a character is traveling between the past and the future without a reference point. At least one major character has died because of this.
- Other examples abound on the show when characters willingly or unwittingly screw with the forces literally surrounding the island.
- Kyle XY did this when he overused his powers. Happened more often to Jessie than it did to Kyle.
- When D'Anna uses the machine on the Algae Planet in the third season of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, she experiences a psychic vision while her body has a nosebleed and then dies.
- Parodied in an episode of Late Night With Conan O'Brien, where a psychic guest loses copious amounts of blood while using telepathy. The psychic's spoon is indeed nudged, although he is now wearing a wet red shirt for it.
- Happens to Sam on Supernatural when he uses his Psychic Powers to exorcise demons, first when he was learning how and later when he gets rid of an especially tough demon.
- In the season premiere of Scrubs season 8, Dr. Cox gets one of these while trying to resist an infectious smile. It's more a battle of wills than psychic, but still qualifies.
- Carnivale: Ben Hawkins got one after he used some form of astral projection.
- It was never made clear whether the nosebleed was due to Psychic Powers or something else, but the "Two by two, hands of blue" assassins in Firefly had a device which caused a progression of symptoms like this: your nose bleeds a little, your nose bleeds a lot, your mouth bleeds, your eyes bleed, you die.
Tabletop RPG
- In Warhammer 40000 nosebleeds are a 'secondary indicative symptom of proximal psychic activity'.
- Much of the fiction features serious psychic nosebleeds, taken to typically WH 40k extremes (for example, the loser of a high-level psyker duel is turned inside out)
- Very popular trope with spellcasting characters in the Fantasy meets Cyber Punk roleplaying game Shadowrun, especially common with hermetic mages. Or, more precisely, not popular at all with player characters as such, but rather with their players. (Of which this troper is one.) Considering that the use of one's magical abilities, psychic battles with spirits or astral combat between astral bodies can result in fatigue and even physical injuries, a magically active character can easily overexert himself into unconsciousness or death.
- Dominic Deegan is prone to Psychic Nosebleed when he's been fighting titanic battles on the mental plane. See example here.
- This could also be explained that Dominic Deegan merely slammed his face onto the desk while battling in the mental plane.
- It also happens here.
- Caused by evil overdose in a paladin in Goblins.
- Penny Arcade has this happen to Tycho when Gabe tries to hate him to death.
Western Animation
- Happens to Jenkins in the Starship Troopers cartoon, hours after he's overexerted himself by making a brain bug ''explode''. It's used while he's alone to illustrate that he did more to himself than he let on to his squadmates.
- Happens to Homer from The Simpsons. While undergoing lucid dream therapy, Bart and Lisa (or, rather, Homer's representation of their memory) start attacking the scenery to jar the blocked memory. Back outside, Homer receives a nosebleed.
- Dr. Killinger in The Venture Brothers manages to induce this upon Dr. Orpheus by merely casually resisting his pyschic assault until Orpheus overexherts himself.
Real Life
- Josef Mengele, Nazi Physician, proved that it is possible for a human to do this while under enough stress, but we'd rather not know exactly how he proved this.
- This troper can verify this is possible. During a particularly heated argument once his nose started spontaneously bleeding.
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