Crazy in the Head, Crazy in the Bed

Conclusion: Unicorns are sexy.

"Today, after a 2-month relationship, I realized two things: A) Dating a known psycho because "crazy chicks are great in bed" is a dumb idea, and B) What crazy chicks are actually great at is beating the crap out of you and driving you to alcoholism."

— This story from FMyLife.com

The stereotype that a person who's mentally unstable makes for a passionate and satisfying lover.

This is due to the belief that their mental instability makes them more enthusiastic and uninhibited, often being into unthinkable kinky stuff that a "normal and boring" person never would be. Power Dynamics Kink and Romanticized Abuse are frequently involved.

If they're obsessed with a person in specific, such as a Yandere or a Stalker with a Crush, there is the idea that they're so utterly devoted to that person's needs that they will go to any lengths in order to satisfy them.

This can be the excuse for why someone would want to remain in a relationship with someone who's obviously unhinged or why they want to have Sex with the Ex with their Psycho Ex-Girlfriend.

This archetype is most commonly attributed to women since All Men Are Perverts and are more willing to look past a person's flaws as long as they're getting laid. Sometimes they can see it's a bad idea, but will still consider the experience to be Worth It. Openly crazy men are usually not seen as attractive to women unless they also invoke a bad boy aura or a woman dates them under the belief they can "fix him".

Sister trope to Cute But Psycho, which tends to feature characters who are somewhat younger, focusing more on things like high school crushes than adult sexual relationships.

Expect the phrase "Daddy Issues" to be mentioned at least once.

This stereotype is commonly applied to Goths.

Compare Aroused by Idiocy, which is about intelligence rather than mental illness. Frequently overlaps with The Ophelia; see also Dominatrix, Mad Love, Sadist, Sex God, and Sex Is Violence. The trope itself can be considered Unfortunate Implications due to it sexualizing and fetishizing women with mental health issues in addition to being an offshoot of Hysterical Woman, which itself portrays women as overly emotional and mentally unstable.

No Real Life Examples, Please!.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Chainsaw Man: Makima's unhinged, abusive, and violent nature are meant to uncomfortably enhance her sex appeal and Dominatrix tendencies. Denji can't help but be unhealthily attracted to her, even when it becomes obvious he should know better.
• Nyaruko: Crawling with Love!: Nyaruko is a Cute But Psycho Lovecraftian horror in the form of a girl that has a Mad Love obsession with Mahiro. When she does finally manage to sleep with him, the experience lasts hours and Mahiro passes out from screaming so much.

Comic Books

• Batman:
  • Harley Quinn is often sexualized due to her being a Sexy Jester with Ax-Crazy / Cloudcuckoolander tendencies, and is often show to be a wild and enthusiastic lover. She may annoy some of her lovers and partners with her antics, but they never complain about how passionate and crazy hot she is.
  • A few women actually became attracted to Joker because of how his utter insanity and unpredictability charmed and fascinated them, most notably Harley Quinn and Punchline. According to Harley, he can be the passionate lover when he wanted to.
• Daredevil: Typhoid Mary is a Psycho for Hire villainess with dissociative identity disorder, with her two "insane" personas being far more sexualized than her "normal" one, often acting like a sexually aggressive and unhinged seductress with a wild libido. Despite how blatant "bad news" she is, men still keep falling for her. She even managed to seduce Kingpin (who's usually very loyal to his wife) and impress him with her passion and sexual prowess.
• Deadpool: Deadpool might be gruesomely disfigured, but his sheer insanity and quirkiness has attracted him a lot of women and it apparently translates great to the bedroom, as he has had many lovers who were quite happy with his performance. He once even managed to impress a Succubus.
• Justice League of America: In Justice League: Rise of Arsenal, Roy Harper/Arsenal is fighting off Jade Nguyen/Cheshire, a Psycho for Hire whom he has a Dating Catwoman relationship with. Mid-fight he starts to wonder what he ever saw in her, but then the fight starts to get more intimate and he remembers it's because, despite her Ax-Crazy personality, that feistiness makes her terrific in bed. Soon enough the fight evolves into Sex for Solace instead.

Fan Works

• Fanfics of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic have an odd tendency to depict Pinkie Pie as very sexually active in the very least. Just as an example, Advice from Pinkie Pie has her as an Ethical Slut.

Films — Live-Action

• Ace Ventura is a massive Cloudcuckoolander who can make love to a woman three times in a row, say "I'm sorry, that's never happened to me before. I must be tired," then instantly be ready to go again.
• In Batman Returns, Selina quips: "It's the so-called 'normal' guys that always let you down. Sickos never scare me. At least they're committed."

Jokes

• A lunatic escapes from the asylum and has sex with a prostitute. The next day, the newspaper headline reads: "NUT BOLTS AND SCREWS." Alternatively, he has sex with a laundrywoman before escaping, and the headline is "NUT SCREWS WASHER AND BOLTS."

Literature

• The Age of Madness has the Judge, a ruthless and unhinged revolutionary who takes great pleasure in having people thrown off of a tower. Her insanity is reflected by her visual appearance as well: she always wears a ragged red dress and goes barefoot, and likes to demonstratively put up her dirty bare feet on the table during the court hearings. However, she emits so much sexual energy that it's difficult even for her enemies to resist her charms (like Gunnar Broad, who eventually becomes her lover).
• Binder of Shame: The narrator mentions that one of his returns to gaming happened after he fell foul of this belief.
  I had been torn between a very pretty and level headed brunette and a deeply disturbed redhead. For a time I couldn't decide which of the two I was [to] date exclusively.
  Like most men I went with the crazy redhead and it ended in disaster. A very sexy disaster but a disaster nonetheless.
• Odd Thomas: Odd's father firmly believes that the more unstable a woman is, the better she'll be in bed. Odd's mother must have been a fantastic lay by that logic since her method of dealing with stress in Odd's childhood was to threaten to shoot herself every time he needed something (and once even pressed a gun to his eye because he was coughing).
• Played for disturbing horror in A Study in Emerald, where a debauched German prince (the Humanoid Abomination spawn of a Lovecraftian cosmic entity and a human) is lured into a trap by Sherlock Holmes with the promise of raping a virgin driven to madness by his appearance.
  Having learned a little of his recreational predilections, I told him I had procured for him a girl, abducted from a convent in Cornwall where she had never seen a man, and that it would only take his touch, and the sight of his face, to tip her over into a perfect madness.
  Had she existed, he would have feasted on her madness while he took her, like a man sucking the flesh from a ripe peach leaving nothing behind but the skin and the pit. I have seen them do this. I have seen them do far worse.

Live-Action TV

• The A-Team: A Lighter and Softer version of this trope: of the whole team, the member who gets the second most Girls of the Week aside from Face is Murdock, who is more than a little nuts (and oftentimes the women find that cute).
• Castle: Castle has Sex with the Ex with his ex-wife Meredith for this reason. While Meredith is shown to be impulsive and irresponsible, Castle finds sex with her great. Beckett is less than impressed when Castle explains this to her.
• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend's season 3 theme song deals with the contradictory ways "crazy" is framed — leaving protagonist Rebecca thoroughly confused.
  Country pop star: Crazy is when I go off the rails
  this is what you've done to me!
  Pop diva: Crazy is how your lovin' makes me feel.
  This is what I always wanna be!
  Classic rock star: I like it when a girl gets crazy in bed!
  Rapper: Don't mess with a bitch who's crazy in the head!
  All together: You do (don't) want to be crazy!
  And you don't (do) want to be crazy!
  To clarify, yes-no on the crazy!
  We hope this helps!
• How I Met Your Mother: The episode "How I Met Everyone Else" reveals Barney has a "Hot-Crazy Scale", which indicates that a crazy woman is allowed to be crazy, as long as they are hotter than they are crazy.
• NCIS: Los Angeles: In the episode "Touch of Death", Eric makes a joke about this when Nell is surprised that the Mad Scientist they're after looks reasonably attractive. She's not amused.
  Eric: You know what they say about crazy women.
  Nell: [In an accusatory tone] No, I don't. What do they say?
  Eric: [Suddenly awkward] I don't know... something.
• Scrubs: In "My Karma", Elliot worries that her "crazy" will scare off her boyfriend Paul. She spends the episode trying to repress this but eventually unloads on Paul about all her insecurities and neuroses. Instead of scaring Paul off, he gets turned on and the two begin making out.
• That '70s Show: When Kelso and Fez fall for the same woman it ends with her choosing Fez, and revealing that she has some issues. Kelso concedes defeat telling Fez "She's clearly a lunatic. Which means she's going to be really great in bed. Congratulations."
• Marry Me (2014): In "Annicurser-Me", Jake tells Annie that he used to be engaged before to a woman named Fatasia Yang, who was his Psycho Ex-Girlfriend for a while. It was an almost Fourth-Date Marriage, and he admits it was an obvious terrible idea that only happened because of how crazy hot she was. Kay reveals she also slept with her, and vouches that the girl was indeed crazy but fire in the sack. Jake expects Annie to be mad or jealous, but she's actually relieved he choose her over a "crazy hot bisexual Asian chick".
• Two and a Half Men:
  • In "Santa's Village of the Damned", Alan starts dating a woman with a strange obsession with Christmas, to the point she seems to still believe in Santa Claus. Charlie tells Alan that the sex will be great, though he warns him to choose positions where he can see her hands.
  • "Round One To The Hot Crazy Chick": Charlie is extremely attracted to Frankie not only in spite of her craziness, but because of it, thinking it will make her a passionate, unrestrained lover. Alan is baffled by the idea, but is soon just as attracted to Frankie as Charlie is.
  Alan: [Watching her destroy a car with her baseball bat] This woman is clearly a lunatic.
  Charlie: Yeah, but look at the passion, the fire... the ass.
• UnREAL (2015): After Rachel's big Freak Out in the first finale of Everlasting, the cameraman jokes about Rachel to Jeremy (Rachel's boyfriend at the time), telling him that "Crazy in the head, crazy in bed, right?" Jeremy isn't amused and just sucker punches him.
• You (2018): In "The Captain" Beck spends most of the episode dealing with troubles with her father. At the end of the episode, she invokes this trope when she arrives to Joe's apartment for some Sex for Solace, joking to him that "They say girls with daddy issues are really good in bed".

Music

• The titular "Crazy Bitch" of the song by Buckcherry and its Richard Cheese cover, who apparently screams at the top of her lungs and scratches up the singer when they're at it.
• "Don't Stick It In The Crazy" by The Poxy Boggards is a song describing various crazy exes the singers had, ranging from violent sexual fantasies to jealousy leading to setting the house on fire.
  She might be good in bed but she's not right in the head!
• Jhené Aiko's song "Maniac" is about this trope, with the singer being a freak nymphomaniac who was assigned to a asylum for being so "crazy in bed".

Podcast

• In the podcast Based Camp, Malcolm theorizes that emotional outbursts are indulged in very attractive women, people are more likely to comfort and soothe them when they're upset. This positive attention serves to reinforce this behavior, and so a hot woman who's treated that way — especially in adolescence — is less likely to learn the kind of emotional regulation that's expected of everyone else. But while a hot woman loosing her composure might get her positive attention in the short term, it doesn't work out for her in the long run. Subpar emotional regulation skills aren't wife material, it doesn't make people want to stick around in the long run.

Video Games

• Baldur's Gate Of the possible Love Interests, Viconia DeVir is by far the most unhinged, due to her evil upbringing as a Undercity drow, her antagonizing attitude and her constant mood changes. She's also the most sexualized of them, with the relationship starting as purely carnal and her being a satisfying lover being frequently pointed out. Your companions (and even herself) seem to assume you're only romancing her because she's a crazy hot drow.
• Drakengard 3: Three is the most overtly insane of the Intoners, but still a Unkempt Beauty that can easily attract men. In her DLC, dialogue with Octa implies that she was actually a highly satisfying lover back when she was actually interested in "nighly escapades", due to how her insanity manifests in her hyper-focusing on something she wants to do. But she has long grown bored of sex and prefers focusing on her experiments, much to Octa's distress, though she's still quite aware of her sexual prowess, and can be seductive when she wants.
• Fallout 3: Eulogy Jones will explicitly mention Clover fits the stereotype of crazy girls being wild in bed when he's trying to pimp her to you.
  Eulogy Jones: I'll tell you why: because Clover is the craziest girl I've ever seen. And I'm an expert on crazy girls. Crazy in a fight, crazy in the sack, crazy every which way but loose! But most of all, she's crazy in love with whoever's holding her leash. And for the low cost of a thousand caps, Miss Clover could be crazy for you.
• Mortal Kombat: Mileena is one of the most sexualized characters in the franchise, and her being an aggressive psychotic "freak" is part of her appeal, and despite her Monstrous Mandibles, she's still one of the most promiscuous characters.
• No More Heroes: Sylvia is a bizarre woman who's prone to sudden mood shifts and often gets violent and demanding, but she's also a highly sexual person, with Desperate Struggle showing all her bragging about her sexual prowess to be no mere boasts. Travis finds himself both extremely attracted and annoyed by her.
• Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Camellia is an unhinged Ax-Crazy Serial Killer, but is still considered extremely attractive and is a total freak in the sheets, with some of her romantic encounters being full-on Interplay of Sex and Violence. The player can even express in dialogue about how her wild side is what makes her so appealing.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: The Malkavians are the vampire clan defined by their madness. Four outfits per clan and gender become available through the course of the story, and while male Malkavians only get sexualized in that their final outfit resembles a pimp's, all four outfits for female Malkavians are heavily sexualized. The first is a cheerleader outfit with too high a thong and too low a skirt. The second is a cowgirl outfit with a bare butt. The third is a sexy cop costume with thigh-high boots. The fourth outfit is a tight leather jumpsuit that would be decent if not for the "XXXploit me" bit on the back. No other player character wears clothes that can be called "inviting" like these.

Web Animation

• Helluva Boss: Blitzo is an eccentric Ax-Crazy imp even by the low standards of Hell, but he's also really good at sex when he wants to be, to the point he gets an advantageous Sex for Services deal with the much higher-ranking demon Stolas just because of how impressed he is with Blitzo's performance in bed.
• Kakyoin Waifu Connoisseur: At first Kakyoin isn't interested in Jinx because of her lack of assets, but then when she brags about how crazy chicks like her are "demons in the sack", it quickly gets his attention. He even considers playing League Of Legends if it means he gets to sleep with her.

Webcomics

• The Idaten Deities Know Only Peace: Miku is a insane, psychotic pervert who unnerves even her fellow demons, but she's still considered to be extremely attractive and is quite a demon in the sack, with even Merku admitting how much she enjoys her "attentions".

Web Videos

• Con Man: Wray describes Louise to Jack as a "crazy, crazy, hot lady". Jack says he's lucky, as a "CCHL" (crazy crazy hot ladies) are super fun in bed.
• The Tactical Response YouTube video "Hot Crazy Matrix A Man's Guide to Women" is a pseudoscience parody attempt of explaining the phenomena via an Exposition Diagram.

Western Animation

• Downplayed in Daria with Helen's sister, Rita, who is described to Jake Morgandorffer by her latest beau as, "a bit flighty, but she's a tiger in the bedroom".
• Family Guy: In one episode, Quagmire shows up at a school play with the intention of hitting on one of the moms there. When Chris informs him that she isn't there because her ex-husband has a restraining order against her, Quagmire says that he finds her more attractive now.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic features a G-rated example in Pinkie Pie, who as of the finale is the only one of the Mane Six to be canonically married with child.

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