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Go Mad From The Revelation
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alt title(s): Goes Mad From The Revelation; Driven Mad From The Revelation 
Just the perfect end to his day.
Bart: "We come now to the final and most terrifying painting of the evening. To even gaze upon it is to go mad!"
Homer: (Looking at the painting) "They're dogs... and they're playing POKER! AAAAHHAHAHAHAHA!!"
I am confident that if anyone actually penetrates our facades, even the most perceptive would still be fundamentally unprepared for the truth of House Dimir.
In many stories, there are some experiences that are so horribly mind-shattering that the usual result is stark raving madness. This is the signature characteristic of an Eldritch Abomination and one of the central tropes of the Cosmic Horror genre, but other things can cause it as well, such as prolonged torture or learning Things Man Was Not Meant To Know.
There is generally a distinction between things that happen to the mind because of experience and things that are done to the brain. This trope is the former. Thus, insanity caused by drugs or a specific, quasi-magical effect (like a Brown Note) doesn't qualify. Contrast those things with the Shoggoths, who strain people's sanity in spite of never having that as a stated special ability — the thought of them is just that horrible. Confronting a Creature From Beyond The Stars or a Thing That Should Not Exist will lead either to psychological regression into denial, or insanity when the cognitive dissonance becomes too great. HP Lovecraft was fond of these; his stories abound with creatures from regions of space where the known laws of nature do not apply, and geometries that violate the laws of physics.
This almost could have been Truth In Television, insofar as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a real mental illness, but a character who Goes Mad From the Revelation will have a more generic insanity, often resembling schizophrenia or perhaps involving homicidal mania. However, if you whack someone with the "insane stick" enough times, they'll get Bored With Insanity.
The main inspiration for this trope is the work of HP Lovecraft. Occurs in most of his work and a good deal of Lovecraft-inspired work, indeed Cthulhu-inspired RPGs often make this a game mechanic. Will be absent from stories where you can punch out Cthulhu. Mostly.
The extreme form of a Freak Out. May take the form of a Heroic BSOD where the thing isn't going to start working again.
Compare with Brain Bleach. See also A Form You Are Comfortable With for a way to avoid this.
Examples:
Anime
- Casca in Berserk goes insane during the Eclipse after a harrowing Break The Cutie ordeal that involves being branded for sacrifice, losing everyone in the Hawks to things out of pure nightmare, getting stripped naked and assaulted by demons, and then getting brutally raped by Femto, her former commander turned demon king, right in front of the man she loved. As Guts is held down and forced to watch it happen.
- It speaks volumes about Berserk that the following words are being typed: And then? It Got Worse.
- A few characters in Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni arguably experience this, most definitely Keiichi and Shmion.
- Suzu in Peacemaker Kurogane becomes Axe Crazy and a Depraved Homosexual after finding his beloved master dead, and being raped by an old man.
- School Days: Kotonoha falls into permanent insanity after she is raped by her boyfriend Makoto's best friend and, few hours later, being dumped by Makoto. The next time we see her, she's found by her love rival Sekai in an absolute Heroic BSOD state.
- Perfect Blue: Rumi towards the end of the movie and in the ending scene where she has been committed to a mental hospital. Disturbing doesn't even begin to describe it.
- The reason Schwarzwald from The Big O goes mad and decides to destroy Paradigm City is because he figures out the show's Ontological Mystery (or at least part of it... it's a big mystery).
- Sensui from Yu Yu Hakusho definitely saw some things he shouldn't have, that broke his brain... literally. However, the madness was aided and abetted by the Chapter Black tape.
- Akito's reaction after Kureno's curse is broken from Fruits Basket.
- Ralph Werec of Soukou No Strain went from perfect soldier to traitorous Omnicidal Maniac when he saw that his people had created the Humongous Mecha he was piloting by killing harmless little alien girls for their Psychic Powers. However, though his reaction is understandable, when one of the sort-of-survivors shows Sara the story in a vision, she keeps her own sanity. Mind you, Ralph also got sucked into a dimensional rift that gave him terminal cancer directly after said vision.
- Arguably happens to Shinji in The End Of Evangelion when the sight of a 50-mile tall nude Lilith/Rei Ayanami reduces him to a fit of shrieking insanity. It didn't help that he had just seen Asuka's torn-apart remains only about a minute earlier.
- More or less every single Tipharian in Battle Angel Alita that learns "the secret of Tiphares" (Tipharians undergo a special ceremony at the age of nineteen. During this ceremony, the brain of the Tipharian is replaced with a computer chip) is driven insane. Most commit suicide.
- Alita is a citizen of Tiphares thanks to Desty Nova. Heroic BSOD time!
- In Fantastic Children, scientist Dr. Radcliffe became obsessed with unraveling the mystery of the Children of Befort. Needless to say, the more he found out, the madder he went. He could have been saved a lot of suffering if he knew that his theory was actually as far from the truth as you could get.
- Space Pirate Mito: Kagerou Mitsukuni goes totally batshit insane when during the capture Aoi operation, he comes to the realisation that his "Justice" is nothing more than a tool of oppression (one that has no issue shooting down a "mob" of villagers, men, women and children) used by a pretender to the throne. This leads to about two episodes worth of him screaming "I AM JUSTICE!" at the top of his lungs whilst firing his gun like the lunatic he is. This would be fine all in all, but the guy doesn't look older than 12.
- Millions Knives from Trigun goes insane after discovering with Vash the experiments that were performed on fellow sentient Plants.
- Digimon Adventure 02: Certainly not the only factor in his decent, but his visit to the Dark Ocean a perpetually dark realm, populated by various Lovecraftian horrors and where Love and Hope are a foreign concept, was definitely the Straw that Broke the Camel's Back for Ken Ichijoji. One look at his expression
 ◊ in that scene is enough to convince you that this kid just went off the deep end.
- Nina's spectacular Freak Out in Code Geass occurs when she learns that Princess Euphemia was killed by Zero. She goes so far off the deep end that she only returns (more or less) to sanity one year later, when she witnesses first-hand the horrible consequences of the bomb she built.
- On Moonphase, Kouhei experiences temporary madness after his new power lets him see Hazuki's true form, after which he temporarily becomes a trembling wreck who screams like a madman every time he sees her, he eventually gets over it though.
- In Chrono Crusade, Aion has a tenuous grasp on his sanity after he's Mind Raped by Pandaemonium and discovers the Awful Truth of his origins.
- Approximately 2/3 of the people who complete Friend's VR, which purportedly reveals his face, are Driven To Suicide. It's not his face.
Comic Books
- From The Sandman: "Not knowing everything is all that makes it okay sometimes." May explain why Delight became Delirium.
Particularly in her little speech in Season of Mists (I think), when she snaps at Desire for belittling her, and says that she knows things, things that not even Destiny (who knows everything) knows.
- The Joker is like this at least some portrayals, more so than most Batman villains. More than one interpretation (including the 1989 movie) has shown him bursting into maniacal laughter after seeing his chemically-disfigured reflection for the first time. His fellow Rogues Gallery members are listed alongside him under Freak Out.
- The Comedian goes medium-mad when he stumbles on the secret island prior to the events of Watchmen.
- In an issue of The Fall of Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep reveals his true form to the inhabitants of a biker bar: by the time he's left, everyone in the bar is sporting Milky White Eyes and catatonic with shock, except for the bartender, who is busily setting himself on fire.
- Cy has had the dubious honour of Going Mad From The Revelation twice in the same series. The first bout of insanity occurs when Nyarlathotep whispers his true name in his ear; after spending the rest of the evening and the next morning in shock, and attempting to commit suicide, Cy finally descends into catatonia for the next year. The second time is some time after Cy's recovery, when he manages to save the world by sending Nyarlathotep back to the court of Azathoth; unfortunately, he manages to catch a glimpse of its main occupant. Cy doesn't survive this next brush with insanity.
- In Spanish comic-book Mortadelo Y Filemon , the title characters are tortured by their boss with an LP of Spanish blockbuster songs (apparently repeated ad infinitum). They are driven mad, and other characters talk about the cruelty.
- In Captain Britain, the precognitive Cobweb goes mad when she makes the mistake of looking into the very near future, which has just been invaded by a cybernetic nightmare from another dimension and is steadily being dominated by an insane reality-warping Prime Minister by the name of Mad Jim Jaspers. Naturally, after puking her guts out and mumbling a few garbled prophecies, she tries to swallow her tongue.
- According to Shattered Glass Optimus Prime's bio, he discovered something so shocking from Cybertron's past that it made him to go insane, and to the present day no one knows what it was he found.
FanFiction
Film
- 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 Russian agent, Irina Spalko, to madness and then dust .
- In Dark City, detective Eddie Walenski is driven mad by the revelation that the City is being controlled by aliens. 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Literature
- The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy has the Total Perspective Vortex, which did this to its first subject. It's believed that this will happen to anyone; the Vortex allows someone to comprehend just how significant they are in the universe (they become hopelessly incapable of functioning when the answer turns out to be "not very")
- In an episode of the radio series, Marvin the Paranoid Android keeps a couple of minor adversaries occupied by tying them up and playing a recording of his autobiography. They start gibbering and raving.
- It is also stated that being forced to listen to Vogon poetry for any substantial length of time will more or less produce this effect (or, at the very least, inspire one to gnaw his or her own leg off).
- And getting a glimpse of the universe as it looks through Marvin's eyes is certainly never a good thing. In the first book, a ship's sentient computer responds to a direct link into Marvin's brain by committing suicide. In the third book, billions of genocidal battle robots are gradually paralyzed by despair when Marvin's forcibly linked into the defense grid. In the movie, Marvin uses the "point of view gun" to telepathically project his perspective onto an attacking army of Vogons. The weeping Vogons have to be literally picked up by health workers and carted off in a fleet of trucks.
- There's also a theory that, based on Fenchurch's reaction in the ending of book four, God's final message to his creations appears different to every person who looks at it. The fact that Marvin saw WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE provides a rather depressing insight into his personality. Fortunately for Marvin at least, reading it actually makes him feel good. And then he dies.
- And then there's Prak who, near the end of the third novel, tells "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" about the entire universe, and drives everyone who hears it mad. Prak himself dies after several days of uncontrollable laughter upon meeting Arthur Dent: he apparently found the "truth" about Arthur fatally hilarious.
- In Robert A Heinlein's novel Methuselah's Children, Slayton Ford goes mad when he meets the Sufficiently Advanced Aliens. Interestingly, after Ford goes mad, Lazarus Long mentions he is afraid that if he met them he wouldn't go mad.
- In Stephen King's book It, seeing the true form of the titular character automatically drives a person crazy.
- The ending of King's short story The Jaunt offers another memorable example of the trope.
- Also, seeing the ring of stones in King's short story "N."
- 19. That is all.
- The Strange Case Of Doctor Jekyll And Mr Hyde has the "good" scientist, Dr. Lanyon, undergo this when he sees the Jekyll-to-Hyde transformation.
- In The Wheel Of Time, the test for becoming a chief of the Aiel — a desert warrior society with elaborate honor customs — involves passing through an artifact that causes them to relive key moments across thousands of years that led to their formation. Aiel are such a prideful people that the shameful truth of their origins (being descended from those outcast from a tribe of extreme pacifists) hits hard. Rand enters at the same time as an Aiel, and by the end that man is clawing out his own eyes. Rand has a rather unfair advantage here, since he wasn't raised as an Aiel. Rand later reveals the truth to everyone, and hordes begin to defect from the old warrior lifestyle every day, either vanishing altogether, joining a rogue tribe, or taking up a pacifist slave life.
- Seen again later with the Seanchan. Their culture believes that women who can use magic are far too dangerous to go free, but also too useful to kill... so they slap collars on them which utterly enslave their wearer and make them puppets to a master, called a sul'dam. Recently, the main characters have disovered that the collars can't be used by anyone who does not have some degree of magical prowess themselves... meaning the sul'dam are essentially the same as the women they treat as objects. When one sul'dam discovers this she undegroes a borderline mental breakdown, and it's speculated that if this knowledge got out publically, it would shake the very foundations of the Seanchan Empire.
- In Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast Of Champions, Dwayne Hoover goes on a rampage after reading a solipsistic novel by Kilgore Trout which says that its reader is the only human being in the world and that everyone else is a machine.
- Although it's made clear that Hoover had already gone doolally by this point, and it's this pre-existing mental condition that makes him believe Trout's book to be a personal message from God.
- The Demu from The Demu Trilogy have their species-wide psychosis because they can't cope with their rite of passage revelation that they are descended from a species that were pets of Neglectful Precursors.
- In the second and third Firekeeper novels, the Healed One, ruler of the nation of New Kelvin, is the one person able to read a book that details the true history of their people. The secrets therein driven more than one newly ascended Healed One mad.
- In Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, James Taggart goes insane, becoming permanently catatonic, when he finally recognizes his own desire to destroy for the sake of destruction. He, in turn, previously revealed to Cherryl Taggart the monstrosity of his world, beating Cherryl, and cheating on her in the same night, driving her to see what had happened to the world, and resulting in severe psychotic episode. This leads to (possibly accidental) suicide.
- In Larry Niven's Draco Tavern story "The Subject Is Closed", one of the tavern's visitors describes how one alien race claimed to have discovered the truth about the afterlife. This is the last that was heard from them, and visitors to their world discovered that they had systematically committed mass suicide.
- Hmmm. So they learned what happens when you die, and all immediately chose to die? That actually sounds like a hopeful inversion, in a twisted sort of way.
- That's one of the first things suggested. The counter is, "What if they learned the afterlife is a Hell that's worse the longer you live?" or a number of other unpleasant possibilities.
- Interesting to compare with the Puppeteers, who somehow discovered that they have no equivalent to an immortal soul, prompting their entire race to suddenly cling to life and safety. Puppeteers who leave the planet are literally considered insane.
- As mentioned above, a Cthulhu Mythos protagonist protagonist who isn't transformed into something... not nice or dead at the end of the story usually suffers this trope. (In the original HP Lovecraft stories, outright madness wasn't as common.)
- In William Tenn's story Firewater, humanity is being observed by aliens that appear to have god-like powers, and anyone who tries too hard to understand them goes insane. Near the end, it's revealed that the aliens have a similar problem with understanding humans.
- In The Bishop Murder Case, Philo Vance posits that someone went mad from studying quantum psychics.
- In Edgar Rice Burroughs's Chessman of Mars, this is claimed for looking on the face of the dead O-Mai, a jeddak said to have died without showing a mark, and whose body was said to lie in a haunted room.
- In the Warhammer 40000 novel Grey Knights, Balurian Imperial Guardsmen are driven out of their minds by seeing the tomb of Saint Evisser. Some "saw a world of glory and bounty" and ran blindly into it only to fall into pits or be attacked by cultists, some collapsed and others struck at comrades in the conviction that all around them were corrupt.
- In Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, the Big Bad Storm King and his minions exist in a place "between life and death" that gives them plenty of time to contemplate Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. Unprepared mortal minds that dare to touch them (or do so accidentally) are driven stark raving bonkers. Also, Du Svardenvyrd, the tome of the mad prophet Nisses, contains sufficient knowledge of the workings of the world to drive anyone who reads it past the Despair Event Horizon.
- The author and main character of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a victim of this.
- Warrior Cats: Having already developed a near-crazy obsession with the Warrior Code, the realization that her parents were in fact Leafpool and Crowfeather and her very existence was "breaking the code" pretty did away with what was left of Hollyleaf's sanity.
- Invoked a lot in Simon R. Green's Nightside novels. One book features Madman, a former theoretical physicist who'd worked out the means to observe reality as it truly exists; his name says it all. In another incident, a minor character asked the animated corpse Dead Boy what it was like being dead, and was reduced to quivering catatonia by the reply.
- In Chris Wooding's novel Poison, the titular character gives up all desire to live after discovering that, not only is she a fictional character who was created by the 'heirophant'- a God-like being in the book's universe, and that her home did not exist before she came into being, but that said heirophant has been controlling her all her life, making her choose certain courses of action and make certain decisions. Luckily, she gets better after discovering that her death would mean the death of those around her, as the story she is in is centred entirely around her.
- David Langford's short story BLIT uses a mind-breaking fractal image as a terrorist weapon.
- On a more philosophical note, Friedrich Nietzsche announces the death of God in an aphorism in The Gay Science entitled "The Madman." It relates the story of a man who had gone mad from the revelation that God is dead, and announces it to the townsfolk, who laugh at him. Or so it seems, anyway; Nietzsche being Nietzsche, nothing in this text is significantly clearer than mud.
Live Action TV
- Firefly both pokes fun at this trope and plays it straight. One theory on the Reavers is that were men who were driven insane by seeing the edge of space. Not only is this theory eventually shown to be wrong, but Jayne is immediately puzzled: he's been out there, and it just looks like more space. However, at one point the Reavers intentionally induce Reaver-like insanity in one victim by killing the rest of his shipmates. The Movie reveals that at least part of River's psychosis was the result of learning what happened on Miranda.
- In Star Trek, having sex with a Deltan makes one go mad. Or so we've heard.
- More precisely, the sex is apparently so good that Terrans, at least, have trouble coping afterwards.
- Unless you're Captain James Tiberius Kirk. Then the sex was sorta 'meh'.
- The Original Series episode "Is There In Truth No Beauty?" revolves around Kollos, an ambassador of the Medusan race, whose physical appearance is so hideous that any humanoid who looks at them directly goes insane. This is a subversion, as Kollos, in contrast with Shoggots and Eldritch horrors, is clearly a good guy.
- In the Doctor Who episode "The Sound Of Drums", we learn that every Time Lord is forced at the age of eight to stare at a gap in the fabric of reality. Through this gap the entire Time Vortex can be seen. In the words of The Doctor, "Some would be inspired, some would run away, and some would go mad." It is hinted the latter is what happened to The Master.
- This should be stressed a bit. The Doctor, who confidently threw Satan into a black hole. ran away.
- Dalek Caan in the Doctor Who fourth season finale The Stolen Earth/Journey's End is arguably a case of someone who went sane from the revelation: despite exhibiting all the obvious characteristics of a Mad Oracle, having seen the whole of time itself left him utterly and completely disgusted at his own genocidal race and thus set things in motion to have the Doctor and Donna Noble defeat the Daleks.
- In the episode The Age of Steel, the Cybermen are defeated by the Doctor stopping their emotional inhibitors from working. This causes them to remember who they really are, and what they have become, and they subsequently go insane as the shock kills them.
- Ghost Light introduced Redvers Fenn-Cooper, an explorer and hunter who was unlucky enough to witness Light's sleeping form in the cellar of a Victorian mansion. The experience turned his hair white and drove him into the depths of insanity. By the time the Doctor arrives, he's disassociated his own identity so well that if he does acknowledge his own name, it's in the third person.
- One episode of Torchwood has a victim of the Rift who's permanently insane as a result of looking into the heart of a dark star. He's living in a secret Torchwood-sponsored care home in an old bunker, with at least a dozen other patients. He screams for twenty hours a day...
- In Upright Citizens Brigade, a house has a "bucket of truth" in it that shows immutable truth; most people are driven to absolute despair by the sights within. A police captain who has been wallowing in despair looks into the bucket and shouts at the heavens, "Don't you think I know that?!"
- Married With Children puts a humorous spin on this trope. Poor Al Bundy has temporarily gone insane after an unpleasant incident at work, and when Peg brings him home, he's babbling about "selling a lot of shoes after midnight." A kiss from Peg brings him back to his senses, but what makes it even funnier is when Al explains what happened:
Al: Oh Peg, it was horrible. Sixteen straight hours of shoe-selling mayhem. The last thing I remember, I was on one knee, waiting on an overflowing glacier of a woman. The first thing they teach you when you're a rookie shoe salesman is, when you've got a fat one in the chair, never look up. I looked up, Peg! I saw underwear! It said "Saturday" on it! Peg: So what? Al: TODAY'S WEDNESDAY!
- An episode of the 1980s Twilight Zone featured William Petersen investigating an insanity epidemic in a small town. It turns out a resident has discovered the meaning of life, but to hear the secret is to go crazy.
- This happens in Being Human, when Annie (a ghost) whispers to her killer, Owen a "secret that only the dead know." He snaps almost immediately. Interestingly enough, when George asks what she said, Mitchell shakes his head slightly, indicating that Annie shouldn't say—as well as the fact that he knows it too.
Music
Tabletop Games
Theater
- At the end of the stage version of Sweeney Todd, Tobias goes insane (or at least is strongly implied to) after discovering the sordid operation that Mrs. Lovett and Mr. Todd have been running, and then slits Sweeney Todd's throat with his own razor. The film version portrays this more as Unstoppable Rage than an outright Freak Out.
- A Streetcar Named Desire: Stanley rapes Blanche in an attempt to invoke Rape As Redemption, but Blanche, who's already a little nutty, has a total breakdown instead and falls into permanent insanity. It really is as heartbreaking and disturbing as it sounds.
Video Games
- Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet begins with the scientist Lord Boleskin going bat shit insane after making a discovery in the Town With A Dark Secret, Illsmouth. As mentioned in the trope description though, this being a Lovecraftian tale it's all par for the course.
- Maximillian Roivas from Eternal Darkness. He's committed after learning that his mansion is actually built over a Cosmic Horror's city and murdering his servants due to his belief that they're all infected with Body Horrors. Most of them actually are. Since the game is directly based on Lovecraft's work, insanity due to revelations is a fairly major theme.
- From Max's autopsy reports on the creatures infesting his mansion:
The veil has opened, and we should not see beyond! We weren't meant to...never...ever...meant to! Oh, give us the blessing of ignorance, the happiness of oblivion! Innocence can only be tainted, never returned!
- Additionally, Alex's sanity meter is set to a lower point every time you finish a chapter. The fact that your character's sanity is a gameplay factor at all is likely also related.
- Of course, this loses some of its impact once you've gotten the proper runes and can cast a spell which instantly increases your sanity meter. You can go mad from the revelation, sure, but a magic circle and a little chanting will fix you right up, no worries.
- On Neopets, a Neopian called Eliv Thade was driven mad from a book of unsolvable riddles. He died, and now his ghost speaks only in anagrams. (You know, "Evil Death"?)
- Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII. After finding out that he was born as part of an experiment to produce people with the power of an ancient civilization that was destroyed. That just emotionally unhinges him, though. What really ticks him off is that the ancestors of modern humans survived by hiding and letting them get eradicated.
- It probably didn't help either when he somehow learned that the "ancient" that was used to clone him was actually the alien who wiped them out...
- Prince La Croix in Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines should the PC take the Anarch or Lone Wolf paths: after spending the entire game hunting for the Ankaran Sarcophagus in the hope that there'd be a sleeping Antediluvian inside to steal ultimate power from, he finally opens it, only to find a large supply of C4 — with a timer set to detonate in ten seconds. Very slowly, Lacroix begins to chuckle, which rises to laughter, and finally to utterly hysterical cackling before the entire penthouse suite explodes.
- Albedo from Xenosaga. He was always a high-strung kid, but the cracks begin to show when he finds out that he is immortal, but his (formerly conjoined) twin brother, whom he depends on completely for emotional support is not.
- I'm practicing so that when they die, I won't cry.
- On the other hand, it's entirely possible that his worldview would make a hell of a lot of sense if we could grasp what it's like to be immortal.
- Another part is when he came into direct contact with U-DO. If Albedo didn't go nuts from the aforementioned, this sure as hell did.
- In La Mulana, players may experience this upon discovering the SKIMPY â?¥ SUIT.
- And the game knows it, too. To elaborate, the treasure at the end of the infamous Hell Temple is a "Forbidden treasure that may not be looked at or used". It's not kidding, the treasure for defeating the horribly hard Hell Temple is the Skimpy Swimsuit. The last room foreshadows this, asking if there is truly anything that could make you regret your long journey through Hell Temple. The treasure has no use, and doesn't appear in your inventory...and that would be awful enough, if not for the fact that it shows you a picture of your character wearing it. Your male character. Screams of horror will ensue.
- Wallachia in Melty Blood when he learned that nothing could avert the doom of mankind, only make it worse. To try and get around that he became a horrible raging unkillable monster For The Evulz. It probably made sense to him. Crosses over with Despair Event Horizon.
- Much of the reason people watch Let's Plays of games like I Wanna Be The Guy is to watch the player go slowly insane. They often swear a lot too but as time goes on, they begin shouting increasingly random things. Here's a good example "Maybe it's about as funny as going to Texas to fish for Vampires."
- Xion in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days goes insane when she finds out that the reason she can use the Keyblade is that she's a failed Replica of Sora created by Xemnas to complete Kingdom Hearts.
- In Star Control II, if you explore the Ghost Planet of the extinct Androsynth, Science Officer Bukowski will find out the hard way that These Are Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. It's very creepy for such a funny game.
- Fou-lu in Breath Of Fire IV is a textbook example of what happens when this occurs to a literal God Emperor. He is summoned, split in the process due to a botched summoning, wakes up 600 years later to find the very empire he founded is attempting to kill him, has said empire fire a literal Curse Nuke called the Carronade at him in an effort to destroy him, and finally discovers the ammo for aforementioned Carronade was his girlfriend who was herself tortured to insanity before being used as a Tactical Thermonuclear Peasant... because she was in love with him and the curse would go just that much deeper. To say he takes this last discovery poorly is quite an understatement.
- Part of the point and appeal of Interactive Fiction title Slouching Towards Bedlam. This means that typing "jump out of window" as your first command is an entirely viable way to "win" the game. It Makes Sense In Context.
Webcomics
- The datasphere recently introduced in 8-Bit Theater. Once Red Mage and Thief concluded that reading it would drive a normal man insane and an insane man normal (or kill him), they decided to try it on Black Mage. Once he was incapacitated, they called Fighter over...
- Who is totally fine. He even understood that the six hundred and twelve-dimensional sphere contained information on how to build "every possible way to build any possible device to destroy every possible thing in all creation."
- While it did shut down his higher brain functions for some time, Black Mage snapped out of his condition pretty fast. For the record, Black Mage's face, currently hidden in the shadow of his hat, made Onion Kid go into a coma. He later said it felt like everything good was gone from the world...
- And lately, Red Mage got the idea of using the datasphere to learn how to destroy the monster currently inside himself, as it threatens to take over his body.
- Hilariously, the result was the death of the monster. And Red Mage was fine. If that makes sense, recall that Red Mage was the monster. Oh, and he might be catatonic.
- In Narbonic, this is how the Science Related Memetic Disorder finally manifests itself.
- The Order Of The Stick features "The mysterious Vaarsuvius, keeper of a thousand arcane secrets. And each one would drive you MAD! MAD!" Note that V tends to boast.
- CaptainSNES: The entire series is about video game characters finding out their lives are simply video games, and their sorrows and such are for our amusement. They don't take it well.
Web Original
- The Batman and Robin episode of the Nostalgia Critic has him going Ax Crazy after he watches a scene where Batman pulls out a "bat-credit card", and another person had to come in and restrain him for several hours. He manages to compose himself twice, but is immediately set off again when he mentions the card.
- The Tom and Jerry movie episode has him reiterating to the viewers the basics of a particular scene: "A cat and mouse are driving a ship trying to save the daughter of Indiana Jones while being chased by a purple people eater, a dog on a skateboard, a performing ship captain, his handpuppet Squawk, two mexican wrestlers, and a doctor riding an ice-cream cart. Ladies and gentlemen, WELCOME TO THE MIND FUCK." Cue footage of the chase scene interspersed with clips of the Nostalgia Critic going bananas while Flagpole Sitta plays in the background and a big red "MIND FUCK!" flashes on the screen.
- Also, in the TMNT movies reviews, he tried to stay positive on the first and second movies, but still gives out negative responses. He tried to hope that the third movie, which even The Angry Video Game Nerd declares So Bad Its Horrible (he considered the first and second decent), will turn out good... then '5 minutes later'... we see him cuddling around in the bathroom, bawling incoherently, followed with much more Freak Out and inventing the word horrifuckus, after the revelation that the movie was really really... bad.
- In a scene similar to the Tom and Jerry incident, one of the last moments in the Jingle All the Way review has NC explaining that the movie simply doesn't care anymore after Arnold gets a jetpack and starts doing silly CGI stunts. He then says, "You know what they say... if you can't beat 'em... join them." Then comes the insanity, the flashing "WE DON'T CARE!", and Playmate, Come out and Play With Me playing in the background.
- Linkara, the Critic's comic-reading counterpart, has a couple moments like these. The first was when he read fanmail to Doom's IV that said that Rob Liefeld was a genius. The second one was when he discovers that Amazons Attack was technically a tie-in to Countdown.
- The Angry Video Game Nerd himself gets one after hearing Zelda's Bond One Liner in The Wand of Gamelon.
- Does Inferno count? She's more of a case of Go Even More Mad From The Revelation...
Western Animation
- The DCAU has many villains that were driven to crime because of the horrible circumstances forced upon them (Clayface, Parasite, etc.) but only one character seems to snap purely because of the knowledge he has received: The Question. When he cracks the Project Cadmus secret files and learns of the overthrow of the government of a parallel world and the ever-increasing likelihood that our Superman will likewise kill the president and instigate a worldwide catastrophe he loses it, begins to mumble incoherently to himself, and eventually tries to kill Lex Luthor himself so that Superman will never have the chance. Things go downhill from there.
- As quoted above, this is parodied in a The Simpsons Halloween Special based on Night Gallery, in which Bart promises that a story based on a particular painting was so terrifying that it would instantly drive people mad. "..but it was far too intense. So we just threw something together with vampires. Enjoy!"
- On one episode of Chip And Dale Rescue Rangers, the villain loses it when he realizes he's just been defeated by chipmunks.
- Batman The Brave And The Bold — In "Deep Cover for Batman!", Batman's only ally in this reversed dimension, Red Hood, is being questioned and tortured. We learn that he was disfigured by being thrown into a vat of chemicals by this universe's version of Batman. Sure enough, we see him look in a mirror, get a glimpse of green hair and bleached skin — and hear a truly maniacal laugh start to rise. Averted when he grabs a chair and smashes the mirror, presumably at the last minute he could retain his sanity. What made this so effective? Really, it's the voice actor — that laugh is as scary as anything Mark Hamill ever unleashed.
- Turtles Forever — The Shredder from the 2003 series discovers The Multiverse and that each world in it contains it's own group of Turtles. He then goes a little crazy and begins a plan to destroy the Source Universe. An action that would destroy him as well (he doesn't care).
- Toy Story — Buzz Lightyear ends up doing this after discovering he is indeed only a toy and not an Intergalactic Space Ranger as he previously believed. He snaps out of it later, though.
Real Life
- Paul Cohen said that he suspected that this had happened to Kurt Gödel, that his discoveries in logic caused him to have paranoid delusions later in life.
- Georg Cantor spent years obsessively studying orders of infinity, and died in an insane asylum for his troubles.
- Some studies show that extreme pessimists have the most realistic grasp of their abilities, place in the world, and the probability of something happening. And they're most likely to be seriously clinically depressed. (Of course, other studies show the opposite.)
- Most of the difference depends on what questions you ask. If it's something that people, in general, are overly optimistic about (i.e., their own abilities, or how much control they have when gambling) the pessimists will be accurate. If it's something that people are overly pessimistic about, (risk of death in a terror attack) the pessimists will be inaccurate.
- The sad story of George Price, who used several mathematical and biological models to derive a mathematical equation that predicted that a predisposition for altruistic behavior would be selected for over time, and that kindness could be (at least theoretically) reduced to a quirk of biology. The discovery sparked recurring bouts of depression, which ultimately led to Price giving away most of his possessions, becoming homeless, and committing suicide.
- Some have tried to poetically paint Friedrich Nietzsche this way. It sounds good: "he got so close to the Truth, a Truth he didn't believe in!" or something like that. He would have probably disagreed very much, being quite the despiser of any clichéd thought, but who knows? He really did pump out quite a few writings in the 1880s, and yet was very definitely insane by the end of that decade. Ultimately he succumbed to the brain disease that ailed him (identified as syphilis at the time, but whatever it was, it was there).
- It's unlikely (though hardly impossible) it was syphilis; most reliable accounts him having sex at most twice in his life. More likely he just went plain old crazy.
- Hallucinogenic or disassociative drugs have the potential to cause feelings of this; with some individuals, permanent psychosis can result.
- While not exactly "mad", Scientologists contend that anyone who reads the Xenu story without proper preperation (re: $200,000 in "donations") will become physically and mentally weakened. This may have something to do with a kind of "shock treatment" backfire similar to the VR in Twentieth Century Boys.
- This damn website.
- And of course, that damn website.
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