Often, a mentally ill character is not confirmed mentally ill from the beginning. Although there will be hints dropped, every reader realizes the character has a mental disorder when they have their Insanity Establishment Scene. This can be for any mental illness, and can be a serious consideration of suicide, a hallucination that other characters are saying isn't there, or something else entirely, such as a Stalker Shrine. This scene can come from some hapless person discovering a Room Full of Crazy.
May overlap with Tomato in the Mirror or Mask of Sanity. Contrast Tomato Surprise.
Examples:
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Fan Works
- In A.A. Pessimal's Discworld-themed story Strandpiel
, Mariella Smith-Rhodes has such a moment when she realises the senior Army officer who nurtured her career and made her National Service halfway bearable isn't just a likeable, affable, commanding officer. Promoted to General, the Ax-Crazy Hans Dreyer has somehow passed beyond that and is demonstrating signs of what at the very least might be called a sociopathic streak. His reaction to the possibility that lots of civilians and non-combatants are likely to be killed, if he launches a raid to take out a dangerous enemy, is to shrug and say they'd have brought it on themselves by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He then goes beyond this and contemplates the advantages of terrorizing other people out of working for their enemy. Mariella then realises why senior politicians are colluding to get the possibly psychopathic Dreyer out of the front line, as a potentially dangerous liability to his country.
- Underverse: While there were subtle hints during the whole first season (especially in Episode 0.3 part 2) that Ink is The Sociopath, Episode 0.4 flat out confirms this when he shows up while his friends are about to get killed, Empty Eyes in full force, and blatantly displays his Lack of Empathy by declaring that "they're not his friends". What follows next is absolute chaos, with main characters and even whole universes dying, and yet Ink never, ever emotes. In fact, he even gives a perfectly calm Motive Rant explaining that his entire motivation for his actions is to be "able to feel new things". Even Error is disgusted with him.
Films — Animation
- Up: While Carl and Russell are having dinner with Charles Muntz (Carl's idol), Russell mentions their bird friend, Kevin. He and Carl quickly find out that not only has Charles been pursuing Kevin's species for many years, but he has also been murdering anyone who passes by his hiding place, believing that they all have been trying to steal Kevin away from him.
Films — Live-Action
- Ace Ventura: Pet Detective learns that Ray Finkle lost his mind both through Finkle's father mentioning his escape from a mental institution and through checking out his room, which turns out to be a Room Full of Crazy containing scrawls of DIE DAN DIE and LACES OUT, laying bare that he blames Dan Marino for the disastrous kick that cost the Dolphins the Super Bowl and turned Finkle into a Scapegoat, and that he has really bad designs for him.
- Shutter Island: Teddy runs up the stairs and is confronted by the apparent Nazi experimenter, who in fact responds extremely calmly and writes out "Andrew Laeddis" on the board, revealing that Laeddis and Teddy are the same person.
- The moment Wendy Torrance (and we) learn that Jack Torrance from The Shining has not only lost his marbles, but also apparently been missing them for a while, is when she reads through the "novel" that Jack has been working on. It turns out to be nothing but pages upon pages of the phrase "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" typed out over and over again.
Literature
- In Stephen King's Misery, it takes Paul Sheldon only a few days after waking up from his accident to realize that Annie Wilkes is mentally unstable. And pumping him full of codeine.
"For the first time, clearly, the thought surfaced in Paul Sheldon's mind: I am in trouble here. This woman is not right."
- Near the end of Of Mice and Men, Lenny hallucinates an image of a woman and an animal scolding him in his voice in a moment which provides nothing to the story except this trope. Naturally, the Film of the Book omits this scene entirely because Lenny's disability is obvious from the moment he speaks.
- Shutter Island: Played with. While there is a standoff between the doctor and Teddy, the actual ending is much more ambiguous. The treatment appears to have worked...then Andrew goes back to pretending to be Teddy. While this occurs in the film, it's strongly implied there that Andrew is pretending not to remember so that he'll be lobotomized. The book indicates much more strongly that, despite the apparent "breakthrough", Andrew is still not cured.
- The Basic Eight: Crossing over with Wham Line when Flann appears to recap Adam's murder and that Natasha was responsible. It reveals that Flann murdered Adam, imagined Natasha all along, and that Flora herself is the eighth member of the Basic Eight.
- Holden Caulfield of The Catcher in the Rye starts talking to his dead brother, Allie, while walking. Because Allie has been dead for a couple of years at this point, this is where most readers realize that Holden has not recovered from Allie's death and needs help.
- In the Young Adult novel The Edge Of Anything, Len needs Sage to wipe her hands for her because she fears dirt. This is when we know she has OCD.
Live-Action TV
- In Daredevil, Dex is introduced as a deadly FBI agent who executes two gangsters trying to surrender. However, we do not find out just how badly messed up he is until Fisk gets hold of his medical records. Dex was a star baseball pitcher and was mentored by his Little League coach, whom he adored. During a game, the coach pulled Dex from the game so another kid could get some play time. This interrupted Dex's attempt to pitch the perfect game, so he lobbed a baseball at his coach's head at pitching velocity, killing the man.
- The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Waltz" shows Gul Dukat slowly losing his mind as he has increasingly intense arguments with hallucinations while stranded on a planet with Sisko, culminating in firing a phaser at them. While the audience knows what's happening, it's only after noticing the reason he wasn't hit was because Dukat was aiming behind him does Sisko realize that Dukat's gone mad.
Theatre
- The Mousetrap: Towards the end of the play, one of the characters (name not mentioned here in regard to the script's famous "No Spoilers" warning) reveals that they've been hiding their insanity all along—and another character has the terrifying realization that the two of them are now alone in a room together with no one to hear them.
- In the play Next to Normal we know Diana is not doing well for a while, but it becomes clear when Dan says that Gabe is dead, even though Diana regularly talks to him. This shows that Diana is having hallucinations, has not recovered from Gabe's death, and is generally not okay.
Video Games
- In Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, halfway through the first case, Nagito Komaeda reveals himself to be obsessed with hope to the point of having suicidal and homicidal desires in order to "become a stepping stone for hope." The reveal comes complete with mad laughter, and an admission to committing murder for the sake of hope even though he wasn't the culprit, an act which could have killed 14 people, including himself.
- In Spec Ops: The Line, while it is clear that Walker is getting more and more hostile as the game goes on, it does not become clear that he is in fact completely delusional and suffering a psychotic break until he sees Konrad's corpse, revealing him as Dead All Along.
Western Animation
- Steven Universe: Future: The first hint that Steven is mentally unwell occurs in "Volleyball", when his Superpowered Evil Side flares up as he utterly snaps unlike ever before at the revelation of yet another skeleton in his mother's closet.
