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alt title(s): Comes Great Insanity
With Great Power Comes Great Insanity
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Now you're really dead.
"You summon and kill, summon and kill. I fail to see the logic here. Is sanity... the price to pay... for POWER?!" — Dante, Devil May Cry 4
It seems like any major military or corporate backed venture to give a mundane person super powers or just enhance their normal abilities always results in the test subject going uncontrollably berserk as a side-effect.
Sometimes the choice of test subject is clearly to blame. Convicted criminals make pretty poor guinea pigs if you're trying to develop a Super Soldier who can punch out a tank, yet nobody in any of these programs ever seems to have been given the most basic psychiatric evaluation. The evidence indicates a connection between morals and one's ability to remain "sane." Normally, using the power makes you crazy the longer you use it, because Evil Feels Good, but a noble, heroic character is better able to stay in control.
Other times, it seems that insanity happens as a side effect for no discernible reason other than to justify the needs of the plot and/or give the super individual a weakness that they must struggle to balance and maintain. This also gives the Badass Normal their one edge over the competition as they lack this weakness.
Sometimes, the creators of the super being realize the error while in the prototype phase and will deep six the subject, hoping everyone just forgets about them. This never works. Often, the first subject to undergo the process - or a single subsequent subject - will turn out okay, so on top of all the various other issues that the treatment has, it's usually their job to clean up the mess made by subsequent failed attempts.
If it's a Science Is Bad story, the sponsors of the program are likely to just keep pumping out nutty prototypes hoping they'll eventually make one that is not insane.
If all else fails, it'll seem like it happened just to make the Aesop "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." appear in the story.
Karmic Death is a frequent end for not only the subject, but the scientists who created him/her/it.
May be either the cause or the result of Science Related Memetic Disorder, especially if the person is already a Mad Scientist to begin with.
H. G. Wells used the trope in The Invisible Man, making it Older Than Radio. In fact, it seems invisibility seems to drive one insane more than any other power, due to homage. Less well known, Plato had a story about invisibility with the same result.
Shapeshifting and telepathy are close seconds to invisibility as potential causes of this trope, probably due to Personality Powers; after all, changing identities too often might result in losing track of the real you, and having other peoples' thoughts in your head is a lot like voices in your head, right? Anything can theoretically trigger it, though. Getting energy blasts can result in Psycho Electro. Getting Charles Atlas Superpowers can result in Ax Crazy. Getting Flying Brick powers can result in A God Am I or Beware The Superman.
This is the inverse of Power Born Of Madness. Often occurs when someone acquires god-like powers. Always occurs when someone makes serious use of an Artifact Of Doom.
A.K.A. Comes Great Insanity for short, to go with the original version, Comes Great Responsibility. Compare with The Corruption, Drunk With Power and Mad God.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Magical Project S misao in one episode is dreaming about having magic powers and how she would use them to have "fun" however when she actualy got said powers she became the (" harlequin" ) argubly insane persona of pixy misa ( who tortured all the main cast including her loved ones)
- In Suzumiya Haruhi, the titular character is kept Locked Out Of The Loop regarding the fact that her friends are all examples of the very weirdness she seeks to find for this very reason. Already a Jerk Ass Tsundere, they're afraid that if she discovers that aliens, espers, dimension/time travellers and other such entities are real, she will manage to make the intuitive leap and realise that she is a Reality Warper of such power that she is, in all practical terms, a goddess. Given how much strain she can put on the fabric of reality even while she's unaware of her power, they naturally fear that allowing someone of her attitudes and ethics full control of her abilities would effectively bump her to Eldritch Abomination status.
- Cowboy Bebop, "Pierrot le Fou": A government test subject is given superhuman assassin skills, and then goes crazy as a side-effect. Given the methods shown (the fact that no explanation of any sort is given for what, precisely, is being done, it's all the more disturbing), it's not too surprising.
- In the Read Or Die universe, this is especially explained in the manga, it seems that super powers and insanity are directly correlated. It takes personal devotion to a concept (such as reading, fire, or math) beyond the limits of sanity to develop a physical affinity. The heroines who were the good guys seemed to require someone who was an emotional anchor for them. Take that away, and they reverted to madness. Anita was deliberately created by the British Library to be sane. But she couldn't activate her powers until she was traumatized by Yomiko; and Dokusensha kidnapped her and placed her in their "Paper Sister" project. Previous attempts to create Paper Sisters resulted in them going insane; it was the synergy of the two projects working together than enabled sanity and power.
- In The Big O, Nietzsche Wannabe villain Schwarzwald is the only known character to figure out the big secret. As a result, he goes batshit insane, wraps himself up like a mummy, and spends the rest of the series raving about philosophy, leaving typewriters lying around everywhere he goes, and confusing the hell out of viewers by showing up in a robot several weeks after his death.
- Gundam SEED plays on this by giving performance-enhancing drugs and treatments to criminals who are doing it in exchange for a full pardon. Naturally, this drives them to insanity in combat... which is pretty much what was planned. As a result, they are given drugs in such doses that by the time combat is over, they are having withdrawal symptoms and are docile again.
- In Gundam Seed Destiny, Blue Cosmos has been attempting to create "Artificial Coordinators" through depraved routines of surgery, hypnosis, insane training, drugs and other horrors. Of the dozens of children selected for the project, only a few survived, and those seen in the series are all, understandably, raving mad and almost incapable of functioning normally in life. To say nothing of the fact that without routine "maintenance" their bodies literally break down and they die.
- This likely derives from earlier series in the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise, most notably Zeta Gundam and Gundam ZZ where artificially created Newtypes are often mentally unstable, and may have forms of amnesia or be brainwashed.
- In Gundam Wing, the ZERO System gives the person who uses it incredible reaction times and tactical predictions bordering on prescience. If he can't focus on the battle, those violent predictions start afflicting whatever he starts thinking about (like say his girlfriend, or that nice peaceful space colony over there), and soon enough he's a psychopath slaughtering whatever the System says is his enemy.
- Similarly, Gasaraki has mecha pilots who were given a cocktail of boosting drugs in order to improve their battle performance (without their knowledge or consent, and said drugs was actually fluid extracted from the muscles of a 1000 year old demon), and the inevitably go berserk from the effects, before either lapsing into a coma or suffering cardiac arrest.
- DNA2 had The Rival become the Big Bad when he gained the power to "absorb other people's DNA". Don't ask how that works or why it gave him a Battle Aura and shapeshifting powers, it just did.
- Anime classic Akira centers around the results of government experimentation on a Japanese gang member with a serious inferiority complex. As a result, the newly created Big Bad Tetsuo runs amok with his telekinetic powers until he mutates, explodes, and forms either a new universe or... something.
- Death Note drops some hints that Light Yagami wasn't entirely stable before gaining the power to kill anyone in the world at any time, but his sanity certainly heads downwards after that. In fact, all the Kiras in the series seem to go bonkers after picking up a Death Note, since it seems to take the major flaw in their personality and magnify it- Light and Takada's narcissism, Mikami's fanatical desire for justice, Misa's obsessiveness and Higuchi's greed.
- It even says in chapter 19
 that "with great power comes great evil," which is pretty darn close, in Light's case.
- The Dragon Ball Z movies have Broly, who's more or less the personification of this trope.
- And in DBGT, Goku loses his reason and turns into a giant, supremely powerful golden ape when he first transforms into a SS 4. He Got Better.
- That was simply the latest in a long list of giant ape transformations from Dragon Ball and early DBZ, which had the same effect: multiplying the Saiyan's power level by a factor of 10, but causing their minds to become animalistic. Vegeta was the only one to remain sane in this form... presumably due to actually being trained in its use.
- In Bleach, Ichigo's powers are greatly amplified when his inner Hollow is released, but he suppresses it in order to preserve his sanity.
- And it turns out that suppressing it didn't even work. It takes a major Battle In The Center Of The Mind for him to gain control over it.
- And even that won't help if you get yourself killed.
- Also, Kouga (from the third anime filler arc) fits this trope perfectly. His power ( forcing others' zanpakutou to do his bidding) is truly enormous; and he quickly goes insane.
- Itsuki's Glam Sight in Rental Magica gives him his Crouching Moron Hidden Badass ability that makes him just the right sort of leader for his team of mages. However, the more he uses it, the more it eats away at his sanity. Thus, Honami and the others warn him not to use it as much as possible.
- Inu-Yasha's heritage of demonic power from his Greater Demon father is so strong that it is too much for his half-human body to handle. That's why his father created the Tessaiga, to serve as a Restraining Bolt on Inuyasha's demonic power and thus preserve his sanity (while also making up for the power surpressed with the sword's own usefulness). If the sword is taken from Inuyasha or broken, he must refrain from getting too emotionally excited, or he risks unleashing his full, uncontrollable strength. Worse, each subsequent overload renders him more insane than the last, and it becomes harder to snap him out of it. If left unchecked, Inuyasha would eventually be reduced to a mindless monster killing and destroying everything and everyone around him, permanently.
- Contractors in Darker Than Black appear to have 'complete lack of conscience' as one side-effect of gaining their powers (and their powers are usually destructive in nature). Even the sanest amongst them are Affably Evil or Anti Heroic at best and have no problems with taking lives, though whether it is the powers themselves that cause it or the result of the extensive masquerade surrounding them and how their fellow humans treat them is up to debate.
- Human-type homunculi of Busou Renkin are a borderline example, as while becoming a homunculus does grant a human great power, none of the ones seen seem like they were particularly sane beforehand. Victor, though, is a dead-on example, as becoming a Victor made him do a Face Heel Turn from an alchemic warrior to a demigod attempting to destroy all alchemy.
- Sensui from Yu Yu Hakusho would probably count, as he seems to have been at least slightly cracked before he officially went insane on the mission to the Black Black Club. (As a child, he says that he is the "warrior for justice". Wondering why demons only attacked you as opposed to other people, and knowing about the extent of your own power to destroy other living things leads to this trope.)
- A major part of Tsukihime; whenever most characters use more of their potential powers, a direct effect is the deterioration of their sanity. Examples are Akiha's inversion impulse, Arcueid's blood-lust taking over (often called 'Warcueid'), and the protagonist upon using his Mystic Eyes of Death Perception too much. The entire Tohno family has this. In spades.
- In Type-Moon's same-universe series Fate/Stay Night, the Servant class Berserker has this as a specific class trait - the ability to sacrifice sanity and reason for immense combat power. Also, Shirou, whose brokenly powerful magic only came about due to him becoming functionally insane due to the impotence he felt after surviving his entire town burning down around him, yet being unable to help anyone else. This results in him using his own body to power his magic, allowing him to bypass natural limitations (i.e. survival instincts) that plague "normal" mages - who themselves are dedicated enough to withstand horrific pain for their magecraft - and instantly produce any legendary weapon he has seen in a fashion that no one else, not even the makers of the weapons themselves, can imitate.
- In Chrono Crusade Joshua Christopher is given the horns of a demon by the Big Bad. The power is too much for the small boy, however - within minutes he's gone completely insane, using his powers to freezeeveryone around him in time and destroy the orphanage he lived in. It gets so bad that later he can't even remember his own sister.
- It's even worse than that in the manga. It turns out that a demon's horns, in addition to granting them direct access to the Astral line, are also what connect them to their "mother", Pandemonium. That constant, painful noise that Joshua was complaining about? It was an Eldritch Abomination constantly mind-raping him.
- In the anime, though the horns did damage his mind on their own, the "noise" he complained of was the thoughts of every human around him. In other words, uncontrollable telepathy that forced him to hear what every single person around him was thinking, all at once, all the time. No wonder he went mad if he had to be near people.
- Due to metatron poisoning, Radium of the Zone Of The Enders OVA, Idolo, goes completely off the deep end after spending just a moment too long in the cockpit of the Idolo. This does not end well for anyone.
- The same can be say for Ridley Nohman with his Anubis, from a rather immoral rebel leader (in Dolores, I)into destruction-obsessed guy (ZOE: The 2nd Runner).
- In Devilman Lady, the entire story centres around evolution and the gaining of vast, beast-like powers by ordinary people, many of whom go insane. The main character, Jun, for much of the series appears to be descending into insanity herself despite her best efforts not to. The climax moment of this aspect of the series is when, having been prevented to indulge her bloodlust by the Human Alliance, she attacks a nurse, but ultimately overcomes her instincts by drawing her own blood.
- In Tenjho Tenge, characters who possess supernatural powers are remarked as always being in danger of becoming insane. A classic example of this is Natsume Shin, Maya and Aya's elder brother who was overwhelmed by his powers and basically started killing random people. This leads to powers being referred to as "Dragons" that will devour their wielder's sanity. Because of this, there is a tremendous social stigma attached to the possession of supernatural abilities, which naturally only serves to aggravate the problem even more.
- S-Cry-Ed shows this one off pretty well, with most (if not debatable all) of the Alter Power users being completely insane to some degree. Particular samples include Straight Cougar, most of the one-shot villains and our main Kazuma (whose personality initially flips between Jerk With A Heart Of Gold and nice-guy... only for the nice guy to comepltely vanish by the final battle).
- A few of the characters in the Mai-HiME mangaverse are given special earrings created using SEARRS technology, which allows them to summon more powerful CHILDs than any of the HiME, and they don't need an emotional anchor to use said powers. However, relying on this ability too much can drive them insane.
- The cyclone-riders in Uzumaki.
- A Claymore who activates her demonic powers (i.e. "Awakens") gains great power but stands a chance of losing her humanity and turning into a human flesh-craving demon permanently.
- In Rosario+Vampire being injected with a youkai's blood gives you all of their abilities for a short while. Eventually the effect starts wearing your body down. One time too many will kill you (if you're lucky) or horribly mangle your body and, if vampire blood is involved, leave you a mindless killing machine. Fortunately there are ways to counteract the less-than-desireable effects.
- Not to mention whatever they did to Kahlua. The audience doesn't yet know what happened, but Kahlua spent her entire fight with Tsukune and company doing
two three things: Crying like a baby, undergoing some grade-A Body Horror, and beating the living stuffing out of all of them at once.
- In Get Backers, Ginji and Kazuki have this as a side effect of their Superpowered Evil Sides. Ginji's "Lightning Lord" aspect is quiet, cold and utterly ruthless, while Kazuki goes absolutely berserk when he releases the seal on his "Stigma," becoming vicious and blood-thirsty. They're always sorry afterward.
- In Soul Eater, the characters infected with Black Blood have their strength increased tremendously when they use it, but also run the risk of loosing themselves completely to insanity. Oops.
- Also the result of mis-using the Nakatsukasa Purpose, which also drives you mad whilst killing you slowly (it damages your soul).
- This is also the reason why witches are so dangerous in the series. Up till a certain age they're normal. But then the "Sway of Magic" affects them and causes them to be evil and destructive. Though there are a few exceptions where this doesn't happen due to the witch having their mind on something else other then their magic.
- In Berserk, the main character finds that he can enter into an Unstoppable Rage like never before due to his recently obtained Upgrade Artifact. However, he finds himself Blessed With Suck due to the incredible physical strain it puts on his body, not to mention the fact that he could accidentally Face Heel Turn at any moment and kill all of his companions.
- Played with in Mirai Nikki, where some individuals who're not so mentally sound to begin with are given the ability to predict the future and told by God to kill each other highlander style. Whether the ability, situation or just generally being that nuts before drives them crazy is up for interpretation.
- Pokemon Special uses this in the R/S arc. The Red and Blue Orbs can be wielded by mortals to control Groudon and Kyogre, but sufficient willpower is required to prevent loss of self. One Magma Elite tried and was driven mad; Archie and Maxie were so consumed by their lust for power that the Orbs wielded them. To prevent the same from happening to their (unknowing at the time) new hosts, Juan, Liza and Tate used the temporal abnormalities of Mirage Island to temper Ruby and Sapphire's collective resolve. Ruby foolishly coaxed the Blue Orb from Sapphire for his own use, but he turned out to have enough strength of will to calm both titans once more.
- The anime has Oakley in PokemonHeroes, who loses it and tries to destroy the world once she gains control of a machine powered by Latios. Even her partner Annie is startled by the change.
- Sasuke Uchiha seems to grow progressively more unreasonable, unhinged, and insane/evil the stronger he gets. He's currently in Complete Monster territory.
- Mention must also be made of the people responsible for making him what he is today, his older brother Itachi, Uchiha founder Madara, and criminal Orochimaru, all of whom display this trope to varying degrees, and all of whom passed a bit of that power and madness on to Sasuke.
- Naruto also tends to head into this territory himself more than once. Not only does relying too heavily on the Kyubi chakra tend to result in him going into an unstoppable rage or transforming into fox-shaped chakra monsters, but if recent manga chapters are any indication, theres an entire manifestation of Naruto's resentment and negative emotions feeding off the Kyubi's chakra as well, and its strong enough that Naruto's first attempt at taking it on failed rather miserably
- This was the result of Elfman's failed Take Over spell against a monster called The Beast a few years before the story started in Fairy Tail. In order to save his older sister, he used his magic on a gigantic magical monster but wasn't quite strong enough to control it. He saved his older sister, and killed the younger. Out of fear of this happening again, he stopped using full body Take Over magic.
- Any diclonius in Elfen Lied exept Nana.
- Negi whenuses the Magica Erebea spell but it's slowly draining his body and soul which can transform into a monster or kill him
Comic Books
- All attempts to replicate the Super Serum that gave Captain America his powers have ended up as Psycho Serum, either made people go crazy or been used on someone who was already crazy. In fact, in the Ultimate universe, this seems to be the origin for pretty much all of Ultimate Spider-Man's Rogues Gallery.
- In almost every incarnation of Spider-Man, when he gains access to the power-enhancing abilities of the symbiote, and ends up becoming irrationally angry and cocky. Or, in the case of the movie, an emo.
- Interestingly, this doesn't actually apply to the original comic book version of Spider-Man; he wore the symbiote suit for about a year without any ill effects, and it wasn't until the suit wanted their relationship to be a little more intimate than Spidey was ready for did he realize it wasn't such a great idea. The '90s cartoon was responsible for the "symbiote makes you a psychopath" aspect.
- And in fact, when the original symbiote comes into play in Spider-Girl, it does start out evil but it doesn't stay like that. After bonding with Normie Osborn - grandson of the first Green Goblin, by that point a good guy - it gets "purified", and at some point it's stated that while it has its own emotions and will it brings out its host's nature. It heals May after she's nearly killed by Carnage - who is still evil - and then proceeds to make a Heroic Sacrifice against the Hobgoblin. This becomes Fridge Brilliance when you look at how Peter Parker actually behaved when he had the symbiote-when the symbiote took his body out on a midnight joyride, all it did was continue to help people and fight crime the way Peter did. Only after bonding with the evil, Ax Crazy Eddie Brock did the symbiote itself actually turn bad.
- In the comic book series Hellboy, losing control of one's powers and/or humanity was a major theme of the series, especially for Liz Sherman and Hellboy himself.
- That is to say: Liz burned her family to death by accident as a kid, and Hellboy doesn't and can't and won't use his flashier superpowers, since they mostly involve ending the world, but occasionally they get stolen, one way or another. His crown, his Name, his right hand, ALL THE BLOOD IN HIS BODY...
- In Gold Digger, dragon hybrids between the tribes (Platinum, Gold, Copper, and Iron) are extremely rare and extremely powerful. Every single one has gone insane, however, with the sole exception being one of the comic's supporting cast, D'bra. And even then, most dragons believe her temper is a sign that it's only a matter of time.
- Apparently, Chris Claremont likes this one (or used to). In X-Men, The Phoenix being a cosmic entity was a retcon to satisfy the then-editor-in-chief's requirement for bringing Jean back: she had to be innocent of her crimes as Phoenix. (The destroyer of five billion couldn't very well be welcomed back to the team with open arms. In fact, her original Heroic Sacrifice was mandated for that very reason.) The original story portrayed Jean's cosmic powers as the ultimate expression of her abilities, and the change from hero to Anti Hero to cosmic-scale threat as simply the result of having the sort of powers she now possessed. Storm also began a similar change upon maxing out her powers, but thankfully was able to return to her previous self (her power level returning to normal with it) within that issue and before she did anything particularly heinous.
- Claremont also established that classic X-Men adversary Magneto's magnetic powers damage his sanity over time. This explains rather a lot; wouldn't being able to control one of the four fundamental forces of the universe screw you up, too?
- Magneto comes close to saying this trope by name in issue two of the nineties X Men series. When Moira Mctaggart explains how his powers played havoc with his mind he states: "What, with great power comes mental instability?"
- Magneto's daughters, Polaris and the Scarlet Witch, suffer from similar sanity-damaging "cursed" powers. Insanity might be In The Blood where this family's concerned.
- It's implied that the Scarlet Witch's crazy came from the Mind Screw the Avengers did so she'd forget her maybe/sort-of/magic children rather than from her powers themselves.
- Considering Quicksilver, Magneto's son, also went a bit crazy when he gained a new power set after House of M, odds seem high.
- Although, that wasn't the first time he'd gone a bit crazy...
- This was Lampshaded in the Assault on Weapon Plus story arc, where the Weapon Plus files stated that super soldier experiments on criminals and psychopaths yielded less than reliable results, prompting them to find a different method of creating anti-mutant super soldiers.
- Oddly enough, though, Jean's time traveling daughter Rachel, who already had ample reason to have gone insane (but didn't) before acquiring the Phoenix power, managed to wield it for years without going crazy. And then lost the power despite the Phoenix itself insisting that it had permanently merged with her.
- Another X-related example has to do with Omega Red, the USSR's attempt to engineer its own Captain America-like super soldier. The brain trust in charge of the program chose a Serial Killer who'd been shot by his fellow soldiers for murdering children in his hometown. While initially a loyal operative, he eventually became too Ax Crazy even for the KGB and was put in suspended animation, at least until the Hand freed him. He now functions as a Psycho For Hire and one of the X-Men's deadliest foes.
- Apparently, getting hopped up on Chaos Emerald Energy in the Archie Comics Sonic The Hedgehog series makes you do crazy things. Examples:
- Knuckles' ancestor Dimitri ends up becoming the insane Enerjak after absorbing some of the Master Emerald's power, one of the most powerful and evil villains in the series.
- Knux's dad Locke, obsessed with the prophecies surrounding his son, genetically engineered himself and infused Knux' egg with energy from the Master Emerald in an attempt to fulfill those prophecies. They're more or less estranged, now, because of this.
- Knux himself isn't safe from this, having recently appropriated Dimitri's mantle of Enerjak to avenge his race's decimation at Eggman's hand, only to quickly degenerate into "technology = evil" and attempt to wipe out all cybernetics from the planet, including those of the Dark Legion and his own girlfriend Julie-Su.
- In the (non-canon) "25 Years Later" storyline, Knux ends up becoming "Chaos Knuckles" (a form he took up in the normal canon without much ill effect), and ends up trying to change the world, as well. The result was the almost complete destruction of his friendship with Sonic and the loss of his right eye.
- Some versions of Sonic's Super form are like this, literally becoming a Superpowered Evil Side. This is mainly seen in the British Fleetway comics, where Sonic always becomes a psychopath when he changes to Super Sonic.
- Such as the third season of Sonic X. Seeing a hostage Chris and Cosmo traumatised in a glass cage gives a view of how upset Sonic gets when his friends are harmed. Combined with the 500-odd fake Chaos Emeralds nearby, Sonic turns Dark Super, shredding two test robots (based on speed and power respectively) in the blink of an eye, complete with the slightly unhinged giggle and a "Alright, Let's try 'em out!". It took a minute, and Eggman's logical prose to snap Sonic out of it, surprising somewhat as they've been at each other for years, and Sonic could quite easily rip Eggman to gibs.
- Sonic from the games actually becomes kind of crazy when he turns into Super/Hyper Sonic, at least in the old-school games on the Genesis. Suddenly goes from fast and cocky but vulnerable to fast and cocky and invulnerable, tearing through anything in his path.
- Not to mention, way, way harder to control.
- Matthew Cable from Swamp Thing. His Psychic Powers and his spiraling alcoholic insanity both stem from the same illicit electroshock treatments.
- Warren Ellis' Global Frequency not only invokes this, but explains it in terms of the surgical alterations required to keep the superstrong bionic arm or whatever from physically tearing the body apart. "They gave him a mirror."
- In newuniversal, which is also by Warren Ellis, John Tensen gains telepathic powers that let him "see" a person's misdeeds or ignoble intentions. The first time he used these abilities, he discovered that his own nurse was planning to poison him. Tensen, not surprisingly, became Ax Crazy and is now the "worst serial killer in New York City history," to quote a minor character.
- In Powers, a naturally occurring variant occurs in "The Sellouts" storyline, in which a never-aging Captain Ersatz of Superman gradually loses his connection with humanity and goes insane, declaring himself to be a God. It's discussed that this may partly be a result of his ever-increasing level of superpowers, which go way beyond anything seen before (to the extent that the government has lied about exactly how powerful he is in order to prevent hysteria about him), and partly because, despite the fact that he doesn't look very old, he's at least over a hundred years old and has gone senile.
- Deadpool was probably messed up before developing terminal cancer, but the Weapon X program (which initially failed to give him a Healing Factor) gives him a hard shove in that direction. Then Dr. Killebrew experiments on and tortures him to the point of having visions of (and falling in love with) Death. What finally demolishes his sanity is when Killebrew orders him killed, his healing factor finally kicks in, saving his life, making his disfigurement permanent, and causing Death to reject him. Depending on the writer, he's a mix of Ax Crazy, Deadpan Snarker, gleeful Genre Savvy and Medium Awareness.
- DC Comics. The newest Kryptonite Man is a scientist who thinks Kryptonite (there is now a lot of it on Earth) can be used as a safe energy source. When he himself becomes that energy source, he decides to show the world how effective it can be by...a murderous rampage. That never ends well.
- Later, in the same storyline, another scientist goes cuckoo bananas when he gains control over an oversized amoeba. Or so it seems. Superman subdues the guy, who says he didn't want to do it but Intergang, a powerful criminal organization, made him.
- Retconned for Doctor Magnus, the leader of the Metal Men, also from DC Comics. He needs a careful application of medicine in order to stay stable and good. He's kidnapped along with genuine mad scientists and they neglect his meds. He invents a gun with living ammo and goes on a rampage (against evil men only), screaming about how he really needed his meds.
- Handled interestingly with Marvel's Sentry. His powers are like some ridiculous combination of Superman and Franklin Richards, making him technically unstoppable and all-powerful. He's also a paranoid schizophrenic who managed to convince himself that there was an evil galactic power called The Void that would destroy the earth if he stayed a superhero... and then actually created it out of thin air, making a hell of a problem for The Avengers to handle while Emma Frost gave him some emergency psychotherapy. During this time, he also managed to RetCon himself out of his own universe, so that his Golden Age exploits all became some comic writer's fantasy. In something of a subversion, Sentry's not a villain: in current canon, he works to use his powers for a great deal of good. Unfortunately, his psychosis still isn't fully under control, and it's a disability that is sometimes just impossible to work around.
- Recent developments/retcons suggest that the Sentry is an inversion of this trope. Robert Reynolds was already a mentally unstable drug addict before taking the serum that gave him his powers, so it's more like someone with great insanity given great power. Furthermore, Reynolds didn't become the Sentry and create the Void, it was the other way around...
- Yet another DC example. Mento wasn't the most stable/mentally healthy guy to begin with. Then he starts tinkering with a helmet that cranks his Psychic Powers Up To Eleven and takes up superheroing. But his wife (and her team) die, and it REALLY sent him downhill until he's doing stints as a supervillain and trying to kill his own adopted son! Of course, when that heroing team was led by a fellow Retconned into a Mad Scientist and Magnificent Bastard, it was damn near inevitable.
- The Mask is this trope. Summary of every Mask story: Person finds the mask, puts it on, discovers they're a Nigh Invulnerable Voluntary Shapeshifting Reality Warper, starts using their powers in pursuit of some logical goal, loses sight of their goal and engages in wanton violence For The Evulz, is either tricked into removing the mask or removes it after a What Have I Become moment.
- The Incredible Hulk. The gamma bomb gave Bruce Banner huge power and exacerbated his multiple personality syndrome. Plus, the madder he gets, the stronger he becomes.
- Interestingly, for both The Mask and Marvel's gamma ray mutants, what happens to the subject's mind depends on what part of their personality they had dissociated themselves from. Most people who get the Mask unlock their evil side, but the fellow in The Movie didn't have an evil side, only a chaotic side, so he essentially became a Looney Tunes character. Marvel goes into more detail—Banner suppressed the rage that came from being abused as a child, She Hulk suppressed her sexuality, Doc Samson suppressed his desire to be a hero, and the Abomination suppressed his self-hatred.
- Interesting case with Black Adam from DC. His powers don't drive him crazy, but he can share them, and anyone who would take them on immediately turns evil. Anyone, including the goddess of love.
- When the Canadian government was looking for people to join Alpha Flight, they initially had trouble finding recruits. The people in charge of the program decided to try creating their own superbeings, and they got the bright idea to experiment on a Serial Killer who got a pardon in exchange for agreeing to participate. The result was a crazed monster with deadly psychic abilities calling itself Bedlam. Wolverine had initially signed on to join Alpha Flight, but this debacle was what caused him to leave the group in disgust.
- In Zenith the alternate Earth Maximan, who had been superpowered since the 40s, ended up going completely insane and killing everyone on his version of Earth. That said, most of the '60s superheroes became somewhat less than rational by the time of the early '90s.
- Arguably completely inverted in All Star Superman: Lex Luthor temporarily gains Superman's powers, and while he predictably rampages, he finds himself stopping to examine the amazing perspective his newfound powers and super-senses give him. He eventually concludes that having the level of power and insight that Superman would make people care for their fellow human beings, and mellows out considerably after losing the powers.
- Similarly inverted (or not) in the Authority, where the Doctor gives up his powers to a previous Doctor, who was basically relieved of his duties for being a psychotic maniac. As soon as the full extent of his powers kicked in, he was overwhelmed by the empathy for every living thing in existence. Super-empathy being part of the Doctor's role as the world's shaman, makes you wonder why this guy was psychotic in the first place.
- Dr Manhattan is a subtler and relatively benign variation of the trope; it's implied that he was more at home dealing with elementary particles than other people even before the Freak Lab Accident turned him into an immortal Physical God who can see the future but not change any of it, even his own actions. However, instead of suffering a spectacular Heroic BSOD and subsequent Face Heel Turn, he's one of the least emotionally damaged people in the entire cast, whilst still being almost entirely disconnected from normal human thought patterns.
Fanfiction
- In the Oneiroi Series (for Order Of The Stick), this fits Deirdre to a T. (Though to be fair, she had a few screws loose before she got the Great Power...)
Deirdre: You want me. And you hate it. I suppose it's only natural. I look a lot like Vaarsuvius, don't I?
Redcloak (her father): Tia, you've gone insane! Please lie down for a second. Take a deep breath. Calm down…
Deirdre: Of course I've gone insane! I'm infused with the magic from a being of pure chaos! But just because I'm insane doesn't mean I'm wrong…
Film
Literature
- Saidin, the magic used by males in The Wheel Of Time, is tainted by The Dark One, causing inevitable insanity in its users. As time progresses, one of the main characters begins to show the effects of this, becoming schizophrenic, moody, and temperamental; halfway through the series, he seems like a completely different person, though he is under a lot of pressure... The Forsaken also have access to what they call the True Power, an extremely addictive, evil flavor of magic that also has serious psychological consequences; most would only consider using it under dire need.
- Possibly exemplified best when some poor soul using Saidin breaks down AFTER ONE DAY, and starts screaming that there are spiders under his skin.
- It's also worth mentioning that Saidin use can bring about other lovely effects, such as rotting flesh. It is entirely random as to which will affect you first, when, and to what degree.
- Played straight and later justified in the third book with the Lord Ruler, a main villain of Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series.
- Also true for the Lord Ruler's Dragons, the Steel Inquisitors. The Inquisitors use hemalurgy, a ghoulish form of magic that allows them to remove portions of someone else's lifeforce by killing them with a metal spike, trapping said life force in the spike, and then impaling * themselves* with said spike to aquire whatever power they stole. This makes them supremely powerful, but is in no way good for their long-term mental health. All the Inquisitors we see in the series are somewhat... homicidal.
- Soon I Will Be Invincible, which even gives it a medical name: "Malign Hypercognition Disorder".
- The One Ring in The Lord of the Rings.
- Jacen Solo in the Star Wars "Legacy of the Force" novels seems to get crazier and crazier the more he falls to the Dark Side of the Force. He first justifies his actions as necessary sacrifices for the good of the galaxy, but by the end of "Fury," he uses the Force to break an underling's neck for failing him. They don't call it The Dark Side for no reason. The same applies to Anakin/Vader and a host of other Expanded Universe characters.
- In David Brin's original novel The Postman, the brutal survivalists/Holnists are led by General Macklin and his aides, who were pre-war experiments on creating soldiers with superhuman strength and speed. Of course the government chose the most ruthless, intelligent and efficient killers in its military, with foreseeable results when the US itself turned into an anarchistic warzone. Macklin is finally killed by George Powhatan, a later experiment of the same ilk, though with a nature loving Neo-Hippie as subject.
- Half straight, half inverted in Dean Koontz's Midnight. A rather twisted scientific genius has designed microchip-like spheres that augment a person's mental and physical abilities, but suppress all their emotions except fear, which produces some rather odd behavior on its own. Then the townspeople begin to discover that an accidental side-effect gives them mind-over-matter shapeshifting powers, and they promptly escape into forms in which their lack of emotions doesn't bother them - either animalistic creatures without the intelligence to notice, or cyborgs without any emotion at all. Everyone dies.
- In H. G. Wells's The Invisible Man, the titular character becomes a psychopath after discovering the ability to turn himself invisible.
- In the Republic, Plato (writing Socrates' lines), tells a story about the Ring of Gyges, which gives the user the ability to become invisible. What does it get used for? The person who finds the ring uses it to seduce the Queen, kill the King, and take his place. Making this one Older Than Feudalism.
- At the very least, most mages in the Evie Scelan novels are highly paranoid. The title character aggressively cultivates a normal life to keep from going crazy herself.
- Timothy Zahn's Cobra Trilogy has people being made into Super Soldiers and adjusting to new strength and speed and lasers in a matter of weeks. They're carefully screened beforehand; only the most emotionally stable ones actually become Cobras. Even so, a percent of them do not handle the transition well and develop something called a "Titan complex", the belief that one is so powerful that one is above normal laws and standards. Handing someone all that physical power at once, instead of having to acquire and use it in small increments, essentially sidesteps the usual adjustment mechanisms, according to the books. These people tend to decide that they know what's best and proceed to rebel until other Cobras either kill them or restrain them long enough to have the Super part downgraded. A major plot point is the main character, a Cobra himself, realizing that he has to help his colonies secede from the Dominion of Man and trying not to look like he's developed the complex.
- Anthony Burgess' One Hand Clapping is about a man with hyper-photographic memory, who uses this ability to become rich, and show his wife the life she deserves. She later finds out not being able to forget things has driven him insane, when he reveals his plan all along; to show her the good life, before ending both their lives in a suicide pact.
- In "the alchymist", one who goes the quick way to being "awakened" will not be able to comprehend the power, resulting in death.
- In The Cycle Of Fire, the process of mastering fire powers involves experiencing being burnt alive. The trainee must get past the pain to understand the flames, which usually requires sacrificing all capacity for empathy, making them a sociopath.
- In the Dale Brown book Warrior Class, Fursenko suspects that Yegorov is suffering from this, the power conferred on him by the Fisikous/Metyor-179 turning him from a mild-mannered and intelligent person to a seemingly Ax Crazy Blood Knight.
- Megan Lindholm's out-of-print novella "Wizard of the Pigeons" is based on a radical re-interpretation of this trope. Magic usually comes hand in hand with letting go of your previous life, memories, and basic perception of reality. Usually, the mage is so divorced from the outside world that he or she cannot hold down a job or personal relationship, and usually ends up living on the street. They also have to follow their own set of arbitrary rules and rituals, implicitly for thePlacebotinum Effect. Of course, Cassie has been doing this since the Trojan War, and is so uninhibited by her environment that she can pretty much bend reality to her whim.
- This happens to more characters than one can count in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy, notably the Lord Ruler and pretty much all the Inquisitors.
- Michael Swanwick's short story "The Promise of God" is based on the premise that using magic gradually erodes a magician's moral sense until they no longer have any concept of right and wrong; magicians are kept in check by being assigned guardians whom they are trained to obey without question.
Live Action Television
- The 2000 The Invisible Man series starring Vincent Ventresca had the invisibility caused by a synthetic gland that excreted a light-bending substance, a secondary side effect of which (after a long enough period of time) was insanity, until the counteragent was administered - though this was only a plot focus once or twice. The primary side-effects were unpleasant enough that the invisible man usually got the counteragent before the secondary side-effects kicked in.
- This was due to sabotage on the part of one of the creators of the gland. He intended to use the counteragent to control whoever possessed the gland.
- Given that they explain Quicksilver Madness as being related to frontal lobe dysfunction, and the frontal lobes are involved in suppressing impulses, the main character presumably wants to be violent but is controlling himself. If they'd done the procedure on someone else, he'd probably have just had Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny.
- This trope is applied in Stargate SG-1 to partly explain the evil megalomania of the show's main enemies, the Goa'uld: it's a side effect of revitalizing themselves with their all-healing sarcophagi too many times. When in "Absolute Power" Daniel Jackson asks to be given just a small portion of knowledge from the Goa'uld's ancestral memories, he is quickly shown that that would make him go wonky too. (See also You Are Not Ready.)
- In an interesting twist, when O'Neill is exposed to "good" knowledge (twice), he also swiftly suffers mental breakdown; no evil megalomania, but his brain begins to fail from the strain of holding on to it all.
- There's also the armband episode, in which O'Neill, Jackson and Carter get magic jewelry that makes them super-strong and -fast. It's rather subverted, though, in that the "craziest" they ever get is kind of impulsive and overconfident.
- River Tam from Firefly. See Serenity reference above, as the extent of her abilities is only hinted at until the movie. She's still crazy in both, though.
- Spoofed rather effectively on That Mitchell And Webb Look, with a sketch involving a man going insane with his power to levitate...biscuits.
- In Supernatural, nearly all of the psychic children except for Sam have gone insane or at least been killed before they ended up killing themselves. But now that Dean's dead and gone to hell? All signs point to Sam becoming the Anti-Christ or at least having a nervous breakdown so massive it's going to rival Dean's from last season.
- It's the former, sorta. He starts sucking demon blood and ends up releasing Satan himself. Granted, that wasn't his intention, but he had already gone somewhat insane from the blood-enhanced powers he was given.
- An episode of Farscape had the crew getting their hands on a powerful weapon that attached itself to the user, powered by an addictive drug with all the properties of TV steroids, which they needed to use to get Rygel back. Predictably, D'Argo, Aeryn, and Crichton all had to use it at some point. Thankfully, it had a built-in off switch - if the wearer lost consciousness, the weapon detached itself.
- Heroes has Sylar, who went from a bookish watchmaker to a psychopathic serial killer after he began to acquire superpowers. Of course, gaining those powers involves killing people and stealing their brains, so it's kind of a chicken-or-the-egg matter with him.
- Season 3 episode 4 shows that his original power was what made him go crazy. When Peter mimics this power, the first thing he does with it (well, the first thing after figuring out how to fix the Sylar watch) is to "figure out" what President Nathan Petrelli is up to... so he cuts open his skull.
- And how. As of Season 3 episode 24 (second to last episode of Volume 4) Sylar's latest power acquisition of physical shapeshifting by absorbing other people's DNA combined with psychometry, the ability to touch objects or people and "read" their history by picking up emotions and visions of past scenes has finally driven him completely bonkers, full blown Norman Bates-style crazy. It takes a lot to creep out Sylar but he finally managed to do it to himself.
- The leader of The Company claims that mental illness are a side effect of the mind trying to cope with possessing superpowers, but it's likely he was simply lying to convince Niki to work for him.
- Plus, HRG says after they capture Sylar that all the changes to his DNA have made Sylar more and more insane.
- Mohinder became more aggressive and developed a compulsion to abduct people and store them in cocoons after injecting himself with his Super Serum.
- Subverted pretty well in Season 3 with Scott, the Marine chosen to get the super soldier injection (a variant of the same serum referenced above with Mohinder). After he finishes twitching and panting, Scott glares at his benefactors, demonstrates his new super strength by throwing a chair hard enough to embed it into the wall... then smiles and nonchalantly remarks that he feels good. He spends his brief remaining screen time behaving quite sensibly until Knox sneaks up behind him and 360's his head.
- Volume Five Big Bad Samuel Sullivan has been revealed to be this way. His power level is directly proportional to how many evolved humans are present. The more supers are around him, the more powerful he becomes. He's even been described as an ego-maniac who doesn't hold the lives of the normal folk as having any worth, and he'll happily off anyone who stands in his way or hurts any member of his "family."
- In the third season of Roswell, Michael the sidekick ends up becoming the back-up king after the real king's (temporary) death and promptly goes crazy and tries to kill his supposedly-destined wife's human husband.
- One of the oldest TV examples of this trope is the Star Trek the Original Series episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before". As Gary Mitchell's god-like psionic powers increase, he becomes a callous megalomaniac, complete with Glowing Eyes of Doom. Dr. Elizabeth Dehner was able to restrain herself long enough to do a Heroic Sacrifice, perhaps because her training as a psychiatrist made her better able to psychoanalyze herself.
- In the first series Star Trek the Next Generation episode "Hide and Q" the focus of the story is Riker's temptation with omnipotence, and how unlimited power takes away his self control and humanity, but fortunately Captain Picard helps him overcome the temptation to save lives and prevent natural disasters. Oh, he uses them to get rid of the space monkeys, so I suppose they didn't totally go to waste.
- In Millennium, Frank and Laura's unique perceptions of reality lead to mental breakdowns. Frank initially seems to have recovered from his; by the third season, however, he's again fraying at the edges.
- In the 2007 remake of The Bionic Woman Sarah Corvus, Bionic Woman 1.0, goes crazy after getting her power.
- There is a small story arc of Smallville where
Batman's Green Arrow's scientific team developed a serum which heals the user of almost any injury, but seems to damage their minds in the process. Eventually Lionel Luthor uses it to save his son, which may or may not have helped his eventual turn into the full-time anti-Superman villain we all know and love.
- A lot of the meteor freaks in Smallville end up going insane and evil. Granted some of the characters already have a screw (or several) loose before becoming meteor freaks (e.g. Tina Greer, Greg Arkin), but some only went nuts after getting powers. Sean Kelvin for example - before getting powers he was just a jerk, after he got powers he became a serial killer. Even the non-killing meteor freaks aren't always all right in the head (e.g. Cyrus Krupp). Also, when normal people get Kryptonian powers they tend to go nuts (e.g. Jeremiah Holdsclaw, Lana Lang, Eric Summers). Should note that not all meteor freaks and normal-humans-with-Kryptonian-powers go nuts (Chloe Sullivan for the meteor freaks, Jonathan Kent for the humans-with-Kryptonian-powers), just most of them.
- In The Greatest American Hero, Ralph (who lost the manual to his supersuit) meets a filthy rich old man who kept his manual and knew everything the suit could do. The guy used his suit to become rich and crush his enemies like bugs, and the aliens finally took the suit away. The old man thinks it's a good thing Ralph doesn't have the manual. At the end of the story, the old man gives the Lord Acton pagequote and says, "I wonder if he had a suit too."
- A major plot arc in Babylon 5 that was mostly abandoned (but still hinted at) with Andrea Thompson's departure was the Psi Corps' attempt to solve the frequent insanity that accompanied telekinetic powers.
Tabletop Games
- Justified in Exalted. After their defeat, the Primordials leveled the Great Curse against the Exalts, making them progressively insane. The madness of the Solars was the canonical reason for the Usurpation and of course the Sidereals decided to kill the Solars thanks to the Great Prophecy and their own Great Curse. The Solars, as the leaders of the Divine Rebellion against the Primordials, were cursed the most. The Dragon-blooded shock-troopers were cursed the least with the Lunars and Sidereals coming in between.
- This phrase goes some way to defining Warhammer 40000. They've even got a Tagline for the game that goes: "Only the insane have the strength to prosper. Only those who prosper can judge what is truly sane." At least some of the Chaos forces admit it - "Sanity is for the weak."
- In the fluff backstory of Mage Knight, it was stated that mastering the opposing magics of Necromancy and Elementalism would drive a mage insane. The one guy who did went on to found the Atlantean Empire, which practiced slavery and subjugation.
- Cyberpunk 2020 has humanity loss as a side-effect of cybernetic enhancement; as characters become more powerful, they start to feel disconnected from the meatbags around them. Eventually they go crazy, at which point C-SWAT has the job of taking them down.
- Aberrant has a "taint" system, which is explained in that "No human being was meant to contain that much power." Taint works in a number of ways. You can purchase a new level in any ability at half price if you take a point of taint with it, and you also take a point of taint when your power reaches a certain level, etc. But no matter how good, or "taint-free" your character is, just remember that this is a prequel to Trinity, where it has already been set in stone that all the Novas went insane.
- Not quite. While large numbers of superhumans did go insane, the idea that they all do so is actually Aeon Trinity propaganda and history rewriting.
- Call Of Cthulhu introduced the Sanity (or SAN) stat. As your characters learn more about the Cthulhu Mythos, their Sanity slowly decreases until they go completely insane. Learning and casting magic also lowers your Sanity, as magic in the Cthulhu setting is a perversion of the natural laws that humans are accustomed to, but then again basically anything, even mundane stuff like seeing a shadow, can do that in CoC
- Cthulhu Tech, in the grand Lovecraftian traditions, is into this in a big way. Having a chip implanted in your brain so you can pilot the awesome Eldritch Abomination Humongous Mechas drives you mad slowly, being linked to an extradimesional symbiont that makes you essentially into a were-Lovecraftian Beast drives you nuts over time, learning both sorcery and enhancing your paraphysic abilities makes you crazy, and the Zoner parapsysics are normal people who a) got powers by going near a tear in reality that used to be Las Vegas and may be an intrusion into the body of Azathoth, and b) as you guessed, go very, very crazy.
- Rifts gives us the Mind Over Matter (M.O.M.) Works, a process that grants incredible strength, reflexes and Psychic Powers to its users via a set of tiny chips implanted in key spots in their brains. Trouble is, the chips slowly cause mental instability that gets worse and worse with time. The character type that has M.O.M. conversion is called, fittingly, the Crazy.
- Vampire:The Requiem subverts the trope at a conceptual level with the new Ventrue, where a Ventrue vampire is more likely to gain derangements and go insane when called to make tests of humanity. And when would they need to make tests of humanity? When expanding their political power of course. And as the Ventrue are "Lords of The Damned", they would have a tendency to do this a lot....
- And in the Revised version of Vampire The Masquerade, the Malkavians, who have both MalkNet (a sort of hive mind of insanity) but also the super power to make OTHERS share a little insanity.
- Pretty much all oWoD had some kind of character that was completly out of its mind. Marauders, Black Spiral Dancers, Specters, every playable character in Hunter.
- When the voices are real, are you still insane? But really, the Imbued of Hunter acquired more power the more they threw themselves into the Hunt, thus moving further away from humanity and its trappings (ethics, morals, emotions, etc), eventually turning into super-powered anti-supe fanatics who are human only in biological makeup.
- And two of the creeds - the Hermits and Waywards - are broken right from the imbuing, since both get a direct pipeline to the Powers That Be.
- The fanline Genius The Transgression also features an inversion; Geniuses, by their very nature, derive power from their insanity. So what happens when one of them goes really nucking futs? Reality bends to fit their delusion.
- The Forgotten Realms setting has Sammaster, one of the mages "promoted" by Mystra to semidivine being status. This impaired his sanity, triggering a delusion (provoked by a ritual) that the goddess was infatuated with him, and the "friendly" advice of an evil priest made it even worse. He ended up stripped of power and convinced that dead dragons shall rule the world due to his bad translation of old prophecy. To fulfill this prophecy he created dracoliches and the infamous Cult of the Dragon.
- Unknown Armies inverts this trope to "With Great Insanity Comes Great Power". A person categorically cannot become an adept (a type of powerful, flexible magic user) without an appropriate pre-existing obsession (in books for Bibliomancy, history for Cliomancy, money for Plutomancy, etc).
- Dont Rest Your Head. Oh dear god, Don't Rest Your Head. The entire reason the player characters have their powers is because they're insomniacs who've started to go off the deep end. Continuing to use their powers risks them turning into Nightmares as a result of their insanity. The powers allow them to become a One Man Army. Hell, the powers are even called madness talents!
Video Games
Webcomics
- Justified in Order Of The Stick When V has spoken the Four Words he merges mentally with three of the most evil but powerful mages ever and therefore it's justified his mental state is a little vague thereafter.
- Then it's later revealed that the splice has as much effect on one's alignment as a cheerleader would on the final score of a game. The fiends just lied to him because nothing makes a person do a horrible act on his own like having him believe that he's not responsible for his actions, especially when wielding great power.
- The superintelligent gerbils of Narbonic, with the exception of the original, Artie. It's explained that, unlike Artie, the other gerbils weren't genetically modified to handle superintelligence, resulting in insanity. But when the sane superintelligent hamsters show up, they're megalomaniacs too. Also, the mad geniuses in the comic are only geniuses because they're mad; if their madness were cured, they would be Brought Down To Normal.
- In fact, the genuises have to go past mad and out the other side...and even then it's a crapshoot. Helen Narbonic reigns in her crazy because of romantic feelings.
- "This is sanity! SANITY!"
- "Precisely."
- Ian Samael of Errant Story starts to fall into this trope after obtaining godlike powers. To his credit, it did take his mother killing herself and his sister to finally drive him off the deep end.
- The Sparks (or mad scientists) of Girl Genius are often (although not always) insane. This is explained in the story as a side-effect of the Sparks' realization of their abilities (also known as the Breakthrough), which is usually traumatic to say the least. Some of the insanity seems to be inherent in the Spark itself; even the protagonist, the relatively sane and heroic Agatha Heterodyne, has shown utter singlemindedness and vengeful wrath while in the throes of a particularly Sparky moment.
- This is implied to be happening to Ysengrin from Gunnerkrigg Court. He received weaponized wooden arms and Green Thumb powers from Coyote; after seeing him use them, Jones declared that he is "drawing closer to the brink of insanity."
- And also Jack after being sucked into Zimmingham, who's gained always-on ether-vision and the ability to fly while simultaneously losing a large chunk of sanity.
- In the invisible killer arc of the B-Movie Comic, the process that makes a person invisible can also make them quite firghtfully deranged, but only if the person has a basic character flaw to serve as basis. The scientist then also use the treatment on Snuka so they can fight the invisible killer, on the assumption that anyone working closely with the professor must be a person of impeccable character. Not quite...
- The Meta has the abilities and A.I. of every Freelancer it has killed so far. That many A.I. in one body, however, have caused it to be more than slightly snarling mad. To the point where it doesn't seem able speak itself, only growl. (Church was naturally thrilled when he heard this.)
Church: "Oh great, powerful and crazy. What a winning combo."
- This seems to be case with the Witch Queen in Cwen's Quest. She is easily the most magically inclined character in the series and while normally smart she seems incapable for mentioning the word magic without bursting into bouts of insane ManiacalLaughing that would scare most versions of the joker. It is even more clear she is brilliant but insane in her Twitterings.
- In Mark Shallow's current webcomic, Antihero For Hire, Wizard is an example of this, despite being extremely intelligent. Waterfall, an adversary using the same technology, snaps with the same kind of insanity at the sight of her sisters being threatened, which invoked Its Personal.
- Last Res0rt's Light Children are often granted/misdiagnosed with all sorts of mental issues when they really can sense the more supernatural aspects of the world; i.e. they may be clinically insane, but they're really just functioning on another level. The title text on one page lampshades and explains this as logically as possible:
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is insane.
Western Animation
- Superman The Animated Series: Luthortech has two examples of experimentation causing insanity.
- Luthor creates a super suit ostensibly to help the police fight crime. The officer testing it builds an unhealthy bond with it and becomes drunk with power, forcing the Man of Steel and John Henry Irons to take him down.
- Luthor poisons an unwitting John Corbin, then offers to save his life with the Metallo project. Corbin, advised only that there may be "some adjustments needed" to help him live a normal life after the process, accepts. But in his new robot body, the hedonistic Corbin can't feel, smell, touch or taste anything, and becomes destructive in his rage at his human sensations being lost.
- To be fair, Corbin was already a criminal and card carrying psychopath.
- Dark Danny of Danny Phantom arguably. Though the whole thing about watching helplessly as your family and friends get blown up and getting your super-powered ghost half removed did give a good start... but he only started a murderous rampage after getting his enemy's power. His past self is extremely horrified.
- Vlad may also apply as he seemed to be largely content with his life before the accident.
- Well, except that his one true love went and married their idot friend who Vlad thinks caused the accident anyhow.
- In The Batman, when good cop Ethan Bennet becomes Clayface, he goes on a murderous vendetta against his former Captain. It's later asserted that the incident that turned into Clayface damaged his mind, and that, the more he keeps his form, the less unstable he will be. In fact, whenever he stays in his normal form, he's polite and rational, but the moment he uses his powers he tends to become violent and unhinged.
- In Avatar The Last Airbender Aang can enter the Avatar State, channeling the power of all his previous incarnations. You'd think channeling all those former Avatars would make him calm, wise and experienced, but no... Instead he gets all incandescent and frags everything in sight. However, true mastery of the Avatar State includes being able to control it, which he finally manages to achieve in the series finale.
- In the series finale, after being made Firelord, Azula pretty much loses it. Her friends' Heel Face Turn as well as her new power as ruler push her over the edge.
- Azula's breakdown was actually paranoia that everyone would betray her if she didn't instill fear in them, and insecurity that no one (especially her mother) truly loved her for who she was. Her friends' betrayal and her coronation only served as catalysts for her to finally snap.
- In The Spectacular Spider Man, three Supervillains become as such when they get bonus mental instability with their powers. Electro and Doctor Octopus each suffer a Freak Lab Accident. Electro gets volatile electricity-based powers, then freaks out at his loss of humanity. Doctor Octopus' robotic arms are fused to his spine during a massive electromagnetic shock, which causes an extreme personality change. Downing an addictive Psycho Serum gives Harry Osborn blackouts and a Super Powered Evil Side in the form of the Green Goblin.
- Actually, as it turns out, Harry Osborn is not and never was the Green Goblin. He was framed by his father, Norman Osborn.
- Not only that, but Norman quite clearly states that he suffered no blackouts and no change in personality
- However, he may be in denial considering that he actually keeps acting crazy and speaking in rhymes while he's hovering above the prison in season 2 while no one can hear him.
- In the case of Doc Ock it wasn't so much a case of the new powers messing with his brain, but rather stripping away his inhibitions.
- More recently, John Jameson was infected by alien spores, which made him super massive, super strong, and essentially a Flying Brick without the flying, but, over time, messed with his head, making him filled with rage and aggression. After Venom threw him into a rage (making him think the one messing with him was Spiderman), Spidey was able to purge the spores from his system, making his body return to normal, but he was severely addicted to the power, and had to be admitted to an insane asylum. The effect was made more evident due to John having a cell right next to the now completely insane Electro, who babbles on about how he has no more human identity.
- Eddie Brock would also qualify as an example. When he's stripped of the symbiote in a battle at Peter's high school, he is strapped to a stretcher and removed by two hospital orderlies, screaming at a crowd of spectators that "WE'RE VENOM!"
- Dr. Viper was formally one of two biochemists who invented the Viper mutagen, which was intended to regenerate plants. Then he decided to try and steal it so he could sell it, directly leading to his transformation into the crazed, lizard-like Dr. Viper.
- The otherwise peaceful Dr. Greenbox invented Zed, a robot that could repair any mechanical device. When said robot went on a rampage, he initially came along to help stop it...but was so delighted with how powerful his creation was that he tried to sabotage the mission and ended up merging himself with Zed.
- An episode of Samurai Jack centers around Jack defeating three shadowy warriors with amazing powers who attack anyone who comes near. After the battle, it turns out that the warriors were actually three men who used a magic well to wish for the power to be the greatest warriors in the land. While the well granted their wish, it also made them blind and took their free wills.
- Maria, from El Tigre is a mild mannered family women who is terrified of danger and hyperventilates when it is around her or her family. However, when she puts on her magical glove she transformers into the 'superheroine' Plata Peligrosa. If she only has it on for an hour she is fine, but a second longer and she becomes crazed and while do anything for a fight (even free crooks from jail). At one point she even starts attacking herself (because she has released villians and that is evil) and trying to kill HER OWN SON because he is trying to help her when she has labled herself evil and attacking herself.
- Two examples from Beast Wars:
- Rampage. A Maximal experiment to create an immortal spark, he is nigh-immortal but also completely insane and takes great pleasure from torturing others in the sickest ways possible. He's also a cannibal.
- Megatron too. Once he mingles his spark with that of his namesake, and then takes control of the Nemesis, he goes completely bonkers and begins quoting the Transformer bible.
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Professor Lapton Professor Von Madman in the Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command episode Eye of the Tempest after he tested his revolutionary crystal/human hybrid technology on himself. But he has a daughter...
- Inverted and then played straight in Re Boot. Hexadecimal started out very powerful and insane. When she gets reformatted into a sprite and as a result is depowered she becomes very sane and cheerful. But then she needs to go viral again to fight Daemon and the powerup makes her insane again.
Real Life
- HITLER. Though potentially an inversion, that he may have gained his power from his insanity... Either way, moving on.
- Memoirs of many German officials close to Hitler portray him as becoming increasingly, even violently, erratic; particularly toward the end of the war. Historians tend to attribute this to an increasingly self-destructive drug addiction. Amphetamine use was common in the German military at the time, and medical records show that Hitler himself was prescribed amphetamines in increasingly large doses, combined with barbituates later on to counter the side effects. Close to the end of the war, pilots were supplied with a formidable drug cocktail containing several analogs of amphetamine, cocaine, and morphine. The cocktail was quickly made available to submarine crews, and certain front-line combat units. It's believed that Hitler himself may have been using this particular combination drug by the end of the war, which contributed to his severe irrationality and eventual suicide.
- The previous President for Turkmenistan made a large number of interesting decrees - [1]
- The Roman Emperor Caligula, who made his horse a noble and collected sea shells to prove he owned the sea.
- More accurately, he claimed at a dinner party (full of hostile nobles) that he could choose to make his favourite racing horse a Consul if he wished. The sea shell thing was an aborted attempt to invade Britain, with him ordering the soldiers to gather shells and pebbles from the shore either so he could ride home through a Triumph because he conquered the ocean or to shame them for refusing to cross the Channel. There is a relatively small but persuasive claim that he wasn't really that mad, he just had a lot of unpopular ideas and an unusual sense of humour. The few accounts from the ancient world about Caligula were very much hostile to his rule and they don't entirely match up with other evidence from his reign (his coinage wasn't unusually debased, meaning that if he was mad he managed to be so cheaply for the state).
- Interesting point. Didn't hear about the shells before, but it was prophesied that Caligula becoming emperor was 'as likely as him riding a horse across the Bay of Baiae.' After he became emperor, Caligula requisitioned all the ships at the port and had them tied up together to form a temporary bridge so he could ride his horse across the bay.
- At least those rumors about the cause of Catherine the Great's death were just an urban legend.
- The 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment: 70 people, especially selected for lack of criminal tendencies and mental illnesses, were chosen to live in a pretend prison. 24 of them were to act the part of guards, with no higher authority to answer to. The intent was to see how people react to being given power in an enclosed situation. In less than a week, the situation had degenerated completely, with the guards horribly mistreating and abusing the prisoners, psychologically as well as bodily - and occasionally even sexually. Many of the "prisoners" exhibited stress-related mental trauma normally associated with victims of torture, with the guards becoming progressively more arbitrary and excessive in the punishments they meted out. Prisoners had to go naked and sleep on the naked concrete floor, were refused use of a toilet or even a bucket and actively played against each other. Eventually, the experiment had to be stopped after only six days, instead of the planned two weeks. Nobody of almost fifty people who came to check up on the experiment ever questioned the morality of it. This was by civilian Americans to civilian Americans. Now imagine Abu Ghraib. (And if Abu Ghraib under American control is bad imagine what is was like under Saddam Hussein. If you have a large stock of Brain Bleach on hand go to the Human Rights Watch website and find out.)
- The Skeptoid podcast did an excellent job of discussing the problems with the Stanford Experiment - namely, that it did not prove this trope and that the guards were not proven to be more aggressive during the exercise than before. This experiment has been misunderstood and misreported so often that the urban legend quoted above is what people are most familiar with. The Stanford Prison Experiment might actually SUBVERT this trope in real life. [2]
- While there have been numerous doubts cast on the methodology and interpretation of the SPE, the opinion of some random podcaster (who, by his own admission, is just a computer scientist of no academic distinction) is pretty worthless. At least cite some psychologists if you really want to argue.
- No fewer than five psychologists are cited in the article with bibliographic information, criticizing the experiment's scientific worth. Also, you don't need to be an expert on the subject to point out such incredibly basic flaws in the methodology as not having a control group or even checking the guards' aggression levels prior to the experiment so that you could actually prove that a change occurred; nor to point out that the actual data gotten from the experiment don't match up with the popular perception of the results.
- Here. Criticism straight from the mouth (or fingertips) of the experiments chief consultant
- An Aesop: human beings with power over others will abuse that power automatically without fear of retribution from a higher power.
- One of the Oldest Ones In The Book, the Trope Namer for The Berserker. Old Norse warriors used to get hopped up on drugs resembling PCP to enhance their combat prowess. Such warriors knew they would not survive the battle though, and as such carried out their death rituals before ingesting the drugs. It's said that a bear-sarker needed to be hacked physically apart before he'd stop. When he did, though (and survived), he was extremely tired and dazed - again, much like someone coming off a drug trip.
- One possible etymology of the word is "bear-sark", sark meaning "shirt", and it is suggested that berserks traditionally wore clothes made of bearskin in battle. Alternatively, it may be bare-sark, meaning they rushed at the enemy shirtless.
- Some studies have shown that those with higher IQs are more prone to mental illness.
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