Examples of Mind Screw in Fan Works.
- Always Visible: The entire work carries this idea.
- A Crown of Stars: When Rayana tries to explain to Touji and Hikari the mindscrew was the original series, Hikari's reaction was muttering her explanations made no sense and asking: "What?"Asuka:“Let me guess, your first clear memory in a long while is waking up underwater on a beach, with these two waiting for you? Preceded by a bunch of really strange dreams, memories that don’t feel like yours, and weird perspectives on things in your head?”
Hikari:“And then they brought us here said you’d be here in a little while to explain things. Are we really on another world?”
Asuka:“That’s going to take a bit of explaining. Ah... [...] A little help?”
Rayana:“Short version for now; The Angels were trying to get at their father-progenitor creature, ADAM, which was hidden under NERV HQ. If they could do that, it would trigger the Third Impact, wipe out all human life on Earth, and make the Angel that did it into a god, for all practical purposes. A group calling itself SEELE controlled the UN and figured out the Angels’ nature and intent well before the Second Impact, which SEELE in fact caused, because they knew that if all the Angels were killed, they could hijack the process and make themselves gods instead. Gendo Ikari screwed everybody when he did it himself to have a chance to reunite with Shinji’s mother, Yui. When he set off the Third Impact it collapsed all human souls into one single mass-consciousness. Ayanami-san, who was in fact a half-Angel clone of Shinji’s mother, refused him the control he intended and gave control of the Third Impact to Shinji here. He eventually decided that all of humanity living as one giant blob of souls with no ego borders was not the way to go and told Ayanami-san to make it possible for everyone to return to their bodies and seek happiness. Shinji and Asuka were the first to return, and over the last four years more people have also incarnated, but about two-thirds of the population is still in the Ring of Souls around Earth. People pulled out of that, such as yourselves, return to bodies that match your last mental self-image. So Suzuhara-san gets his arm and leg back intact, and you both haven’t aged at all. Asuka and Shinji came out four years ago, so they really are a bit older than you now. Oh, and yes, you really are on another world. Welcome to Avalon. Take off your shoes and stay awhile. [...] Good enough for the moment?”
Hikari:“....That made no sense. What?” - Advice and Trust: When Asuka got trapped into the Sea of Dirac she got a very weird hallucination where she was in a train car and a child version of her talked about "the self inside of the self" and asked what she was afraid of and whether she was valued. Asuka later described that episode in these terms: "I... it was like I had eaten too much spicy food and fallen asleep reading Satre or something. Just a weird conversation with myself about... the self, and loneliness. It didn't make much sense."
- Children of an Elder God: In chapter 5 Shinji has a horrid nightmare where he was dragged to a great underground lake to be turned into a god. The pool was filled with a black, oliy liquid substance which bubbled and seethed and sometimes rippled and formed tendrils that rose and fell. When Shinji tried to back away, a mob grabbed him, ripped his clothes and threw him into the pool. Then the real mind-screw began:His clothing was ripped from him, rough fingers bruising his flesh, and then naked, they lifted him like a sacrifice. They howled incoherently now as they ran towards the lake, while Ritsuko chanted and shouted in a deep voice not her own. "Come, Lords of the Outer Realms! Come and recieve this one into your number!"
They hurled him into the lake as he screamed, and the lake rose up and pulled him under. It suffused him, leaking in through his pores and sphincters, eating away at him and replacing him with itself. He became LCL and it was him. And the black fluid became a void, and around him, all was filled with the idiot flautings of a dozen mindless tentacled frog-things, which capered and played a dance for the beings who capered about in a great circle, ringing something behind him. The part of him that was still his 'real' self knew something horrible was there, but the god Shinji turned to gaze upon its master, giving a great incoherent cry of soulless joy.
At the last moment before he would have gazed upon it, the void cracked open, and there was light. And the light burned away the darkness, the void, the gods, and the dream. - Doing It Right This Time: Shinji defines everything what he saw and went through Instrumentality as “whatever the hell had happened.”
- Once More with Feeling:
- In addition to Third Impact, a minor but humorous one happens when a package is been delivered to the Katsuragi household while Shinji is at school. Shinji doesn't want to try to figure out how their penguin mascot signed for it because he suspects the truth would destroy his mind.
- A lot of things Pen Pen does tend to boggle the mind; Misato has somehow turned the bird into an alcoholic and he apparently reads the Wall Street Journal every morning to check stock rates.
- The One I Love Is...: There was at least three: the first in chapter 5 Shinji falls into Leliel trap and sees an image of his younger self asking what he loves and what people thinks of him; in chapter 7 when Shinji is absorbed into his giant robot and wades through a bunch of hallucinations; and in chapter 12's side-story when Gendo merges with Adam and Lilith. He and Unit 01 grab the Lance at the same time and all the sudden we see Gendo and Yui are in some kind of Eldritch Location. They talk, Gendo explains his actions, Yui and Kaoru lecture him about his mistakes, and Yui tells she will set him free because he was willing to do anything to save her... and maybe after a long while she will forgive him.
- That One Time The Ponies Did That One Thing At That Place
. It starts out hilariously vague, and then five paragraphs in everything goes to hell. - Platinum Pirate: Given their knowledge of heliocentrism, Lucas and his Pokémon are dumbstruck by the idea that the sun can just never set in places like Enies Lobby even when things operate normally in most other places.Lucas: [eye twitching from disbelief] But—how—but the sun—it—why—?
Smoker: Like I said, the most common example of Grand Line geography. You wanna keep any sanity on these seas?
Ace: Don’t ask questions. Just have fun. - HERZ: A mild one during the final battle: Rei hijacked the MP-Evas and used Shinji, Asuka and their robots to set off the children’s own version of Instrumentality. As she collected the SEELE’s souls she showed to Kiehl several images of the Ikari family to teach him other way to reach Instrumentality. Shinji and Asuka saw their mothers across an immense void and said goodbye. Rei created a second Moon, sealing herself inside it, and Shinji and Asuka woke up on a beach.
- Higher Learning: Shinji -and everyone- goes through one in the last chapter when Instrumentality happens. Shinji sees strange, confusing imagery and wades through the memories and thoughts of countless people as he looks for Asuka and tries to understand why he is alive. Meanwhile his family and acquaintances talk about themselves, Kaoru finally explains who he was and whence he came, and he meets new people.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide: Shinji and Asuka get one right after the Final Battle when Yui/Unit-01 absorbs their souls to save Asuka’s life, and they live for a while in a illusory world.
- This Arthur fanfiction definitely counts.
- Especially in chapter 12 with not only an appearance from Simon Cowl and lopping Francine's hand off without her noticing immediately, some kids and him snort drugs while in detention. Seriously.
- And somehow they're all anime fans.
- Deep Water is an example of an intentional and well-done Mind Screw in Fan Fic, by virtue of an extraordinarily complex villain with telepathic powers.
- Bart the General, specificaly episode three. For example, one of the subplots involves House — Yes, that House — in a well, calling out Milhouse (who was never in this fan series before) when a guy — He's possibly keeping House in the well in the first place — jumps down to have a conversation with him that's nearly incomprecencible, then lets him out. House then walks down a path to a desert while sad music plays, then finds a water tower with the letters "DB" writen in what seems to be yellow beans with eyes. While inside, a small floating thing smokes a cigar, and flys away while talking in a high pitch tone. It doesn't help that next to nobody talks clearly. Oh, and some of the names are changed for no reason and Bart-er... Berton looks like a creepy goth.
- The Firefly fanfic Forward has this happen a few times in the "Riverthink" segments, usually when she's having her worst schizophrenic episodes. There were two entire chapters of the story that were nothing but River's POV, and more than one reviewer came out the other side asking "....I have no idea what half of that was about."
- The Jubal Early hallucination in the "Fourth Interlude" is especially screwy for the reader, as he is alive and actively hunting the crew at that point in the story.
- My Immortal originally starts off as an Author Avatar dating Draco Malfoy in a gothic Hogwarts. Right around the bathtub scene, the story contorts into a ghastly creature: Voldemort wears high heels and used to be a goth who dated Harry's owl (who is now a male goth). Ebony herself sleeps and tortures her way through the plot until she is given a time-travelling iPod. She is tasked with making Voldemort fall in love with her so he could stop being evil. After seducing Voldemort and leading him to have sex with Hedwig in the middle of the great hall, they both travel to the future, where Ebony, Draco, past!Voldemort, and Vampire have a four-way in front of Lupin and Filch for no reason. past!Voldemort then reveals that he knew about the time travelling all along, and reveals himself to be present!Voldemort. Then Snape crashes a flying car into the hall.
- Paradigm of Uncertainty is a classic example, starting out relatively straightforward (as much as a fic featuring a post-graduation Harry Potter as a James Bond style superspy can be, anyway) but by the time we get to the second and especially third instalments of the door-stopping trilogy it's well and truly in Mind Screw territory.
- DOOM: Repercussions of Evil: "No! I must kill the demons" he shouted. The radio said "No, John. You are the demons." And then John was a zombie.
- Peter Chimaera's fics in general can often veer into this territory, particularly when the spelling gets so awful that whatever meaning his words may have had is utterly obscured. His "Book of Hsitorical FaFfiction" contains such gems as "Caser was dysnnrf om yjr back" in the Caesar segment, along with this behemoth in the segment on Thomas Edison:
"...where goald beocomes makreasred aotuah of iraon oara leradrd buat thatsethe beatn and idraea that asd donra alreadsyt sor5 I daddiecdd not to write about it." - In a similar manner to hank hill.avi and Chriddof, Hank Hill teaches Bobbeh a Lesson.
- HetaOni, a Hetalia: Axis Powers horror game based on Ao Oni. It includes Time Travel, memories that don't belong to them, Italy showing signs of being The Chessmaster, a Tony-look-alike Eldritch Abomination and an Ameriblob that keeps appearing!
- Uninvited Guests chapters 37 and 38. This Bleachfic been bad enough from chapter one given the premise, supposedly hit its peak when Aizen got run over by an airborne BawaBawa, but as soon as Aizen figured out how to become The Hero, it found deeper depths of weirdness. Especially his fight with Yamamoto in Chapter 38.
- And then Yachiru made Toshiro The Hero by pressing the "Shiro-chan" button on the thing that stole Ichigo's Plot Armor for Aizen. The guy who made it didn't put that there.
- If this doesn't count, it ought to.
- The Anagram Of Suzumiya Kurumi pulls this off in a good way. Without spoiling anything, just say it involves Time Travel, conspiracy theories, Anachronic Order, and more crazy supernatural backstories for much of the cast than what was in canon.
- Half-Life: Full Life Consequences: He didnt want nothing to happen to Henry Freeman because Henry Freeman was John Freeman saw Combines start to run like monsters to humens and Henry Freeman and saw Henry Freeman and humens run like brave to Combines.]]
- This How to Train Your Dragon fanfic, called "Of Oak, Ash and Blessed Thistle" is a good example of this. It starts out as what seems like an angsty Hiccup/Astrid romance involving an arranged marriage for Hiccup, but then Hiccup gets injured and has this freaky prophetic vision, and it all goes downhill from there. EVERY chapter contains some kind of subtle foreshadowing, most of which are so tied up with actual history and Old Norse that you need a guide at the start of every chapter to even begin to understand it...and you also have to use said guide to interpret what the characters are SAYING. Then halfway through, it seemed like the author suddenly couldn't decide what the main conflict of the story should be. So we have four or five different plot lines running around involving Hiccup's mom being some kind of goddess and wanting him to die because she sold his soul to Freya, Toothless being able to talk to Hiccup and Astrid, the village elder and Astrid's mom trying to trick Hiccup into getting Astrid pregnant, Astrid being royalty and not knowing it, a love triangle between Hiccup, Astrid and...Ruffnut? The list goes on until around Chapter 60, you finally say, "Hell is something gonna happen that MAKES SENSE?"
- This Higurashi/Umineko fanfic. It takes an essay to even explain the concept of the story, let alone HOW it screws with you.
- The Hetalia: Axis Powers fanfic, Seven Little Killers. So, SO much.
- Nobody Dies pulled off an absolutely epic mind screw with the beginning of "Season 5" (Chapter 102): Everything since Chapter 70 was All Just a Dream courtesy of a planet-wide attack by Arael. Meaning that everything that happened since Zeruel was defeated... didn't happen. Except that some of it did: Uriel's still a Dominion, Zyuu's still human, and Armisael is still doing stuff just like he was in the Dream, so... what did or did not actually happen is kind of confusing at this point.
- The rule appears to be as follows: everything in Australia or South America near Armisael actually happened. Arael either couldn't or chose not to deploy the field over those areas. Nothing else did, but if there was enough AT-field hax involved the effects on beings that existed already carry over. Anything that involved someone changing what type of being they are carried over. Anyone "born" in the dream was just an element of Arael's power, with the exception of the apparent younger copy of Ichi joining the original in the Mark-01. The stronger someones AT-Field is, the more they fully remember.
- A certain trilogy of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac fics falls into this category, deliberately cyclical enough to be a literal one of these. The disjointed and yet perfectly planned scenes, the horrifying realizations, the fatalism of watching it all play out... as Todd is supported by Nny in killing his parents, goes next door to find Nny afterwards, BECOMES NNY, forgets that he's Todd... and then it gets worse. It's Dark Fic of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. That alone makes it a mind screw. Vasquez probably reads it for occasional laughs.
- This fanfiction here: Fukakai-no-Unmei-, a Darker and Edgier version of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time. Where to even begin with this story? We start out with the human-turned Pokémon main character and his partner who join a Guild that is actually a brainwashing, mind-raping cult that controls everyone whom they interact with, the cute little pokemon, Azuri who is actually a Lab Rat used for experiments. It gets even WORSE half-way through when the main character dies. Please don't read the spoilers, people. Just enjoy the mind-screws.
- A Shadow of the Titans has the "Destiny" interlude, which breaks away from the main story to show an apparent Bad Future, where an adult Jade teams up with the Demon Sorcerers and Eight Immortals to stop an evil adult Jade from releasing something called "Omega", followed by an in-universe message of some kind that none of the readers understand.
- Homestuck + Bad Translator = Buffet Breakfast. Prepare to get your brain scrambled.
- Those caught up in The Infinite Loops will occasionally do this to nonloopers for a lark.
- Seinen Kakumei Utena, the Revolutionary Girl Utena and Penguindrum continuation crossover, explores the original series' metaphysical elements in great depth.
- The second sequel to Dante's Night at Freddy's, Evie's Night at Fazbear's Fright starts getting weird and existential from the first chapter. According to what little is known, the writer of the series is AWOL, the story has apparently already been written but is ever changing and the narrator (who is not the writer, unlike the last two stories) is openly acknowledged to exist on a separate plane of reality. For a more simplistic idea, at one point a character drop-kicks themself.
- The Second Try: In the author's own words, it wouldn't be Evangelion without a Mind Screw. This includes:
- A bizarre and slightly disturbing rehash of the Gainax Ending in chapter four "Love".
- Another minor one occurs in "end" with Shinji wondering how Aki made it back from the future. However as Asuka puts it: "Tell you what, Shinji," a wide grin sprawled over her face while they walked up the stairs. "I don't give a damn. She's back and that's all that matters to me."
- Through The Monitor is a doorstopper Sonic the Hedgehog fanfic (Over 475,000 words) that definitely falls under this trope. It starts with all the characters in the series disappearing for no reason, which results in random people being transformed into Sonic characters and sent to the world. And it somehow manages to get weirder from there, complete with Star Fox characters appearing, for some reason.
- In Neon Metathesis Evangelion, it is Rei, piloting EVA-01, who gets swallowed up by Leliel. Inside, she had some quite lengthy and weird visions, which go well beyond what Shinji sees in canon. Leliel is helping her to 're-integrate' the fragmented parts of her recently reunited soul.
- The crossover slash-fic People Like Us between Joker (2019) and Taxi Driver has several scenes dedicated to exploring the damaged psyches of Arthur Fleck and Travis Bickle, but the weirdest one by far is when Travis has a dream where he has a heartfelt discussion about his relationship to Arthur... with Laika the Russian space dog, who is able to talk in the dream. It was set up earlier in the story, but it's still so strange that it can easily turn what is supposed to be an emotional scene into Narm.
- Fiend Folio: The Cacophobia boss fight consists of shooting at a giant stationary doll-like entity (named Venus, "Cacophobia" appears to refer to the entire boss process) while the screen repeatedly cuts to black and reveals different patterns of eyes that fire blood shots at Isaac. When Venus' health is depleted, Isaac is suddenly teleported to a field of red grass and flowers, and then back to the now-emptied Boss Room. Venus/Cacophobia disappears without a trace aside from leaving behind the boss drop, and none of this is ever explained. The whole thing plays out like more of something out of a straight horror game than the general Black Comedy tone of the base Binding of Isaac or the mod itself.
