History Main / Gaslighting

* Max Keeble is the king of the gaslighters. Especially with Troy [=McGinty=]

* In ''VengeanceUnlimited'', Mr. Chapel uses a police officer's ID and his own computer savvy to drive his mark crazy. It's almost undone by his mark's biggest fan, a computer genius herself... Until he gets the mark to confess within her earshot.

* One CriminalMinds episode had ''the good guys'' doing this to [[TerroristWithoutACause some terrorist]] who had information about a bomb attack; by reducing the time a bit each day so they could eventually say it was too late, and thus the guy would give away some important thing during his {{evil gloating}}. Which he does, of course.

* Whether it was his intent or not, ''{{Dracula}}'' did this to Jonathan Harker while he had Harker imprisoned in his castle. Harker was convinced he'd hallucinated the whole thing for a ''long'' time afterward. By the end of his stay, not only is Jonathan a psychological wreck, but he's practically become nocturnal to match the Count's own sleeping habits.

* In the {{VC Andrews}} standalone, "My Sweet Audrina," [[spoiler:Audrina's whole family engages in gaslighting (particularly to fake the passage of time), which leads her to believe she is someone else after her sexual assault]].

* The {{Batman story}} ''Dark Victory'' (sequel to the Long Halloween) had Alberto Falcone get out of Arkham, only to become convinced that his home is haunted by the ghost of his father when he keeps hearing voices, and even receives a gun like the kind the Holiday Killer used. When he reports this to his siblings they think he's nuts, but it's actually the Calendar Man who has been talking to him through hidden speakers throughout the house in an attempt to drive him to kill.

* A ''VinylCafe'' short story recounts how a Chinese restaurant owner using this managed to get a bigoted returning customer to slowly feel more and more subconsciously uncomfortable and leave on his own. Over the course of a year, he slowly increased the portions that the customer received a spoonful at a time, shortened his chair with a file, and changed a painting that he liked to look at while he ate a brushstroke at a time (it used to be a summer scene, and it was turned to a winter scene by the end).

* When [[AtopTheFourthWall Linkara]] begins seeing and hearing people who aren't there during his review of ''SilentHill: Dead/Alive'', he tells himself that someone must be trying to pull this trope on him. It doesn't seem to be helping much. [[spoilers:It turns out he's right.]]

* When [[AtopTheFourthWall Linkara]] begins seeing and hearing people who aren't there during his review of SilentHill: Dead Alive, he tells himself that someone must be trying to pull this trope on him. It doesn't seem to be helping much.

[[AC:RealLife]]
* In an interview on C-Span in 2004, [[TheDailyShow Jon Stewart]] actually referenced the idea, saying that the Bush administration's spinning in the face of what Stewart, at least, believed was overwhelming evidence made it "feel like they're trying to ''Gaslight'' me".
* Interestingly enough, due to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_blindness change blindness]], it's been proven that you can make huge changes in an environment without the viewer even noticing, so some forms of gaslighting may not actually work in real life.
** So the obvious solution would be to alter something that the person would instantly notice a change, such as replacing a person's shoes with ones that are a few sizes too small.
** When used in real life (and some morally hollow agencies and people have) the method of choice is to change a very large number of small but important things, like which drawer a pen is in or which jacket their wallet is in. Most will be ignored but a few will get noticed and sub-consciously the victim will get uneasy, possibly without knowing why. From there, once the person already has doubts, you escalate to the larger stuff.
* With [[http://www.holosonics.com/?g&gclid=CJGWy5vLiJ0CFSWlagodFgjNaQ Holosonic]] technology, you can use a hidden transmitter to make someone ''hear voices directly inside their skull''. That no one else can hear. Isn't science grand?
* [[{{Sonichu}} Christian Weston Chandler]] was driven more insane than he already was when an impostor, known as [[http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Chris-chan/CChanSonichuCWC Liquid Chris]], started impersonating him and saying that "Solid Chris" was an impostor. It was ''so'' memorable it even made it to the Encyclopedia Dramatica front page.
** The really funny part about this is that Liquid's first video was just a quick impression of Chris that he did for fun, and if Chris hadn't reacted the way he did (furiously assuming that Liquid was actually trying to steal his identity) it probably would have ended there...but as always, Chris just kept adding fuel to the fire.
** Even better, pretty much everyone who know of what was going on sided with "Liquid Chris", prompting "Solid Chris" to challenge him to decide who the real Chris was. "Solid Chris" ''lost'', and was officially named an impostor.
* A couple of years ago, a British mental health organisation ran a series of banner ads on various websites (including youtube) in order to increase awareness about various mental health issues. One of the banner ads was about paranoia, and it involved playing constant, quiet whispers over the speakers/headphones that were alternatingly insulting and indistinct, until the user rolled their mouse cursor over the advert. Some people, however, did not notice the advert and were genuinely disturbed by the effect, thinking they really * were* hearing voices.

* This trope is frequently recommended for DMs trying to run a MindScrew type of horror game, via PaintingTheFourthWall. Specific examples are generally along the lines of describing a room with something, e.g. a girl, mentioned in a BreathlessNonSequitur.

* The developers of EternalDarkness Sanity's Requiem do this to the player when the player character's sanity meter slips [[strike:too low]] low enough.

* The developers of EternalDarkness Sanity's Requiem do this to the player when the player character's sanity meter slips [[strike:too]] low enough.

* The developers of EternalDarknessSanitysRequiem do this to the player when the player character's sanity meter slips [[strike:too]] low enough.

* In Mysterio's second appearance in the ''SpiderMan'' comics, he poses as a psychologist and nearly convinces Peter Parker that the strain of a secret identity is driving him crazy and that revealing this identity to the friendly psychologist would cure it all... the changes were not terribly subtle though. More things like like Peter walking in to the office to find the room was upside down, including the psychologist.

* A ''VinylCafe'' short story recounts how a Chinese restaurant owner used this managed to get a bigoted returning customer to slowly feel more and more subconsciously uncomfortable and leave on his own. Over the course of a year, he slowly increased the portions that the customer received a spoonful at a time, shortened his chair with a file, and changed a painting that he liked to look at while he ate a brushstroke at a time (it used to be a summer scene, and it was turned to a winter scene by the end).

* ''BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', "Gone": An accidentally invisible Buffy does this to a social worker (moving her coffee mug and whispering, "kill, kill...") who was probably about to have Dawn taken away. Kind of mean, since the social worker wasn't being unreasonable, she just happened to visit the Summers' house on a really bad day... which is probably every day around there...[[MoralDissonance um]]?

-- '''{{Seanbaby}}''', ''[[http://www.cracked.com/blog/exploring-the-mysteries-of-the-mind-with-the-sims-3 Exploring the Mysteries of the Mind with]]'' TheSims 3, {{Cracked}}.com

* In Mysterio's first appearance in the ''SpiderMan'' comics, he poses as a psychologist and nearly convinces Peter Parker that the strain of a secret identity is driving him crazy and that revealing this identity to the friendly psychologist would cure it all... the changes were not terribly subtle though. More things like like Peter walking in to the office to find the room was upside down, including the psychologist.

* {{Gaslight}} is probably the modern TropeMaker and is certainly the TropeNamer. In that film, a man marries a woman [[spoiler: so he can get into the loft her aunt willed her and get at her treasure. To get her out of the loft,]] he starts a plan to make her think she's gone insane so that he can commit her to an asylum.

* A variation of this idea forms the plot of the 1969 film ''The Big Cube''. In it, spoiled rich teenager Lisa tries to con her stepmother Adriana out of the money her recently-deceased father left her by driving Adriana insane. She and her drug-dealer boyfriend try to accomplish this through a combination of LSD and a hidden tape-recorder. The boyfriend takes things too far, however, when he adds an extra message to the tape urging Adriana to jump out the window to her death...

* RoaldDahl's ''The Twits'' was all about this - the eponymous dysfunctional couple do it to each other to begin with (for example, adding a small segment to the bottom of a walking stick every day to make the wife think she's shrinking), and have it spectacularly turned on them at the end ([[spoiler:they're tricked into gluing themselves to the floor]]).

* Done in an episode of Australian drama series TheFlyingDoctors. For an extra twist, [[spoiler: a medicine with the known side effect of making people dizzy and confused is mixed into the victim's food, in addition to basic Gaslighting.]]

[[AC:VideoGames]]
* Albedo attempts this on Junior in ''{{Xenosaga}}''.
* Zouken Matou tries this on Sakura in ''FateStayNight''. He thinks he succeeded. [[KickTheSonOfABitch He's wrong,]] [[FreakOut it was a coincidence.]]
** Arguably, it still works, [[GoneHorriblyRight just a little too well for his own good]].

* [[CrazyAwesome Dave's Bro]] from {{Homestuck}} uses his [[CreepyDoll ventriloquist's dummy, Lil' Cal]] in combination with some slick {{Flash Step}}ping to make Dave ([[NightmareFuel and the audience]]) think that the doll is alive. Even [[strike:worse]] better is that he also [[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002736 somehow manages]] to use this as a ''fighting technique''.
* [[http://xkcd.com/666/ This]] {{XKCD}} comic.

* In an early episode of SeaLab2021, Sparks had the orphans pee in Captain Murphy's bed every night to make him think he was wetting himself, as part of a larger plot to drive him insane.

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