History Main / MomentOfLucidity

* In the ''Series/Space1999'' episode "Death's Other Dominion", the Moon passes by a planet which is the refuge of a human space expedition presumed lost many years before. The expedition's former leader, Colonel Jack Tanner, is now a prancing, Shakespearean fool prone to making cryptic comments and issuing dire warnings. The Alphans disregard what he says as the babbling of a madman until [[spoiler:he reveals to Koenig that his condition is the result of a sinister experiment (for which he volunteered).]]
-->'''Koenig:''' ''Right now you're as sane as I am''.\\
'''Tanner:''' ''It comes and goes. It comes and goes...''

* In the final chapter of ''Literature/TheGardenOfSinners'', when Mikiya confronts the ArcVillain [[spoiler:Lio Shirazumi]], whose mind has, by that point, been completely overtaken by cannibalistic urges, the villain shows a rare moment of lucidity to talk with him and muses that it may actually be [[LivingEmotionalCrutch Mikiya's calming presence]] that gave him this one last moment of clear thinking.

* In ''ComicBook/JLA1997'' storyline "Rock of Ages", ComicBook/MartianManhunter has to put in incredible effort to reorganize Joker's mind long enough for him to give up the cataclysmic power of the Philosopher's Stone. The briefly sane Joker immediately says MyGodWhatHaveIDone verbatim as he hands it back, before quickly losing his mind and reverting to his usual laughing madman state.

* ''ComicBook/LockeAndKey'': Erin Voss has been left virtually catatonic as a result of [[spoiler: Dodge using the Head Key to empty her mind]] and can barely string two words together at the best of times. However, meeting someone or something familiar from her past will briefly allow her to recall something important before it slips away again. Most prominently, in "Alpha And Omega," she can be heard encouraging Rufus to stop Dodge. Later in the same issue, [[spoiler: she and her nurse catch Rufus in the act of breaking out of the hospital - but before the nurse can stop him, Erin deliberately swings her wheelchair around and knocks her over, giving Rufus time to escape and save the day.]]
* ''ComicBook/TheSandman1989'': When Dream has an emotional breakdown at the prospect of [[spoiler: talking to his estranged son Orpheus]] in order to find his long-lost brother [[DestroyerDeity Destruction]], Delirium wills herself into a moment of lucidity to tell Destiny off and get Dream to pull himself together. Considering she is the AnthropomorphicPersonification of madness, her lucid state "hurts very muchly".

* ''ComicBook/SpiderMan:'' During the final fight between the Spider-Man of 2211 and the Goblin of 2211, who is the daughter of the former driven insane by an attempt at busting her out of a LotusEaterMachine gone ''very'' wrong, the Goblin unmasks herself to say she knows full well what's happened to her, that whatever's left of her sanity is stuck inside her "screaming to get out", but never will. Then she reverts back and tries to kill her father, only to wind up killed in the process.

* In the ''Theatre/{{Wicked}}'' fanfic ''Fanfic/TheLandOfWhatMightHaveBeen'', the monster known as the Hellion is usually a shrieking, demented LivingDollCollector who's singled out Dorothy Gale as her latest doll - [[{{Yandere}} and is prepared to kill anyone to get her hands on her]]. However, after finally managing to capture Dorothy, for some reason the Hellion can't bring herself to transform her into a doll, and is struck by a rare moment of introspection in which she tearfully asks herself why she can't be happy now that she has everything she's ever wanted. Not long after, though, Elphaba shows up to rescue Dorothy, sending the Hellion flying into possessive rage all over again.
* After Rei is given a drug overdose in ''Fanfic/AdviceAndTrust'' that forces her back into being cold and emotionless, she manages to crack a single joke to show Asuka and Shinji that the Rei they have come to know and befriend isn't completely gone.

[[folder:Films — Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Coco}}'', Miguel's great-grandmother Coco, who is more than a century old, wheelchair-bound, can barely talk, and often mistakes family members for one another. Her advancing dementia becomes plot important because [[spoiler: she's the last living person to still remember her father Héctor, but she's starting to forget, meaning he's going to be DeaderThanDead unless Miguel can rouse her memory. Miguel just barely manages to get through to her by singing a lullaby that Héctor wrote for Coco when she was a little girl, finally bringing back her memories of him]].

[[folder:Films — Live-Action]]
* ''Film/ABeautifulMind'' features several of these: after being diagnosed with schizophrenia, John Nash refuses to acknowledge it at first, but once he discovers conclusive proof that his top-secret work was just a fantasy, he agrees to receive treatment. However, he finds the medication too debilitating and [[NoMedicationForMe secretly gives it up]], kicking off a disastrous relapse that nearly results in his infant son drowning. After this, John undergoes an epiphany and decides to return to work at Princeton - again without medication but this time accepting the support of his wife. Unfortunately, the stress of teaching prompts him to suffer a very public breakdown, and it takes a lot of work before he's confident enough to begin making progress again.
* Over the course of ''Film/TheCremator'', Karl Kopfrkingl's sanity has been circling the plughole as his obsession with death deepens and his [[AmbitionIsEvil desire for status]] becomes entangled with the rise of Nazism in Prague; this ultimately comes to a head when he murders his half-Jewish wife, then begins hallucinating a Buddhist monk proclaiming Karl the new Dalai Lama. Officiating at his wife's funeral, Karl seems much more lucid, even regretful... right up until he notices the Nazi officials in the congregation alongside [[TheGrimReaper the Pale Girl]], and suddenly his eulogy turns political as he begins screaming about the certainty of "the Fuhrer's New Europe." [[spoiler: Minutes later, [[PaterFamilicide Karl murders his son and tries to do the same to his daughter]], before being escorted by the hallucinatory monk to "the throne in Lhasa" - really a Nazi death camp where Karl has been put in charge of the crematoria.]]
* ''Film/TheDescent'': having lost her grip on sanity over the course of the film following numerous battles with [[TheMorlocks the Crawlers]], Sarah experiences one of these after managing to escape the caverns at the end of the film - only to wake up back in the cave a moment later. As it turns out, the entire escape was just a delusion. For a few seconds, she seems to comprehend reality again; then she sees her daughter sitting across from her with a birthday cake. Sarah smiles back at her... and then the camera pulls back to reveal that she's alone, smiling vacantly at her torch, [[DownerEnding and the Crawlers are closing in...]]
* ''Film/ShutterIsland'' climaxes with Andrew Laeddis finally breaking though his layers of delusions and acknowledging that he isn't really [[spoiler:US Marshal Teddy Daniels]], that his conspiracy theory has been a fantasy, and that [[spoiler:he murdered his wife after she drowned their children]]. He's then told that this is actually the ''second'' time he's been cured, and that if it doesn't stick this time they'll have no choice but to lobotomize him to keep him from being a danger to the other patients. In the final scene, [[spoiler:he appears to have regressed back into his fantasy again, but as he's being carted away for his lobotomy he drops a line that heavily implies he really is cured for good this time, and is merely faking his regression because [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone he's so guilt-ridden by what he's done]] that he ''[[DyingAsYourself wants]]'' to be [[DeathSeeker lobotomized]]]].
* In ''Film/TheDeadCenter'', John Doe has only a few of these while he's stuck in the emergency psych ward, just long enough to give a very muddled overview of what happened to him, and to flat out tell Dr. Forrester to kill him. He finally remembers his real name and demands to see his kids, [[spoiler: but it's really due to the [[DemonicPossession demon inside him completely taking over and pretending to be normal]] in order to get discharged faster.]]

* Late in ''Literature/{{Colony}}'', hitman [[PsychoForHire Paulo San Pablos]] AKA Mr Pink Socks has been driven completely insane by his transformation into an extremely clunky cyborg, and goes on a killing spree that only relents when he finally manages to catch up with his original target, [[ButtMonkey Eddie O'Hare]]. During their final conversation, Paulo admits that [[PastVictimShowcase he took a stomach from one of his victims]], at the time believing that he could somehow incorporate it into himself so he could eat again, and seems genuinely confused at the deluded reasoning behind this move. Thinking that Pink Socks is on the verge of an epiphany, Eddie suggests that he can be helped if he just turns himself in... only for Paulo to slip back into murderous rage and go on the attack.
* ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'': In ''The Devil's Foot'', Holmes and Watson deliberately inhale a substance Holmes suspects was responsible for the two murders, although he does take the precaution of using only a small amount, leaving the door and window open, and having each man face the other in case an intervention is needed. But the stuff was stronger than Holmes suspected, and Watson's vivid description of the hallucinations starts veering into CosmicHorrorStory. Only the sight of Holmes' equally-anguished face [[ThePowerOfFriendship is enough to break Watson out of his trance]] and drag them both outside.

At the same moment, in some effort of escape, I broke through that cloud of despair and had a glimpse of Holmes' face, white, rigid, and drawn with horror--the very look which I had seen upon the features of the dead. It was that vision which gave me an instant of sanity and of strength. I dashed from my chair, threw my arms round Holmes, and together we lurched through the door, and an instant afterwards had thrown ourselves down upon the grass plot and were lying side by side, conscious only of the glorious sunshine which was bursting its way through the hellish cloud of terror which had girt us in.

* In ''Literature/TheShining'', when Jack has been completely taken over and is about to kill Danny, Danny manages to stagger it by telling it outright that it's not his father and claims it's just wearing a "mask" of his father. This manages to shake Jack out of its control long enough to let Danny go and tell him how much he loves him, before the hotel "kills" Jack by making him smash his own face in with the roque mallet, destroying the "mask" and leaving nothing but an entity of the hotel. [[spoiler:It also leads into a fitting KarmicDeath for it ''and'' the hotel as, like Danny points out to it, ''Jack'' was the one who remembered to dump the boiler each day to keep it from exploding, while ''it'' didn't, and the ensuing explosion puts an end to it and the accursed hotel once and for all]].

* In the season 3 finale of ''Series/BoardwalkEmpire'', the dangerously-unstable [[ArcVillain Gyp Rosetti]] plunges to new depths of insanity after he's abandoned by his boss, outmaneuvered by [[VillainProtagonist Nucky Thompson]] and driven out of his own base by [[OneManArmy Richard Harrow]]. In the throes of a VillainousBreakdown, he parrots back Nucky's words to him from the start of the season, then starts miming glasses (while ''[[RecklessGunUsage still holding a loaded gun]]'') and screamingly proclaims himself "[[ComicStrip/SnuffySmith Barney Google with the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes]]." For a moment, Gyp looks as though he's about to kill one of the last ''three'' henchmen he has left... then he calms down. As he puts together an almost-plausible plan to start over in a smaller community, things appear to be looking up for his sanity - right up until he starts singing the Barney Google song in an increasing demented voice. [[spoiler: And then Tonino knifes him in the back.]]

** Left dangerously unstable by years of unrelenting trauma, [[LivingShip Talyn]] goes off the deep end in "[[Recap/FarscapeS03E19IYenschYouYensch I-Yensch You-Yensch]]" and blows up a hospital ship in a fit of paranoia, then tries to kill Moya - his ''own mother'' - when it looks like her crew are considering switching him off. It takes a heartfelt talk from [[ParentalSubstitute Aeryn]] to finally calm him down and make him realize that he needs help; eventually, he allows Crais to switch him off in preparation for a [[DeathOfPersonality full system reset]] - the only possible cure at that point.
** [[ButtMonkey Stark]] has spent most of the second-to-fourth seasons growing steadily loopier as personal tragedies stack up, and in ''The Peacekeeper Wars,'' having to absorb a piece of Hierarch Yondalao's soul appears to have left him catatonic. In the wake of the battle aboard the Decimator, however, he suddenly begins providing unusually rational explanations and seems much calmer for a while - apparently due to carrying around the the knowledge of how to use Yondalao's [[CareBearStare peace-imbuing powers]]. After transferring the knowledge to the other Eidolons, he doesn't quite go back to normal, but he's still pretty eccentric and prone to panicking under fire. [[spoiler: However, the experience eventually allows him to achieve inner peace, the energy rift behind his mask sealing shut in the process.]]
* ''Series/FatherTed'': In ""Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading"", Father Jack briefly comes out of his alcoholic stupor, only to realize he's still trapped on that feckin' island.
* ''Series/{{Hannibal}}'': In "Buffet Froid", the [[MonsterOfTheWeek Killer Of The Week]] is discovered hiding at the crime scene and flees, but not before [[TheProfiler Will Graham]] tries to ground her in the moment by saying "if you can hear me, you're alive." As it turns out, the killer is [[TragicVillain Georgia Madchen]], a terminally-diseased woman suffering from an inability to recognize faces and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotard_delusion the delusion that she is already dead]], and Will's entreaty apparently stirred something in her... because she spends the rest of the episode stalking him, and murders his neurologist after getting the two mixed up. Eventually, Georgia turns up at Will's house in a state of exhaustion, allowing him to finally get though to her with a YouAreNotAlone speech, and the episode concludes with her in custody, receiving treatment. [[spoiler: And then it turns out Georgia wasn't really the one who killed the neurologist, but merely Hannibal's patsy.]]
* ''Series/ThatMitchellAndWebbLook'' has a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp02ubGuTIU sketch about an elderly Sherlock Holmes who is stricken with dementia]] until he gets a very brief moment of self-awareness. It was meant to be a satire on comedy shows that use pathos to win awards but, whatever the intention, the ending is still an absolute tearjerker.

* On ''Series/RaisingHope'', Mawmaw suffers from dementia and often doesn't recognize her family. In the moments she's lucid, however, she's shown to be highly intelligent and has a wide variety of skills.
* ''Series/Space1999''. In the episode "Death's Other Dominion", the Moon passes by a planet which is the refuge of a human space expedition presumed lost many years before. The expedition's former leader, Colonel Jack Tanner, is now a prancing, Shakespearean fool prone to making cryptic comments and issuing dire warnings. The Alphans disregard what he says as the babbling of a madman until [[spoiler:he reveals to Koenig that his condition is the result of a sinister experiment (for which he volunteered).]]
-->'''Koenig:''' ''Right now you're as sane as I am''.\\
'''Tanner:''' ''It comes and goes. It comes and goes...''\\

* ''Videogame/BlazBlue'': Arakune is normally an insane EldritchAbomination who WasOnceAMan but had GoneMadFromTheRevelation. In the second game, when his old friend Litchi confronts him, he has a brief moment of sanity, telling her to not pursue him, not corrupt herself with the same thing that corrupted him, and to seek Prof. Kokonoe for help. He goes mad again shortly afterward.
* ''VideoGame/DeadSpace2'': been driven almost completely insane by his exposure to [[ArtifactOfDoom the Marker]], Isaac Clarke finds himself confronted by his hallucination of Nicole one last time, during which she demands to know why she's still haunting him and why he can't just let her go. In the end, Isaac finally confesses that without her, he has nothing left; with this, he finally reaches step four - Acceptance - and his symptoms abate. [[spoiler: However, they're merely dormant: once he gets back in close proximity with the Marker, he starts hallucinating again.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Deltarune}}'' features Spamton, a corporeal spambot that talks in broken fractured English and is riddled with {{malaproper}}s, incorrect spam mail merge variables, constant misspellings, and weird nonsensical terms and sayings. [[spoiler:If you defeat his {{superboss}} form Spamton NEO though, he apparently snaps out of this long enough to [[TragicVillain lament how he can never be more than a "puppet" and wishes Kris and their friends well]].]]

* ''VideoGame/OdinSphere'': [[BigBad King Valentine]] spends much of the game in full-on OmnicidalManiac mode fully intent on undergoing a SuicidalCosmicTemperTantrum due to his cursed undead immortality, but there are moments of lucidity, mostly when he's thinking about his daughter, Princess Ariel, and [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone his horror]] at having [[OffingTheOffspring murdered her with his bare hands]]. During the most memorable of these moments, [[spoiler:he outright begs Odin (Ariel's lover) for a MercyKill by utterly oblierating him to put him out of his misery. Odin is tempted but refuses, [[CruelMercy believing that Valentine deserves to suffer for eternity]].]] In the true ending, [[spoiler:Valentine's last such moment is triggered when he has his granddaughter Velvet before him and is poised to kill her when she's too exhausted to fight back, but her [[StrongFamilyResemblance resemblance to Ariel]] causes him to back off doing so, instead leaving her behind as he flies into the sky with [[{{Kaiju}} Leventhan]] to witness TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt and finally die vaporized by Leventhan's own BreathWeapon.]]
* ''VideoGame/ThePark'': after spending most of the game succumbing to her own burgeoning negative impulses while under [[AmusementParkOfDoom Atlantic Island Park]]'s [[MindRape brain-warping atmosphere]], Lorraine finally manages to recover enough of her sanity to [[HeelRealization realize]] that Callum is only lost in the park because of her neglectful parenting. And then, just as it looks as though she might be able to rescue Callum from the House of Horrors, the Bogeyman literally forces her back into insanity [[spoiler: by pressing an icepick into her hand, directing her to an unconscious Callum, then letting her go and allowing the madness Lorraine has accumulated so far [[DeathOfAChild to do the rest]].]] For good measure, the sequel mission in ''VideoGame/TheSecretWorld'' reveals that Lorraine [[DespairEventHorizon never recovered from the incident]].
* ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts}}'': Normally, using Confusion on other characters will cause them to be temporarily dazed and say funny things. Using Confusion on the mentally unstable and conspiracy-obsessed Boyd Cooper (only possible through cheating, because Confusion won't work on Boyd by the time you would normally obtain it) will cause him to snap out of his paranoia and realize that there are no conspiracies, and [[MilkmanConspiracy the Milkman]] is [[spoiler:an alternate personality planted in his head...]] but the Confusion wears off and he goes right back to reciting his conspiracy theories.

* ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine'': the finale is a moment of lucidity for Captain Walker after spending most of the game slowly losing his mind. After discovering that [[spoiler: Colonel Konrad is already dead and the voice on the other end of Walker's radio has been a hallucination all along]], Walker is forced to acknowledge that [[NiceJobBreakingItHero he was responsible for most of the atrocities in the game]], that he was being driven by delusions of heroism instead of his orders, and he can no longer [[NeverMyFault blame anyone else for the deaths]]. How well this moment works is dependent on the player: [[spoiler:In the end, Walker can kill himself, provoke the rescue team into killing him, murder the rescue team en masse, or just allow himself to be rescued and tried for his crimes.]]
* Shortly after Otto Octavius demonstrates his mechanical tentacles in ''[[VideoGame/SpiderManPS4 Spider-Man [=PS4=]]]'', Peter Parker discovers that the tentacles' neural interface runs the risk of driving him insane; Otto already seems a lot more volatile than usual, and when he's encouraged to rethink things, he loses his temper and begins ranting how he no longer feels "like a failure." Fortunately, Peter is able to calm him down by warning him of the possibility of brain damage. However, the moment Peter leaves the lab, Otto happens to see [[WeUsedToBeFriends Norman Osborn]] on TV [[BlatantLies bragging about how he was responsible for stopping Mr Negative]]; switching the interface back on, Otto [[ShootTheTelevision destroys the TV]] in a fit of rage and vows to get revenge on his old partner once and for all...
* In the finale of ''VideoGame/UntilDawn,'' a combination of stress, guilt, and [[GoingColdTurkey withdrawal from antidepressants]] drives the already-unstable [[WellIntentionedExtremist Josh Washington]] into a breakdown, during which he hallucinates his dead sisters, the pigs he had to butcher earlier, the voices of his friends chiding him, and [[spoiler: the {{Wendigo}} that kidnapped him]]. Fortunately, Mike and Sam are able to drag him back to reality with [[GetAHoldOfYourselfMan a sharp slap to the face]], allowing them to lead him out of the caves. Depending on the player's actions, Josh can remain lucid or give in to madness by the end of the game: [[spoiler: if the player never found Hannah Washington's ApocalypticLog, Josh remains lucid, refusing to believe that the Wendigo is real even as it kills him. However, if Josh learns of what really happened to his sister and recognizes [[WasOnceAMan the Wendigo's true identity]], Hannah recognizes him in return and [[EvenEvilHasLovedOnes captures him alive]], leaving Josh alone with his demons in the CannibalLarder - ultimately paving the way for his transformation into a Wendigo.]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* In ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'', Odin is mostly portrayed as a CloudCuckoolander who needs his son Thor to take care of him as a result of divine brain damage (Northernmen in the last world thought magic was for weaklings and gave him, the god of magic, the wrong kind of worship; his recovery has been slow, but there) but in one of his moments of lucidity, he keeps it together enough to explain why it is a net benefit that GodsHandsAreTied.

* ''Series/TheCryOfMann'': Jack and Courtney both suffer SanitySlippage over the course of the story, with Jack becoming consumed by hatred for his family and the desire to work out excessively. The crazed "Jack Prime" goes and terrorizes his sister, until he notices [[spoiler:He's at his brother's funeral]]. The realization snaps him back to normal long enough for a speech and some snacks... Until Courtney shows up, causing Jack Prime to take over again and join her in creating chaos. They're both snapped out of it for good after [[spoiler:Tank Mann comes home, and defeats the evil Gergiev, the source of their madness.]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' episode "Betty", Ice King is turned back into Simon Petrikov by [[AntiMagic Bella Noche]], restoring his sanity. However, Simon is slowly dying without the crown's power keeping him alive and so they must get the crown's magic back to him before then, much to the dismay of Simon, who says wearing the crown again is like living with eternal diaper rash.
* ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman'': For most of the fourth season, Bojack has to care for his dementia-addled mother Beatrice, who doesn't even recognize him anymore, but at the end of the episode [[Recap/BojackHorsemanS4E11TimesArrow "Time's Arrow"]], she briefly comes out of her mental haze a bit, frightened and confused by her surroundings, asking Bojack where she is. Earlier in the season, Bojack had wanted Beatrice to be lucid so that [[CallingTheOldManOut he could stick it to her]] one last time [[AbusiveParents for being so cruel and abusive to him all his life]], but now that he has the opportunity, he decides to comfort her instead, lying in order to give her one last pleasant memory.

* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'': In [[Recap/StarWarsTheCloneWarsS4E21Brothers "Brothers"]], Darth Maul is revealed to be NotQuiteDead. The former Sith is less than half the man he used to be — [[HalfTheManHeUsedToBe literally]] — reduced to a spider-legged scavenger on a landfill planet. The experience and his isolation has left him a broken shell barely able to keep his mind in one place, helplessly aware that he's insane, and sustained by little more than ThePowerOfHate. But when his long-lost brother Savage Opress shows up looking for him, he's reminded of the past until one [[TranquilFury coldly serious]] thought surfaces: [[{{Revenge}} revenge on Obi-Wan Kenobi]]. He returns to insanity afterward, but he's soon cured of it by the Nightsisters of Dathomir and restored to his former glory.