History Main / PowerBornOfMadness

** Nightmare Moon seemed to be this -- at least Princess Luna seemed much weaker once she'd regained her sanity. However, when she returns in the second season, we find out that she is in fact so powerful as herself that she can be destructive ''without meaning it'' if she doesn't work to keep a lid on her godlike powers. She seems more powerful than her sister because she is less restrained, and of course being ''evil'' is the logical extension of this.
** [[CloudCuckooLander Pinkie Pie]] is this to a T. She's so preoccupied with hopping around, singing random songs out of nowhere, and throwing parties, that she never seems to realize she's [[RealityWarper breaking the laws of time and space as she does it]], and on numerous occasions completely freaking out her friends as she does it.

* In ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'', the inherent power of the Uchiha clan (Sharingan) may be activated only in the event of suffering ultimate stress and loss so strong that they break the Uchiha somewhere deep. It can upgrade into the Mangekyo Sharingan, but only after even greater trauma. Clan lore held that the only way to unlock the Mangekyo was to murder your closest friend, though it's shown that other equally traumatic events can also work. Every Uchiha with the Mangekyo, even ones who didn't cause the trauma themselves, has been insane, broken, or both.
** The exception is Sarada from ''Manga/{{Boruto}}''. She got her initial Sharingan from being incredibly ''happy'' at the prospect of seeing her father, and her Mangekyo from the fear of losing him rather than losing him outright.

* People known as "The Lost" from the obscure RPG ''In Dark Alleys'' have such a bad direction sense that ''it defies time and space''. By wandering randomly through streets and corridors they can, in about 15 minutes, get anywhere. The other side of town? They could go there. Another continent? yes. Your baby brother's ''subconscious''? Yes, and they'd probably enjoy it, since most of them are either complete {{Cloud Cuckoo Lander}}s or constantly high/drunk. The same stupidity/clumsiness/insanity also allows them to pull anything out of a bag or pocket. Some people can just casually accept the fact that there could be, say, a hand grenade in their wallet they don't remember ever having put in there.

** Parsee Mizuhashi, the [[TrollBridge bridge-haunting]] GreenEyedMonster of ''Subterranean Animism'', is explicitly stated in-game to have powers fueled by her jealous rage. There's a reason it's called the "Bridge People No Longer Cross".

* ''''Vengeance of the Kilrathi'''' has a few:

* ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'' has a few:

** Clownpiece takes this trope even more literal, since she's a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lampad Lampad]] who carries a torch that drives everyone even just near it completely insane. This insanity coupled with her own purification by her boss' friend Junko made her absurdly powerful and difficult to deal with even by Touhou's NintendoHard standards.

* Ask any Mental Hospital staff member and they can tell you about at least one combative patient who took six people to properly restrained. Sometimes 4 times their own weight. Some mental illnesses in the more severe states, can cause the sufferer to ignore their own body's limiter on strength. This can cause 90 pounds when soaking wet girls to throw a 200 pound orderly across the room.

->''"[[Characters/BatmanTheJoker The Joker]]'s a special case. Some of us feel he may be ''beyond'' treatment. In fact, we're not even sure if he can be properly defined as insane... It's quite possible we may actually be looking at some kind of super-sanity here. A brilliant new modification of human perception. More suited to urban life in the twenty-first century."''

* This is a common theme in the Franchise/{{Batman}} mythos.
** ComicBook/TheJoker is sometimes portrayed as being able to see through the FourthWall because of his insanity.

*** In a ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'' / ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'' crossover, Judge Death tried to possess Joker's body but ended going straight through his head and falling out through the other ear.

--->'''Harley:''' [[NoSell *grins* "Cute face."]] [[TalkToTheFist *Kick!*]]
** Franchise/{{Batman}} himself is often shown to possess a form of Power Born of Madness - his obsession with justice is so great that mental powers meant to play on any other trait simply slide off.

* ComicBook/{{Deadpool}} has this.
** Deadpool is an interesting example of both WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity AND this. His lunacy is due to having been imbued with superhuman regeneration while suffering from terminal cancer (or just made him more insane depending on the stories), which means that his brain is constantly rotting away and regenerating back. However, this same insanity grants him several [[BreakingTheFourthWall perks]] that increase his power even further.
* Rorschach from ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'', CaptainErsatz to The Question, is similarly able to do things like [[ImprovisedWeapon fighting off cops with some hairspray and a match]] because he is [[AxCrazy crazy]], [[NietzscheWannabe crazy]], badass, and ''[[VigilanteMan crazy]]''.
* The deadly threat that [[ComicBook/ThePunisher Frank Castle]] represents is often credited to his psychotic pain threshold and utter lack of inhibition towards hurting people.
* [[ComicBook/TheQuestion The first Question's]] abilities after Steve Ditko consisted of having an odd mask and paranoia. [[CrazyPrepared Lots and lots of paranoia.]] Originally he was just a good detective, fighter and skilled at criminal psychology.
* Peter Milligan's ''ComicBook/ShadeTheChangingMan'' is the prime example of the RealityWarper ("forge what you need on the smithy of your soul".) He began merely poetic, and therefore only insane to his native culture, so he was able to survive being flung through the Area of Madness relatively insane. With time on Earth, he got much madder.
** Loma, from ''Shade, the Changing Girl'', follows suit.
* ''ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk'' What the Hulk runs on, and heavily implied to be the reason that Banner not only survived the detonation of the gamma bomb, but why the Hulk is so much more powerful than most, if not all of the gamma mutates that have come before or since. His already fractured psyche created a monster based on the trauma he received as a child, and the personae emerged from different stages of his life that Banner denied himself the person he wanted to be (Savage-the angry child; Joe Fixit-the late adolescent, etc.). Adding to this, his long-suppressed rage gives the Hulk the ability to get stronger when he gets madder. His rage and anger is shown to be so powerful that not only does it cause UnstoppableRage but also gives him immunity to mind control and other telepathic attacks, often showing him simply shrugging it off. Also explains his more varied abilities, like being able to see ghosts, as Banner always feared his long-dead abusive father would come back to torment him again.

* ''ComicBook/SamAndMaxFreelancePolice'': Max's mind is so screwed up he's immune to all forms of mind control and hypnosis, has various psychic powers (which mostly served as DeusExMachina or one time gags until ''The Devil's Playhouse'') and awareness of the fourth wall. Granted this awareness is shaky, so is his awareness of his own world.

* [[TokenEvilTeammate Whirl]] of ''ComicBook/{{The Transformers|IDW}}'' does this on purpose: specifically, he's (mostly) rational but deliberately acts insane (or deliberately makes himself insane, nobody can really tell) in combat. His behavior makes him feared by Decepticons and Autobots alike.

** The various tabletop [=RPGs=] have several mechanics to track your progress: aside from experience, there's also "insanity" and "corruption". In most of the games these are bad things to build up... Except in ''TabletopGame/BlackCrusade'', where more corruption gives you more [[BodyHorror Gifts of the Gods]], but there's no insanity track any more. The assumption is that you ''start the game'' at the maximum of 100 points of Insanity, and it's only by being that off the wall that you even CONSIDER tapping into the kinds of power granted by the [[EldritchAbomination Chaos Gods]].
* In ''TabletopGame/UnknownArmies'', all mages works on this principle. Ritual magic can be done by the sane, for rather wide definitions of sane. The faster and more powerful adept magic, however, can only be powered or cast by individuals who are crazily obsessed with money, books, historic places, alcohol, or danger to the point of that obsession overwriting local reality. A typical bibliomancer, for example, would be so obsessed over books that he or she would cajole or even kill for a given text, and take an assault on the Library as a personal assault. Mechanically, becoming an adept after character creation usually requires five failed Stress checks in a single column and the resulting madness. [=GMs=] are instructed to punish adepts who don't let their character's insanity shine through with drops in power or odd spontaneous magical effects.

* A DownplayedTrope in ''Fanfic/NightmareInArkham'', where the Joker's insanity makes [[{{Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet}} Freddy Kreuger]] powerless against him and allows him to destroy Kreuger once and for all.

*** It's worth noting that the Malkavians' signature discipline of [[MindRape Dementaion]] can only be used by someone with a [[TheMentallyDisturbed derangement]]. Curing or losing your derangement means Dementation can no longer be accessed, which doesn't affect Malkavians themselves, who are cursed to always have a derangement no matter what. It does affect members of other clans who manage to learn Dementation.

* ''ComicBook/WelcomeToHoxford'' has Ray Delgado, who achieves what he does because he's just that disconnected from reality. Who else would come up with the idea of [[ManBitesMan biting off a werewolf's tongue]] as it's snarling at you? He even finishes the series by [[spoiler: challenging the Alpha to a DuelToTheDeath and ''wins'', [[KlingonPromotion effectively becoming the packleader]] without actually being a werewolf]].

* In ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'', the inherent power of the Uchiha clan (Sharingan) may be activated only in the event of suffering ultimate stress and loss so strong that they break the Uchiha somewhere deep. It can upgrade into the Mangekyo Sharingan, but only after even greater trauma. Clan lore held that the only way to unlock the Mangekyo was to murder your closest friend, though it's shown that other equally traumatic events can also work. Every Uchiha with the Mangekyo, even ones who didn't do cause the trauma themselves, has been insane, broken, or both.

* In the ''Bookworm'' series, certain types of magical energies can only be summoned to the mortal plane-and used- by the insane. Coupled with the fact that [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity dark magic drives people insane]], and normal magic is no match for dark magic(especially necromancy), the only thing keeping the muggles from utter inslavement by immortal evil and insane sorcerers is pure luck.

* In ''VideoGame/MetalGearRisingRevengeance'', after receiveing two consecutive [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech talkings to]], Raiden finally embraces the inner bloodlust that he had been trying to suppress and reclaims his old moniker of [[AxCrazy Jack the Ripper]]. This gives him the powerup required to, literally, cut through Monsoon and his posturing.

** RealityWarper: Though they probably are more stupid than crazy, both Black Belt and Fighter shows signs of this category. E.g., Black Belt has, due to his NoSenseOfDirection, on numberous occasions altered the space-time continuum in ways that shouldn't be possible. And when their deathtrap of a submarine was filling with water, Fighter was able to return it to normal by pulling out the plug and letting the water drain out.

*** The personalities are named [[AnIcePerson Icy]], [[PlayingWithFire Hothead]], and [[AxCrazy Random]]. As stated above, Random has access to all of Blitzwing's forms and abilities, but it's balanced by Random's tendancies to sing nursery rhymes or go off on tangents about servo salad.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheMask'': The Mask as in the film gains his powers and abilites by being genuinely insane and also the same thing with Eve, Masked Peggy Brandt, Masked Milo, Masked Chet, Masked Pretorius and Masked Dr Neuman and in one episode a goverment guy wears the mask in the future but dosen't become insane that causes him to have no powers or abilites at all which shows that you need to have a creative mind to become insane as it is proven by The Mask who manages to defeat the goverment guy just by being insane and having a creative mind as well.

** Mental breakdowns of varying degrees are unusually common among [[MadMathematician pioneers of mathematics]], some apparently driven [[GoMadFromTheRevelation insane]] by endless calculations in [[AcidTripDimension hypothetical]] [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace hyperdimentional]] [[AlienGeometries non-linear systems]] while others [[Film/ABeautifulMind begin a bit off from the start]], which [[BlessedWithSuck may actually contribute to being able to deal with]] high level mathematics in the first place.

** ''Literature/ThiefOfTime'' : Excessive sanity as a form of insanity. Jeremy Clockson is [[BlatantLies completely sane]] and has a paper that confirms it (not a lot of people have those). At first [[TheIgor Igor]] has to admit that after working for [[MadScientist Mad Doctor Scoop, Crazed Baron Haha, Screaming Doctor Berserk, Dribbling Doctor Vibes]], and [[AxCrazy Nipsie the Impaler]] "when it came to getting weird things done, sane beat mad hands down" but it eventually becomes clear Clockson's '''''so''''' sane he's gone around the bend and come out the other side. "Stark, staring sane" has to lead somewhere bad... [[spoiler: like nearly ENDING TIME ITSELF.]]