History Main / PowerBornOfMadness

* Parsee Mizuhashi, the [[TrollBridge bridge-haunting]] GreenEyedMonster of ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}: 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".

* Peter Milligan's 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.

* From the {{Nightside}}, there is the one known as Madman, who was driven mad by perceiving the truth underlying reality? He's a dangerously powerful RealityWarper whose hallucinations manifest around him. Most notable is that he's accompanied by his own personal soundtrack. The other one is Jessica Sorrow the Unbeliever, who thinks that everything is just her hallucination and everyone is just another voice in her head. She tears heavy doors like paper, and anyone she find a nuisance disappear.

* From the {{Nightside}}, there is the one known as Madman, who was driven mad by perceiving the truth underlying reality? He's a dangerously powerful RealityWarper whose hallucinations manifest around him. Most notable is that he's accompanied by his own personal soundtrack. The other one is Jessica Sorrow the Unbeliever, who thinks that everything is just her hallucination and everyone is just another voice in her head. Just focusing her unbelief, she can unmake anything.

* ''TabletopGame/DontRestYourHead'', a system where you become more powerful the longer you haven't slept. Indeed, your insomnia grants you "madness powers" which can be used to warp the world around you as you see fit. One of the examples in the sourcebook is the madness power of preparedness, where, if you activate it to a certain degree, you can have "conveniently" happened to have picked up the combination to a vault you are just now getting to. And then there's [[ScarletWitch probability]].

* {{Deadpool}} has this.

* The deadly threat that [[ThePunisher Frank Castle]] represents is often credited to his psychotic pain threshold and utter lack of inhibition towards hurting people.
* [[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.

* Helen Magnus in ''{{Sanctuary}}'' engineers a BatmanGambit to catch a bad guy that involves [[spoiler: pretending to kill a friend and putting a critter in her brain that will make her seem insane to throw off the psychic powers of those meant to determine if she committed the murder since one of them was aforementioned bad guy.]]

* Dr. Will Magnus, creator of the MetalMen, does ''[[ScienceRelatedMemeticDisorder crazy]]'' things when he's not on his meds. Specifically, he has bipolar disorder. During his creative highs he's capable of building a superpowerful and destructive robot made of plutonium. During his soul-crushing depressive lows he feels horrible enough to seriously consider activating it.

* In the Creator/RandallGarrett short story [[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24521/24521-h/24521-h.htm "In Case of Fire"]] Earth's ambassador to [[ReassignedToAntarctica Saarkkad]], who goes out of way to make [[BunnyEarsLawyer use]] of the psychologically messed-up workers who get sent to him on a regular basis, finds himself needing to send someone to negotiate an armistice between Earth and the Karna race--notorious for their silver tongues and LoopholeAbuse-ing. He sends [[spoiler:a man with a severe mental block against making decisions and a paranoiac. The former can't move until he sees a clear decision which can be proven not to be rigged, and the latter points out all the potential traps and loopholes he sees (whether they're there or not). Together, they present what seems to be an implacable wall that soon has the Karna reeling.]] As for the Ambassador himself, [[spoiler:who do you send as Ambassador to Saarkkad, a planet whose upper echelons' prestige is based entirely upon their aloofness and isolation? Whose most respected people are those never seen? An agoraphobic xenophobe, of course.]]

* One of the possible character backgrounds in ''"{{Arcanum}}"'', a Victorian Steampunk-meets-high-fantasy RPG, is that you are really an escaped asylum lunatic. Because you are deranged, most people have a lowered initial reaction to your appearance, but you are also so crazy that you take 10% less damage from everything.

* In ShadowSkill, this caused the StartOfDarkness of FallenHero Kain Phalanx.

* In ''JonathanStrangeAndMrNorrell'', Strange takes a PsychoSerum that lets him see one of TheFairFolk so he can learn more magic from it.

* ''CityOfHeroes'' plays this straight at moments, and subverts it as well. Rularuu's Lanaru aspect broke free of and became powerful enough to frighten Rularuu himself thanks to Lanaru's remarkable insanity. On the other hand, the Clockwork King is undeniably and completely insane, a MadScientist, but one of his particular delusions -- [[spoiler:that he can create working robots out of random junk]] -- ''prevents'' him from realizing his true abilities in our universe.

* In the Creator/RandallGarrett short story [[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24521/24521-h/24521-h.htm "In Case of Fire"]] Earth's ambassador to [[ReassignedToAntarctica Saarkkad]], who goes out of way to make [[BunnyEarsLawyer use]] of the psychologically messed-up workers who get sent to him on a regular basis, finds himself needing to send someone to negotiate an armistice between Earth and the Karna race--notorious for their silver tongues and LoopholeAbuse-ing. He sends [[spoiler:a man with a severe mental block against making decisions and a paranoiac. The former can't move until he sees a clear decision with that can be proved not to be rigged, and the latter points out all the potential traps and loopholes he sees (whether they're there or not). Together, they present what seems to be an implacable wall that soon has the Karna reeling.]] As for the Ambassador himself, [[spoiler:who do you send as Ambassador to Saarkkad, a planet whose upper echelons' prestige is based entirely upon their aloofness and isolation? Whose most respected people are those never seen? An agoraphobic xenophobe, of course.]]

* In the Creator/RandallGarrett short story [[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24521/24521-h/24521-h.htm "In Case of Fire"]] Earth's ambassador to [[ReassignedToAntarctica Saarkkad]], who goes out of way to make [[BunnyEarsLawyer use]] of the psychologically messed-up workers who get sent to him on a regular basis, finds himself needing to send someone to negotiate an armistice between Earth and the Karna race--notorious for their silver tongues and LoopholeAbuse-ing. He sends [[spoiler:a man with a severe mental block against making decisions and a paranoiac. The former can't move until he sees a clear decision with that can be proved not to be rigged, and the latter points out all the potential traps and loopholes he sees (whether they're there or not). Together, they present what seems to be an implacable wall that soon has the Karna reeling.]]

->''Isn't sanity really just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean all you get is one trick, rational thinking, but when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh, oooh, the sky is the limit!''
-->-- '''WesternAnimation/TheTick'''

* In the 3rd Edition of ''DungeonsAndDragons'', a cleric with access to the Madness Domain (offered by Tharizdun and a couple of other evil deities) gains a Insanity Score equal to half his class level. This lets them add this score to his Wisdom Score whenever Wisdom applies to spellcasting. However, it has a disadvantage: for anything else that involves Wisdom he ''subtracts'' the Insanity Score from his Wisdom Score.

** In the early Batman stories whenever the curlpit was an old man, you could count on the following fight to include a caption with 'the strength of a madman' in it explaining why Batman wasn't able to take him down with a finger snap.

** The Eldritch Order of the Lost Pantheon[[note]](In the ''Lords of Summer'' sourcebook)[[/note]] deserves special mention. Every one of them is very powerful, somewhat insane, and believes to their bones that they are the embodiment of an archetype that determines how they make sense of the world. It works: their madness makes them more perceptive and longer-lived, and gain power from mortal worship.

* From the ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'', ''Shivering Isles'' expansion, and less directly in previous releases, there is Sheogorath, [[OddJobGods Daedric Prince of Madness]]. In this case the power isn't born of his madness, but is in fact the primordial essence of madness; Sheogorath himself is essentially just an avatar of a larger, immortal force [[spoiler:which periodically replaces the avatar with another]].

* ''{{Achewood}}'' features this in the Great Outdoor Fight. Those with Blood of Champions are known for entering fugues which destroy their minds afterward. Ray succumbs to this at first, but gradually channels it into a productive "berserker" state, which according to Roast Beef is the difference between "a lunatic [and] a pissed man with goals[.]"

* In ''Naruto'', inherent power of Uchiha clan (Sharingan) may be activated only in case of suffering ultimate stress and loss so strong, that they break the Uchiha somewhere deep.
** Despite insanity of several jinjurikis, their powers are not born of madness. It is side-effect of hosting a demon.
** As a fan joke, the protagonist of the story is said to use unique mental technique, that is driven by his... dedication to his beliefs.

* The only real way to describe Wrestling/{{Boogeyman}}'s quirks, such as his ability to evade and bypass all security measures and the difficulty in getting him to [[NoSell sell]] anything up to and included shards of glass buried in his skin.[[/folder]]

* ''TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness'': the Marauders from ''TabletopGame/MageTheAscension''. Something went ''wrong'' during their Awakenings, resulting in them seeing reality through a skewed lens. They are ''extremely'' resistant to the effects of [[WeirdnessCensor Paradox]], which can sometimes slide off them and affect ''any other mages in the area''. If they get crazy enough, they're eventually shunted off into their own pocket dimension in the Umbra.
** The Malkavians in ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' are driven insane the second they are turned, and this very insanity powers their unique ability to cause delusions and hallucinations in others, [[MadOracle as well as see 'patterns' in reality that their saner fellows cannot]]. In the computer game, ''Bloodlines'', Malkavians also get [[DialogueTree different dialogue options]], many of which hint at or warn about future events... albeit in such a confusing manner that you need to finish the game through a sane character first to get all the references. Malkavians are also able to ignore the existence of certain objects rendering them useless against that character, e.g. the machete that did not repeatedly hack into their necks. In games where most of the [=PCs=] are Malkavians, it's more a case of the [=NPCs=] hallucinating the object...

** In the early Batman stories whenever the curlpit was an old man, you could count on the following fight including a caption with 'the strength of a madman' in it to explain why Batman wasn't able to take him down with a finger snap.