History Main / ThroughTheEyesOfMadness

** ''VideoGame/SilentHill3'' raises the possibility that it's an example of the trope, with a character first angrily decrying ("You come here and enjoy spilling their blood and listening to them cry out! You feel excited when you step on them, snuffing out their lives!"), then shockedly asking the game's protagonist, regarding the creatures she's fought and killed for the whole game, "Monsters? They looked like monsters to you?" He claims to have just been kidding... but he may have been just saying that to calm her down and the monsters were just her mysticism-addled visions of innocent bystanders... but then again, maybe he really was just kidding.

* ''Fanfic/AsylumDaemonOfDecay'' has Twilight going to bed after another day with her friends, only to wake up in the titular asylum, where the the nurses and her doctor inform her the life she remembers was just a side-effect of her new experimental treatment regiment. Instead of becoming the personnel apprentice of Princess Celestia, Twilight apparently had a mental breakdown, and has been hallucinating her many misadventures. On the one hand, most of her friends and the other characters from the show are still real in some way or another, [[spoiler:''but'' her prized assistant and adopted brother is not]]. Though sad, this all seems legit... until Twilight hears [[spoiler:Celestia telling her that the Asylum isn't real and Equestria is in grave danger of dark forces that have created the asylum to trick her]] and Twilight soon starts noticing signs of a conspiracy among the staff and seeing things that may or may not be real, but whether she really is crazy, in some kind of LotusEaterMachine, or both is yet to be made clear.

* One of ''Series/TheXFiles'' episodes ("[[Recap/TheXFilesS06E21FieldTrip Field Trip]]") has Mulder and Scully trapped underground in a giant fungus mycelium, hallucinating that they were trying to solve a case (the case that brought them into the forest, in fact), while in reality the mycelium was secreting a hallucinogenic narcotic compound onto their skin to keep them passive while it slowly digested them. To further fit this trope, both Mulder and Scully seem to have had the exact same "plot" to their hallucinations, which is pointed out as impossible in the actual episode.

* In the RPG ''TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost'', players have a stat called "[[SanityMeter Clarity]]" which indicates how tenuous a hold the player's character has on his or her perception of reality. At low levels of Clarity, the core book encourages the [[GameMaster Storyteller]] to provide subtly different information to that player in comparison to the rest, so as to simulate a reaction to something only that character is seeing.
* This is the main premise behind Evil Hat Productions' RPG ''TabletopGame/DontRestYourHead'', where a low-level madness induced by chronic severe insomnia allows the characters to enter a ''Literature/{{Neverwhere}} / Film/DarkCity'' style DarkWorld. Depending on the GM, the setting can be treated as fully real, as existing only in the players' sleep-deprivation-addled heads, or as some [[ParanoiaFuel combination of the two]].
* Similarly, there's ''TabletopGame/JAGSWonderland''. So you've started hallucinating and hearing voices -- perhaps you're schizophrenic. No, wait, you're not schizophrenic -- you've got this disease called Cyclic Psychoaffective Disorder. None of the medical professionals like to talk about it, because you can physically interact with the hallucinations... and it's contagious. No, wait, those aren't hallucinations -- they're the things that operate on the lower levels of reality. You're not losing your grip on reality; ''reality'' is losing its grip on ''you''.

* Some productions of ''Wozyeck'' designed the setting this way.

* ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys4'' has a young child trying to survive a group of nightmarish animatronics, [[spoiler:which are just that: his nightmares. Having his head crushed by a real animatronic really did eat away at his mental health, and also transported him to [[AdventuresInComaLand Coma Land]].]]

* ''VideoGame/OracleOfTao'' has Ambrosia, a girl supposedly [[MissionFromGod called by God]] to [[TheChosenOne save the world]]. The problem is... it's unclear to her whether or not her quest is even real, much less her traveling companions. A possible interpretation of what's going on is that aside from meeting her party, the entire quest is a giant delusion of a girl hoping to feel important because her birth parents abandoned her.
* P.I. Douglas Reilly in ''VideoGame/PataNoir'' is off of his (unspecified) medication - because he "works better" without it - and therefore has a somewhat more literal view of metaphors than most people. If the text says that a cigarette butt is smoking like the embers of a dying fire, Reilly can (apparently) ''pick up one of the embers'' and use it to warm up a potential client who's been acting coldly toward him.

* ''VideoGame/{{Postal}}'' casts the player as a stressed employee turned paranoid delusional who goes on a horrific rampage. And why does he do this, you may ask? While it's probably all about revenge subconsciously, he's deluded himself into believing that the town he lives in must be terminated because its inhabitants are insane. Talk about projection.
** ''VideoGame/Postal2: Apocalypse Weekend'' plays with this trope. The game takes place after the Postal Dude has suffered a gunshot wound to the head at the end of ''Postal 2'', and as a result he often finds himself transported to a ''Silent Hill''-like "alternate reality" version of his current location, where the walls are made of blood and Gary Coleman-like demons appear and attack him. It's probably just a head-trauma-induced hallucination, though. Probably. Postal Dude even remarks "With my luck, that's really a nun. Or someone's grandmother." after blowing away one of the demons with his firearms; being the guy he is, though, he follows this up with "but there's no sense in taking chances".
* This is the entire premise of ''VideoGame/RiseOfInsanity'', a First-Person game where you're a mental patient exploring an abandoned asylum and trying to piece together what actually happened. It's as big a MindScrew of a game as it sounds.

* ''VideoGame/{{Sanitarium}}''. TheReveal is sprung too early, but until then, it's not clear which parts are real, which parts are the main character's demented hallucinations and which parts may be someone else's deranged hallucinations.
* The alternate ending to ''VideoGame/{{Scratches}}: Director's Cut'' has elements of this.

* ''VideoGame/TheSuffering'' is very much built around this trope. On the one hand, there's definitely monsters tearin' shit up. On the other hand, the main character, Torque, is definitely out of his damn mind. On top of the constant hallucinations, he can transform into [[SuperpoweredEvilSide a hideous monster]] that does excellent melee damage to foes, but suffers from health damage if used for too long. It's eventually revealed that Torque only ''imagines'' his transformation and the weird attacks he uses while in the form of the monster: it's all just him slaughtering people with his bare hands. This becomes very obvious when other characters react with surprise at how many enemies Torque killed while transformed, but never seem to notice any physical change.

* ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines'' is one of the few [=RPGs=] that lets you play an actually batshit insane character--a vampire of the Malkavian clan. All dialogue in the game plays differently as a Malkavian than as other clans, and among other lovely perks, you can have thoughtful discussions with TV sets and road signs, and realize in unholy terror that [[spoiler:the cabbie that has been driving you around LA is actually ''Caine the Original Freaking Vampire'']]! Or is he?
** Malkavian vampires were known for their insight as well in the table-top game Bloodlines was inspired by, and this was carried over. As a result, the character can talk to another mad character, the two of them can blithely explain the entire plot to the player in their babble, and then the protagonist can basically say, "Well, time to go fulfill the plot," and go off to do it. None of it will make sense until the very end of the game.

* Ayami of ''VisualNovel/TokyoDark'' is a detective investigating the death of Kazuki, her partner, and the supernatural circumstances surrounding it. However, in one ending, she has sudden flashback which shows that she is actually Kazuki's [[StalkerWithACrush stalker]], who killed him when he 'betrayed' her by seeing another girl. Ayami's clothing then changes to a straitjacket, the woman you thought was her neighbour is revealed to be a nurse, and the background fades out to be replaced with a padded cell. It's left unclear whether Azumi went insane and was imagining herself to be in an asylum, or was really insane from the start.
* In ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry'', no witnesses survive the murders, but the audience is shown the spectacularly magic action sequences. In this case, the "madness" is actually [[InvokedTrope invoked]]; the idea is that the Game Master claims that all the murders are done by magic, and the object of the game is to break "the illusion of the witch" and figure out how they could have been done by human hands.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBros'' puts Henchman 21 through an Eyes of Madness arc in Season 4. His best friend, Henchman 24, died at the end of Season 3. The audience sees 21 at first having one-sided [[CompanionCube conversations with 24's skull]], then two-sided [[DeadPersonConversation conversations with his ghost]]. There are teases that maybe the skull can move or the ghost can interact with the world, and that maybe the ghost knows things that 21 couldn't, but ambiguity is maintained. Even 21 himself is not always sure he's sane as he searches for 24's killer. The truth is revealed at the end of the season. [[spoiler:The ghost is not real.]]

* ''Anime/BoogiepopPhantom'' plays out like this for the first few episodes (and probably longer than that even...) as most of the time the viewer's in [[MindScrew Confusion Land]] trying to figure out what's real and what's not. Is that guy eating bugs for real or is it just a sick illusion?
* ''Anime/FateStayNightHeavensFeel'': In the second film, ''Lost Butterfly'', Sakura Matou suddenly finds herself in a lovely fairy tale world, wearing a lovely princess dress and surrounded by cute creatures and food, and happily starts playing and feasting. In reality, she is wandering through the city barefoot and only wearing a nightgown, killing everyone in her path with a shadow monster.

** In one episode, [[spoiler:an assassin is interrupted by the protagonists, but blows himself up to take out his target]] Well, actually not. That minute of footage was all from his viewpoint, so he only thought he pulled it off. It's subtle to catch too, reading the revealing line wrong makes it look like there was some DeusExMachina going on.

* In ''The Horror Mansion'', the story "The Magic Ball" has an ugly scene at the end that shoves the entire story firmly into this camp. [[spoiler:Despite previously seeing the hand of Atsuko's baby, indicating that it was a normal human child, we now see it as a monster, just like Mayako's babies... while Atsuko seems to see all the babies as normal. As Atsuko never seemed to have been affected by whatever the Magic Ball had done, this calls our vision of the babies as monsters into doubt. And if we can't trust what we see or read to be what really happened here, how can we know that any of the apparent strange happenings throughout the story were real? The monsters in the well, Isamu's transformation, the bizarre change in attitude of Mayako and Atsuko's parents... it's possible none of it was real.]]

* The final episodes for ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'' definitely qualify. Were the events of the last two episodes real, or were they all merely taking place in Shinji's shattered psyche? From a literal standpoint, they could potentially fit in during the closing moments of the Movie. Aside from a few completely minor details, the two endings are compatible with each other. Depending on your interpretation, of course.
* The final episode of ''Anime/OddTaxi'' confirms that the characters are not actually animals, but [[FurryLens the audience sees them that way]] because the main character is suffering from a brain injury that causes him to see people as animals.
%%* ''Literature/{{Paprika}}'' is another example. Once again, it's made by Satoshi Kon.
* ''Anime/ParanoiaAgent'', a series directed by Creator/SatoshiKon, starts off here, with the existence of Lil' Slugger and the sanity of the witnesses and/or victims in extreme doubt. When incontrovertible proof is presented that Lil' Slugger is [[spoiler:real - but not a real ''person'' - and he is most definitely supernatural,]] that's the signal for things to ''really'' go off the rails.
* Another of Kon's works, ''Anime/PerfectBlue'', has this among the many tricks it plays with perception and reality. Towards the end, the audience is seeing things through the eyes of ''two'' different characters' madness, at the same time.

* In ''Manga/SoulEater'', the effects of the Kishin and the Black Blood are an erosion of sanity. Since [[spoiler:the good guys failed to stop the Kishin from reviving, the effect is slowly spreading over the entire world.]] For examples, there's the kids hallucinations when they come face-to-face with Asura, Eruka and Free having the skin ''pulled off their faces'' plus the one where Black Star appears to succeed in stopping Eruka. Maka's hallucination in the Clown chapters is just cruel, twisting a cute flashback into the abrupt 'deaths' of her father and friends. One of the last battles in the series turns this around, with [[AxCrazy Stein]] hallucinating that his bloody killing of the enemy forces is, in fact, him 'unwrapping presents' to see what's inside.

* ''ComicBook/TheFilth'', written by Creator/GrantMorrison, is deliberately ambiguous about how many of the events are real and how many of them are Greg Feely's encroaching madness.

* ''ComicBook/HowLoathsome'': Nick -- a drug dealer -- tells a story of how three German men followed him around, using mind-control powers to mess with his perception until he shot them dead. How much of this was a hallucination caused by drugs, how much is the truth and how much is a lie is never explained.
* ''ComicBook/TheKillingJoke''. Joker's flashbacks.... [[MultipleChoicePast are they what actually happened or simply a fabrication of his twisted mind?]]
** In Shadow of the Bat #38, ''Tears of a Clown'', ComicBook/TheJoker celebrates his anniversary of the day he was a still sane, but hapless comedian, and was thrown out of an exclusive StandUpComedy club for a unfunny act. Being desperately poor, this marks his StartOfDarkness as he agreed to provide to his family by pulling a job for the Red Hood gang. So he kidnaps all the patrons that didn't laugh with him and re-enacts his act with control collars that will kill them when they laugh. The funny thing is that the patrons are really hardcore StandUpComedy fans, [[ButForMeItWasTuesday so they have seen so many acts that nobody remembers the act of a bad comedian]]. The Joker cannot even be sure that this StartOfDarkness really happened.

* Tom King's ''ComicBook/MisterMiracle2017'' run basically involves the titular hero going through this. The story starts with Mister Miracle slitting his wrists as part of his latest adventure/escape routine, trying to see if he can escape death itself. He spends a few days in the hospital, then goes home. From that point on, it becomes increasingly unclear what's actually happening and what's delusion. At one point Miracle has a conversation with Oberon, [[spoiler:despite the fact that the latter died from cancer months ago]]. When Miracle is reminded of this fact, [[MindScrew "Oberon" immediately disappears]]. It's not even clear what the ''cause'' of the delusions could be; Mister Miracle could just be mentally ill... or he might be infected by the Anti-Life Equation.
* The events of ''ComicBook/{{Mnemovore}}'', a CosmicHorrorStory ComicBook, may be just the main character's fractured memories.

* An issue of ComicBook/UltimateSpiderMan shows the conversation between Spider-Man and Green Goblin from the previous issue, only from the latter's point of view. Among other things, he sees blood-red skies, Spider-Man as some horrifying human/spider hybrid (complete with fangs) and dozens of ghost-like "plasmids" floating around and whispering to him.
* The Queen of Fables [[ThoroughlyMistakenIdentity thinks]] Franchise/WonderWoman is Literature/SnowWhite and Franchise/{{Superman}} is PrinceCharming. From her point of view, Wonder Woman wears Snow White's traditional dress instead of her usual swimsuit-like armor.
* An issue of ''ComicBook/XMen'' shows the final "Everyone against Cyclops" battle from ''ComicBook/AvengersVsXMen'' from Scott's point of view, while he's DrunkOnTheDarkSide of the Phoenix Force. He can't keep track of what's happening now as opposed to his memories (admittedly, at least partly because "[[ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} a man with claws]] is attacking me" is a recurring theme), or whether he thought about doing something and decided not to, or did it and then used his RealityWarper powers to undo it again.

* ''Film/TheAmityvilleHorror1979'' is one of the best examples, especially the [[Film/TheAmityvilleHorror2005 remake]]. The protagonist becomes possessed by the haunted house, seeing his own children (and wife) as demons and eventually [[ItWasHisSled killing his own dog with an axe!]] Later on he goes after the family too, but [[spoiler:after being knocked out and dragged away from the house, he becomes sane again.]]
* ''Film/{{Antichrist}}'': Maybe one of the protagonists is crazy. Or maybe both are. Or maybe there really is ''something'' in the woods. [[MindScrew Or maybe all of the above simultaneously]].

** In ''The Tenant'', the protagonist (played by Polanski) learns that the previous tenant of his apartment had committed suicide by throwing herself from the apartment window; he becomes convinced that his neighbors are trying to force him to re-enact her suicide. By the end of the film, it is unclear how much of what we have seen has been the product of his descent into madness.
* In ''Film/Asylum1972Horror'', the factuality of all three of the patients' stories told -- Bonnie's, Bruno's and Barbara's -- are suspect due to their clear insanity in the present. However, of the three, "Lucy Comes to Stay" qualifies the most, as it's implied from the start that Barbara is only hallucinating Lucy's presence -- in fact, Lucy first appears causally sitting on a chair when Barbara turns around, apparently having appeared out of nowhere. At the end of Barbara's story, we see something from her perspective that is definitely unreal: when Barbara looks into her mirror, she sees Lucy in place of her reflection.
* ''Film/TheAttic'' plays with this: From the very beginning, Emma is shown to be a bit unstable and agoraphobic, so the audience starts to suspect this is in play once she starts seeing a mysterious double of herself wandering around the house, among other strange occurrences... But her family's behavior around her starts seeming increasingly suspicious, and a detective she meets, who is willing to believe her, sees the double too, and uncovers proof that her family was hiding the existence of a dead twin sister... [[spoiler: TheReveal is that she was imagining both her sister ''and'' the detective, and when she witnesses her sister murdering her brother, she was really killing him herself. But then it turns out that there was something supernatural going on after all: The house they lived in was a GeniusLoci that kills off families that move there by picking a potentially vulnerable family member and giving them paranoid hallucinations]].
* In ''Film/TheBeastWithFiveFingers'', the [[HelpingHands disembodied hand]] is seen by, and attacks [[spoiler:Hilary]], who tries desperately to convince others of this. However, at the end of the film, it is revealed that [[spoiler:Hilary]] was using the severed hand to stage a ScoobyDooHoax, but his SanitySlippage caused him to believe that the hand was real and haunting him.
* John Nash, the protagonist of ''Film/ABeautifulMind'', a noted mathematician who is hired by the Pentagon as a code breaker to look for magazine and newspaper articles apparently linked to a Soviet atomic bomb plot. After he is spotted by enemy agents during an attempted info drop-off, he is blackmailed into staying on the assignment, only for the film to later reveal that these black-op missions, the attacks and conspiracies are chiefly resulting from Nash's paranoid schizophrenia.
* One of the segments of horror AnthologyFilm ''Film/AChristmasHorrorStory'' involves Santa Claus fighting a zombie outbreak among his elves in the North Pole... [[spoiler: It turns out "Santa" is a [[HolidayVolunteering volunteer at a charity food]] drive at the mall, who suffered a nervous breakdown, went AxeCrazy, and started attacking volunteers and mall employees he was imagining to be zombie elves]]. There are a few early hints that something is "off" about this story line -- [[spoiler: it's the only segment that (seemingly) doesn't take place in the same fictional suburb as the others, the wraparound segments keep mentioning a disturbance at a local mall, and early on Santa and his elves have an oddly technical, in-depth discussion about weather phenomena, hinting at "Santa's" true identity as a local radio weatherman who briefly appeared in the wraparound]].
* Subverted in ''Film/BigEyes''. When Walter begins commercializing her work, Margaret starts to see people in the grocery store with giant eyes like in her paintings. This is never brought up again.
* The realization that Nina from ''Film/BlackSwan'' is batshit insane puts an interesting spin on much of the rest of the movie.

* In ''Film/CleanShaven'' the protagonist is a man suffering from schizophrenic, and it uses abstract images and sounds to show what he is experiencing.

* ''Literature/TwentySixSixtySix'': The Part About Amalfitano practically runs on this.
* The protagonist of ''Literature/AlongTheWindingRoad'' may be perfectly normal, but the love interest certainly claims insanity to the point that we can't be sure if [[spoiler: he caused the zombie apocalypse or not.]]

* Music/NickCave's ''Literature/AndTheAssSawTheAngel'' is really clever about this. The book quickly establishes the setting as a [[MagicRealism Magic Realist]] one. But then the protagonist turns out to be a pretty UnreliableNarrator, and we're left wondering how much is in his head.

* In ''Literature/ChasingShadows'', Holly's chapters delve into her increasingly-fragile mental state as her visions and mental health worsen, culminating in bringing Savitri close to death in the hopes she can bring Corey out with her.

* ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'' has a couple long stretches that read like this. Notably, Jonathan's diary entries get like this, especially if read taking into consideration exactly how his sense of time passing has been screwed up. It's definitely a viable AlternateCharacterInterpretation that the main cast are all pretty cracked.

* A very mild example occurs in the ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' episode "Red Starved". Finn is looking for something red for [[OurVampiresAreDifferent Marceline]] to feed off and finds a large ruby, but a monster Finn talks to keeps insisting it's an emerald. Once Finn brings it up to Jake and Marceline, it turns out it actually is an emerald (the shown color changes from red to green), and Finn is red-green colorblind.
** In "Mortal Recoil", we get to see what the world looks like to the Ice King for a few seconds. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l67RK_tvaM It's less than pleasant.]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'' episode "The Downer", Gumball, after he wakes up in a bad mood and his family crowds around his bed trying to cheer him up only to frustrate him further, wishes that they would just leave him alone, right before [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor they, and seemingly all the other people in Elmore, vanish without a trace.]] After trying and failing to find anyone, Gumball is chased by a black mass that's consuming all around it, until he realizes the mass is a manifestation of his negative emotions and it's all in his head. After coming to, we get a flashback [[OnceMoreWithClarity from his family's point of view that reveals that Gumball had been wandering around unable to tell everyone was still there the entire time]], but what exactly caused this [[AmbiguousSituation isn't elaborated on.]]
** In "The One", Tobias apparently kills all his classmates and steals their abilities in a clear spoof of ''Film/{{Highlander}}'' to try and become Gumball's only friend. As it turns out, everything we were shown was all in his head: [[OnceMoreWithClarity what actually happened involved tons of loud yelling, waving his arms around like a madman and generally embarrassing himself in public by acting like a deranged psycho]], and he never absorbed his classmates' "Friendening" in the first place. How he managed to [[OffscreenMomentOfAwesome actually throw a couch against Darwin during his "fight" against him at the end of the episode]], resulting in him almost getting killed, however, is left unexplained.

** In "The American Dad After School Special", Steve revealing that his new girlfriend is chubby makes Stan horribly self-conscious about his own weight and begins excessively dieting, with help from an enthusiastic coach named Zach. However, despite Stan's best efforts he keeps gaining weight, and it appears as though his family is sabotaging his diet by injecting his vegetables with fat so as to make him feel bad and apologize to Steve. However, after being sent home from work after passing out during a physical, the family confronts him about his weight issue and state that he is really anorexic. At that point, it's revealed Stan wasn't getting fatter, he was suffering from a delusional state of mind and lost so much weight he was practically a walking skeleton. His personal trainer also turned out to be a hallucination, and Francine and Hayley's "sabotage" was really an attempt to make Stan better.
** "100 A.D." has Roger being high on Turkish amphetamines, hallucinating that he's driving on a weird planet with Steve as a Nazi walrus and Klaus as Franchise/{{Garfield}}.

* ''WesternAnimation/BigCityGreens'': In "Pizza Deliverance", Tina, a girl who works for Mama Roni's Pizza, is to make a delivery to the Green family now living in Smalton, but brushes off her co-workers' fears after seeing a horror movie. Once she gets to the country, she gets lost and feels nervous; eventually, everything through Tina's eyes appears as a horror movie with a sick green filter, and she begins seeing the Greens as evil marauding zombies out to eat her, prompting her to avoid them as much as possible. In reality, the Greens are mildly confused that she keeps running away from them and not even giving them their pizza, and in the end Tina realizes the Greens are really nice and learns not to believe what she sees in movies.
* ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman'': The episode "Time's Arrow" is a WholeEpisodeFlashback showing the life of Beatrice as seen through her dementia-addled mind. Because she has trouble remembering things now, all the faces of people in the background are [[TheBlank featureless]], details of scenes pop in as they go on (for example, she only remembers Butterscotch was holding a hat after he says it, and the hat materializes in his hand), and some memories are warped and distorted (such as a family portrait in the background phasing between the one in her childhood home and the one in her adult home, words on signs distorting, and after [[spoiler:her mother's lobotomy]], Beatrice only sees her as a literal shadow to symbolize how she became an EmptyShell).

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'': In "Really Loud Music", Luna wants to enter a songwriting contest for a TV show, ''America's Next Hitmaker'', but she is pensive before she sends her initial song because she worries it's not a song the whole world will love. She then visits her siblings and parents doing their usual mundane things in reality, but from Luna's perspective, they suddenly burst into song out of nowhere with different genres based on whoever she is visiting (Lola singing a showtune, Lana doing a toilet jam, Lisa spitting rhymes about the periodic table, and so forth). [[InnerThoughtsOutsiderPuzzlement When Luna comments about such, the family says they weren't singing]]; according to Lisa, Luna was hallucinating the musical numbers because of her indecisiveness and uncertainty over trying to find the right sound for her song.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/MyLifeAsATeenageRobot'' episode "Daydream Believer", Jenny is given a chip to allow her to simulate dreaming. When she tries to activate it during the day it breaks, causing reality in her eyes to resemble the world of Creator/DrSeuss crossed with Roman mythology. In particular, she sees Tuck and later Brad as goat men.

** The UnreliableNarrator tendencies of [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Pinkie Pie]] are just one of the many manifestations of her insanity. In one episode, she closes the (bizarre[[note]] She says she used to live on a rock farm, among other things. Two seasons later and it turns out rock farms are canon, however.[[/note]]) story of how she got her cutie mark by proclaiming, "[[CreationMyth And that's how Equestria was made!]]" and [[MindScrew promising to later tell the story of how she got her cutie mark]]. A later episode reveals that her internal world is visualized as simplistic [[StylisticSuck animated felt-board illustrations]].
** Her "[[CompanionCube party guests]]" in "Party of One". They're a bucket of turnips, a pile of rocks, a sack of flour, and a pile of lint. She gives them names and voices, and moves them around to simulate them "talking". Once they "ask" her the ArmorPiercingQuestion, she loses any sanity she had left ''and the "party guests" start moving and speaking on their own.'' Then, the camera zooms out, and the "party guests" are just as inanimate as they always were...
* In the ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'' episode "More Smarter", Mordecai and Rigby make themselves progressively smarter until they see everyone around them as unintelligible neanderthals. On the opposite end, the others see them arguing in GratuitousLatin.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'' puts Henchman 21 through an Eyes of Madness arc in Season 4. His best friend, Henchman 24, died at the end of Season 3. The audience sees 21 at first having one-sided [[CompanionCube conversations with 24's skull]], then two-sided [[DeadPersonConversation conversations with his ghost]]. There are teases that maybe the skull can move or the ghost can interact with the world, and that maybe the ghost knows things that 21 couldn't, but ambiguity is maintained. Even 21 himself is not always sure he's sane as he searches for 24's killer. The truth is revealed at the end of the season. [[spoiler:The ghost is not real.]]

* ''Fanfic/{{Cain}}'': Katsuki is a VillainProtagonist with an extremely SelfServingMemory. While he outright refuses to see just how awful most of his actions are, one incident in particular stands out: his attempt to paint Toshinori as [[MistakenForPedophile a predator]]. As part of this scheme, he [[spoiler:ambushes Izuku in the locker room, forces him to strip, and fakes 'hickies' by having other students pinch and hurt him]]. [[invoked]] WordOfGod affirmed that Katsuki is deliberately downplaying what actually happened, but offers no further insight or clarification.

* ''Film/{{Antichrist}}''. Maybe one of the protagonists is crazy. Or maybe both are. Or maybe there really is ''something'' in the woods. [[MindScrew Or maybe all of the above simultaneously]].
* ''Film/{{Anon}}'': At various points in the film, Sal's AugmentedReality implant is hacked to change his perception of the world in real time, causing him to hallucinate various things, such as a different flight of stairs in front of him, or the hallway outside his apartment being on fire. Because we're frequently seeing these events through his eyes, the viewer shares in his confusion.

* In ''[[Film/DontLookBack2009 Don't Look Back]]'', the viewer sees things from the point of view of main character Jeanne, who increasingly comes to doubt her own sanity as the film progresses.

* The UnreliableNarrator tendencies of ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'''s [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Pinkie Pie]] are just one of the many manifestations of her insanity. In one episode, she closes the (bizarre[[note]] She says she used to live on a rock farm, among other things. Two seasons later and it turns out rock farms are canon, however.[[/note]]) story of how she got her cutie mark by proclaiming, "[[CreationMyth And that's how Equestria was made!]]" and [[MindScrew promising to later tell the story of how she got her cutie mark]]. A later episode reveals that her internal world is visualized as simplistic [[StylisticSuck animated felt-board illustrations]].

* In ''Film/NeTeRetournePas'' ("Don't Look Back"), the viewer sees things from the point of view of main character Jeanne, who increasingly comes to doubt her own sanity as the film progresses.

* [[https://youtu.be/RiNQpeLapt8 Winston]], a short film on the YouTube channel Alter, runs on this trope. It’s basically The Tell Tale Heart in a snowy place and the main character is convinced his neighbor Gary is stalking him…from beyond the grave.

** ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'': This is the only real explanation for how the "Wild Wasteland" trait works, a trait you can give your character that will throw a bunch of odd easter eggs and replaces a few relatively normal minor encounters with less mundane ones, including replacing a gang of thugs with a gang of rolling-pin armed old women and replacing a mercenary camp with a ''alien recon team'',[[note]]Though this is far from the first time aliens have made appearances in the ''Fallout'' franchise[[/note]]. The only way this is possible is if the trait makes the PlayerCharacter delusional. Which considering the game opens with them miraculously surviving a double-head-shot, wouldn't really be that surprising.

*** There is a side-quest in the ''Honest Hearts'' DLC, where The Courier has to drink a special tea made by the Sorrows shaman White Bird, that causes their vision to go blurry, before fighting "The Ghost of She", a Mythical and large [[BearsAreBadNews yao guai]] said to have fused with the soul of a nameless little girl, after having killed her. When The Courier confronts said yao guai, you find that it's somehow ''on fire'' when it attacks you and after doing enough damage to it, it '''duplicates''' and you're forced to fight four flaming yau guai at once. After killing the original, the Courier's vision returns to normal and the duplicates disappear. While it is likely that this was just the affects of the "tea" and you just killed killed a regular yao guai, considering the ''Fallout'' franchise ''has'' played with adding otherworldly elements before...

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Very often overlaps with MundaneHorror, which is basically TruthInTelevision, since many mental disorders, including schizophrenia, add horrifying hallucinatory details to everyday life.

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[[quoteright:350:[[Manga/SchoolLive https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/20170212_175742.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350: Wait, what's wrong with this? [[note]]https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/20170212_175817.jpg [[DisguisedHorrorStory Oh. Oh dear.]][[/note]]]]

** In one episode, [[spoiler: an assassin is interrupted by the protagonists, but blows himself up to take out his target]] Well, actually not. That minute of footage was all from his viewpoint, so he only thought he pulled it off. It's subtle to catch too, reading the revealing line wrong makes it look like there was some DeusExMachina going on.

* It's gradually revealed that Season 1 of Podcast/{{Palimpsest}} could be this. [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane Maybe.]] While it seems like it's a ghost story, with Anneliese gradually becoming more and more aware of [[spoiler:the ghosts of Ms. Aikmann and Thomas]], it's made clear that Anneliese isn't entirely stable, and there's enough parallels between Anneliese's experiences and a possible mental break in her past that she very well could be losing her mind.

[[quoteright:350: Manga/SchoolLive https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/20170212_175742.jpg]]

* ''WebVideo/MyLittlePonyTotallyLegitRecap'': Downplayed in one episode, where it's briefly implied the ellagent harp motif that often plays while Rarity's talking is actually an auditory hallucination she has.

* This trope is the main source of horror in ''VideoGame/Phantasmagoria2: A Puzzle of Flesh''. The main character was recently released from a mental institution, and throughout the game sees and hears horrific things that no one else seems to notice.

* ''ComicBook/CindyAndBiscuit': It is ''just about'' possible to read the whole' naturalistically as the story of a lonely and disturbed little girl with a disturbingly violent imagination, although the strips from Biscuit's point of view suggest otherwise.

* ''[[Film/TheInfernalAffairsTrilogy Infernal Affairs III]]'' turns out to be this at the end.

* ''Film/{{Marebito}}'' is, on its face, a kind of dark UrbanFantasy movie about a man who travels into the underworld and finds a vampire chained to a rock. However, all the movie's fantasy elements are taken from real conspiracy theories and well-documented paranoiac fantasies,

* ''Film/NakedLunch'' is a very loose adaptation of [[Literature/NakedLunch a book that was fairly freeform to begin with]] by a man who was doing a lot of drugs. Different layers of the movie's reality bleed together, combining sequences and characters from the book with the book's own writing process, and also a lot of drugs. The end result is one of the stranger biopics ever made.

%%* ''Film/NakedLunch'' (1991), by director Creator/DavidCronenberg.

* Would you believe that Franchise/WinnieThePooh used this trope as the TwistEnding in one of the movies? After finally reuniting with Christopher Robin at the end of ''WesternAnimation/PoohsGrandAdventure'', Pooh and Tigger notice that the entrance to the cavern looked way bigger and scarier when they entered it. Christopher Robin explains "Well, things can seem that way when we're alone, or afraid, or someone's hurt." During the following song, [[OnceMoreWithClarity it is revealed what several of the scary locations they had been through actually looked like.]] For example, the carnivorous plants with huge thorns had really been just roses. Before this, it was also revealed that the [[HellIsThatNoise unearthly growling sound]] they had been hearing throughout the movie had been Pooh's stomach growling.