History Main / WorldGoneMad

* "Real World" instead of RealLife? Has the world gone mad? Was it ever sane?
* How most [[NeutralityBacklash Centrists]] felt during the 2016 election and the aftermath immediately following.

* The ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' sometimes verges on this, especially in the books that star [[TheChewToy Rincewind]]. Played with in ''Discworld/MovingPictures'': when one man wonders why all of CMOT Dibbler's movies (or "clicks") are set in a "World Gone Mad", Dibbler's nephew comments "Because he is a very observant man."

A world that would be utter hell to live in. But instead of everything just, being depressingly rotten like in the CrapsackWorld, everything is depressingly ridiculous. Nothing in the world makes sense, and the very laws of physics seem to exist for the purpose of making things turn out unfairly. Any attempt to find meaning or validation is answered with an AnvilOnHead.

A world that would be utter hell to live in. But instead of everything being depressingly rotten like in the CrapsackWorld, everything is depressingly ridiculous. Nothing in the world makes sense, and the very laws of physics seem to exist for the purpose of making things turn out unfairly. Any attempt to find meaning or validation is answered with an AnvilOnHead.

* Pretty much everything by Dave Stone, to a greater or lesser extent. Some of his most successful work has been for the ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'' franchise, where it fits right in. Another example is his first Literature/DoctorWhoNewAdventures novel, ''Sky Pirates!'', which is set in a pocket universe where everything veers between hilariously disturbing, disturbingly hilarious, and just plain disturbing; for instance, there's a snowbound SingleBiomeWorld shaped like an enormous snowman, where the inhabitants live in dread of the fearsome Snata, which hunts people down in a sleigh drawn by reindeer with glowing noses. It eventually turns out that the universe was deliberately set up by an EldritchAbomination to be hostile to all forms of life, and the inhabitants view it through a filter of bad jokes because it's the only way to retain some grasp on sanity.

* On ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'', the characters are PettingZooPeople and {{Animate Inanimate Object}}s who live in a predominantly human world. But that's not the weird part; it's where mundane things escalate into something bizarre. For example, playing rock, paper, scissors. In the pilot episode, if you manage to tie 100 times in a row, you'll will summon an EldritchAbomination.

* The RPG ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}} [[ShapedLikeItself IOU: Illuminati University]]'' is about a ExtranormalInstitute university where everyone has learned to adjust to an utterly futile universe. For instance, blood feuds between professors are fully regulated and organized by the school bureaucracy. [[spoiler:[[FunWithAcronyms You're not cleared to know what the O stands for.]]]]

* Music/DanielAmos' ''Music/{{Alarma}}'' has a short story in the liner notes In the liner notes story, where the narrator dreams of an alternate world that’s a twisted parody of the flaws of American Christians. The inhabitants see nothing strange when preachers mix patent nonsense into actual passages from the Bible, and they fully believe that positive feelings are the solution to all life’s problems.

* What time is it? Adventure Time! Constantly. Though the Land of Ooo in ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' seems to (mostly) be a benign sort of mad, with hints of darkness. Evidently it's a world taking place [[AfterTheEnd after a nuclear war]] according to WordOfGod.

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': In "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS2E2TheReturnOfHarmonyPart2 The Return of Harmony, Part 2]]", Equestria gets turned into this under [[MadGod Discord]]. Everything gets crazier and more chaotic as the episode goes along and ''everyone'' is driven insane in some way or another, whether as a mockery of their previous selves or in some random way Discord found amusing. The landscape is likewise warped -- roads are turned into soap, some houses are turned into flat props and others are uprooted and float seemingly of their own accord and the very sky shifts rapidly from day to night and back again, while truly random creatures roam the chaos-stricken land (buffaloes in tutus, rabbits with impossibly long, spindly legs, ''pies randomly coming up through the floor''...). This is all highlighted by the main character, Twilight, being left sane and aware of twisted everything is and having to deal with a nonsensical world, the hateful, one-dimensional parodies her friends were twisted into and Discord’s constant mocking.

* The world of ''WesternAnimation/MiloMurphysLaw'' (and, [[SharedUniverse by extension]], ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'') has its main character cursed with Murphy's Law, meaning that anything that can go wrong for Milo and those around him will go wrong. This can range from llama stampedes to sudden alien abduction. And that's to say nothing of the things that aren't a result of Milo, such as a underground society of trapped construction workers or time travelers that want to save pistachios from going extinct.

* ''ItsAMadMadMadMadWorld'' is, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin unsurprisingly]], this UpToEleven: you can see a bunch of perfectly normal people degrading into this in the matter of minutes -- and you'll be hard pressed to find a single unaffected character in the whole film. Bonus points for actually ''not'' breaking any laws of human psyche.

* ''Weekend'' by Creator/JeanLucGodard. Everything is SeriousBusiness, half the population are {{Cloudcuckoolander}}s, and everyone is constantly hyped up to his maximum.

->''"Any dolt with half a brain / can see that humankind has gone insane,\\
To the point where I don't know if I'll upset the status quo / if I throw poison in the water main."''
-->-- '''Doctor Horrible''', ''WebVideo/DoctorHorriblesSingAlongBlog''

%%* ''Manga/SoulEater''. Nuff said. (ZeroContextExample)

->''Any dolt with half a brain / can see that humankind has gone insane,\\
To the point where I don't know if I'll upset the status quo / if I throw poison in the water main''

[[folder:Anime & Manga]]

%%* Many sketches on ''SpittingImage.''

* ''ItsAMadMadMadMadWorld'' is, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin unsurprisingly]], this UpToEleven: you can see a bunch of perfectly normal people degrading into this in the matter of minutes - and you'll be hard pressed to find a single unaffected character in the whole film. Bonus points for actually ''not'' breaking any laws of human psyche.

* ''ItsAMadMadMadMadWorld'' is, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin unsurprisingly]], this UpToEleven: you can see a bunch of perfectly normal people degrading into this in the matter of minutes - and you'll be hard pressed to find a single unaffected character in the whole film. Bonus points for actually ''not'' breaking any laws of physics or human psyche.

* ''ItsAMadMadMadMadWorld'' is, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin unsurprisingly]], this UpToEleven: you can see a bunch of perfectly normal people degrading into this in the matter of minutes - and you'll be hard pressed to find a single unaffected character in the whole film.

* ''ItsAMadMadMadMadWorld'' is this UpToEleven: you can see a bunch of perfectly normal people degrading into this in the matter of minutes - and you'll be hard pressed to find a single unaffected character in the whole film.

Compare CosmicPlaything, FinaglesLaw. May leave the reader saying "WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs" May be a result of stepping into a {{Cloudcuckooland}} or CrapsaccharineWorld. Compare and contrast WorldOfChaos.

* The world of ''Film/{{Brazil}}'' would be a good example....depending on how much of that is [[MindScrew just in Sam's head]].

* In the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' episode "The Return of Harmony, Part 2", Equestria gets turned into this under [[AnthropomorphicPersonification Discord]]. Everything gets crazier and more chaotic as the episode goes along and ''everyone'' is pretty much driven insane. To state a few examples: The dirt roads are transformed into soap, some houses are turned into flat props, others are uprooted and float seemingly of their own accord, the very sky shifts rapidly from day to night and back again, along with truly random creatures roaming the chaos-stricken land (buffaloes in tutus, rabbits with impossibly long, spindly legs, ''pies randomly coming up through the floor''...)

* ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' has this be the ultimate goal of [[BigBad Bill Cipher]], who wants to [[spoiler: remake the universe in his own image, turning it into "a party that never ends with a host that never dies!" The fact that this means TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt doesn't bother him at all.]]

* The ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' sometimes verges on this, especially in the books that star [[TheChewToy Rincewind]]. Played with in ''Discworld/MovingPictures'': When one man wonders why all of CMOT Dibbler's movies (or "clicks") are set in a "World Gone Mad", Dibbler's nephew comments, "Because he is a very observant man."

* Wonderland from ''Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland'', as well as Looking-Glass House from ''Literature/ThroughTheLookingGlass'' read rather like this, more than once reducing Alice to tears of frustration at trying to deal with their nonsense.

* The Wiki/{{SCP Foundation}} has many examples, particularly regarding things with extradimensional origins\powers. Whoever the Foundation assigns to study them [[ScienceCannotComprehendPhlebotinum often struggle to explain what the hell is happening]]. [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1193 SCP-1193]] and [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1877 SCP-1877]] stand out because the writer intended them to be intersections of World Gone Mad with reality leading to "mudane is horrible, MindScrew is normal":