Gaslighting / Comic Books

Gaslighting in Comic Books.

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• Archie Comics:
  • In an older story actually dating to near the Gaslight film's original release, Archie and Jughead, shortly after seeing the film, start gaslighting Veronica — because Archie forgot his date with her and he wanted to avoid her temper — by convincing her that Jughead is Archie and vice-versa. They actually get her doubting herself to the point that she begins trying to hug and kiss Jughead who, being the girl-hater that he is, swiftly gets the heck out of there in disgust. Then Archie is left alone with Veronica, wearing an evil grin, asking, "Have you ever heard of a movie called Gaslight?"
  • A newer comic has Jughead pull this on Mr. Lodge as a joke after he decides it's hilarious how Mr. Lodge has a massive fishtank for a single tiny fish. He continually swaps it out for a slightly bigger one each time the man leaves the room and actually has Mr. Lodge genuinely doubting his sanity... until he catches Jughead in the act and swiftly retaliates.
  • Another comic has Archie and Ms. Grundy do this by accident to Mr. Weatherbee. The principal dumps his repulsive coffee in a plant while checking out the set for a school play, and then right after he leaves Ms. Grundy asks Archie the plant is not big enough and to go get a slightly larger one. This goes on for some time with Mr. Weatherbee never catching them in the act by pure chance, but believing the plant is growing massively fast and coming to the conclusion the coffee must have been turbo-charged. Naturally though he goes to get some scientists to check it out... just in time for Ms. Grundy to decide the plant is distracting and getting Archie to bring back the original tiny plant. Hilarity Ensues.
• Batman:
  • The Joker tries this on James Gordon during the events of Batman Endgame by doctoring himself into several photos, such as an old newspaper about a fire in a hospital, and another where he can be seen in the background of a photo taken after the birth of Barbara and James Jr. Bonus stories at the end of each issue show that he also attempted this on (already unhinged) Arkham patients...and succeeded. He is going out of his way to make himself appear as a bogeyman, taking the "monster" part of Monster Clown quite seriously.
  • The organization of wealthy gamblers The Black Glove led by Simon Hurt try to drive Batman to his mental breaking point in Batman RIP. They actually succeed, leaving them at the mercy of Batman's Success Through Insanity backup personality The Batman of Zur En Arrh. That same arc had the Joker trick Batman into thinking his newly adopted red and black color scheme had some greater, nefarious purpose to a possible bigger plan, only for the Joker to blithely reveal his only plan was to make Batman believe there was another plan just to fuck with him.
  • The Batman story Dark Victory (sequel to The Long Halloween) had Alberto Falcone get out of Arkham, only to become convinced that his home is haunted by the ghost of his father when he keeps hearing voices, and even receives a gun like the kind the Holiday Killer used. When he reports this to his siblings they think he's nuts, but it's actually the Calendar Man who has been talking to him through hidden speakers throughout the house in an attempt to drive him to kill.
  • Master illusionist Doctor Tzin-Tzin tries to do this to Batman in the classic story "The House That Haunted Batman." He fails.
  • Robin (1993): When Bruce decides to test Tim by giving him a fake message from the future about a teammate turning evil he responds to Tim bringing it to his attention by acting like Time Travel is impossible and ridiculous. Bruce is on a team with a time traveler and has traveled in time himself, making Tim immediately realize the message is from Bruce. Amusingly Tim had actually suspected one of his villains of leaving the message to try and unsettle him, so he was furious when he realized it was Bruce trying to test his commitment to Bruce's ideals.
• In The Beano, in a Roger the Dodger strip, Roger wants a day at the beach but his parents won't agree to it, so he gaslights them by putting washing back in the washing machine and bringing back books that his father already returned to the library so they think they're getting stressed and agree to it. When his dad realises what Roger's been doing by checking the date the book was checked out on (that day, rather than whenever he'd originally checked it out), they turn the tables and gaslight Roger by going full circle around a roundabout on their way to the beach, telling him they've already been and are just coming back.
• A rare well-meaning example can be found in Bone. When Fone Bone comes to the valley, nobody believes that he met the Great Red Dragon, much for his frustration. It happens that Gran’ma Ben and Lucius took years convincing the people and sentient animals that dragons were make-believe, so they could have a normal life and keep Thorn safe. Besides, Gran’ma held a strong grudge against the Great Red Dragon because he didn’t help her to save her daughter and son-in-law. Thorn is not happy at all when she learns her grandmother deceived all those years. It also backfires against Lucius when Phoney Boney takes advantage of the villagers’ fears creating rumors against a dragon; Lucius can’t tell them the Great Red Dragon is not dangerous because he would have to admit that he lied to the villagers.
• A very important Wham Line in The Boys reveals that Black Noir, actually a clone of the Homelander, has been doing horrible things and sending photographic evidence to the Homelander to make Homelander think he himself is murderously insane so Black Noir will get the go-ahead to kill him.
• Catwoman and her partners make a plan to do this to Roulette, who had thought she'd done it successfully to Catwoman.
• The Spot started gaslighting Daredevil as payback for Daredevil foiling one of his crimes and humiliating him in the process. He kept this up for months. His powers allowed him to do things like plant the remains of Murdock's father on Matt's desk and teleport his institutionalized ex-wife to his bedroom and back to the asylum before anyone noticed she was gone. It didn't help that Matt's friends already thought he was going nuts because he was trying very hard to act happy in the face of all of the tragedy in his life.
• An EC Comics story subverted this with a story in which a woman believes she is losing her mind after the death of her young son. It's actually a ploy by her husband to get her committed to an asylum, which is successful — until the reveal that he's going to the asylum, and she played along with the doctors to lure him there. She had found out what he was doing and that he, not her, is the one who's mentally ill.
• In an early Peter Milligan comic for Vertigo, Enigma, there's a supervillain team called the Interior League whose modus operandi is gaslighting. Specifically, they break into your house while you're out/sleeping, and rearrange the furniture into the exact right positions to turn you into a homicidal maniac.
• The Flash: In The Flash (1959) #300, the villain Abra Kadabra sought to pull this on Barry Allen by putting him in a situation where he'd be tricked into thinking that the iconic lightning-chemical bath, instead of giving him his powers, actually left him with horrible skin-burns. Kadabra even set up illusions of Barry's friends coming in to try and convince him that he'd never been a superhero, but rather that he'd been in a coma following his hospitalization. Near the end, though, Barry managed to defeat Kadabra after noticing a key detail that the villain had overlooked. Kadabra had brought in an illusion of Professor Zoom to taunt Barry, something which, if the supposed reality was true, should be impossible, as Zoom's origin was inspired by the Flash — basically, if the Flash never existed, then logically Zoom shouldn't exist either.
• Johnny the Homicidal Maniac:
  • The house and its residents use this method, along with More than Mind Control, to drive the titular character (even more) insane.
    Johnny: I don't remember you guys ever moving around like that.
    Mr. Fuck: Yes, well, the rabbit provoked us.
  • A few moments later:
    Johnny: Um...how come you're not moving around anymore?
    Mr. Fuck: We can't move around. We're made of styrofoam.
• Mickey Mouse Comic Universe: The Italian Mickey Mouse story Mickey and the visionary syndrome (1997) features a particularly elaborate one. The story opens with Mickey, in detective mode, trying to capture a duo of industrial spies. He falls from a considerable height and suffers a concussion. For a while, he is delirious. The spies are apprehended by the police and Mickey is to be the key witness in their trial. When Mickey is released from the hospital, he is still in poor health and unable to fully care for himself. Conveniently, a previously unknown Country Mouse cousin drops by for a visit and offers to move in with him for a while. The cousin takes over all the housework and even volunteers to do repairs in neglected areas of Mickey's household. A few weeks later, Mickey feels fine enough to go out for a walk with the cousin. The cousin soon seems to vanish into thin air, and with him, all the improvements he made to Mickey's house. Mickey's family denies the existence of this mysterious cousin and no associate of Mickey remembers meeting him, only hearing Mickey mention him in phone conversations. Everyone concludes that Mickey has not recovered from his concussion and suffers from hallucinations. His allies in the police lose all faith in him, he is discredited as a trial witness, and Mickey genuinely starts doubting his own sanity. Then he notices an overlooked detail in his house and starts figuring out what happened. The overlooked detail was a rope knot performed by the cousin which failed to vanish with the other improvements. He soon figures out that "the cousin" was a con artist connected to the industrial spies. The entire gaslighting operation was intended to have the case against them collapse before the beginning of their trial. During his stay, the cousin claimed shyness to avoid meeting any of Mickey's associates. He orchestrated his own disappearance, while his accomplices were working hard to undo the improvements and repairs in Mickey's residence.
• MIND MGMT features a particularly cruel version of this, where a man whose psychic powers allow him to selectively remove memories does this to his wife, to keep her unaware of the dangerous business he's in.
• Monica's Gang: Jimmy Five's "foolproof" plans against Monica usually involve this. The very first story of the first issue of her comic book series had the boys trick her into thinking she has gone color blind (at the time, it wasn't stabilished that CVD was more common to happen to men than women) and, therefore, getting too old to keep ruling the neighborhood with an iron fist. Jimmy Five ends up blowing the plan himself after stating that his green shirt was dirty, when earlier he said to Monica that its color was red. As punishment, not only all boys get blackened eyes, but Monica forces them to hear her tell the exact colors of every flower that she finds on a field, while they collectively agree.
• In one Cartoon Network comic featuring The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, the Hooded Claw tries this, having decided that if he can't kill Penelope and get her fortune, he'll drive her mad, and in her weakened mental state, she'll sign over her fortune to his secret identity Sylvester Sneekly. It almost works, but before Penelope can have a breakdown, the Ant Hill Mob show her the Hooded Claw's carelessly discarded costume and she calms down upon realizing that the strange things happening to her were probably the Claw's doing. This in turn drives Sneakly mad, as the stress of having his plans go up in smoke again after so much effort gets to him.
• A Project Superpowers story has the Black Terror getting stalked by the ghost of a girl who died in a robbery he broke up, who tries to convince him that all he does is create more problems for people, and thus he should just kill himself. The ghost turns out to be Mystico, an old ally of the Black Terror's who is now being blackmailed into trying to steal his soul.
• In the Runaways story "It's Not Lupus", Nico accidentally (and literally) curses Molly after losing her temper. When Molly suddenly turns deathly ill, she convinces Klara that it was her fault, that she infected Molly with a disease from the 1900s. Of course, then Chase starts acting strangely, despite Klara and Molly having been quarantined, and Nico is forced to concede that she's behind these incidents.
• In Mysterio's second appearance in the Spider-Man comics, he poses as a psychologist and nearly convinces the wall-crawler that the strain of a secret identity is driving him crazy and that revealing this identity to the friendly psychologist would cure it all. The changes were not terribly subtle though; more things like Peter walking in to the office to find the room was upside down, including the psychologist, or confronted with apparently hallucinations of his other enemies. The scheme was only exposed by J. Jonah Jameson and Flash Thomson tracking Spider-Man to the psychiatrist's office and coming in just as Spider-Man was about to unmask, their reactions to Mysterio's tricks confirming that Spider-Man was being manipulated rather than going insane.
• The Spider-Man story Revenge of the Green Goblin had Norman Osborn use Goblin serum-laced toothpaste, hypnotic CDs, and other tricks to make Peter doubt his reality and ultimately dress like the Goblin himself.
• Superman:
  • "Dead Again" had Brainiac, who was thought to still be lobotomized after the events of Panic in the Sky!!, pull this off by making it appear that Superman's body was still in his grave after The Death of Superman, making everyone, even Superman, think that he wasn't the real deal and that the true Superman was genuinely dead (to say nothing of making it look like Brainiac himself was still incapable of such a scheme).
  • In Krypton No More, Supergirl is coaxed into making her cousin believe Krypton never existed for his peace of mind (long story). She pulls this off by going through Clark's home and the Fortress of Solitude, switching the Bottle City of Kandor, the Phantom Zone projector, and anything that could prove the existence of Krypton with dummies, and then telling her cousin Krypton was a delusion of his.
  • In The Super-Revenge of Lex Luthor, Lex Luthor plots to destroy Superman psychologically by saving his life multiple times, and manipulating people's perception of him. After weeks of demoralization, Superman eventually figures out what's going on and pretends to have a mental breakdown to make Luthor think he finally won.
  • In Who Took the Super out of Superman?, villain Xviar sneaks into Clark Kent's apartment and treats his civilian clothes chemically so that Superman is unable to use his powers. Just as planned, he makes Superman believe he is suffering some kind of nervous breakdown.
  • In The Strange Revenge of Lena Luthor, a criminal gang is paid to drive Lena crazy. So, they stealthily install several devices around her home which make things blow up or float randomly, leading Lena to believe her psychic powers are going out of control and she is a danger to everyone.
  • DC Retroactive Superman: After betting Grbnsqz the Wagerer that he can destroy the Man of Steel, Mxyzptlk gives Superman a new power without his knowledge: the stress-triggered ability to create psychic apparitions subconsciously. Suddenly, Superman -who was previously feeling tired and irritated- starts fighting obviously fake enemies which vanish as soon as the fight is over, together with any evidence of battle damage. Superman's bewilderment increases his stress, which triggers more battles against invisible enemies, and makes him doubt his sanity until Supergirl tells him that the Fortress' cameras spotted Mxyzptlk lurking about right before the first attack.
  • World's Finest (1941): In issue #142, Batman and Robin enter the Batcave and find out an anonymous sign saying "I know your Batcave's secrets and all your secrets!" and setting a date and time for a private meeting. Robin utterly denies that is his idea of a prank. Meanwhile, Superman arrives at his Fortress of Solitude, and finds out that someone broke in. The intruder did not steal anything, but they left the door open so that Superman knew that some had trespassed, and left another sign saying "I know all your secrets!" and demanding a meeting. At the time and place appointed, Superman and Batman find out that they are being blackmailed by someone who calls himself Composite Superman, who has used telepathy to learn their secrets.
  • Following Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC Comics mandated that Superman could be the only Kryptonian character, which meant getting rid of his time as Superboy. Remembering too late how crucial Superboy was to the Legion of Super-Heroes' history, the book's creative team had to retcon the Superboy who was a Legionnaire as a creation of the Time Trapper. The Trapper claimed he manipulated the Legion into founding because he needed them to fight Mordru the Merciless, so he created a pocket universe and diverted them to this world whenever they travelled through time. Effectively, the Legionnaires were told they never met the "real" Superman and Superman himself had no memories of the Legion. Year later following Infinite Crisis, Superman's career as Superboy was restored in his personal history. The Time Trapper offhandedly mentioned at Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes that he tried to "confuse the Legion with pocket dimensions," reframing the Pocket Universe Superboy as a trick to demoralize the Legionnaires and keep them from Superman while using the fluidity of time to fuck with Superman's childhood memories.
• Teen Titans: During the "One Year Later" arc, the Titans visit the Doom Patrol in order to get medical help for Kid Devil. While there, Robin discovers that the Chief regularly gaslights the other Patrolmen, convincing them that they're mentally ill or have impaired judgment in order to discourage them from questioning his orders.
• In Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, the motormouth Autobot Swerve brags about doing this to his roommate, the paranoid security chief Red Alert, just to make him freak out. He then says he's going to wheel Red Alert into a different room while he's offline recharging. Given that Red Alert is known for being paranoid and violent, this just serves to cement Swerve's Too Dumb to Live status.
• Venom (Donny Cates) revealed that Eddie's "cancer" and memories of a sister and uncle who'd died from it were really false memories created by the symbiote to keep Eddie from leaving it.

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