Loss of Inhibitions

Inhibition is the feeling of restraint. It imparts a subconscious limitation to act on our desires, especially if we know that what we're doing is wrong. So what happens if we lose those inhibitions? We indulge in our desires, acting upon them without compunction. If a normally good person were to be freed of their unwillingness to act upon their basic desires, they could be capable of anything. They could give into their Greed and steal, lie to save their Pride, cheat for victory, give into their Lust and take a mistress, give into anger and hit their child, drink themselves sick, even commit murder.

This is all based on Dr. Sigmund Freud's model of the psyche: there is the Id, the Ego and the Super-ego. The Id represents one's unconscious instinctual desires and our drive to seek pleasure, the Super-ego is the moral-conscience that puts those around us into consideration, and the Ego is the part of the self and mediates between them and applies them into the real world. A healthy balance between these three components equals a balanced mind, so what would happen if you suppressed the Super-Ego and let the Id call the shots?

Several things can cause this to happen. Perhaps a Psycho Serum was administered to the unwilling victim, or maybe a god, devil, or other supernatural creature used their powers of temptation on them. It could be something in the air. Who knows? This naturally can lead to More than Mind Control if that was the purpose behind it. The victim may even Jump Off The Slippery Slope or become Drunk on the Dark Side. Since these inhibitions keeping us grounded are usually ethical ones, this qualifies as an innately villainous ability.

In Real Life, this is called disinhibition, and it can be caused by drugs, alcohol, or damage to the brain involving the Orbitofrontal cortex. It can also be the result of immaturity, repeated trauma, or mental illnesses.

See Inhibition-Destroying Puppet, GIFT, In Vino Veritas, But Liquor Is Quicker, Dying Declaration of Love, and Dying Declaration of Hate for specific circumstances that can cause someone to lose their inhibitions. See The Sociopath to look at characters who start with no inhibitions rather than losing them.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Ayakashi Triangle: When Matsuri hesitates to follow the Third Law of Gender-Bending during a shopping trip, Reo has him smell some incense for "the courage to take a new step forward". It works well enough that Matsuri goes through a Costume-Test Montage with almost maniacal enthusiasm, even as the outfits Reo hands get him outright ridiculous, and switches his underwear with lingerie without noticing it. He snaps out of it when he sees the latter, after stepping out in front of his friends, and is predictably embarrassed.
• Rosario + Vampire: Lilith's Mirror is capable of revealing a monster's true form and unleashing their hidden desires. In the anime, when the mirror is used on the other girls in Tsukune's harem, they become more lascivious towards Tsukune than usual, shamelessly attempting to seduce him.
• Seven Mortal Sins has Asmodeus accuse Mariah of being a Covert Pervert when she captures her in Episode 3, and after drugging Mariah with a powerful aphrodisiac in one of the specials, finds out to her horror just how right she was. Without her inhibitions, the sweet and innocent Mariah proves herself to be a bigger freak than the Demon Lord of Lust.

Comic Books

• In The Boys, Tek-Knight suffers from a steadily-worsening compulsion to have sex with anything that has a hole in it. After he dies while saving a woman and her baby from a ton of falling bricks (and having a Dying Dream about fucking an asteroid until it explodes), doctors discover that he had a tumor the size of a fist in his brain.
• The Crossed virus removes any and all inhibitions from its victims regardless of age, creating a Hate Plague of rapist torturing murderers marked by a cross-shaped rash on the face. One utterly sociopathic Serial Killer didn't even notice he'd caught it at first, only looking into a mirror when he was curious as to why his neighbors were torturing their baby to death. Once he realized most of the world now thought the same way he did, he set out to let the Crossed pass for human to infiltrate society.
• In DC Comics, this is apparently the effect of Superwoman of the Crime Syndicate's lasso in the post-Crisis pre-Flashpoint Antimatter Earth.
• This is one of the effects of gamma mutation in Marvel Comics - gamma ray exposure unlocks the person's "deepest sense of self", so each person's mutation is different. This is why The Incredible Hulk is a walking time bomb of Bruce Banner's unleashed anger and She-Hulk is an intelligent, fun-loving, flirtatious party girl.
• Nova villain the Corruptor has the ability to dose people with psychoactive chemicals by touch. These chemicals dampen inhibition, which makes them highly suggestible to him but also leaves them selfishly immoral if left without direction. This effect becomes more potent if they're already experiencing strong emotion.

Fan Works

• Dungeon Keeper Ami: From "Beryl's Plan'', after Ami sobers up, she mentions this effect of alcohol, as she was planning on wearing a Stripperific outfit she wouldn't wear normally out of embarrassment:
  Right. Alcohol also lowers inhibitions. Good to know.

Film — Live-Action

• In The Mask, the titular artifact works like this, unlike in the comics, where it's a sentient Evil Mask that corrupts its wearers into homicidal maniacs. When being worn by Stanley, a hopeless romantic with a passion for old cartoons, he becomes, in his words, "a love-crazy wild man". When being worn by Dorian, a mobster who puts on an air of being a classy, old-school gangster, he becomes little more than a brutal thug who kills for fun.
• Spider-Man 3: The symbiote (who has little characterization in this film) enhances id-based emotions such as anger and libido. When it bonds to Peter Parker, it makes him more aggressive, arrogant, and hedonistic. When Peter finally realizes what the symbiote is turning him into, he is able to force it off him, leading to the symbiote to bond with Eddie Brock, who as a result of undergoing Adaptational Villainy, embraces his inner evil as he tries to get revenge on Peter for ruining his life (despite the fact that it was his fault for forging pictures in the first place).
• In Super, putting on a mask and becoming Boltie awakens all of Libby's worst impulses, from violent assault to outright murder to rape.

Literature

• Grounded for All Eternity: Parris initially influences the town by removing peoples' inhibitions and causing them to act on impulse.
• In The Name of the Wind, Kvothe is dosed with an alchemical poison called a "plum bob", which suppresses all inhibitions and appears to block the ability to make moral judgements.
• The second Story Arc of Kokoro Connect, Kizu Random, revolves around this, with Heartseed suppressing the inhibitions of the Student Cultural Society at random times. This causes the group to unleash their desires and commit such actions as Yui using excessive force on a group of guys sexually harassing girls, Aoki fighting off police officers arresting Yui, Inaba attempting to seduce Taichi, etc. This being a Deconstructor Fleet, we get to see the terrifying results of losing your inhibitions and acting on your desires, especially if those desires are wrong.
• The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World: Jim had confidence issues before he had to accept a mission that the fate of the world hinges upon, so he takes a drug that suppresses a person's morals, giving him absolute confidence and self-righteousness. According to him, the drug is universally banned, but people who did take it were known to take over entire planets.
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Dr. Jekyll created the potion that would turn him into Mr. Hyde for this purpose. Jekyll wanted to indulge in his vices without fear of the consequences, only for this to end up working too well when Hyde murders Danvers Carew. By the time Jekyll realizes he's gone too far, he's already used the potion so much that he starts turning into Hyde involuntarily, forcing him to rely on the potion to keep Hyde from taking control until he finally runs out.
• Rifters Trilogy: Achilles Desjardins is a Sadist and uses sophisticated technology to control his urges. Once it is gone, his sadism becomes his primary motivation.

Live-Action TV

• Season One of Fargo revolves around the Chew Toy Lester Nygaard and his gradual loss of inhibitions. After an encounter with hitman Lorne Malvo inspires Lester to snap and murder his nagging wife, Lester finds himself doing all manner of illicit activities to keep himself out of jail; each one lowers his inhibition and makes the next act easier, culminating with framing his own brother for the crime. Following a Time Skip he's become a (overly) self-confident success story.
• Played for Drama in the Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode "Frame", where Goren's former mentor, criminal profiler Declan Gage, begins suffering dementia. Never the most stable person to begin with, Gage's loss of self-control progresses from eating expired food to alienating his mentally-ill daughter to collaborating with serial killer Nicole Wallace in a plot to drive Goren into a nervous breakdown, which then goes even more awry when Gage murders Wallace and boasts about it to an utterly-horrified Goren.
• The Outer Limits (1995): In the episode "From Within", parasitic worms infest the inhabitants of a town and take over their brains. This causes the townsfolk to lose all of their inhibitions and start indulging in their deepest desires, including lots of sex and violence.
• Smallville:
  • This is the effect of Red Kryptonite on Kryptonians. It is especially bad when it happens to Clark as his powers combined with a lack of inhibitions make him very, very dangerous.
  • The episode "Nicodemus" has a scientist use Green Kryptonite to resurrect a toxic flower which has been extinct for 100 years. If someone is sprayed by the flower's toxic mist, they lose all of their inhibitions. Jonathan, Lana and Pete are all infected with the flower's toxins and begin to act dangerously Out of Character; Lana becomes more outgoing to the point of suicidal recklessness, Pete reveals his feelings for Chloe and tries to kill Lex and Jonathan tries to kill an employee at the bank who turned him down for a loan.
• In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Naked Time", the crew begins experiencing strange feelings and behaviors after being the search team for a mysterious disaster. Dr. McCoy ultimately realizes the water on the planet had mutated, causing it to affect the brain like alcohol. While some effects more resemble delusions (e.g., Sulu calling Kirk "Richelieu"), a lot of them (Sulu leaving his station early to fence at the gym, Christine Chapel making an Anguished Declaration of Love to Spock, Spock crying and Kirk confessing how stressed he feels because of his position) fall under the lack of inhibitions that alcohol typically causes.
  • This then gets repeated in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Naked Now".
• Famine in Supernatural can induce Horror Hunger and augment people's desires to make them hungry for whatever their weakness may be, such as alcohol, drugs, sex, or in Sam's case, demon blood.
• In HEX Cassie describes being controlled by Azazeal and being turned into the Vamp as her normal inhibitions or brakes no longer being there.
• In the Mortal Kombat: Conquest episode "Quan Chi", Quan Chi drugs Kung Lao, Siro and Taja with dust from Netherrealm that has this effect on them, hoping to compel Kung Lao to murder the innocent and damn his soul in the process. The normally-zen Kung Lao becomes ill-tempered and Ax-Crazy, the lovable-letch Siro overdrinks, and the former-thief Taja becomes a kleptomaniac
• The Sandman (2022): In "24/7", John Dee was raised by a mother who was a thief and a Compulsive Liar, so he had developed a knee-jerk hatred of liars and dishonesty. When he retrieves Dream's Ruby, an Ancient Artifact capable of controlling dreams, he intends on using it to change the world into a "more honest one". This translates to him taking away people's inhibitions, starting with people being more open about their feeling to one another, then having sex with each other before eventually devolving into them massacring one another. Dream explains that this is because he took away their dreams, and thus their reason to live.
  John: They're lying to themselves. All lies.
  Dream: Not lies, John. Dreams. Kate dreams of running away, where no one will find her. Garry dreams of proving his father was wrong about him. Bette dreams of creating something that matters to people. Their dreams inspired them. Their dreams kept them alive. But if you rob them of their dreams, if you take away their hope, then... yes, this is the truth of mankind.

Philosophy

• Sigmund Freud believed that loss of inhibitions is the result of a strong Id overpowering a weak Superego.

Tabletop Games

• Changeling: The Lost: In the Hedge, an Eldritch Location between the mortal world and the Land of Faerie, humans' perspectives are skewed to justify anything they do, so they can act completely freely with no harm to the Karma Meter. As soon as they reenter the human world, however, all of their immoral actions hit them retroactively.

Video Games

• Season One of Batman: The Telltale Series has the Children of Arkham create a Psycho Serum that induces this, causing anyone injected with it to lose all sense of morality and restraint. Renee Montoya kills Carmine Falcone despite being a By-the-Book Cop when injected with it and told the latter wasn't going to be punished by the law, an act that haunts her greatly once she comes to her senses. The serum is used to make Hamilton Hill reveal his true intentions upon his reelection as mayor of Gotham and is also heavily implied to have contributed to Harvey's Sanity Slippage. Bruce Wayne ends up being injected with this serum at the end of Episode 3 by the Children of Arkham's leader, Vicki Vale, who manipulates him into attacking Oswald Copplepot and gets him send to Arkham Asylum.
• Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: The third motive is a virus called the Despair Disease, which changes the victim's personality. This causes the usually timid Mikan to remember her time as Ultimate Despair and drives her to kill. During her trial, she drops her submissive persona and screams about her rage towards those who have tormented her, becoming much more assertive and even getting Nagito to shut up.
• The third game of Mega Man Star Force has this happen to Ice, Belle's personal assistant and manager, when she is transformed into Diamond Ice by a Noise Card. Ice wants to make Belle a star and surpass Sonia, no matter what it takes, but when Mega Man and Sonia end up taking the spotlight, Ice becomes angry enough to wish they would disappear. Once transformed by the Noise, Ice loses all her moral restraint and decides to take matters into her hands even if she has to freeze Sonia's concert. Once she's stopped, returned to normal, and called out by Belle, Ice finally realizes her actions were wrong.
• Ni no Kuni:
  • Shadar is capable of taking pieces of a person's heart containing one of their 8 virtues, including restraint. Queen Lowlah and Swaine, after losing their restraint, respectively become a glutton for cheese and a kleptomaniac who steals for no reason, forcing Oliver to find someone with a good amount of restraint to magically transfer to them.
  • A downplayed and rare positive example occurs to a minor character in the same game. A guard in Hamelin has so much restraint that he ignores his hunger to continue his work, refusing to stop until he finishes it. Oliver magically removing this excess restraint causes the guard to come to his senses and make him realize he does need to take a break.
• The Big Bad of Pokémon Sun and Moon, Lusamine, is revealed to have been injected with Nihilego's inhibition-suppressing neurotoxins, which played a part to her descent into villainy, her obsession with the Ultra Beasts, and her abuse of her children. She does regain some of her sanity when she's separated from the Nihilego she fused with, but the ending of the game has Lillie travel with her to Kanto to meet Bill so they can purge the neurotoxins from Lusamine's body completely.

Webcomics

• Henchgirl: Near the end of the first act of the series, Mary is outed as the one who tipped off the heroes about a orphanage robbery. So her boss, Monsieur Butterfly, has her taken to a immoral doctor to be given an "evil serum" which takes away her inhibitions, intending to make her a more effective henchman. It does work... a little too well in fact. To the point she starts acting much more reckless in her endeavors. Eventually it gets to the point she outright kills a villain on live TV, tries to concoct a time travel scheme to change her life and almost kills a superhero out of jealousy which inadvertently gets a fellow co-worker and friend killed. Eventually the serum is purged from her system but has to live with the results of her a actions.

Web Original

• Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series: After developing an alcohol addiction, Tristan Taylor's voice decides to run around with scissors, resulting in its temporary death.

Western Animation

• In the New Batman Adventures episode "Never Fear," Batman saves a man from falling to his death and a sheepish office worker barges into Bruce Wayne's office to tell him off and quit his job right before kissing Wayne's secretary. Batman discovers the first man had a phobia of heights, and both went to a seminar that was run by Scarecrow, using a new gas that is the opposite of his Fear Toxin—a chemical that makes the victim not be scared of anything. Batman, undercover, gets hit by the gas and acts more reckless than before for the rest of the episode. If it wasn't for Robin using the antidote, he would have ultimately killed Scarecrow, because breaking his one rule is the one thing he's scared of the most.
• The Fairly OddParents! episode, "Emotion Commotion!", has Timmy wish to have no emotions at all, making him completely fearless. Later in the episode he's recruited by a government agency to save Trixie and Chester from a volcano. Just as he's about to jump in, he regains all of his emotions... except for his common sense, resulting in him jumping into the volcano to save them instead of wishing them to safety.
• The Animated Adaptation of Iznogoud has the Villain Protagonist behave this way, although his lack of inhibition forms a core part of his The Caligula personality. Sometimes he uses Refuge in Audacity to try and become Sultan instead of the Sultan, although Status Quo Is God keeps him from achieving this.
• The Lion Guard: In the third season, it is revealed that the venom from a snake's bite can remove the victim's inhibitions. Scar was bitten by a snake during his time as leader of the Guard, causing his already-present dark tendencies to increase, eventually leading to him killing his brother and taking his throne. Kion is bit by Ushari the cobra in the present, and for most of the season finds himself becoming more easily angered, and more willing to use his position as leader of the Guard to make the others do what he wants to.
• The Mask: Stanley continues to use the Mask of Loki, which causes him to lose his inhibitions, but he's still a good guy deep down. So instead of wreaking havoc like the former wearers of the Mask that Skillit (a malevolent imp) knew, including Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Blackbeard, Billy the Kid, Stanley instead uses the Mask to be a superhero. At least, when his alter-ego isn't partying at the Coco Bongo. It's also stated by Skillit that Abe Lincoln used the Mask too, and that he was the first person to use its power for good, much to Skillit's annoyance.
• Miraculous Ladybug:
  • The Eagle Miraculous holds the power of Liberation, being able to "liberate" people from that which holds them back. While all of the miraculous were created to be used for good, in the hands of a villain like Techno-Pirate, it can lead to this. With the Eagle Miraculous, Techno-Pirate (as Miraclonizer) "frees" the United Heroez from their moral restraints — Majestia's self-control, Knightowl's restraint towards minor offenses, Victory's Heroic Vow to uphold civil liberties, Doorman's code of ethics — leaving New York City defenseless to Hawk Moth's machinations.
  • Simpleman's power is the ability to "simplify" everyone in Paris. His first "simple-wave" has this effect on everyone, with Marinette deciding to do away with her Complexity Addiction in favor of just telling Adrien how she feels. Multiple simple-waves results in everyone becoming much dumber, Simple-Man nearly succeeding in taking Ladybug and Cat Noir's miraculous by trading them for candy.
  • A subtler example comes from Risk, who's ability makes it so that anyone who hears him singing is more prone to risk-taking and thus more vulnerable to Shadow Moth's plans.
• Ozzy & Drix
  • Invoked in the episode "The Globfather". When Sal Monella and his gang enter Hector's stomach as a result of the latter eating a tainted corn dog and plan to inflict food poisoning after tricking the police force into going to the feet, Ozzy and Drix come up with a plan to turn Hector's fear off so he can go bungee jumping and vomit out the gang and the toxic waste they'll pour into Hector's stomach.
  • Attempted again in "Out of Body Experience", when they need Hector to go back in the pool with Christine so Ozzy (who got stuck in Christine's body) can swim home, but Hector's near-drowing experience left him afraid of swimming. They ultimately fail, but Hector's crush on Christine overrides his fear anyway.
• South Park: Cartman discovers Tourettes Syndrome and fakes it so he can say whatever he wants with no repercussions. Unfortunately, in lowering his already low inhibitions, he finds himself involuntarily saying things he doesn't want to say, like how he wets the bed, or how he and his cousin once touched wieners.

Real Life

• Alcohol consumption in excess can cause this, resulting in social behavior such as aggression, self-disclosure, and acts of violence.
• Certain causes of dementia have been known to cause a loss of inhibitions. One example includes frontotemporal dementia due to the damage done to the frontal lobe of the brain.
• Certain drugs have been reported to cause disinhibition. Both dosage and mode of administration are important variables to know when minimizing drug-induced behavioral disinhibitions.
• Phineas Gage, a New England railroad worker, became the subject of a lot of hype among neuroscientists following an 1848 accident that sent an iron rod through his head, destroying much of his frontal lobe. Amazingly, he survived (he never even lost consciousness or motor functions), and aside from becoming blind in one eye made an outstanding physical recovery, but it was widely reported that he experienced a major personality shift, starting to use profanity after almost never having done so before and developing a violent temper. This led to a lot of discourse among psychologists discussing the function of the frontal lobe and results of compromising it, though the validity of these claims have become increasingly debated due to some of the claims being highly contradictory (some claim he became a chronic womanizer and sexual deviant, others say he lost all interest in sex), as well as there being little to no documented sources backing them up, making Gage more of a case of folklore than actual scientific revelation.

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