Your expanding consciousness will bring you a deeper and deeper understanding of the universe until your head bursts like an overripe melon.
— The Onion horoscope
"It burns
My brain
Oh heavens
How it burns."
"The sun, and the moon. The day, and the night. But why do they hurt? ... I can see everything. All that is. All that was. All that ever could be. ...My head... It's killing me."
— Rose, Doctor Who, "The Parting of the Ways"
No matter how tempted I am by the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head.
— Evil Overlord List, Rule #22
The Joker: Did you know the human brain can only hold so much information before it collapses from stress? Lance?
Lance: 'Sup?
Joker: Teach the Goblin Spanish. All of it. Now.
It came like a tidal wave. A roaring waterfall of sights, sounds, images, ideas, emotions. I was swept away by it, a free flyer in a hurricane.
All the minds I had downloaded into mine, they were all there, all crowded now into my own limited Ketran brain. I was a computer running a thousand sirs at once. My own body seemed to exist in infinite variations. I had hands, feet, wings, tentacles, stingers, prods, claws, feelers; had eyes of every kind, I could see light all across the spectrum, I could see X rays and cosmic rays and microwaves, I had ears to hear only the deepest bass notes, and ears to hear only the highest pitches, and ears to hear a fuzzball floating on a breeze at a thousand yard's distance.
And all of it, all those sense memories, all crammed into my own inadequate body and brain. I fought down the rush, the deluge. I surfaced again, me, Toomin, the gamer who called himself Ellimist. I was in control. No, not control. No. All I could do was suppress the waiting onslaught. I couldn't use it. Couldn't open the door to it and use it without being overwhelmed.
—Animorphs - The Ellimist Chronicles
Cosmos Fiend: All of the contents of all of the books in this library are about to flow into your mind. And this time, you will truly come to understand everything.
Santa Claus: What will happen to me then?
Cosmos Fiend: Once you understand everything...you can only think of Halloween until you die.
Santa Claus: (collapses to the ground) H...Hallo, Hallo...Halloween...Halloween...Halloween...Halloween...
A shard sliced him across the cheek, and Monster learned that Elvis' downfall was engineered by vampires, that a dairy farm in Iowa had several superintelligent cows plotting the overthrow of the human race, and the mathematical composition for cold fusion, which he forgot about immediately.
The storm grew worse the next few steps. His umbrella burst into flame. He was drenched in knowledge, flooded in bits and pieces of information. It passed through his mind without taking hold, eroding his knowledge like a rushing flood against crumbling soil. He was getting stupider, and if he didn't get inside, he'd probably forget his own name.
"How many worlds do you think your feeble mind can process before it turns to sludge? I'd say less than one."
—Brainiac to Superman, Superman Unbound
