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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"How's it going in there, Kyle? The first six months I was in solitary, I did push-ups every day and I never talked to myself. The next six months, I stopped doing push-ups and I...I confess...I did talk a little to myself. The six months after that...those next six months, Kyle?'' [ [[Beat]] ] ''You don’t wanna know what happened then."''
|'''Charlie Crews''', ''[[Life]]'', speaking to [[Punk in the Trunk|a man in the trunk of his car]]}}
Extended social isolation that might make a person go crazy. People who are [[Robinsonade|stranded alone]] will usually be subject to this. A person on a ship or [[Space Madness|in space]] where it is months or years until they reach their destination are also at risk. Solitary confinement can be using this as punishment.
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{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[One Piece]]'s'' Brook spent fifty-plus years in total isolation and flashbacks suggest he definitely went at least a little crazy in that time. This might also have caused a deterioration of social skills that has resulted in Brook being one of anime's few post-mortem [[Dirty Old Man|Dirty Old Men]].
** Made worse by his Devil Fruit powers, which resurrected his soul into his undying skeleton, so in his isolation he couldn't even look forward to dying of starvation or thirst before his second lifespan finally ran out at some unknown point in the future. Due to a promise he made he couldn't kill himself, either. So he was stuck there, alone, for fifty years, with only his instruments to keep him company—and the skeletal remains of his former crew, who ''he'' had been in charge of when they died.
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== Comic Books ==
* {{spoiler|Element Lad}} of the [[Legion of Super-Heroes]] spent billions of years as the only being in the universe after being flung outside time and space in ''Legion Lost''. He was driven very much insane as a result, although there was also some [[Showing Off the Perilous Power Source]] involved. It took him weeks to even remember his former friends when they were brought to his attention.
* Inverted in ''DV8'' #5, when Copycat gets trapped in a [[White Void Room]]. She's already mad (she has multiple personality disorder). Spending time in the void allows her personalities to start integrating.
* [[Cable]]'s recent{{when}} series involving [[Time Travel]] and [[X-Men|Bishop]] chasing after a [[MacGuffin Girl]] had Deadpool. Wait, I see you all there in
* There's a comic in the ''[[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]'', ''Mostly Automatic'', which has a young man with a sweetheart taking a load of cargo on a trip which should have taken two weeks, during which he happily planned to lounge around playing games and watching vids. But a rock hit his ship, taking out the hyperdrive and the comm. Sublight engines still functioned, but it was ten parsecs to any kind of civilization and would take ''sixty years'', alone on a little ship. He put the ship on automatic and then "quietly, and very deliberately...went...out...of...my...mind..." For the first few years he mostly slept until he ran out of sleep-inducing medication, then he went pretty much mad until he found an inactive service droid in a box in the hold and activated her, which helped.
* Appa Ali Apsa, also known as the Old Timer, was once of the Guardians of the Universe in ''[[Green Lantern]]''; in fact, he was the last Guardian to remain behind when the others departed for another dimension. Unfortunately, being left alone on Oa was not conducive to his continued sanity. Of course, he now had all the power of Oa too.
== Films -- Animated ==
* Believe it or not, this actually happens in ''[[Happy Feet]]''.
* It seems that ''[[Rango]]'' had reached this point in the beginning where he sees each inanimated object in his glass box having a name and a personality and he is able to hear them talking. It's justified because Rango probably spent his whole life stuck in that cage without anybody to talk to but himself.
== Films -- Live-Action ==
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* In ''[[Sunshine (film)|Sunshine]]'', {{spoiler|Captain Pinbacker was left alone in the Icarus I for 7 years, until Icarus II comes along. He mistakes Capa for an angel. Then again, he was a little mad in the first place...}}
* Oh Dae-Su from ''[[Oldboy]]'' gets locked up in room for reasons unknown to him for 15 years, being released when he was just about to escape. He gets obsessed with revenge at any cost.
* In the British film
* ''[[Mission to Mars]]'' finds Luke Graham marooned on Mars for a year after his crewmates are killed in a storm, and he attacks his rescuers when they arrive because he thinks they're just a hallucination. He quickly reverts to normal once he realizes they're real, however.
== Literature ==
* Ben Gunn from ''[[Treasure Island]]'' is semi-insane from being marooned on the island for several years. He's coherent enough to help the heroes, though.
* ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'': Both Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent go mad when stuck in earth's prehistory, although admittedly they ''chose'' to go mad to save time. Ford got [[Bored with Insanity]], himself.
* The short story ''[[The Yellow Wallpaper]]'' by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
* ''[[The Seventh Tower]]'': Comes up as a problem for Tal when dealing with a character isolated inside a sunstone, complete with her [[Living Shadow|spiritshadow]]. Considering the character herself admits to having been mad, Tal is wary in trusting her advice.
* In the ''[[Star Trek]]'' ''Q Continuum'' novel trilogy, the omnipotent being 0 has spent millions of years isolated outside the galaxy (and his inability to travel at light speed precluded him from travelling to distant galaxies), and has turned mad from the isolation, making him [[Power Born of Madness|even more powerful]] than the omnipotent Q.{{verify}}<!-- By definition, an omnipotent being cannot have an inability. Omnipotentence means being able to do everything. -->
* In [[Jack Vance]]'s ''[[Lyonesse]]'', King Casmir imprisons Prince Aillas at the bottom of an oubliette. Aillas gradually loses his sanity and starts thinking of the skeletons of former inmates as friends and comrades in adversity. He gets better after escaping.
* [[Marion Zimmer Bradley]]'s story
* In the ''[[Firekeeper]]'' saga, the spellcaster Virim went mad from spending nearly a century or more alone in a tower far from civilization. When Firekeeper and her allies enter it, they find it full of various illusions and images of Virim constantly debating and arguing, representing his every second thought since {{spoiler|unleashing the plague that killed the world's magic users}}.
* In the second book in ''[[The Bartimaeus Trilogy]]'' (The Golem's Eye), Honorius is an example of this after {{spoiler|being cooped up in Gladstone's tomb for over a century.}}
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* The protagonist of ''[[House of the Scorpion]]'' suffers from a mild case of this, on account of being locked in a room full of chicken litter for six months.
* The [[Stephen King]] short story ''The Jaunt'' had a futuristic mode of transportation which got people to their destination almost instantly, but they have to be knocked out beforehand. Otherwise, the person's mind feels like it spent an eternity in isolation. Anyone conscious during the trip arrives insane or just falls over dead.
* ''[[Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea]]'': After seven months of not talking [[Closed Circle|with any other human being]] except Captain Nemo, [[The Professor]] Aronnax and [[Battle Butler]] Conseil, the independent and [[Book Dumb]] Ned Land, not interested in submarine investigation, is slowly going insane.
{{quote|I'll also mention that the Canadian, at the end of his strength and patience, made no further appearances. Conseil couldn't coax a single word out of him and feared that, in a fit of delirium while under the sway of a ghastly homesickness, Ned would kill himself. So he kept a devoted watch on his friend every instant.}}
* The ''[[Saga of the Noble Dead]]'' has the ancient vampire Li'kan, who has spent thousands of years alone in an ice-covered fortress on a mountain peak, her unnatural life sustained by an [[Artifact of Doom]]. By the time the protagonists encounter her, she has forgotten even the sound of speech.
* In [[Jack Campbell]]'s ''[[The Lost Fleet|Fearless]]'', several rescued prisoners, despite each other's company, still were badly affected enough to wake up thinking they are back there.
* Apart from the corrupting influence of [[The Lord of the Rings|the One Ring]], living for several centuries in the darkness of a subterranean lake under the Misty
* In ''[[Remnants]],'' [[One Bad Mother|Mother]] is a [[Sapient Ship]] whose creators abandoned her for unknown reasons, leaving her AI running. How does a computer go mad? Very, very slowly.
** [[Oracular Urchin|Billy]] too, after being put into an artificial sleep for five hundred years that somehow turned off his body [[And I Must Scream|but not his mind]]. He goes from mad to sane numerous times, and by the time he wakes up his brain has dealt with the issue by slowing down to the point of nearly being comatose. [[Bored with Insanity|He eventually turns back to normal]]. [[Touched by Vorlons|Or as normal as he ever was,]] anyway.
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* Ilox in ''[[The Wild Boy]]'' goes insane after being put in a 'cocoon', a sensory deprivation technique intended to fix his 'problem' with his psychic bond with Phlarx.
▲== Live Action TV ==
* In ''[[Doctor Who]]'', isolation, or at least having no one to talk to to act as his conscience tends to do very bad things to the Doctor. This is especially proven in the new series, where he goes on a power trip and almost becomes [[Complete Monster|the Master Mk. II]] in one episode because he didn't have a companion on hand to call him on his darker tendencies. He also admits he gets very lonely without someone around and the times he is seen alone he gets noticeably unhinged if the time elapsed is long enough.
* Mad Gerald from ''[[Blackadder]]''.
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* The reality TV show ''[[Solitary]]'' is based on this trope.
* In the ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' episode "The Torment of Tantalus," a man is stranded on an alien planet for more than 50 years. When the team stumble across him, he refuses to believe that they're real at first.
* ''[[Law
** ''Criminal Intent'' did this with Goren, showing a day and a half in solitary in about 5 minutes. it was a long five minutes to watch, and when the guy comes to release him Goren practically rips his head off saying "I told you just the weekend!" Cue the guard saying "It's Sunday evening."
* On ''[[Life]]'', Charlie Crews was a well-adjusted cop and family man...until he was [[Clear My Name|falsely convicted of murder]] and spent 12 years in prison, the majority of which he spent in solitary confinement. He's [[The Wonka|not quite all there]] when he gets out.
* ''[[The Fades]]'': This is present in the backstory of [[Big Bad]] John. A major reason for his descent into madness and villainy was being trapped on Earth as a Fade, unable to interact with anything or anyone, for at least sixty years after he was unable to ascend.
* The pilot episode of the original ''[[Hawaii
== Music ==
* More or less the subject of [[Van der Graaf Generator]]'s "A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers".
== Tabletop Games ==
* In ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'', there was a demonic armor that was cursed so that the wearer could not remove it once equipped. However, the armor was also enchanted to provide sustenance so that the wearer did not have to eat, drink, or sleep. The story goes that one adventurer found and wore the armor. As his party was adventuring through a dungeon, he fell into a pit trap that sealed itself after he fell in. His party didn't notice him fall and never found the trap. The poor adventurer spent decades in the pit going mad before dying of old age.
* ''[[New World of Darkness]]'' has characters who spend incredibly long periods of time alone (say, years) make rolls to avoid [[Karma Meter|degeneration]]. Failing a degeneration check requires rolling to avoid getting derangements.
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* Isolation is one of the five Stress Gauges in ''[[Unknown Armies]]''.
==
* In ''[[Portal (series)|Portal]]'' the protagonist comes across the makeshift camps of earlier survivors: isolated for weeks in a death maze presided over by a [[A.I. Is a Crapshoot|pathological AI]], there is [[Room Full of Crazy|evidence]] that they have succumbed to insanity, such at the photographs with the faces replaced with pictures of their inanimate [[Companion Cube]]. {{spoiler|Though it turns out it was actually just one survivor, and that he was already insane to begin with. How he managed to even function faced with both schizophrenia and social isolation is a mystery.}}
* In ''[[Mass Effect]]'', if you save rescuing Liara for last, you'll find that she has gone half mad from spending so much time in a bubble. She'll refuse to believe that you aren't a hallucination until you physically drag her to safety. She recovers pretty quickly, though.
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* In ''[[Morrowind]]'', Azura and Sheogorath make a bet about whether or not this is always the case.
* Implied to have happened with The Twelve Traitors in ''[[Lusternia]]''. Granted, they were [[Drunk on the Dark Side|pretty merciless]] prior to their exile in the Void, but thousands of years alone wandering the darkness ''certainly'' weren't kind to [[Fallen Hero|Fain]]. And as for [[Blue and Orange Morality|Morgfyre]]...
* Averted in ''[[BlazBlue]]''. Hakumen spent 90 years alone in the Void, and [[Determinator|retained his sanity through sheer force of will]].
** Played straight for Arakune, though. As a human named Lotte Carmine, he continued to isolate himself in his own research to be the scientist supreme for himself, refusing even the only one who wanted to help him, Litchi (the rest could not care less about him at all). When he goes to the Boundary despite Litchi's warning, the corruption got to him easily due to him isolating himself, and thus turning him into Arakune.
* ''[[Ghost Trick]]'': {{spoiler|Yomiel}} spent years separated from humanity, with his fiancée having committed suicide because he was presumed dead, unable to die, and this is what fueled his need for revenge. {{spoiler|Though he wasn't [[Morality Pet|technically alone...]]}}
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== Web Comics ==
* In ''[[Chopping Block]]'', the serial killer Butch left a woman locked up in his basement with no contact with the outside world to see if it was possible for someone to become bored to death. The story is told from the woman's point of view and ends with her happily [[Companion Cube|telling the room's inanimate objects]] good bye because Butch has gotten tired of waiting and is just gonna put a power drill through her head.
* Pretty much the point of Ian Samson's strip ''[http://www.kdingo.net/champ/pics/main.php?g2_itemId=2344 Idle Minds]'', where the heroine is [[Taken for Granite|disguised as a statue]] for one week in a big deserted gallery so she can spy on the [[Big Bad]] and his sidekick when they visit the place. The isolation, together with her fear that she may have failed in her mission, drives her completely crazy, but she's saved by {{spoiler|her subconscious mind}}.
* An example in the comic ''[[Penny Arcade]]'' did for the ''[[Fallout|Fallout 3]]'' release, featuring a Vault containing one man... and a crate full of puppets. With predictable and insane results. Yes. [http://fallout.bethsoft.com/eng/vault/pennyarcade.html Yes indeed.]
* ''[[Bob and George]]'' [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/020702c George goes mad] partly from this, partly from [[Unwilling Suspension]].
* [[The Omniscient|For]] [[Physical God|all]] [[A God Am I|of]] [[Reality Warper|his]] [[Jerkass Gods|power,]] [[A Wizard Did It|Sarda]] from ''[[8-Bit Theater]]'' was just a ''little'' [[Ax Crazy|bugnuts]] [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity|insane.]] One of the more [[Up to Eleven|extreme]] versions of this trope [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2005/05/24/episode-554-fashion-advice/ happened] [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2005/05/26/episode-555-a-brief-history-of-time/ to] him, by way of him accidentally stranding himself at the beginning of time and being forced to take [[The Slow Path]] back to modern time. [[And I Must Scream|For billions of years, frozen and alone]].<ref>* To be fair, it was [[Hoist by His Own Petard|his own damned fault]] that he overshot sending White Mage back in time and got trapped as a result. Plus, he was trying to [[Rewriting Reality|remake all the universe in his image,]] so, y'know, [[Laser-Guided Karma|not feeling too sorry for him]].</ref> One would think, and some of his [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2008/06/14/episode-1005-of-hardships/ other dialogue] supports this, that these vast ages of isolation were what shattered Sarda's sanity.
{{quote|'''White Mage:''' At last! [[Hero's Journey|Our long, harrowing travels are at an end!]]
'''Sarda:''' [[Deadpan Snarker|Yes, long and harrowing, I'm sure.]] [[Mood Whiplash|Like billions of years]] ''alone'', [[Fate Worse Than Death|adrift in infinite frozen darkness.]]
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== Web Original ==
* This is one theory as to why ''[[Salad Fingers]]'' is so mentally disturbed.
* This [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ibAWqDfClVE Grickle short] had ''[[Santa Claus]]'' have this happen to him, leading to a little bit of [[Fridge Horror]] that he lives on what amounts to a desolate ice cap. He begins growling like a lion to an audience of elves, and his elves start squealing like monkeys in something that evokes ''[[2001: A Space Odyssey]]'', all while rather creepy music is playing. It's terrifying.
* In the [[Creepypasta]] ''100 Hours'' a college student, to get into a fraternity, is locked in an abandoned bunker for 100 hours despite his protests. While locked in the bunker, the college student begins hallucinating and eventually snaps. When the 100 hours are up, the ringleader reveals that the real test was for the student to see if he would realize that the bunker wasn’t actually locked and [[Lack of Empathy|callously brushes off driving him insane]]. The story ends on a [[Bolivian Army Ending]] for the ringleader.
== Western Animation ==
* In ''[[The Ren and Stimpy Show]]'' episode, "Hermit Ren," the eponymous dog gets so sick of Stimpy he leaves to join a hermit guild. They provide him with a cave and a boulder to lock him in forever. Completely alone. It doesn't take long for him to lose his mind. {{spoiler|He gets kicked out for creating imaginary friends}}. Likewise, Ren (or [[Recycled in Space|Commander Hoek]] technically) goes insane in "Space Madness" when, confined to a spaceship on a long mission, he is deprived of all contact besides Cadet Stimpy. Interestingly Stimpy does absolutely nothing to instigate this as the only bit of mischief he causes in this episode occurs after Ren is long gone.
* Stewie Griffin from ''[[Family Guy]]'' was conscious while still in the womb and [[And I Must Scream|suffered for it]].
* An episode of ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes|Jimmy Two Shoes]]'' had Jimmy the only one left in Miseryville. As a result, he began suffering from [[Hallucinations]].
* ''[[Ben 10:
* An episode of ''[[Batman Beyond]]'' has the villain putting patients who act up in "Iso"- isolation units, AKA complete sensory deprivation. At least one of these patients is shown to have sustained permanent psychological damage.
{{quote|'''Guard:''' Just think of it as [[Understatement|a lot of peace and quiet!]]}}
* ''[[The Penguins of Madagascar]]'': In the episode "All King, No Kingdom", Julien banishes his two followers from their habitat, and soon starts behaving oddly because of having nobody to pay attention to him. He ends up holding a party and inviting his stuffed toys.
* [[SpongeBob SquarePants]] and Patrick once fell victim to this trope after being trapped in a cave with a crazy old man who convinces them to try to [[I'm a Humanitarian|eat each other.]] Turns out {{spoiler|the old man was actually Sandy, and their willingness to resort to cannibalism proved that they were "true survivalists." But Spongebob and Patrick just turn on Sandy and try to eat ''her''.}}
* In ''[[My Little Pony:
* The ''[[Ed, Edd
* Completely averted in ''[[Futurama]]'' when Bender ends up as just a head buried in the ground for over a thousand years: <small>I was enjoying it till you came along.</small>
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[[Category:Madness Tropes]]
[[Category:Solitary Tropes]]
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