Go Mad from the Revelation: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

In many stories, there are some experiences that are so horribly mind-shattering that the usual result is stark raving madness. This is the signature characteristic of an [[Eldritch Abomination]] and one of the central tropes of the [[Cosmic Horror Story]] genre, but other things can cause it as well, such as [[Cold-Blooded Torture|prolonged torture]] or learning [[These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know|Things Man Was Not Meant to Know]].

* In ''Captain Britain,'' the precognitive Cobweb goes mad when she makes the mistake of looking into the very near future, which has just been invaded by a cybernetic nightmare from another dimension and is steadily being dominated by an insane [[Reality Warper|reality-warping]] Prime Minister by the name of Mad Jim Jaspers. Naturally, after puking her guts out and mumbling a few [[Mad Oracle|garbled prophecies]], she tries to swallow her tongue.

** Captain Britain himself had his own brush with this trope when he was first confronted with a supernatural occurrence he couldn't [[Flat Earth Atheist|dismiss or explain away]] - in this case, extradimensional beings contacting him in the middle of a Trans-Atlantic flight. He promptly freaked out and jumped out of the plane. Note that at this point in time, Brian got his powers from an amulet and scepter given to him by Merlin and Arthur. ([[Knights Of The Round Table|Yes, them]]). This has been [[Retcon|retconned]] at some point to Brian getting his brains rattled by a psychic attack and jumping to protect the plane's passengers (At this point he couldn't fly yet).

* One issue of ''[[Hellblazer]]'' features a [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]] priest who gets into the habit of calling the police when teenagers start confessing their misdeeds to him- and at one point, he goes so far as to physically assault a girl who confessed to having sex with her brother. And then the Devil shows up; after letting him know how badly the teenagers have suffered, he ushers the priest back into the confessional and lets him hear ''his'' confession. Minutes later, the priest burns the church to the ground; from then on, he's straight-up [[Ax Crazy]], murdering people from one end of the country to the next, culiminating in his attempt to rape a young John Constantine- which results in him getting a razorblade wedged in his face, being arrested, and committed to an asylum. After being released over twenty years later, he bumps into Constantine again at a local church; by now completely lucid, he explains everything, then [[Eye Scream|jams a pencil in either eye]] and [[Driven to Suicide|headbutts the pew in front of him.]]

** And, of course, John himself was pretty horribly traumatized by what happened in Newcastle in '79, and had to go in and out of institutions for several years afterword.

** In the revised first book of the [[Dark Tower]] series, a man comes [[Back From the Dead]] and claims to have knowledge of the afterlife. When he tells Roland's girlfriend what it is, she begs Roland to kill her. {{spoiler|He does.}}

* ''[[The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde]]'' has the "good" scientist, Dr. Lanyon, undergo this when he sees the Jekyll-to-Hyde transformation.

* In ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'', the test for becoming a chief of the Aiel -- [[Proud Warrior Race Guy|a desert warrior society with elaborate honor customs]] -- involves passing through an artifact that causes them to relive key moments across thousands of years that led to their formation. Aiel are such a prideful people that the shameful truth of their origins ({{spoiler|being descended from those outcast from a tribe of extreme ''pacifists''}}) hits ''hard''. Rand enters at the same time as an Aiel, and by the end that man is clawing out his own eyes. Rand has a rather unfair advantage here, since he wasn't raised as an Aiel. {{spoiler|Rand later reveals the truth to ''everyone'', and hordes begin to defect from the old warrior lifestyle every day, either vanishing altogether, joining a rogue tribe, or taking up a pacifist slave life.}}

** Seen again later with the Seanchan. Their culture believes that women who can use magic are far too dangerous to go free, but also too useful to kill... so they slap collars on them which utterly enslave their wearer and make them puppets to a master, called a sul'dam. Recently, the main characters have disovered that the collars can't be used by anyone who does not have some degree of magical prowess themselves... meaning the sul'dam are essentially the same as the women they treat as objects. When one sul'dam discovers this she undegroes a borderline mental breakdown, and it's speculated that if this knowledge got out publically, it would shake the very foundations of the Seanchan Empire.

** {{spoiler|Dalek Caan}} in "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End" {{spoiler|is arguably a case of someone who went ''sane'' from the revelation: despite exhibiting all the obvious characteristics of a [[Mad Oracle]], having seen the whole of time itself left him utterly and completely disgusted at [[Omnicidal Maniac|his own genocidal race]] and thus set things in motion to have the Doctor and Donna Noble defeat the Daleks.}}

** In the episode "The Age of Steel", the Cybermen are defeated by {{spoiler|the Doctor stopping their emotional inhibitors from working. This causes them to remember who they really are, and what they have become, and they subsequently go insane as the shock kills them.}} The Doctor effectively uses the same technique to defeat {{spoiler|Mercy Hartigan in "The Next Doctor", severing her link with the Cyber King and allowing her to see the monster she's become, destroying her mind.}}

* The ''[[Torchwood]]'' episode "Adrift" has a victim of the Rift who's permanently insane as a result of looking into the heart of a dark star. He's living in a secret Torchwood-sponsored care home in an old bunker, with at least a dozen other patients. {{spoiler|He screams for twenty hours a day...}}

* In ''[[Upright Citizens Brigade]]'', a house has a "bucket of truth" in it that shows immutable truth; most people are driven to absolute despair by the sights within. A police captain who has been wallowing in despair looks into the bucket and shouts at the heavens, "Don't you think I know that?!"

** Then there's [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=29721 Obsessive Search].

*** Which is from the set cal let '''Torment'''... and has the keyword ability Madness...

** ''[[Cthulhu Tech]]'', on the other hand, plays with this. Reading arcane texts, for example, can slowly drive you over the brink, as you'd expect exposure to the Necronomicon would. So does exposure to god-like aliens or their avatars or anything else that every natural law is struggling against. Realizing that the [[Body Horror|Doahanoids]] you [[Shoot the Dog|vaporized with a charge cannon]] ''weren't'' isn't good for your grip on reality, either. However, since the [[Japanese Media Tropes]] the game adds to the Mythos call for a certain level of idealism, society at large is [[Genre Savvy|entirely aware of these effects]], and [[There Are No Therapists|There Are Therapists]] to reduce or eliminate the dementia characters gain.

* Many people who encounter the daemons of Chaos in ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'' and ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'', especially the daemons of Nurgle. The Chosen of Chaos Archaon is also rumored to have gone mad from reading a prophecy about Chaos' victory.

* Archaon was a templar of Sigmar who read a forbidden manuscript and went batshit after learning the truth about the Gods including his own Sigmar.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* In ''Call of Cthulhu: [[Dark Corners of the Earth]]'' Jack is subjected to a series of revelations driving him more and more insane, culminating in him committing suicide in a mental institute {{spoiler|after discovering that his father was possessed by a Yithian when he was conceived, making him not quite human}}

* Maximillian Roivas from ''[[Eternal Darkness]]''. He's committed after learning that his mansion is actually built over a [[Cosmic Horror]]'s city and {{spoiler|murdering his servants due to his belief that they're all infected with [[Body Horror|Body Horrors]]. Most of them actually are.}} Since the game is directly based on Lovecraft's work, insanity due to revelations is a fairly major theme.