Journey to the Center of the Mind: Difference between revisions
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''There's someone in my head but it's not me''|''[[Pink Floyd]]'', "[[The Dark Side of the Moon|Brain Damage]]"}}
A relative to [[Fantastic Voyage Plot]], except instead of traveling into another character's physical body via [[Applied Phlebotinum]], they [[Mental World|enter their mind]]. The problem this is supposed to solve can range from recurring nightmares to [[Easy Amnesia|memory loss]] to [[Single-Issue Psychology|psychological disorders]], and even the odd [[Convenient Coma]]. Expect to see some psychological aspects of the character [[Anthropomorphic Personification|manifested as physical beings]], a la ''[[Herman's Head]]'' (See [[Ghost in
Often the justification for a [[Mind Screw]] episode.
A closely related plot is the one where the main characters enter [[Dream Land|the dreams of their sleeping cast mates]] or the [[Happy Place]] of [[Convenient Coma|comatose friends]]. If there's [[Mind Control]] involved, expect a [[Battle in
Oddly, rarely shown as a malicious act when done by the heroes, despite being deeply personally invasive and usually without consent. This may be [[Justified Trope|justifiable]], however, if the owner of the mind would otherwise get/remain crazy/in a coma, or, in short, when serious issues are at stake. Less justifiable when done to solve minor issues.
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== Anime & Manga ==
* In one episode of ''[[Irresponsible Captain Tylor]]'', a typically strange turn of events leads to Yuriko and Azalyn entering the mind of a comatose Tylor.
* Interesting variation on the trope: Instead of one character doing this to another, the ''audience'' takes a [[Journey to
* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'': Shadi goes into Yugi's mind to investigate why he has a Millennium Item. He's understandably surprised to find not one but ''[[Split Personality|two]]'' minds there!
** [[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series
* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! GX]]'': During Jim's duel with Judai while he's possessed by Haou, Jim uses his magic replacement eye to take a trip into Judai's mind to figure out what's going on with him. He finds the former [[The Ace|Ace]] surrounded by images of his dead friends and listening to to a repetitive loop of [[Hannibal Lecture|Hannibal Lectures]] from that season's villains, sinking deeper into despair and [[I Know You Are in There Somewhere Fight|farther out of reach]].
* In episode 12 of ''[[Pani Poni Dash!]]'', alien technology causes Rebecca's class to get stuck in Himeko's dreamscape, where they encounter all matter of weirdness, including [[Idiot Hair]] on everything, a restaurant that serves nothing but crabs, and a fat thug who claims to be the Archangel Michael guarding the door to Himeko's heart.
* In the ''[[X 1999]]'' anime and manga, the Taoist mystic Subaru takes a trip Within {{spoiler|to pull Kamui out of his [[Heroic BSOD]] and [[Convenient Coma|catatonic state]] after Fuuma's [[Face Heel Turn]] and Kotori's death}}. He first used this technique in ''[[Tokyo Babylon]]'', where he entered the mind of a rape victim to help her deal with the trauma.
* The ending of ''[[Darker Than Black]]'' turns into a ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]''-[[Shout-Out|esque]] [[Journey to
** It isn't the first time something similar happened, either. This is the problem with being in an [[Eldritch Location]] with an [[Amplifier Artifact]] near someone who {{spoiler|[[Reality Warper|can change the way the world is put together]]}} and doesn't know it; [[Psychoactive Powers]] tend to ensue.
* With the help of a stray Unown, the ''[[Pokémon (
* Utilized for psychotherapy via [[Dream Land]] in ''[[Paprika]]''.
* There is a machine that allows people to do this in ''[[Chrono Crusade]]''. They call it ''Diving'', and the user undergoes an [[Out-of-Clothes Experience]] while visiting the patient's psyche.
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* Happens throughout ''[[Kaiba]]'' with the help of a small machine. People's minds are all libraries of various kinds, with their memories as books.
* Happens frequently in [[Ergo Proxy]], as this is the Proxies' preferred method of combat.
* If Road from ''[[D
* At one point in the series ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' and the other senshi enter Chibiusa's mind to help her.
* Whenever it's done in ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' (via magic, of course), it involves an [[Out-of-Clothes Experience]].
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* [[Grant Morrison|Grant Morrison's]] run on ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|New X-Men]]'' featured a trippy, one-issue-long sequence with no dialogue (save one line on the last page), in which telepaths Jean Grey and Emma Frost travel into Cassandra Nova's mind in order to rescue Professor Xavier. In a later issue, when Jean discovers {{spoiler|Emma's been having an affair with her husband}}, the confrontation takes place in Emma's mind.
** In [[X-Men (Comic Book)|Wolverine]] {{spoiler|Wolvie's body has been taken over by demons, prompting Emma to lead several members of the X-Men into his mind in an attempt to drive them out. In addition to people representing aspects of his personality and memories of comrades, Wolvie has doors in his mind dealing with specific subjects.}}
* There was an issue of ''[[The Brave and
* [[Doctor Strange]] does this quite a bit. A person's mind seems act as a sort of pocket dimension, with [[Acid Trip Dimension|all associated imagery]].
* In a [[Justice League of America]] Fill-in issue by J.M. Dematteis, [[Martian Manhunter]] decides to show [[The Spectre]] that there is good [[Rousseau Was Right|in everyone]] by taking him, along with the rest of the League, into the mind of an "evil" person.
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== Films ==
* This is the entire premise of ''[[Being John Malkovich]]''. Even Malkovich goes into his own mind, and the resulting surrealistic horror might qualify as [[Nightmare Fuel]] if it weren't so goddamn funny.
* This is the whole point of the movie ''[[The Cell]]'', where in trying to connect to those who are in a comatose state, this normally therapeutic tool then gets used as a [[Mind Probe]] on a serial killer by the police and {{spoiler|then turned around on the therapist by the serial killer into a [[Mind Screw]]. Later, the whole experience then makes the therapist improve on the whole thing to make it a true [[Journey to
* [[Fight Club]]: "Slide!"
* [[Inception]]: {{spoiler|Four times.}}
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* The sixth novel in the ''[[Young Wizards]]'' series, ''A Wizard Alone'', has Nita and Kit travel into the mind of an autistic wizard.
* And, of course, ''The Dream Master'' by [[Roger Zelazny]].
* This also happened during ''[[Discworld
** There are also some short scenes in ''[[Discworld
* In ''Timewyrm: Revelation'', one of the very first ''[[Doctor Who]]'' [[Virgin New Adventures|New Adventures novels]], Ace gets pulled into the Seventh Doctor's psyche by the titular Timewyrm.
* In Simon Spurrier's [[Warhammer 40000]] [[Night Lords]] novel ''Lord of the Night'', the eldar trap Sahaal in his own mind. The psyker Mita is caught with him and at first thinks it's a daemon world. She explains the situation, he persuades her, and she frees him.
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* In Andreas D. Hesse's ''Schatten über Fraterna'' (lit. "Shadows above Fraterna"), almost the whole story takes place in the protagonist's sister's mind, after his sister literally fell into a coma and he himself got hit by a truck. As every person his sister knows has an alter ego in her mind, equipped with power according to the relationship to her, he slips into the body of the duke of Fraterna, only to notice that the personification of his evil side has just stolen the most vital artifact in the whole world (the reason for his sister's coma). He is assigned by the queen (the representation of his sister) to retrieve said artifact.
* The protagonists of James Morrow's ''Blameless in Abaddon'' enter the mind of God Himself, where they converse with Biblical characters and dinosaurs playing Scrabble. They discover that God is a Platonist, and hence everything they encounter is the Idea/Essence of that thing. They also learn some counter-arguments to the best theodicies<ref>A theodicy is an explanation/defense for why evil exists if God is good</ref>; they intend to use them in the prosecution of an upcoming trial against… God Himself.
* This trope is a typical day at work for a soulscaper in ''[[
== Live-Action TV ==
* In a ''[[Star Trek:
** In another, Picard and company attach Data's brain to the holodeck to enter his dreams so they can learn what he doesn't know that he knows.
** In ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine|Deep Space Nine]]'', O'Brien and Bashir interrogate a special agent this way. He turns the tables on them by {{spoiler|creating a part of his mind that looks like the room they started from and trying to trap them there}}.
* ''[[
* Natch, there's a ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer
* Likewise in the ''[[
* In a ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' dream episode, Bobby was trying to get killed by his dead wife (who he killed), Dean fought and killed a doppelganger personifying his massive ball of self-loathing and Sam was tied down in a Christ-pose and used his psychic powers(?) to kill the [[Big Bad]] of the episode by bringing back his [[Abusive Parents|Abusive Dad]].
** In the 6th season's finale, {{spoiler|Castiel breaks down Sam's wall and he has to find his way back to Dean and Bobby by finding and killing Robo!Sam and Hell!Sam, which the wall was making sure he never remembered}}.
** And again in the 7th season mid-season finale, when {{spoiler|Bobby is dying of brain trauma, and has to navigate his own mind to escape a reaper coming after him and to find a way out}}.
* In ''[[Heroes]]'', Matt Parkman was forever going inside peoples' minds and dreams for various reasons. This came back to haunt him in Volume Five when {{spoiler|he traps Sylar's consciousness inside his own mind, ultimately allowing him to take control of his body}}.
* In the season four (two part) finale of ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'', Chase attempts to use medical hypnotism to unlock House's memories of a bus-crash. We can see both the inside of the bar he visited beforehand, and the bus he rode on. Most details are obscured or not present.
{{quote| '''House:''' God, I hate Beer brand beer!}}
* In ''[[Smallville]]'', [[Superman|Clark Kent]] does one of these to get some data from Lex Luthor's head and save his [[Brought Down to Normal]] cousin Kara. It should be noted that the machine used for the trip had killed everyone who tried to use it before, but, well, it IS [[Luckily, My Powers Will Protect Me|Super]][[New Powers
** Then there was other one, when one of the criminals from the [[Phantom Zone]] tries to [[Body Surf|take over]] Clark's body, trapping him in a imaginary world where he is a schizophrenic patient who [[All Just a Dream|has hallucinated every bit of the series so far]] (The Phantom Zone is a book on a shelf, Jor-El is a brand of shampoo, and so on). It is the [[Martian Manhunter]] who [[Journey to
* In the ''[[Fraggle Rock]]'' episode "Boober's Dream," Boober goes on a [[Journey to
* Played with in ''[[Taken (TV series)|Taken]]''. Several characters enter a crashed alien spacecraft, and see visions from their minds - a soldier sees his mother and her delicious cookies; one sees cockroaches, his greatest fear; one of the main characters sees her dead grandfather that she never met, who claims to be how she views him in her mind. In the end, {{spoiler|it turns out the resident child psychic has been pulling these images out of peoples minds and making them see them - there wasn't even an alien crash.}}
* One of the episodes of Disney Channel's [[So Weird]] had this as it's plot. Fi, Jack, and Clu end up going inside a young boy's dreams to find out why he's having nightmares. The nightmare-creature (represented by a huge mass of black mist) is constantly chasing them, and will only be defeated when the child stands up and faces his fears. What's he afraid of? {{spoiler|His parents are constantly fighting and he's afraid [[Parental Abandonment|that one of them will leave.]]}}
* The episode "Numbskulls of the Beast" from ''[[
* In an episode of ''[[Fringe]]'', Peter and [[Mad Scientist|Walter]] enter Olivia's mind in order to retrieve her conciousness after she is possessed by {{spoiler|William Bell}}.
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== Videogames ==
* This is the central premise of Tim Schafer's ''[[
** Likewise, the action-adventure ''[[
*** And the [[
**** Dual Hearts and Alundra are created by the same development team. DH is practically a [[Spiritual Successor]].
* The "Dive To The Heart" segments from several [[Kingdom Hearts]] games. They generally take place early on and represent the player character's Keyblade powers awakening / resurfacing.
* In ''[[Quest for Glory IV]]'' it's possible to see into the mind of a powerful enchantress in your dreams, by sleeping at certain places that have been touched by her magic. The dreams tell the hero what happened to her, foreshadow the climax of the game, and can vary slightly from character class to character class (characters who play as Paladins receive more information about what to do, while characters who have some magical ability have some dreams with [[Love Before First Sight|a more romantic bent.]])
* In the [[The
* ''[[Max Payne (
* ''[[Breath of Fire]]'' uses this quite a bit. Every game in the series had a mental dungeon or two.
* The surreal dreamworld side quest in ''[[The Elder Scrolls|Oblivion]]''. It's the side quest where you help a comatose man wake up by retrieving parts of his sanity and reason to make him realize that it is [[All Just a Dream]].
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* The third ''[[Sly Cooper]]'' game sees Sly entering the mind of a trance-bound Panda King with a little help from the Guru. Once inside, he finds the Panda King locked in their [[Boss Battle]] from the first game, continuously reliving the moment of his ultimate failure.
* [[Earthbound|Magicant]].
* Happens in ''[[Drakengard]] 2'', in which the protagonist, through [[Hand Wave|sheer force of will]], enters Manah's mind to cleanse it of [[Demonic Possession]], ending in a rather creepy [[Battle in
** [[Nintendo Hard|That hurt like hell]]
* In ''[[Shin Megami Tensei I]]'', you have to enter the mind of the heroine to eradicate a demon that is devouring her from the inside.
* One of the Quests in ''[[Romancing
* At least two examples in ''[[City of Villains]]''. {{spoiler|The villain Psymon Omega has you enter his mind and destroy his fear of commitment, the unknown, and the past. Similarly, the famous singer Johnny Sonata has you enter his 'personal hell' and destroy his soul so he can get out of a [[Deal
* ''[[Neverwinter Nights 2]]: Mask of the Betrayer'' features sequences where you enter your own and other people's dreams (and fight inside them, and [[Your Mind Makes It Real]] if you die...), and the game ends with an extended where you enter your soul and have to prevent the [[Enemy Within]] from literally devouring your memories, and then banish him.
** Gann can also wander around in your dream sequences, as can Kaelyn, Safiya, and Okku if you have enough influence with them at the end.
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* ''[[American McGee's Alice]]'' assumes the theory that [[Lewis Carroll]]'s Wonderland was all a representation of Alice's subconscious mind, and in the game Alice retreats to Wonderland after her parents die in a fire, only to find Wonderland twisted beyond recognition by her own guilt and trauma, and takes it upon herself to defeat her inner demons and set Wonderland right once again.
* ''Hellgate: London'' has your character ''literally'' open a portal to Hell through [[Butt Monkey|Techsmith 314's]] mind - after you have him [[Face Full of Alien Wingwong|face-raped by a demonic monkey, of course.]] (Played with for laughs, if it's any consolation.)
* In ''[[
* In the ''[[
* In [[Lunar 2 Eternal Blue Complete|Lunar: Eternal Blue]], Ronfar goes into Mauri's mind to free her from Zophar's influence.
* [[Final Fantasy VI]] does this. There's a side quest where you can go into Cyan's mind and help him overcome his (justified) angst.
* [[
* In [[Ar Tonelico|Ar Tonelico I and II]] the main character can 'dive' into the 'cosmosphere' of the Reyvatails in your party, which is directly similar into exploring a person's inner mind and consciousness. It is a major game play mechanic as not only does it give you an intriguing look at their inner-selves, but is a requirement to unlock more powerful [[Magic Music|song magic]] for the Reyvatail you are diving into.
* [[Silent Hill]] can be seen as this, with each game an examination of a particular character's psyche.
** [[Silent Hill]] 2 being the most obvious.
* This happens multiple times in ''[[Batman: Arkham Asylum]]'', thanks to [[Mad Scientist|The Scarecrow's]] fear toxins. They typically involve a lot of [[Mind Screw]], some [[Fission Mailed]], and oh yeah, a [[Kaiju]]-sized Scarecrow trying to drive you permanently insane.
* In ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', the [[Eldritch Abomination|Old God]] Yogg-Saron will forcibly bring the players into his mind. There, they will bear witness of some acts that took place in the lore (or are currently taking place) in the form of illusions that they must shatter to access the brain, which must be damaged enough to remove Yogg-Saron's invulnerability. However, if they remain inside the Mind's Eye for too long, their ''[[Sanity Meter]]'' will instantly drop to zero, thus falling into the Old God's control
** In the Wailing Caverns dungeon, the player is literally fighting creatures summoned by a sleeping druid. The final boss is essentially his mental jailer--when you kill it, he wakes up.
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** However, it's implied that {{spoiler|it's probably influenced by the show that Travis was watching while Henry was out cold.}}
* It's strongly implied that this is what the Dream World represents in ''[[Yume Nikki]]'',but...[[Mind Screw|then again...]]
* This is shaping up to be a major plot element in the ''[[King's Quest]]'' [[Fan Sequel]] ''[[The Silver Lining (
* Classic RPG ''[[Wasteland (
* There's an educational game called [[Exactly What It Says
* In ''[[Solatorobo]]'', the main hero undergoes one of these to unlock the repressed memories of his origins.
* ''[[Skyrim]]'' has a sidequest where you find [[Mad God|Sheogorath]] taking a vacation in the mind of the deceased, criminally insane Emperor Pelagius III's mind, which he finds to be a nice vacation spot. To get Sheogorath to leave, and tend to his Daedric realm, you have to treat Pelagius' mental illness using Sheogorath's Daedric artifact.
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* ''[[The Last Days of Foxhound]]'' features the main cast going into Liquid's head following a [[Heroic BSOD]] starting [http://www.gigaville.com/comic.php?id=49 here], and later [http://www.gigaville.com/comic.php?id=281 one of Ocelot], with hilarious results:
{{quote| '''Psycho Mantis''': Once, just once, I would like to see a mind that is not a goddamn metaphor.}}
* We get a glimpse inside of {{spoiler|Zombie}}'s mind in [[Hanna Is Not a
* In ''[[Nodwick]]'', the rest of the party enters Yeagar's mind {{spoiler|to free him from the influence of a malign artifact}}. Yeagar's intellect is represented by an avatar of Artax (the party wizard), his conscience by Piffany (the cleric), and his insecurities by Nodwick (the henchman and the brains of the outfit).
* ''[[Soul Symphony]]'': Pretty much the story's premise. Main character Olivia is chosen to cure high school students of negative emotions by teleporting into their "Soul Worlds" and defeat monsters.
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== Web Originals ==
* [[
* In ''[[We Are Our Avatars (Roleplay)|We Are Our Avatars]]'', many went <nowiki>[[</nowiki>@Ozbourne Oz]] [[Original Character]]'s mind , and later done with "[[Persona 3|Ra]][[Teen Titans (
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* In ''[[The Tick]]'' episode "The Tick vs. Proto-Clown," The Tick gets literally knocked into orbit by the titular monster and goes on a journey through his own mind while the rest of the heroes have to deal with Proto-Clown.
* In the ''[[Jimmy Neutron]]'' episode "I Dream of Jimmy," Jimmy travels into Carl's highly-illogical dream-scape to deal with his friend's recurring nightmare.
* In an episode of ''[[Teen Titans (
* ''[[Duckman]]'' enters his own mind via hypnosis. Inside, he finds a monster made from his guilt that sabotages his ability to love women because he feels responsible for his wife's death.
* ''[[
* ''[[The Spectacular Spider
* The first episode of the Aardman Animations series ''[[Rex the Runt]]'' had the cast entering the mind of [[Cloudcuckoolander]] Vince in a shrunken submarine in order to cure his Random Pavarotti Disease.
** Instead, they re-tune him to BBC Radio 4.
* ''[[
* ''[[Danny Phantom]]'' has one episode where Danny's overshadowing ability extends to flying inside people's minds, specifically their dreams.
* An opening of ''[[Arthur (
* In the series finale of ''[[Mighty Orbots]],'' when the title robots mistakenly believe they are slated to be [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|scrapped,]] they decide to prove their worth by making a likely suicidal frontal assault on the series [[Big Bad]], Umbra, a vast living computer in a [[Dyson Sphere]] called the Shadow Star. They physically penetrate Umbra's body, and find themselves literally ''inside his mind,'' doing battle with the physical manifestations of his thoughts. {{spoiler|Against all odds, they win and destroy Umbra. They go home, and discover they were never going to be scrapped after all. They had misheard Rob planning a party for their first birthday. [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|Sniff!]]}}
* This once happened to [[Beetlejuice (
* In the ''[[Venture Brothers]]'' episode "Assisted Suicide" the Monarch uses a mind-control machine to go inside Dr. Venture's brain to try and kill him from the inside out; Dr. Orpheus goes in after him to save Doc from the "possessing spirit." However, it turns out that Dr. Venture's mind isn't such a pleasant place to be, and a combination of traumatic memories and Freuidan archetypes send the Monarch running away screaming.
** Doctor Henry Killinger does this to Doctor Venture as well in the episode "The Doctor is Sin."
* In "Memory of a Memory" of ''[[
* In the [[Halloween Episode]] of [[Invader Zim]], Zim and Dib gets trapped in a world filled with twisted amalgamations of characters from the [[Crapsack World]] the show takes place in, evidently inside Dib's mind. Of course, when they try to escape into the real world, they find it too horrifying to bear and return back to their own (apparently less) hellish dimension.
* The [[Duck Dodgers]] episode, "A Lame Duck Mind" has the Cadet, I.Q. High and the [[Villain of the Week]] going inside the tangled mess that is Dodger's brain. They're assisted by Dodger's Id, Super-Ego and Ego.
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