Journey to the Center of the Mind: Difference between revisions

''There's someone in my head but it's not me''|''[[Pink Floyd]]'', "[[The Dark Side of the Moon|Brain Damage]]"}}

 

 

Often the justification for a [[Mind Screw]] episode.

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.

 

 

{{examples}}

== Comicbooks ==

* Nightmask of [[The New Universe]] had the ability to enter anyone's dreams, which he used to assist in psychotherapy.

* The [[Don Rosa]] Scrooge McDuck story "The Dream of a Lifetime" has the Beagle Boys using an invention stolen from Gyro Gearloose to enter Scrooge's mind, where they end up reliving some of his many adventures. [[Donald Duck]] ends up going in after them, to try and wake them up before Scrooge wakes up with disastrous consequences for him and the Beagle Boys.

* Done in Paul Jenkins' run on ''[[Incredible Hulk]]''. Bruce Banner travels into his own mind to try and strike a deal with his Hulk personalities, each of which represents a different aspect of Bruce.

** 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 the Bold]]'' (#31 of the revived series) that had [[The Atom]] literally shrinking down inside of the Joker's brain at the request of some scientists. He is given a tour through Joker's childhood after accidentally walking through the wrong synapses and absorbing some memories.

* [[Zardoz]]. Much mirror-maze self confrontation/realization with a loin-clothed Sean Connery and a Omnipotent Computer Brain.

* ''[[The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus]]'' has it happen again and again; the Imaginarium is kinda-sorta its title character's mind combined with the explorers' imagination(s).

 

 

*** And the [[PlayStation 2]] action-RPG ''[[Dual Hearts]]'', which sadly got lost in the shuffle of case of [[Kingdom Hearts|many games]] with [[Shadow Hearts|"Hearts" in the title]] coming out around the same time.

**** Dual Hearts and Alundra are created by the same development team. DH is practically a [[Spiritual Successor]].

* 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 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (video game)|Hitchhiker's game]], Arthur Dent travels inside his own mind. He's looking for his common sense. It's pretty tiny, so it takes a while to find.

* In ''[[Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Explorers]] of Time/Darkness'', the player and partner are sent into Azurill's nightmare to find out why he won't wake up.

* In the ''[[Xenosaga]]'' series, there is a machine called the Encephalon which does this. In the entire trilogy, there have been three of these uses - once when retrieving KOS-MOS's memory banks from a black box in Episode I ({{spoiler|shown as Miltia before and after the Gnosis incident began}}), and in Episode II, the crew has to dive into MOMO's head ({{spoiler|shown as the subconscious of the girl MOMO was based off of, combined with a little of Jr.'s}}) to figure out what the hell Albedo did to her back during the [[Mind Rape]] of the previous game. The third incident is in Episode III, where the crew dives into Shion's subconscious ({{spoiler|shown as Miltia before the whole thing with the Gnosis started}}) without even knowing they had done so. All three of them were pretty much [[Mind Screws]], ''especially'' the KOS-MOS one (where it doesn't even ''use'' KOS-MOS's memories, instead an amalgamation of Shion and Jr.'s).

* [[Baldur's Gate]] 2 has several dream sequences where the [[Player Character]] wanders around a recreation of their childhood home floating in a void, while [[Big Bad|Irenicus]], Imoen and their [[Super-Powered Evil Side]] spout cryptic foreshadowing at them.

* [[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.

* ''[[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.}}

* 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.

* An opening of ''[[Arthur (animation)|Arthur]]'' had the titular character enter the mind of his teacher and the mind of a classmate (later revealed to have dyslexia). The first mind was a giant homework factory, the second was a giant picture slideshow.

* 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!]]}}

* 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."

 

== Real Life ==

** See also [[wikipedia:Psychonautics|psychonautics]], [[wikipedia:Lucid dream|lucid dreaming]], and [[wikipedia:Vision quest|vision quests]].

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Metaphysical Place]]

[[Category:Plots]]

[[Category:Journey to the Center of the Mind]]