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Obfuscating Insanity: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''"Hide behind the mask of a fool, a drunk, or a madman to create confusion about your intentions and motivations. Lure your opponent into underestimating your ability until, overconfident, he drops his guard. Then you may attack."''|''Stratagem 27'', ''[[wikipedia:Thirty-Six Stratagems|Thirty-Six Stratagems]]''}}
It's pretty much a given that no one takes crazy people seriously. It's also a given that a lot of people give crazy people a wide berth lest they flip out on them. A lot of people are aware of this and choose to take advantage of it, although their reasons for doing so vary from one character to the next. Sometimes the apparent nutcase is actually perfectly sane, other times they actually are a little on the nutty side (or maybe more than a little) but deliberately play it up to the Nth degree so that they appear to be far crazier than they actually are.
Not to be confused with [[Insanity Defense]]. Compare [[Obfuscating Stupidity]], where people pretend to be dimwitted instead of crazy.
{{examples}}
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== Anime and Manga ==
* In ''[[Bleach]]'' Urahara loves playing crazy and often goes to great lengths to ham it up. Of course, he still has [[The Wonka]] tendencies even when he drops the mask, but that doesn't change the fact he's wearing a mask in the first place.
* ''[[Reign:
** Diogenes was more [[Crazy Awesome]]. He prescribed masturbation to prevent sexual immorality, then ''demonstrated.''
*** "If only I could satisfy my hunger by rubbing my belly."
* ''[[Banner of the Stars]]''. Several of the admirals are... eccentric. Sometimes they have crazy ideas that their saner subordinates shoot down; sometimes they have crazy brilliant ideas that pan out. (Or that were good, but don't pan out anyway.) This resonates with a culture of snark, where one suspects they're trying to see how much insanity they can get away with before someone cracks. Bebaus brothers, especially.
* Many powerful shinobi in ''[[Naruto]]''. The longer they've been around, the crazier they get; see Maito Gai, Kakashi Hatake, Jiraya, Tsunade, ''Anko Mitarashi''... and underneath all the crazy is someone who could kill you in the time it takes to blink.
** [[Fanon]] seen in a lot of [[Fanfic]] is that high-level ninja tend to develop bizarre quirks as a coping mechanism; the more powerful they are, the more crap they end up going though in using that power, and the stranger the coping mechanism gets.
** Perhaps best demonstrated with Chiyo, who's laughing like a loon the first time we meet her and her elderly brother, and attempting to attack Kakashi as soon as she meets him. She's crazy powerful, though. Naruto sums it up, "She may be old, but she's good."
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== Comics ==
* [[Batman|The Joker]]. It should be emphasised that just how ''much'' of the Joker's madness is genuine or part of a ploy [[Depending on the Writer|largely depends on the writer]], naturally. He is quite, ''quite'' mad, but whether he's an out-and-out loony or just a very driven psychopath with a twisted sense of humour changes from story to story.
** There was a particular story ("Case Study" by [[DCAU|Paul Dini]] and Alex Ross) that really explored this facet. The story was told from the perspective of two psychiatrists at Arkham, who had found a psychiatric analysis of Joker that revealed him as sane, but faking insanity to get into mental institutions where it would be easier to break free. Hopeful that they can use this to get Joker transferred to a prison, they're disappointed to find out that the person who wrote the analysis was {{spoiler|''[[Mad Love|Harleen]]'' ''[[Psycho Supporter|Quinzel]]'', from before she went insane.}}
** Oddly, this changing personality is ''also'' something that exists in-story, {{spoiler|as noted by the very same Dr. Quinzel,}} after being driven mad. She theorized that he reinvents his personality entirely on a day-to-day basis, so that one day he may be a funny guy with a penchant for stalking the Bat, then the next he's a [[Complete Monster]], then the next he's a glibbering loon. Her madness, of course, shows in her conclusion that the only constant is his love for her.
** This theory is also put forth in [[Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth]] by Ruth Adams who equates it as a form of Super Sanity that may be more suited to the end of the 21st century than the here and now.
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* John McClane has to fake this in ''[[Die Hard With a Vengeance]]'', when a madman makes him wear a billboard insulting [[Politically Correct|Afro-Americans]] while in his underwear. His future partner in adventures saves him by claiming his insanity, and [[Sure Why Not|he runs with it]].
** And in general, McClane has his moments where he appears "unhinged". He does this for various reasons, either to fool and confuse his enemies, or to cope with [[Being Good Sucks|the crap he has to go through]].
* A similar thing happens in ''[[Johnny English]]'' where the title character, a secret agent, mistakes a group of mourners for jewel thieves. His assistant Bough comes to his rescue and tells the mourners that English is an escapee from a lunatic asylum.
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* [[John Christopher]]'s YA SF ''[[The Tripods]]'' series--the hero and his cousin are first informed of the resistance's existence by a wandering man who appears to be crazy. If I remember, he informs them of the resistance in a speech to them that includes the phrases "And I was born on a rainy morning" and "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings ..." as camouflage.
* Invoked in ''[[Catch-22]]'', though averted with the eponymous [[Morton's Fork]].
* The old king in ''Once Upon a Marigold'' realizes that his evil and abmitious wife is slowly poisoning him. But even though he throws out his daily "medicine", he pretends to be crazy and senile as well as sick so he can keep a watch on her without arousing her suspicions.
* There was an SF story in the '40s or '50s, "Clerical Error," in which a psychiatrist gets himself "accidentally" locked up with an insane patient so he can talk to him.
* Justine of ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' actually ''was'' deeply mentally ill when she was first introduced, but when she eventually recovers, she keeps up the act in order to act as a spy on the White Court for Thomas.
* ''[[Don Quixote]]'': In Part II, Chapter XI, Don Quixote claims to ''from a child I was fond of the play, and in my youth a keen lover of the actor's art."''. Several critics [[Alternative Character Interpretation|have toyed with the idea that Don Quixote never lost that passion for theater and behaves like an actor]]: [[Obfuscating Insanity|Don Quixote uses this trope because he does not believe to be a knight, but pretends to be one]], as if he's on stage.
* Wonko The Sane from the fourth [[Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy]] book.
* ''[[Mercedes Lackey|Firebird]]'': Ilya has to do this to avoid being killed.
* Bartholomew the Village Idiot/Cynic in ''[[Lamb: The Gospel According To Biff|Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal]]'', though the "obfuscating" part is... questionable, especially when considering conversations like this:
{{quote|'''Biff:''' I have to go find Joshua.
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* [[Doctor Who|The Doctor]], particularly in his fourth and eleventh incarnations. He's very much of the genuinely a bit nutty variety -- his eighth incarnation, in the [[Doctor Who Expanded Universe|novels]], has difficulties remembering that TV is not [[Real Life]] and consequently runs the risk of being [[Driven to Suicide]] by ''[[Eastenders]]''. However, no matter just how capriciously, [[Adorkable|adorkably]] batty The Doctor is, there is always that moment when he goes ''deadly'' serious, and then you remember that this seemingly flighty alien is capable of bringing thousands of alien ships to a standstill, is responsible for multiple genocides and has saved countless billion lives and - oh yes - ''the very fabric of the universe itself''. He doesn't look quite so [[Killer Rabbit|adorable]] now, does he?
* In ''[[Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide]]'': In the "Bullies" episode, Gordy advises Ned to act crazy so Loomer will be too scared to beat him up. It works to degree; Loomer isn't scared, but too wierded out to do beat Ned up.
* Corporal Klinger of ''[[M*A*S*H]]'' was all about this trope, spending the first six seasons of the series attempting to secure a Section 8 discharge through a variety of methods (most notably [[Disguised in Drag|donning women's clothing]]).
* In the ''[[Blackadder]] Goes Forth'' finale, Blackadder plans to try this to get out of the Big Push (putting his underwear on his head and sticking pencils up his nostrils), but is forced to change his plans when he overhears General Melchett say he had to shoot an entire platoon for doing the very same thing (via the very same method).
** As he later tells Baldrick just prior to going "over the top", it was bound to fail anyway: "I mean, who would have noticed another madman 'round here?"
* Lord John Marbury in ''[[The West Wing]]'', although it's unclear whether he's this trope played straight or a [[Cloudcuckoolander]] who pretends to be even crazier than he actually is.
* Helen Magnus pulls this in the [[Sanctuary]] episode "Veritas" by actually making herself a bit crazy with the aid of some [[Applied Phlebotinum]].
* In ''[[Firefly]]'', [[Psycho for Hire|Jubal Early]] hides a dangerous intellect behind a veneer of philosophical ramblings and eccentric behavior. It's also not clear when River is doing the same or is genuinely being crazy.
* Legend of the Seeker, Zeddicus Zul Zorander (Zed) is known as 'that crazy old guy who talks to his chickens'. As it turns out, he saved the Titular Hero's life as a baby, broke through a magical barrier, and brought him to a loving family. He's also a very powerful wizard.
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* The title character of ''[[Hamlet]]''. Among his tactics were [[Like a Weasel|absurd self-contradictions]], [[Jerkass Facade|irrational and sudden tirades]], and [[Obfuscating Stupidity|general oddness]]. ''How much'' of his insanity is simulated, is the [[Alternative Character Interpretation|subject of some debate]]. Depending on how you look at it, the same might also apply to [[The Ophelia|Ophelia.]]
* Edgar's masquerade as "Tom O'Bedlam" in ''[[King Lear]]''.
* After first meeting Freddie in ''[[Chess (theatre)|Chess]]'', Molokov decides that he must be insane, and therefore easy to beat, but Anatoly thinks he's trying to pull this trope: "That's the problem - he's a ''brilliant'' lunatic, and you can't tell which way he'll jump. You can't dissect him, predict him... which of course means he's not a lunatic at all." It turns out that Freddie is [[Dysfunction Junction|just as screwed-up as all the other characters are]], if not moreso.
* Petruchio from ''[[The Taming of the Shrew]]'', already somewhat eccentric, puts everyone under the impression that he's stark staring mad as part of his plot to tame Katherina.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* [[Vampire: The Masquerade|Malkavians]] use two different levels of this.
** First, [[Vampire: The Masquerade|all Malkavians are innately insane,]] but most of them also have psychic visions of the future. But those who do obscure their visions by acting so crazy that only their allies who are in the know would trust any of their rantings.
** Secondly, the majority of them exaggerate the degree of their crazy--for example, a Malk with mild hallucinations will pretend to be wildly schizophrenic. This is so that their fellow vampires won't take them seriously or see them as a threat until they suddenly turn incredibly calm and lucid.
*** The only vampires who have caught onto the Malkavians' [[Obfuscating Insanity]] are those of the Tremere clan, and the Malkavians are aware of that.
{{quote|"They. Are on. To us."}}
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* {{spoiler|Yanni Yogi}} from ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' did this, but having to keep the act up for so long strained him immensely and {{spoiler|he eventually snapped}}.
* {{spoiler|Falitza}} from ''[[The Reconstruction]]'' fits this trope to the T. She allegedly destroyed he mind by "[[Things Man Was Not Meant to Know|peering into the unknown]]", but it was all because {{spoiler|she was sick of being "little miss perfect" all the time.}}
* ''[[Far Cry]] 3'' has an interesting variation of this trope explained to Jason (our protagonist) by the main villain Vaas near the beginning of the game. Vaas explains in a rather eloquent fashion that insanity is defined as repetitious cycles of behavior done with the expectation that a different result will come from it. When he first heard that he thought it was "bullshit" and even shot the guy who told him that. Actually taking time to look at people around him Vaas realized that insanity is the norm for humanity because people really do have everyday moments of insanity that they don't even realize that they commit, so in actual fact Obfuscating Sanity is the fake persona because deep down everyone is insane in some way. A major theme of the story is the idea that men being left to their own devices without civilization to bog them down will become immoral animals and do whatever they want, this is explicitly pointed out by the developers that Vaas is supposed to unsettle us because it makes us wonder if it might be true that we might become something vile like him if we were left to our devices.
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== [[Real Life]] ==
* [[Richard Feynman]], at least according to his [[wikipedia:Surely
* According to at least one history book, an ancestor of Sun Tsu was arrested and imprisoned because of a jealous rival and feigned insanity, eventually to the point of faking his own death.
** Another assassin in approximately the same era also feigned insanity to get close to his target. (He got called on his bluff and didn't make it.)
* [[Lewis Black]] invoked this trope in his special "Red, White, and Screwed" on how to deal with terrorism. Paraphrasing: "The only way to defend against crazies is to scare them by acting crazier than them. I should know: we New Yorkers do it all the time." His solution to out-crazy Islamo-terrorists? [[Refuge in Audacity|Elect a dead President]]: preferably [[Ronald Reagan]].
* Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union spy during the American Civil War who acted like a crazy homeless person so that the Confederates would leave her alone.
* [[wikipedia:Kenneth Bianchi|Kenneth Bianchi]], one of the Hillside Stranglers (the other was his cousin, Angelo Buono), tried faking multiple personality disorder to get out of standing trial for his crimes. It didn't work.
* At least one WWII prisoner-of-war at Colditz tried to escape this way - his acting was flawless, but the Germans never repatriated him.
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** There's a ''[[Law and Order]]'' episode that, of course, [[Ripped from the Headlines|mixes this plot up with Henry Hill writing]] ''[[Goodfellas]]''. A mob guy in Witness Protection is killed, and the Don who's supposedly responsible is currently in the grips of Alzheimer's. That is, until the prosecution discovers a passage in the mob guy's novel where said Don said that if he ever found himself prosecuted, he'd fake mental illness...
* Alan Moore allegedly wrote up false reports of himself being a child murderer and other horrible things, then sent them to magazines under a fake name so people would think he's insane and won't approach him if they encounter him in public.
** [[Rob Liefeld]], on the other hand, thinks that Alan is doing this ''all the time''.
* The first woman reporter, Nellie Bly, pretended to be crazy so she could get committed and write about lunatic asylums from the inside. It worked too well. She couldn't convince the doctors she was sane when she wanted to leave. Her editor had to come in with a couple of lawyers. She wrote about brutality, beatings, unsanitary conditions, ice cold baths, lousy food and all the ways that the inmates were denied any sense of self-respect or humanity. [http://librivox.org/ten-days-in-a-madhouse-by-nellie-bly/ The book she wrote is still in print].
* [[wikipedia:Rosenhan experiment|The Rosenhan experiment]]. Psychiatrists and students tried to do what Nellie did almost 100 years later. Like her they had no trouble getting in, though leaving was less of a problem. It's partly the reason the DSM-III was introduced (and of course, subsequently the current model DSM-IV).
** There's a lot of stuff in that book that reformers argue is normal behavior that has been designated as crazy so insurance companies would pay off. Every edition is bigger and more complex. Some of the editors for the DSM-V have come out with concerns that the DSM-V diagnoses relatively normal behaviour as well.
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* World War I pilots sometimes used a technique called "jinxing" -- flying like you have no idea what you're doing. In addition to any possible psychological edge it offered, jinxing made you unpredictable and thus harder to shoot down.
** This caught on to such a degree, it evolved into the concept of jinking, a series of quick, evasive dodges and turns specifically designed to avoid gunfire.
* Pro wrestler Brian Pillman is a prime example of this. He developed his "Loose Cannon" gimmick of behaving incredibly erratically, not just at shows, but everywhere he could, to make people genuinely believe he was a nut, in order to get WCW, the company he was working for, to "fire him for real" (as in, send him a real release for a fake firing), which he immediately signed and jumped ship. Before his death, he only let a handful of people he truly respected in on how deep into character he was, and not actually insane.
* A Soviet man avoided being drafted to fight in Afghanistan by studying textbooks on mental illness, and then faking it. It worked, but he wound up feeling crazy in the Soviet mental hospital. He eventually wrote a memoir about it, ''Teach Yourself Madness.''
* It's entirely possible that Libya's former dictatorial leader, Moammar Gaddafi, [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/22/AR2011022207257.html was doing this.] He was known to behave very bizarrely and might also have been [[Obfuscating Stupidity]], but Wikileaks cables reveal that he was quite the [[Manipulative Bastard]], playing off any number of rivals, subordinates, and his own family members against each other.
** Of course nothing prevents him from having been both completely nuts, yet still politically savvy. He wouldn't have been the first ruler to combine the two traits.
* In 1200, the English village of Gotham ([[Batman|not that one]]) in Nottinghamshire learned that King John wanted to build a hunting lodge nearby. This meant that the road through the village would be a royal highway, which would mean anyone travelling on it would have to pay more tolls and taxes. So the entire village pretended to be mad, by attempting to imprison a cuckoo by building a fence round its tree, drowning an eel, and trying rake the moon out of the village pond. [[Justified Trope|Justified]] by the fact that in the [[Middle Ages]], insanity was believed to be contagious, and therefore a) the idea of an entire village going mad was perfectly believable and b) no-one in their right mind would go anywhere near the place. The hunting lodge was never built.
* During Queen Elizabeth the First's trip around England, one household feigned madness en mass in an attempt to avoid the large price of hosting the Queen. It worked.
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