Ocean Madness: Difference between revisions

[[Futurama|Note that this is no excuse for ocean rudeness]].

 

** Though it's less from the usual reasons, and more because they basically stumbled into a [[Cosmic Horror Story]].

 

== Film ==

* Results in a [[Disney Acid Sequence|particularly delirious]] musical number in ''[[Muppet Treasure Island]]''.

We're all going ''mad!'' }}

* Arguably, Tom Hanks in ''[[Cast Away]]''. He wasn't strictly "at sea", per se, but he fits the rest of the trope.

*** On the yet another hand, Wilson may actually have kept him from going frothing mad by virtue of being "company" to talk to.

* Tom Hanks again in ''[[Joe Versus the Volcano|Joe vs the Volcano]]'', after days of solitude, dehydration, and exhausting the entertainment potential in his luggage.

** Well, it's definitely Hell for ''Jack'', who has been known to mention that he considers the sea - and having a ship of his own - is one of the few things he actually considers to be worth living for. It's entirely possible that the Locker would appear differently to other people who were trapped in it (as opposed to the rest of the cast, who essentially come into Jack's head).

* ''[[Master and Commander]]: [[Colon Cancer|The Far Side of the World]]'' has a significant subplot concerning an officer who comes to believe he is a curse on the ship. {{spoiler|[[Driven to Suicide|He kills himself.]]}}

 

== Literature ==

** Hopefully. Because if he ''was'' actually sane when he saw [[Nightmare Fuel|all that stuff out there]]...

*** The fact that [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old|the Mariner might be close to a thousand years old]] would seem to corroborate his story, unless ''every single detail, including '''when it happened''', is a hallucination.''

* ''[[Cryptonomicon]]'' has Goto somehow managing to swim all the way from open sea to New Guinea. As an Okinawan who grew up in the sea, he knows damn better than swallowing the sea water. Problem is, he's swimming with a Tokyo city mouse, who doesn't knows any better... and after swallowing the sea water for a while, he slowly starts losing it, until he collapses in the shore while laughing sardonically...

* Captain Wolf Larson, in Jack London's novel ''[[The Sea Wolf]]'', starts off as a sadistic [[Nietzsche Wannabe]], but degenerates into a full-blown psychopath with a [[Death Seeker|death wish]].

* From ''[[Nation]]'': "''Calenture''...meant a special kind of madness...sailors got [it] when they'd been becalmed at sea for too long. They'd look over the side and see, instead of the ocean, cool green fields. They'd leap down into them and drown." Although, since it's [[Complete Monster|First Mate Cox]] doing the explaining there, it's entirely possible that he [[Kick the Dog|pushed them in himself]].

* Likely happened to Pi in ''[[Life of Pi]]'', becoming most if not all of the conflict in the story.

* Inverted in John Masefield's "Sea-Fever":

And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking. }}

 

* In the TV-movie of ''Noah's Ark'', after the rain ends, the ark drifts for weeks across a sun-drenched and scientifically impossibly ''dead calm'' sea, and Noah and his sons and daughters-in-law all gradually go around the bend. However, Noah's ''wife'', being the Mommeee, is supposed to be an infinite source of self-sacrificing nurturance, so when ''she'' starts to crack, all the other characters stare at her in shocked amazement and suddenly go sane again.

* On ''[[Lost]]'' the crew of the freighter is slowly going mad while anchored near the Island. However, the main cause is the time-twisting effect of the Island rather than just being at sea.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* The background for the villain Cannibal from the Dark [[Champions]] sourcebook ''Murder's Row'' involves him going mad while stranded on the ocean in a lifeboat and discvering he has [[I Am a Humanitarian|taste for human flesh...]]

 

== Western Animation ==

* In ''[[The Simpsons]]'', Homer, Bart, Ned and Todd start to succumb to this after they get stranded out at sea in a raft.

* The [[Trope Namer]] is ''[[Futurama]]'', despite this instance actually being a [[Cassandra Truth]]. When the crew gets stranded underwater, Fry sees a mermaid, resulting in everyone brushing it off as ocean madness. However, Fry really ''did'' see a mermaid, and no one actually goes mad.

'''Leela''':"It's ocean madness all right, the sailors call it "Aqua Dementia". The deep down crazies, the wet willies, the screaming moist..." }}

* Referenced in ''[[Road to El Dorado]]'' after Miguel, Tulio, and their horse Al Tivo have been floating for God-knows how long and then suddenly wash ashore:

'''Tulio''': ...you drank the seawater, didn't you? }}

* As quoted, the episode "How the West was Fun" of [[The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack|Flapjack]]. The [[Disney Acid Sequence|full sequence]] is mildly [[Nightmare Fuel|horrifying]]

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Madness Tropes]]

[[Category:Tropes At Sea]]