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Sanity Slippage: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|'''Newscaster:''' Lets all love Lain! Lets all love Lain! Lets all love Lain ''LainLainLain!!!''}}
* Happens quite a few times in ''[[Code Geass]]'', with results ranging from a [[Heroic BSOD]] to [[Insane Laugh]].
** One particularly notable incident from ''[[Code Geass]]'' is when {{spoiler|Nina goes full on [[Yandere (disambiguation)]], to the point of showing up with a nuke to kill Zero, even though it would likely take everyone around with it, even her friends. She sounded beyond unhinged at the time, wild-eyed and shouting with grief and anger. Thankfully, it was defective...but then Nina switched to working on [[Applied Phlebotinum]] [[Fantastic Nuke|fantastic nukes.]] Oy.}}
* ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'' has Simon going [[Ax Crazy]] while fighting enemy mechas, locking himself on his room almost 24/7, and spending all his time carving statues {{spoiler|of Kamina}} out of stone. Luckily, he finally does a 180° flip.
* Makoto in ''[[RahXephon]]'' teeters on the edge until his grand scheme [[Hoist by His Own Petard|bites him in the ass]], at which point he takes the thrilling plunge into insanity.
* An entire episode of ''[[Elfen Lied]]'' is dedicated to the [[Ax Crazy]] protagonist Lucy's childhood, in which we get to see just how she got so unstable and murderous through this trope.
* In ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'', Scar's older brother is revealed to have suffered this. The combination of his lover's death, failing to revive her through human transmutation, and the imposing threat of a war on his home eventually pushed him over the edge. Using his own body, he planned to create a Philosopher's Stone out of Ishbal's people during the massacre. He wandered out onto the battlefield ''completely naked'' with [[Ax Crazy]] eyes and tears streaming down his face as Scar watched in horror. It didn't end well.
** First anime only, please note. In the manga and Brotherhood, this self-taught alchemist, name unknown, is the only person apart from the immortal Van Hohenheim (who knew the villain personally) to work out what is wrong with Amestris and its alchemy, why the Ishbal War was started, what is going to happen on the Promised Day, and how to stop it.
*** He then dies heroically saving his little brother's life, leaving his essential research in his care. All the more you could ask is that he'd been slightly better at communicating, so his brother had the faintest idea what he was carrying and what the Amestrians were really working toward.
** This happens to Shou Tucker as well in the first anime - his madness is depicted as being far more explicit and (somehow) more forgivable than in the manga. Here, instead of meeting his [[Karmic Death]] at the hands of Scar, he continues to live aiding the homunculi and experimenting on his own body (turning him into hideous monster) in hopes of bringing back the daughter he sacrificed, with the help of the Philosopher's Stone. Upon realizing that he only got an [[Empty Shell]], Tucker completely breaks down into a gibbering wreck, trying to relive the happy memories he had with his daughter before she became a victim of his research.
** Fairly late in the manga (chapter 82), after the second Greed kills the first Greed's old minion Bido, while the poor chimera insisted they were friends, he goes through some very rapid sanity slippage, due to triggering memories he believed shouldn't exist. Greed gets ''very'' attached to people who are his, but he was also pretty insistent that he was a different person than the previous Greed. [[Meat Puppet|Ling]] in [[Grand Theft Me|his head]] shouting about the indissoluble bonds of the soul did not help with the screaming-flashback identity crisis problem.
*** Once he pulls himself mostly together again he adopts the only ''slightly'' saner behavior of attacking his brother Wrath, shouting through the whole epic fight about how Wrath killed all his 'possessions.' Then he goes off and [[Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal|pulls]] a [[Heel Face Turn]] as Ed's 'boss'-slash-[[Token Evil Teammate]], with a series of excuses about how [[Noble Demon|it's for his own benefit]] that last right about till {{spoiler|his [[Heroic Sacrifice]].}}
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* ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' has a cast that display their loss of sanity in different ways... some a little more disturbing than others.
** ''End of Evangelion'' decides to do away with the incremental slips and jumps right off the edge thanks to [[Eldritch Abomination|the ritual to awaken Lilith]] leaving [[Go Mad From the Revelation|Shinji a shrieking]] [[Freak-Out|broken mess]].
* [[Yandere (disambiguation)|Kaede]] from ''[[Shuffle]]''. In the anime version, anyway.
* Sekai and especially Kotonoha in ''[[School Days]]''.
* ''[[Ookamikakushi]]'': Issei in the few episodes he appears in until he {{spoiler|dies in episode 5}}.
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* ''[[Weiss Kreuz]]'':
** Youji Kudou begins slowly losing his mind after [[Kill the Ones You Love|killing his would-be love interest]] before she could kill him first (although close scrutiny will reveal a few hints of it beforehand, such as a manga scene where he mistakes Omi for her after waking up from a nightmare). Before it's over, he's nearly killed several one-night stands and had several long conversations with the woman's ghost.
** Ken Hidaka doesn't fare much better: starting with the two-part OVA ''Verbrechen ~ Strafe'', he finds himself [[Blood Knight|enjoying the act of killing]] more and more, goaded along by having to fake killing his teammates and having to ''actually'' [[Kill the Ones You Love|kill his girlfriend]] when she turns into a target. He manages to avoid falling so far as to start killing people on his own time, but in the [[Radio Drama]] ''Fight Fire With Fire,'' set after Weiss has been dissolved, he tries to convince Aya to become the new [[Mission Control|Persia]] so that he'll have someone to tell him who he can kill.
* ''[[Gintama]]'': Yamazaki has one in an episode where he's running a stake out and can only eat anpan and milk. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK4M8nZ4HQc Watch it here.]
* Quite a few characters in ''[[Pandora Hearts]]'' go through this at one point or another, like Leo after {{spoiler|Elliot's death}} or Oz when he goes into [[Love Makes You Crazy]] mode for Alice. (He gets slapped out of it by Gil).
* ''[[Mirai Nikki]]'': Yukiteru. [[Ax Crazy|Yuno]] doesn't count because that would imply that she was sane to begin with.
* Mima and Rumi of ''[[Perfect Blue]]'' both experience this. Mima gets better but Rumi [[Go Mad From the Revelation|doesn't]].
* Koharu Mutsuki ''[[Koharu no Hibi]]'' acts more [[Yandere (disambiguation)]] as the story progresses as a result of her love for Akira.
* In ''[[Saint Beast]]'', Zeus becomes increasingly insane as the series progresses.
* Relatively rare in [[Trigun]], all things considered--most of the insane people are already insane when introduced, ''including'', in two cases, during the ''kid'' part of their [[Used to Be a Sweet Kid]] reveal. The only serious case of [[Sanity Slippage]] in the manga is actually ''[[The Hero|Vash]]''.
** A bit in-continuity, but mostly during the SEEDs flashback, after [[Muggle Foster Parents|Rem]] gets [[The Messiah|Vash]] and [[Omnicidal Maniac|Knives]] out of the medbay where they learned the awful truth and promptly attempted to starve to death. Vash persists in wanting to die and hating humans, [[Self-Made Orphan|stabs Rem in the side]] in the course of a fight over a fruit knife he [[Driven to Suicide|hopes to use on himself]], and for a really awful moment, he '''[[Slasher Smile|smiles]]'''. Then he breaks down crying, patches her up, and things start to be okay again.
** Notably, Knives didn't get this. Knives went promptly and utterly over to [[Go Mad From the Revelation|mad from the revelation]], and acted like he'd blocked it out and was perfectly okay right up until enacting Plan [[Kill All Humans]].
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== Fan Works ==
* Jack O'Lantern, the [[Arch Enemy]] of [[Ultimate SpiderWoman|Spider-Woman]], commits increasingly violent and destructive crimes as the series progresses. He goes from robbing banks to taking people hostage to going on killing sprees to orchestrating a bloody city-wide [[Mob War]]. Even in jail, we see him fantasizing about carving up human heads the way people do Halloween pumpkins. What's unusual is that Jack always had these sadistic urges-the Sanity Slippage comes from the escalating nature of his crimes.
* [[Axis Powers Hetalia|Austria/Roderich Edelstein]] in the ''[[Nineteen Eighty Three Doomsday Stories]]'' is portrayed for the most part as undergoing through this. His obsession in finding out [[Hope Spot|whether Hungary survived]] [[World War III|Doomsday]] grows increasingly desperate (and irrepressible) over time to the point that others eventually start wondering if he's gone delusional from grief. {{spoiler|He doesn't.}} It's also mentioned to have happened as well with Romano (hijacked by [[The Mafia]] as his brother's successor) and Poland (having his personality shattered).
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* Ursula of ''[[The Little Mermaid]]''. While not a good character, she was sane and composed during most of the film. However, when she transforms into Vanessa, its implied that she lost quite a bit of sanity (to the point of becoming a borderline [[Ax Crazy]]) when turning into her, as she talks to her mirror in a manner similar to a schizophrenic, emits a psychotic grin when throwing a pin at a mirror's head with enough velocity to knock the mirror back, and most certainly kill a person had that been a human being, not to mention her cackling.
* Harvey Dent in ''[[The Dark Knight Saga]]'' screaming in silent agony in the hospital after realizing that {{spoiler|Rachel died}}. From there his [[Sanity Slippage]] is evident, especially following [[The Joker]]'s disturbing [[Hannibal Lecture]] on him.
* [[Yandere (disambiguation)|Alex Forrest]] in ''[[Fatal Attraction (film)|Fatal Attraction]]'' grows increasingly unhinged the more Dan Gallagher tries to distance himself from her, until she reaches the point where she's willing to boil his daughter's bunny in the pressure cooker, kidnap her, and then try to knife his wife to death.
* Jafar in ''[[Aladdin (Disney film)|Aladdin]]''.
* In ''The Assassination of Richard Nixon'' Samuel Byck (who was a real person) experiences this. Initially he just seems like a slightly delusional loser, but eventually he {{spoiler|plans to hijack a plane and fly it into the white house. Not to mention his intentions of killing his boss before that.}}
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** Isobel: {{spoiler|completely breaking down from Joy's [[Mind Rape]] - which we get to read in painful detail... except the "therapy reports" are written completely in newspeak.}}
** Louis: {{spoiler|getting more and more lost in his vision of the Revolution, overlooking obvious flaws until everything collapses around him }}
** Joy: {{spoiler|a meek girl with self-image problems, using her intelligence to get to power and ending a [[Knight Templar]]. Then she realises that she could actually have a boyfriend and it drives her completely [[Yandere (disambiguation)]] over a couple of chapters.}}
** Michael, the most notable, being the narrator: over a couple of chapters {{spoiler|he suffers severe head trauma, discovers alcohol, discovers that the girl of his dreams is a slut and what's worse, she only started an affair with him to get back at his brother... he starts hearing voices, having memory gaps...}} By the end of the story he is so broken, that when he discovers what {{spoiler|he is now a boyfriend to a [[Yandere (disambiguation)]] and they just murdered his ex in cold blood }}, he decides to just roll with it.
* The narrator of ''[[The Yellow Wallpaper]]''. Understandable, when you're locked in the attic for months, almost totally deprived of outside interaction.
* Very common in [[H.P. Lovecraft]]'s work, most notably in "The Rats in the Walls" and "A Shadow Over Innsmouth." Of course, considering the [[Cosmic Horror Story|type]] of stories he wrote, it's understandable.
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** And possibly for Bastila in the first game, though the final stages happened offscreen.
** In a somewhat stranger example, {{spoiler|Revan}} in ''The Old Republic''. {{spoiler|After three hundred years of being [[Fate Worse Than Death|trapped in stasis]] and [[Mind Rape|mind raped]] by the Sith Emperor, (all the while subtly influencing him NOT to attack the Republic)}} he's broken out by a strike team..... Only to {{spoiler|immediately go to one of the remaining Star Forges in the galaxy (you know, the [[Eldritch Location]]}} he spent the better part of the first game trying to destroy?) and {{spoiler|attempts to build a robotic army that will wipe out all those in the galaxy that contain even a trace of the Sith gene in them-incidentally 97.8% of the Imperial population.}} Not that, given his situation, this isn't ''slightly'' justified.
* This plays out in reverse in ''[[Time Fcuk]]''. The protagonist is a [[Heroic Mime]], but due to the unusual nature of time and space in the game, he often gets radio messages from his past and future self. In the beginning, you're getting messages from what seem to be several future selves, ranging from a [[Perky Goth]] to a [[Conspiracy Theorist]] to someone who's flat-out hallucinating. Towards the end, you can hear his early messages, when he was [[The Everyman]]--arguably making it scarier, now that you know exactly how he'll be broken.
* This is the result of the third week of ''[[CROSS†CHANNEL|Cross Channel]]'', the first week where Taichi knows {{spoiler|time is looping}} and has more of his deep psychological issues surface. If it wasn't for this and the broadcast he makes at the end of that week, this treatment of Kiri would be rather hypocritical and [[Moral Event Horizon|unforgivable]].
* ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines]]'' featured a quest in which one has to "cleanse" a haunted hotel (much akin to ''[[The Shining]]''). Upon finding the diary of a woman whose ghost now lives in the house, one can read her tale of how her husband experienced one of these inspired by [[Love Makes You Evil|romantic jealousy]], culminating in him {{spoiler|murdering her and her two children and killing himself}}.
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* Fentible of ''[[Starship Titanic]]'' suffers for these occasional, usually in mid conversation. The end result is mostly rudeness and forgetfulness. Thankfully he can be reset.
* In ''Schizophrenzy'', you play Private Investigator John K. Facey - a severe schizophrenic. Your sanity is represented by a sort of "health meter" and is constantly decreasing, with only your medication keeping you from going completely over the edge. Of course, even fully medicated you perceive yourself as walking on walls and hallucinate bizarre creatures.
* In ''[[The Sims]] 2'', if a Sim's aspiration meter bottoms out, they'll start doing crazy stuff related to their Aspiration:
** A Romance Sim will try to dance with a mop...
** A Popularity Sim will start talking to a puppet made out of a plastic cup...
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* Sergeant Michael Becket of ''[[First Encounter Assault Recon|F.E.A.R. 2]]''. A combination of Alma's [[Mind Rape]] powers, {{spoiler|her actually raping him}}, and being held captive by Armacham for nine months while being continuously tested and experimented on has driven him gradually insane.
* ''[[Devil Survivor|Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor]]'' has an odd example of an ''[[AI Is a Crapshoot|AI]]'' apparently undergoing this. [[Mad Oracle|The Laplace Mail]] starts out giving news from the future, but as the game wears on (and the protagonists [[Screw Destiny|repeatedly prevent its predictions from coming true]]), it starts to get glitchier and glitchier, first capitalizing random letters and eventually adding in weird symbols in place of them, changing its "Have a nice day" ending to "Have a nice ''death''", and finally spitting out an error message and discontinuing all together.
* {{spoiler|Pit}} of all people starts to go crazy in [[Kid Icarus: Uprising]]. {{spoiler|In chapter 23, he gets eaten by Hades after the 3 Sacred Treasures are destroyed in front of him. When he's eaten, [[Go Mad From the Isolation|he's isolated from the outside world]] and can't get into contact with Palutena. Only Hades can talk to him from the inside and constantly [[Mind Rape|taunts him]] the whole dungeon. It gets to the point where Pit starts talking to himself and acting like he's going crazy.}} It's then defied when {{spoiler|Pit literally lampshades this trope and says he needs to get out of Hades before he REALLY goes crazy.}}
* ''However'' {{spoiler|Given the [[Break the Cutie|events that happened]] through chapter 18-21, it's not hard to think he has lost it at this point of time.}}
* The title character of ''[[Iji]]'' can experience this, depending on player actions/inactions. She becomes increasingly desperate and maniacal if her body count increases rapidly, going from crying [[Apologetic Attacker|"I'm sorry!"]] to those she kills to shouting "DIE!", and she swiftly goes completely unhinged if {{spoiler|Dan is killed}}.
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'''Duke:''' Killing you is as easy as breathing.
'''LK:''' I have five rocket... Did he say killing you is as easy as breathing? What-- '''''it's not!''''' If this is how difficult breathing is ''BREATHING IS THE HARDEST THING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD!'' ... ''Mushroom style...'' I'm doing this Mushroom Style. Mushroom style all over the place. Mushroom. Badgerbadgerbadgerbadger. Gimme the mushroom! }}
* Pitchfork, the writer of the [http://socksmakepeoplesexy.net/index.php?a=patff Rise and Fall of Final Fantasy] series of articles, spent the last four years playing though each ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' game and writing the articles, [[Determinator|a rather impressive feat on its own]]. The zenith was, of course, at ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'' and ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' (the former of which got a score of [[Rank Inflation|six out of five]]), but with each progressive game afterwords, he became more divided in his opinion. Then came ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'', which was his first time playing an MMORPG. So not only did he not know what to expect from it, but he didn't realize at first how unrealistic it was to try to "beat" it. His "Vana'diel Diary" gives us quotes like "I refuse to admit that I am not having fun," and he tears the disclaimer given by Square Enix upon logging on ("'THAT BEING SAID, WE HAVE NO DESIRE TO SEE YOUR REAL LIFE SUFFER AS A CONSEQUENCE.' Bullshit. Vicious, brazen mendacity. Like a tobacco company printing "we have no desire that you should develop a dependency while enjoying the smooth taste of our product" on the side of cigarette packs."), and at the end of that, he begs that someone tell him that not all MMOs are like it. In his ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]'' article, he says that the ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' under Square is gone forever, leaving only a [[Cash Cow Franchise]] [[Franchise Zombie]] by Square-Enix. ''[[Final Fantasy X
* ''[[Atop the Fourth Wall]]'': Sometimes, the terrible quality of the comics he's reviewing sends Linkara over the edge, usually with [[Sanity Slippage Song|the soundtrack of]] [[The Wurzels]]' "I've Got A Brand New Combine Harvester" (In particular, ''[[Dooms IV]]'', ''[[Amazons Attack]]'', and ''[[The Clone Saga|Maximum Clonage]]'').
{{quote|Oh, I've got a brand-new combine harvester, and I'll give you the key
C'mon now, let's get together in perfect harmony. I've got twenty acres, and you've got forty-three
'Cause I've got a brand-new combine harvester, and I'll give you the key! }}
** "Look at the pretty bunny! Look at the pretty bunny... *Breaks down crying*
* Common in ''[[The Slender Man Mythos]]''. For specific examples--
** {{spoiler|Evan and Alex}} from ''[[Everyman HYBRID]]'', Logan from ''[[Just Another Fool]]'', Zeke Strahm from ''[[Seeking Truth]]'' (but he gets saner, [[Alternative Character Interpretation|possibly]]) and Damien of ''[[Dreams in Darkness]]'. Quite a kettle of fish, is it not?
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* May be a result of playing ''[[Kaizo Mario World]]'' without save states.
* In ''[[We Are Our Avatars (Roleplay)|We Are Our Avatars]]'', Hilarity, [[Super OCD|comedically]]. Sapph, [[Shell-Shocked Veteran|not]] [[Drunk with Power|so]] [[What Have I Done|comedically]]
* Kevin Low from ''[[New Game Plus the Rpg]]'', after countless slights against him, begins to believe the world is against him, as he begins to slip even more, he starts to have spans of time where he wishes vengeance upon his friends. "He smiles at the twitching bloodied body, he knows she is still alive, but he wants her to suffer. She has become a proxy for every single person who hurt him, every situation bent on beating him down. and now they all are suffering. and it pleases him."
* [[The Nostalgia Critic]] went through one during his review of ''[[The Neverending Story (film)|The Neverending Story]] 3''. He started the review feeling scared and hateful towards the film as he does towards most films he thinks that are horrible, then in the middle of his review he goes off on an unusually long (for his standards) [[Cluster F-Bomb]] rant over the [[Character Derailment]] of the Rock Biter, and by the end of his review {{spoiler|he [[Laughing Mad|insanely laughs]] while leaving his house to buy a crowbar, goes on a primitive rampage on the DVD with said crowbar, and tops it off with fucking the DVD}}.
* [http://www.youtube.com/user/hamsteralliance#p/u/83/gqIscuzmABY This] LP of Super Meat Boy. Hamster seems relatively okay most of the time until he starts dying a lot. Then he devolves into swearing, flailing, laughter that really just says "kill me now" and incoherent gibberish.
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** SpongeBob frequently has [[Sanity Slippage]] to the point that you wonder whether he's exactly sane to begin with...
** Mr. Krabs goes crazy when the squeaky noise of the rubber boots he gave Spongebob becomes too much to bear.
** In Clams after Mr. Krabs looses his millionth dollar we see him slowly go [[Sanity Slippage|completely insane]]. The cut back to Mr. Krabs, who begins giggling maniacally [[Eye Scream|and tears his two eyes out, using them as a jumprope]] is genuinely disturbing.
* ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'': The [[Fan Nickname]] for this is "Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Syndrome", given that a pony failing to live up to their special talent (symbolized by their cutie mark) is the most common cause of ponies going nuts. (It's worth pointing out that in all of these cases, the insanity was cleared up by the end of the episode with [[The Power of Friendship]].)
** In "Party of One", [[Genki Girl|Pinkie Pie]] thinks her friends are avoiding her because they're sick of her parties. Her normally curly hair goes straight, she [[Companion Cube|makes her own party guests]] out of things like a sack of flour and a pile of rocks (whom she holds conversations with), her colourful persona becomes noticeably darker, as if it's under a shadow, and the normally insufferably cheerful pony becomes cranky, miserable, and borderline paranoid schizophrenic. Her slippage even comes complete with [[Creepy Circus Music]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cy9gNE_vIE Music] (which has a disturbing resemblance to the [[Leitmotif]] of a certain personification of chaos).
** In "Best Night Ever", [[Shrinking Violet|Fluttershy]] snaps at the Grand Galloping Gala due to all of the animals running in fear from her. After her increasingly desperate methods fail, she goes into full blown [[Yandere (disambiguation)]] mode, unleashing animal-based chaos with the line [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwp60eYuie0 "You're... going to LOVE MEEEE!"].
** [[Adorkable|Twilight Sparkle]] goes through a complete psychotic break in "Lesson Zero". Convinced that she's about to fail her duty to Princess Celestia, her mane goes disheveled, her teeth grind, her eyes becoming unfocused, she [[Talking to Themself|talks to herself]], and she starts [[Teleport Spam|teleporting at random]] while undergoing a complete nervous breakdown, culminating in an (unintended) mass hypnosis that requires the Princess herself to intervene, furious at her student abusing her powers. .
* In the ''[[King of the Hill]]'' episode "Pretty, Pretty Dresses" Bill is very lonely and depressed, and finally loses it when Hank destroys the gifts he'd been saving for his ex-wife Lenore in case she ever came back. He starts wearing her old clothes she'd left behind and talks in a falsetto voice, believing that he himself is Lenore; eventually Hank is able to break him out of it and gets him to get over Lenore.
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* Watching [[Tom Cruise]]'s career is like watching a mental train wreck in sloooooooooooooooooow motion. Going from a very respected actor to a high school drop out who claims to know more about psychology than people who actually study it is a long fall.
* [[Mel Gibson]] is taking Cruise's slippage and [[Up to Eleven|taking it to places few have ever trodden]].
* Which appears to be ''nothing'' compared to Randy Quaid and his wife, who are engaging in the kind of ''folie a deux'' that leaves TMZ salivating. After bailing on a good number of bills, mortgages, and other outstanding charges, the couple was arrested for squatting in a manor they'd sold years back. And that's when things got ''really'' weird, as the Quaids started talking about how most of the recent celebrity deaths were the fault of a hit squad known as the "Star Whackers" that was targeting them and had ties everywhere -- in one interview, the couple said the Star Whackers received orders out of a Dairy Queen in Marfa, Texas.
* [[Charlie Sheen]] seems to be a less tragic version. "Tiger Blood" indeed.
* [[Howard Hughes]] inherited a toolmaking company from his father, and built it into one of the world's largest defence contractors during the 1940s and 1950s. He also made a fortune in a parallel career as a Hollywood film producer, bankrolling ''The Front Page'' and the original version of ''Scarface'', amongst other hits. His aerospace business produced a string of innovative designs, most of them personally devised - and tested - by Hughes himself, and by the end of Hughes' life the company was successfully branching out into the space industry. But by that time a long-simmering combination of opiate addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder had transformed him into a recluse, bundled from hotel suite to hotel suite under cover of blankets, interacting only with a small group of hand-picked assistants who were forbidden to look at him. By the 1960s he had completely withdrawn from public life, living on chocolate bars and milk, spending most of his time watching films - in one of his personal cinemas - repeatedly on a loop; if the print he wanted was not to hand he would buy the local TV station and ask them to broadcast it for him. Despite his enormous wealth he eventually died of malnutrition, leaving an emaciated husk of a corpse with broken-off needle tips embedded in its arms.
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