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* ''The King In Yellow'' is later used by [[August Derleth]] for the [[Cthulhu Mythos]], with a performance of the play acting as a [[Speak of the Devil|summoning ritual for]] Hastur. Anyone who ''wasn't'' driven insane by reading or viewing the play can say goodbye to their sanity once ''he'' shows up.
* In the novel ''[[Infinite Jest]]'', a movie known only as "The Entertainment" was described as so fascinating, anyone who watched it became obsessed with it.
* SF author [[David Langford]] invented the ''basilisk'', also known as the ''[[The Basilisk|Langford fractal basilisk]]'' or blit ([https://web.archive.org/web/20131005141835/http://data.tumblr.com/13741903_500.jpg see here]), a fictional type of computer-generated image that basically acts as a [[Logic Bomb]] to the human brain. In the story, it is explained that logical paradoxes like <small>THIS SENTENCE IS FALSE</small> aren't normally dangerous to our sanity or our health because we filter them through three or more levels of cognitive understanding; basilisks, as theorized by Langford,
* An image similar to Langford's "basilisk" was used in the [[Star Trek]] novel ''Before Dishonor''.
* The short story ''Von Goom's Gambit'' featured a mathematician who became the world champion chess player "by default" when he discovered a certain arrangement of pieces on the board which formed an image that would short out the brain of anyone who saw it from the opposing player's perspective. Effects of the gambit included; causing some to go blind, driving others insane, and in one instance even turning all of those who saw the gambit at one tournament to turn to stone.
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* The plot of Neal Stephenson's ''[[Snow Crash]]'' revolves around the titular Snow Crash virus which ''resets'' a person to speaking and understanding only ancient Sumerian, which is described as a programming language for human beings. It allows people to be programmed directly, but leaves them gibbering crazy people spouting glossolalia until then, and shows up in the form of a bitmap image. All hackers are vulnerable, because they can understand the embedded binary code in this bitmap, which causes their unconscious to be able to pick up and mentally "run" the virus. Any [[Hackers]] who sees the bitmap, whether in cyberspace or in real life, becomes infected with the virus and instantly turns into a wandering bag-lady (or, erm... bag-lord?).
** In [[Cyberpunk]] novels, the concept of "ice" capable of killing people in [[Your Mind Makes It Real|virtual reality]] is often based on the same idea of an image [[Go Mad from the Revelation|or piece of data]] that the [[You Cannot Grasp the True Form|brain cannot process]].
* [[Logic Bomb]]s were used in the [[Discworld]] novel ''[[
** The ''[[Discworld]]'' also features the [[Warrior Poet|gonagles]] of the Nac Mac Feegle, who fight by reciting atrocious poetry and by playing music on their painfully high-pitched mousepipes. They can make it rain.
** [[Great Big Library of Everything|The Library of the Unseen University]] is full of books that do [[Tome of Eldritch Lore|horrible things to people]]. In particular the Necrotelecomnicon (
** On a less-rarified level, the 128-foot "Earthquake" pipe on the UU's pipe organ is said to have caused acute bowel discomfort across a quarter of the city when sounded. Which was only attempted once, as the same subterranean-depth note also got the six students who'd worked the bellows to power the organ sucked into the ductwork, plus the university's Great Hall shifted an inch to one side.
** In a less-than-lethal example, the species of bird called "geas" (mentioned in ''[[Sourcery]]'') uses this trope defensively, by being so monumentally silly-looking that any potential predator will laugh itself sick at the sight.
** The Patrician's waiting room has a clock designed so that the ticking is irregular, the sounds coming a tiny bit before or after you're expecting it, or sometimes not happening at all. It's described as, after about ten minutes, reducing one's mental state to mush.
* One of the best known examples of a Brown Note in Hispanic literature is in ''[[wikipedia:The Zahir|The Zahir]]'', a short story by [[Jorge Luis Borges]]. In the story, the Zahir is a random, unique object, picked by Allah himself, which drives anyone who takes even a tiny little peek to total and complete obsession with that thing, to the point of becoming unable to feed himself out of pure detachment. The list includes a navigation device, a tiger, a vein of marble in a mosque, and an Argentinian coin with a "2N" scratched on one side. The story itself tells how the character became increasingly obsessed with the Zahir.
** This trope was a favorite of Borges' actually (especially the obsession version). In ''[[wikipedia:The
* ''Ubbo-Sathla'', a story from the ''[[Cthulhu Mythos]]'' by Clark Ashton Smith, is about a British archeologist, called Paul Tregardis, who found a strange gem that causes anyone who looks at it to have all his mind and consciousness transferred to all the ones who looked at the gem before, until his body disappears and his mind is transferred to the "original chaos".
* In the [[Cordwainer Smith]] short story ''The Fife of Bodhidharma'', the fife can cause either serenity or madness, depending on how it is played.
* Necromancers' bells in the ''[[Old Kingdom]]'' trilogy by Garth Nix. Different bells give different effects, and the effect also depends on how the bell is played. One of the bells kills everyone who hears it, including the player.
* A variation of this occurs in ''[[A Clockwork Orange (novel)|A Clockwork Orange]]''. After Alex's psychological conditioning, he is unable to listen to classical music without feeling sick and weak (in the film, only [[Ludwig Van Beethoven|Beethoven's]] Ninth has this effect). At one point, one of Alex's former victims uses this knowledge in an attempt to drive him insane.
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«''The odor of diphenyl diselenide is extremely disagreeable but is not nearly so bad as that of selenophenol. [...] The odor of selenophenol is very penetrating, and is nauseating beyond description.''» }}
* [[Twitter]] completely [https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/twitter-stops-some-images-animating-to-protect-those-with-epilepsy/ shut down support for Animated PNG] images in 2019, as they were being abused to [https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/17/tech/epilepsy-strobe-twitter-attack-trnd/index.html send flashing images to photosensitive epilepsy patients].
** Not the first time these issues have arisen: John Rayne Rivello, 29, of Maryland was [https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/17/us/twitter-journalist-strobe-epilepsy/index.html criminally charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon] for [https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38365859 deliberately sending a blinking image] to ''Newsweek'' writer Kurt Eichenwald in 2016.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know]]
[[Category:Cosmic Horror Tropes]]
[[Category:Bathroom Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Brown Note]]
[[Category:Tropes Examined by the Mythbusters]]
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