Brown Note: Difference between revisions

** 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.

* ''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.

== Web Original ==

* [http://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oaeg-view-article&egart_uid=480ea52d4ae86 Neuro-fractal patterns] can induce all sorts of reactions from calmness to nausea. In some places fractals that promote immune health are used to prevent populations from getting sick.

* From ''[[The Onion]]'': [http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-study-too-frightening-to-release,619/ "New Study Too Frightening To Release"]. A scientific study who contents must be suppressed or the knowledge within would likely cause "the total breakdown of societal order, including the abandonment of the current political and economic system, rioting, looting, mass suicide and even, quite possibly, global thermonuclear war." The head of the team investigating then killed himself, and many of the other researchers are "cannot be accounted for".

* In ''Star Harbor Nights'', a close-up look at the insanity causing molecule in Rhyme's blood at just the right angle causes viewers to scream until they pass out.

 

== Real Life ==

* The movie ''[[Avatar (Film)|Avatar]]'' seems to be getting a reputation for this. Several people walked out with motion sickness from watching it in 3D, [http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/11/avatar.movie.blues/index.html others suffered depression and even suicidal thoughts,] and one man even died, [http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583351,00.html apparently from over-excitement.] <ref> [[MST3K Mantra|It's just a movie, you really should relax.]]</ref>

* This trope is the source of the common [[Fridge Logic]] expressed about how we know what deadly gases smell like ([[Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick|almonds, fresh hay, etc.]])

** Toxicity is relative; any toxin on earth is only deadly in sufficient quantities, and the quantities needed to ''smell it'' are often (but not always) miniscule enough to avoid injury. This is how [[Scarily Competent Tracker|Scarily Competent Trackers]] get away with trying to identify suspicious substances by "tasting" them.

** This prompted him to not release the album for 35 years and bury the original tracks in the vaults in a fit of panic, refusing to finish the album until 2004. Some other tracks of the original song were destroyed. Brian Wilson went into seclusion for decades, fearing that his hallucination-induced music would cause more fires. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LI-KazTKw8 Listen to it here].

* "The Elephant's Foot", a formation of reactor core lava in Chernobyl<ref>so-named because it is shaped like an [[Eldritch Abomination]], apparently.</ref> which was so radioactive, just ''looking at it'' [http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/bf822b7d3b8e.gif would kill you on the spot]. Like the classical Medusa, a heroic Russian physicist risked his life to [[To Hell and Back|journey into the bowels of the reactor]] to take pictures and find out what was going on down there; he had to use ''a mirror'' to take pictures of it from the adjoining hallway. Why did he "[[But Thou Must|volunteer]]" to do this? Because (a) he was [[Badass Grandpa|old enough not to worry]] about inevitably dying of cancer from background exposure (which he did later; [[Heroic Sacrifice|they all did]]) and (b) the robot they sent to take photos of the reactor core lava had its ''[[Phlebotinum Overload|circuits fried due to radiation]]'', while a human could move quickly through the same hallway as long as he did not look into the open doorway itself.

** A person able to actually see critical fissionable material up close will die a horrible death, although all they will see is a glimmer of (deadly) light, along with a weird buzzing. (Note that the light ''itself'' is deadly, as it contains gamma rays.)

* In the real world, infrasound--sounds employing frequencies ''below'' the range of human hearing--is reputed to cause anxiety and fear in those exposed to it, and at least in one case a hallucination. For example, see its use as a weapon of psychological warfare in the early [[Robert A. Heinlein]] novel ''Sixth Column'' (also released in the 1970s under the name ''The Day After Tomorrow''). It may also be the explanation behind some "haunted" houses.

** Back in the 1950s French Professor Vladimir Gavreau invented a [http://davidszondy.com/future/war/infrasound.htm real infrasound weapon.] (It's not clear whether he designed it ''as'' a weapon or just to explore the potential of infrasound effects.)

*** Given as how the ''non''-insanity-causing theorems in that field include such gems as "there are as many fractions as there are counting numbers, but there are ''more'' numbers between 0 and 1 than there are fractions" and "there are things in math that are true but unprovable, and it is possible to prove that individual instances of this are unprovable", the existence of the Black Theorem suddenly seem a lot more plausible.

** Now in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw-zNRNcF90 BBC documentary form!]

** The ''Murderous Maths'' book ''The Phantom X'' by British author Kjartan Poskitt had a rather...[[Go Mad From the Revelation|intimidating]] prospect near the end once it had taught the reader all the basics of mathematics. It came in the form of {{spoiler|a very complicated, yet reasonable formula which straight-up proved that any number is equal to zero. Cue collapse of time-space continuum...}}

** George Cantor's studies of orders of infinity [[Go Mad From the Revelation|led to him being institutionalized]] in his later years.

* There is actually a weapon currently being tested by police which they refer to a "sonic cannon" that is designed to emit a long and powerful directional sonic burst at the exact resonance frequency of cranial fluid. Supposedly, it can knock an entire floor of an average office building unconscious after 10 seconds of exposure by mimicking the effects of a severe concussion without the accompanying impact trauma.

** Here's its debute at the 2009 G20 summit in Pittsburg [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjsgymR8Kg4 here] and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV88Ndffr1c&feature=related here].

** Similarly, the Anons later found that playing a recording of [[L Ron Hubbard]] reciting the infamous Xenu story would cause any Scientologists who haven't reached OT3 to back off and leave the area. This is due to the fact that they have been told that anyone who hears it before they're spiritually ready will get sick and die.

* In the DVD commentary for one of the Alien movies, it is mentioned that in one of the test screenings, groups of older people kept excusing themselves. Upon asking them about this, it was revealed that they were leaving to use the restroom, due to sudden urges. It turned out that apparently the composer for the score had used brown notes in the score, unknowingly. When they changed the score, the problem stopped.

* The bizarre angles of the [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Oregon_vortex Oregon Vortex] will cause most people to lose their balance trying to cross it, or even become physically nauseous. In this case, it's the mind trying to correlate the ear's sense of gravity with the eye's [[Alien Geometries|wildly different impressions]], until it just reboots.

* Recently, several [[Let's Play]] gamers have left the community. Some of their fans claim this is because of the "curse of [[I Wanna Be the Guy]]", as most of them have played the [[Nintendo Hard]] indie game before their abandonment.

*** One commenter asked, "Is this the Langford Fractal Basilisk department of ritsumei.ac.jp?"

** The "koma" page has a link to "Escape from this page." It actually uses the word "Escape." And that's not a mistranslation.

* Merely learning the premise of ''[[The Human Centipede]]'' can leave you feeling unsettled for the rest of the day. <ref> Hope you brought your [[Brain Bleach]]...</ref>

* The flier mentioned [http://xfinitytv.comcast.net/tv/Criss-Angel%3A-Mindfreak/94633/2098057375/Celebrity-Minds/videos?skipTo=818&cmpid=FCST_hero_tv here], apparently.

* The Flaming Lips have a album called Zaireeka. But, to make sure this WAS A EXPERIMENT, they put a warning on the front stating that on rare occasion, some of the songs contain high frequencies that could cause listeners to become disoriented. [[Oh Crap|Oh god.]]

* Quite a few people who saw ''[[Cloverfield]]'' on the big screen got motion sickness from its jittery camera angles.

* ''[[Twilight (Film)|Breaking Dawn Part 1]]'' was reported to cause seizures due to flashing white lights in the [http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/breaking-dawn-birth-scenes-seizure-inducing-effects/story?id=15029032 birth scene].

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4coyGh1MIU Anna Karkowska's violin playing ]