With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Difference between revisions
With Great Power Comes Great Insanity (view source)
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== Western Animation ==
* ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'': Raven must suppress her anger,
* ''[[Superman: The Animated Series]]'': Luthortech has two examples of experimentation causing insanity.
** [[Lex Luthor]] creates a super suit ostensibly to help the police fight crime. The officer testing it builds an unhealthy bond with it and becomes drunk with power, forcing the Man of Steel and John Henry Irons to take him down. Irons later worked out the flaws in the suit and created his iconic "Steel" armor.
** Luthor poisons
* In ''[[Ben 10: Ultimate Alien]]'', this is revealed to be the reason behind Kevin's villainy in the
▲** Luthor poisons unwitting gangster John Corben, then offers to save his life with the Metallo project. Corben, advised only that there may be "some adjustments needed" to help him live a normal life after the process, accepts. But in his new robot body, the hedonistic Corben can't feel, smell, touch or taste anything, and becomes destructive in his rage at his human sensations being lost.
**
* Dark Danny of ''[[Danny Phantom]]'' arguably.
▲* In ''[[Ben 10: Ultimate Alien]]'', this is revealed to be the reason behind Kevin's villainy in the first show. Absorbing energy causes insanity in people with his powers: before he'd even met Ben he was hooked on electricity and was planning to do things like crash trains full of people together to make a buck. After accidentally absorbing energy from Ben's Omnitrix he ''really'' goes nuts, and turns into a full on [[Psycho for Hire]]. After the [[Time Skip]] in Alien Force and Ultimate Alien, he is noticeably wary about doing it.
▲** {{spoiler|Kevin ends up proving it by absorbing Omnitrix energy to stop Aggregor, but looses his sanity and takes the power Aggregor stole in the process. He then proceeds to try to drain energy from anyone with power, right after giving out [[Disproportionate Retribution]] to anyone he's had problems with. He is barely stopped long enough to cure him.}}
▲* Dark Danny of ''[[Danny Phantom]]'' arguably. Though the whole thing about watching helplessly as your family and friends get blown up and getting your super-powered ghost half removed did give a good start... but he only started a murderous rampage ''after'' getting his enemy's power. His [[Future Me Scares Me|past self]] is extremely horrified.
▲*** Well, except that his one true love went and married their idot friend who Vlad thinks caused the accident anyhow.
* In ''[[The Batman]]'', when good cop [[Face Heel Turn|Ethan Bennet becomes Clayface]], he goes on a murderous vendetta against his former Captain. It's later asserted that the incident that turned into Clayface damaged his mind, and that, the more he keeps his form, the less unstable he will be. In fact, whenever he stays in his normal form, he's polite and rational, but the moment he uses his powers he tends to become violent and unhinged.
* In ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'', Aang can enter the Avatar State, channeling the power of all his previous incarnations. You'd think channeling all those former Avatars would make him calm, wise and experienced, but no... Instead he gets all [[Glowing Eyes of Doom|incandescent]] and frags everything in sight. However, true mastery of the Avatar State includes being able to control it, {{spoiler|which he finally manages to achieve in the series finale}}.
** In the series finale, {{spoiler|after being made Fire Lord, Azula}} ''loses it''. {{spoiler|In an inversion, it's because she's ''losing'' power and she knows it - her friends had shown themselves insufficiently scared of her and even defied her, and her dad appointed her Fire Lord right before turning the position into "irrelevant figurehead". Paranoia of further betrayals if she didn't instill fear in everyone around her, and insecurity that no one (especially her [[Missing Mom|mother]]) truly loved her for who she was, caused her to finally snap
* In ''[[The Spectacular Spider-Man]],'' three [[Super Villain
** More recently,{{when}} John Jameson was infected by alien spores, which made him super massive, super strong, and essentially a [[Flying Brick]] without the flying, but, over time, messed with his head, making him filled with rage and aggression. After Venom threw him into a rage (making him think the one messing with him was Spiderman), Spidey was able to purge the spores from his system, making his body return to normal, but he was severely addicted to the power, and had to be admitted to an insane asylum. The effect was made more evident due to John having a cell right next to the now completely insane Electro, who babbles on about how [[That Man Is Dead|he has no more human identity]].▼
▲** More recently, John Jameson was infected by alien spores, which made him super massive, super strong, and essentially a [[Flying Brick]] without the flying, but, over time, messed with his head, making him filled with rage and aggression. After Venom threw him into a rage (making him think the one messing with him was Spiderman), Spidey was able to purge the spores from his system, making his body return to normal, but he was severely addicted to the power, and had to be admitted to an insane asylum. The effect was made more evident due to John having a cell right next to the now completely insane Electro, who babbles on about how [[That Man Is Dead|he has no more human identity]].
* ''[[Swat Kats]]'':
▲*** Eddie Brock would also qualify as an example. When he's stripped of the symbiote in a battle at Peter's high school, he is strapped to a stretcher and removed by two hospital orderlies, screaming at a crowd of spectators that "WE'RE VENOM!"
**
** The otherwise peaceful Dr. Greenbox invented Zed, a robot that could repair any mechanical device. When said robot went on a rampage, he initially came along to help stop it...but was so delighted with how powerful his creation was that he tried to sabotage the mission and ended up merging himself with Zed.
* An episode of ''[[Samurai Jack]]'' centers around Jack defeating three shadowy warriors with amazing powers who attack anyone who comes near. After the battle, it turns out that the warriors were actually three men who used a magic well to wish for the power to be the greatest warriors in the land. While the well granted their wish, it also made them blind and took their free wills.
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** Optimus Primal had a couple of instances too. When he carried the spark of Optimus Prime, he not only got a new body out of the deal, but took on some of Prime's mannerisms. Prime was an incredibly ''good'' character, so Primal didn't get the nasty side effects Megatron got. In another episode, he gets injected with a serum that was [[Gone Horribly Wrong|supposed]] to turn him into a coward. However, it instead ''removed'' all fear, turning him into an unstoppable berserker. He didn't get stronger, just ''fully'' utilized his already considerable strength.
* Ratchet on ''[[Transformers Prime]]'' goes nuts when hopped up on synthetic Energon.
* <s>Professor Lapton</s> [[Insistent Terminology|Professor Von Madman]] in the ''[[Buzz Lightyear of Star Command]]'' episode
* In ''[[Static Shock]]'', the Big Bang was occasionally thought to invoke this in earlier episodes. Notably, it's why [[Secret Keeper|Richie]] refused to trust Static when the metahuman Replay was framing him, believing that Static just took longer to go nuts then the others. However, since the Big Bang took place in the middle of a gang war, the guys who got the highest doses were generally not great people to begin with, and later episodes introduce other perfectly sane superpowered characters.
* Inverted and then played straight in ''[[ReBoot]]''. Hexadecimal started out very powerful and insane. When she gets reformatted into a sprite and as a result is depowered she becomes very sane and cheerful. But then she needs to go viral again to fight Daemon and the powerup makes her insane again.
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* Nerissa of ''[[WITCH (animation)|WITCH]]'' is a sad example of this. She was actually pretty well-adjusted until she gained control of the Heart of Candracar. The Oracle tried to cut her off at the pass, making her hand it over to her best friend, Cassidy. All it did was drive Nerissa farther into needing it, in which she killed her friend in cold blood. A good generation later, she comes back, pulling off a massive [[Xanatos Gambit]] to obtain more Hearts "for the greater good of the universe".
* ''[[Teen Titans Go! (animation)|Teen Titans Go!]]'':
** Beast Boy ends up falling [[The Hobbit|Gollum]]-style to the allure of Jessica Cruz's [[Green Lantern]] ring during the second part of the
== Web Original ==
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