History Main / GoMadFromTheRevelation

* ''Blog/InvisibleGames'' has this happen at least twice. In ''Killswitch'', a man acquires what may be the last surviving copy of the titular video game and promises to upload online videos of his playthrough. The only video he ever posts [[spoiler:is of him staring at the camera and crying while the game runs on a screen in the background.]] Later, in ''The Pentintytär Arcade,'' after discovering the scene of a woman's suicide, a young boy begins to play the set of unique video games she had constructed. [[spoiler:The story that spans across the games haunts him for the rest of his life and drives him to relentlessly collect the games years after the set has been broken up and acquired by different collectors. He is last seen sitting naked among the game cabinets, crying and clutching a gun.]]

Compare with BrainBleach (the character is afflicted by {{squick}}y mental images), BrainFever (the character is made ill by mental stress and trauma), DrivenToMadness (when this is deliberately inflicted by someone onto the character), MyGodWhatHaveIDone (the character is wracked with remorse), and MySkullRunnethOver (the character is overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information stuffed into his brain). See also AFormYouAreComfortableWith for a way to avoid this. Often goes hand-in-hand with the DespairEventHorizon, to the point where a number of examples on this page can be found on the other as well.

->''"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either [[Main/TropeNamers go mad from the revelation]] or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."''

** [[spoiler:Monika gains MediumAwareness, and realizes she's a side character in a visual novel, which causes her to turn {{Yandere}} and start ''deleting'' the other heroines so she can have her own route and romance the player, since the player is the only real as opposed to programmed thing she has any contact with.]]

** Makuta Teridax wrote something called ThePlan. Zaktan tried to read it, but it broke his mind completely. [[MindScrew And Zaktan going insane from reading part of it might have been part of The Plan.]]

->''"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."''

* The Website/SCPFoundation secures any number of artifacts that could easily qualify, ranging from memetic cognitohazards that will infest your mind just from ''knowing about them'' to locations with psychic and/or dimensional instabilities that can induce madness to things outright {{Eldritch Abomination}}s able to MindRape you simply from exposure, to '''[DATA EXPUNGED]'''. And those are just a handful of categories of items the Foundation has allowed to be catalogued without absolute redaction of all knowledge on the subject.

Compare with BrainBleach (the character is afflicted by {{squick}}y mental images), BrainFever (the character is made ill by mental stress and trauma), MyGodWhatHaveIDone (the character is wracked with remorse), and MySkullRunnethOver (the character is overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information stuffed into his brain). See also AFormYouAreComfortableWith for a way to avoid this. Often goes hand-in-hand with the DespairEventHorizon, to the point where a number of examples on this page can be found on the other as well.

-->-- ''Literature/TheCallOfCthulhu''

[[caption-width-right:350:"'Look up'? Whoah, when did that anti-halo get there?!"]]

%%%

%% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order. Thanks!

%%%

%% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1367342083057580100
%% Please do not replace or remove without starting a new thread.

[[quoteright:300:[[TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tumblr_m9t621UX8P1ru6dgwo1_400_6890.jpg]]]]
[-[[caption-width-right:300:[[SublimeRhyme Just one look was all it took\\
Before one word was spoken\\
His mind was broken.]]]]-]

->''"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either [[TropeNamers go mad from the revelation]] or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."''

* ''TabletopGame/OculusImperia'': The Oculus' videos "On The Nature of Chaos" and "A Treatise On The Nature of the Daemonic" both start relatively normally, but as the horror of what he's describing builds, slowly causes the historitor to have a mental breakdown, until he's left muttering "[[MadnessMantra The Emperor Protects]]" over and over again in a terrified whisper. This is ''despite'' the many "precautions" he apparently took both times, though the fact he recovers enough to keep making videos suggests they were at least effective enough to prevent permanent damage. The risk of ''worse'' happening was so great, he had to get the express permission of Roboute Guilliman himself to even ''try'', and that conversation took up a video in and of itself.

* Theatre/OedipusRex discovers that [[spoiler:he's [[OedipusComplex sleeping with]] [[TropeNamer his mother.]]]] He then [[EyeScream cuts out his eyes]].[[note]]To punish himself for doing it, even though he had no way to know.[[/note]]

* The Wiki/SCPFoundation secures any number of artifacts that could easily qualify, ranging from memetic cognitohazards that will infest your mind just from ''knowing about them'' to locations with psychic and/or dimensional instabilities that can induce madness to things outright {{Eldritch Abomination}}s able to MindRape you simply from exposure, to '''[DATA EXPUNGED]'''. And those are just a handful of categories of items the Foundation has allowed to be catalogued without absolute redaction of all knowledge on the subject.

->''"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."''

[-[[caption-width-right:300:[[SublimeRhyme Just one look was all it took; before one word was spoken, his mind was broken.]]]]-]

There is generally a distinction between things that happen to the mind because of experience and things that are done to the brain. This trope is the former. Thus, ChemicallyInducedInsanity, PsychoSerum, a [[MindRape telepathic attack]], or a specific, quasi-magical effect (like certain types of BrownNote) doesn't qualify[[note]]unless the focus is less on the stimulus's direct neurological effects and more on how it shows you something too terrible to behold: for example, if [[HigherUnderstandingThroughDrugs the drug opens your psyche to mind-shattering secrets]], if the telepathy transmits information or sensations that your fragile psyche can't take, or if the BrownNote breaks you because what you're perceiving is already too much to comprehend and doesn't even need to magically attack your brain[[/note]]. Contrast those things with Creator/HPLovecraft's shoggoths, who strain people's sanity in spite of never having that as a stated special ability--the thought of them is just that horrible. Confronting a Creature From Beyond The Stars or a Thing That Should Not Exist will lead either to psychological regression into denial, or insanity when the cognitive dissonance becomes too great. Lovecraft was fond of these; his stories abound with [[EldritchAbomination creatures from regions of space where the known laws of nature do not apply]], and [[AlienGeometries geometries that violate the laws of physics]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/BigHero6'', Hiro discovers that [[spoiler: Professor Callahan is alive and was Yokai the whole time, and that his brother Tadashi died for nothing]], prompting him to [[spoiler: reprogram Baymax into a killing machine to destroy him]].
* In ''WesternAnimation/Frozen2013'', Elsa fled her kingdom Arendelle and built her own ice palace on a distant mountain, mistakenly believing that Arendelle would be safe from her dangerous power. When Anna delivers the news that Elsa in fact unleashed an eternal winter, Elsa is sent into a flurry of panic that leads her to [[spoiler: freeze Anna's heart.]]

* This appears to be what happens to the man in the suit [[spoiler: and then to everyone else]] in the video for Music/{{Radiohead}}'s [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_qMagfZtv8 "Just"]]. The revelation itself is [[TakeOurWordForIt kept from the audience]].
* One of several possible meanings behind Music/{{Gnarls Barkley}}'s [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N4jf6rtyuw "Crazy"]], as suggested by [[http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858579738/ several people on SongMeanings]].

** In "The Bifrost Incident", any contact with the Old Gods is bad for people's minds. [[spoiler: Odin was driven mad by them in dreams decades before the album, leading to the construction of the Bifrost to bring them into the world. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garmr Garm]] is [[AdaptationSpeciesChange changed]] from a hellhound to a man driven to an animalistic state when Ragnarok comes. Inverted with Loki, whose past MindRape by Odin ends up burned away by their presence.]]

* The myth of the [[http://www.scaryforkids.com/twister/ Kunekune]]

* ''Podcast/TheAdventureZoneBalance'' has [[spoiler: Maureen, whose mind was destroyed when she finally looked through the cosmoscope she’d built to [[MySkullRunnethOver witness the entirety of the multiverse]].]]

* Alfred Glass from ''Podcast/PretendingToBePeople'' was driven mad by an [[NoodleIncident incident involving a supernaturally-powerful gun]]

* Theatre/OedipusRex discovers that [[spoiler: he's [[OedipusComplex sleeping with]] [[TropeNamer his mother.]]]] He then [[EyeScream cuts out his eyes]][[note]]To punish himself for doing it, even though he had no way to know [[/note]].

** [[spoiler: There's one case in which this can be averted: In the special good ending, Sayori is so touched by the player's apparently sharing her commitment to [[ForHappiness making everybody happy]] that she manages to keep her sanity through the same revelation.]]

* A particularly bleak bad ending in ''VisualNovel/UnderTheMoon'' shows the heroine driven into a delusional state [[spoiler:after unleashing her magic in a moment of panic, unintentionally murdering all her friends]] with only her love interest left to care for her. There's also a variant version in which [[spoiler: her lover gets caught in the blast too,]] leaving her all alone.

* ''Webcomic/CaptainSNES'': The entire series is about video game characters finding out their lives are simply video games, and their sorrows and such are for our amusement. They don't take it well. [[spoiler: Except for [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI Kefka]], who, being a [[StrawNihilist nihilist]], feels he was vindicated]].

** A more serious example occurs when after asking an omniscient cueball about whether [[spoiler: the horrorterrors are good or evil, [[BlackMagicianGirl Rose]] [[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=005542 goes]] [[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=005543 grimdark.]]]] The scariest part is that [[BrownNote we never get to see the answer ourselves.]] [[spoiler: Again, it's shown to be subverted when she arrives on Skaia - she's still herself, (probably) sane and responds positively to meeting [[TheHero John]], but she is far more aggressive and can only speak in incomprehensible BlackSpeech. After she dies and is revived on Derse, she returns to normal.]]

** [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0842.html And the thousand-and-first...]] (Refers to [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0639.html this]].)

* ''Blog/InvisibleGames'' has this happen at least twice. In ''Killswitch'', a man acquires what may be the last surviving copy of the titular video game and promises to upload online videos of his playthrough. The only video he ever posts [[spoiler: is of him staring at the camera and crying while the game runs on a screen in the background.]] Later, in ''The Pentintytär Arcade,'' after discovering the scene of a woman's suicide, a young boy begins to play the set of unique video games she had constructed. [[spoiler: The story that spans across the games haunts him for the rest of his life and drives him to relentlessly collect the games years after the set has been broken up and acquired by different collectors. He is last seen sitting naked among the game cabinets, crying and clutching a gun.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory'' -- Buzz Lightyear ends up doing this after discovering he is indeed only a toy and not a Space Ranger as he previously believed. He snaps out of it later, though.

->''"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either [[TropeNamers go mad from the revelation]] or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."''

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* The Brazilian song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-5LLSWkf-A "Samba do Crioulo Doido"]] (Crazy Nigger's Samba) is about a samba writer who was forced to learn Brazilian history to fit the state law of historical Carnival themes. Then forcing him to learn current politics (when Brazil was under a dictatorship!) drove the crioulo nuts and he wrote one hell of an AnachronismStew.

->''"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either [[TropeNamer go mad from the revelation]] or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."''

->''"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."''