History Main / Hallucinations

* ''Series/InterviewWithTheVampire2022'': Paul de Pointe du Lac has hallucinations which make him think that birds in his head are talking to him, imparting God's will. His family put him in a mental hospital to treat this, but he only got worse.

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* In ''[[ComicBook/AvatarTheLastAirbenderTheSearch The Search]]'', Azula still has visions of her mother after having lost her mind in the series proper. Azula blames Ursa for "turning her mind against her".
* ''ComicBook/TheBatmanAdventures'': Hugo Strange creates a machine to remove the memory of [[OutlivingOnesOffspring his son's death]] but it only made him go nuts (or nuttier). At one point he walks into a crowded street and sees his son's face in ''every single person.''

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]

* In ''The War Between Men and Women'', there's one scene where Jack Lemmon's character gets drunk and hallucinates.

* A major facet of ''Series/{{Hannibal}}'' is that, due to the stress of being a layman entering serial killer's minds and analysing their crimes, Will Graham really starts suffering from SanitySlippage. Since he's effectively forcing himself to hallucinate to recreate crime scenes, it isn't long [[RuleOfDrama before he can't control it and starts losing his grip]], and certain sequences and scenes begin to blur between reality and nightmare.
* In ''Series/{{Innocent}}'', Tarık suffers from auditory and visual hallucinations, which frighten his wife Emel (and only worsen after her death). At one point, they lead to a bar fight after he imagines another patron imply Emel is a prostitute.
* ''Series/BabylonBerlin'':
** Gereon experiences them infrequently due to his PTSD.
** It turns out that [[spoiler:Ulrich]] is quite unhinged, starting to hallucinate that he's lecturing to a rapt audience, oblivious as the police creep up on him.

* ''VideoGame/JimsComputer'': Implied, as Jim starts to randomly sees his door open and close, his TV to randomly turn on, along with hearing things that are not there such as footsteps, scratching, and generally creepy noises. There is also the chance that the stranger messaging him is a figment of his imagination.
* In ''[[VideoGame/TwistedMetal Twisted Metal: Black]]'', [[spoiler:the Preacher]] was having these in his prologue. What he thought was [[spoiler:an exorcism]] was really [[spoiler:a baptism.]]
* In ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', Herald Volazj, a [[EldritchAbomination Forgotten One]] in the Ahn'Kahet instance uses this as an attack, in combination with a ShapeshifterGuiltTrip -- he puts a debuff on the party called "Insanity", which makes the player believe his party is trying to attack him. This can be rather terrifying if no one in your party tells you what's going to happen the first time you battle him.
* In the first ''VideoGame/MaxPayne1'' game, after being drugged by the villains, Max hallucinates about being a video game character.

* ''VideoGame/BrothersInArms: Hell's Highway'' has plenty of this. The player, as Baker, sees hallucinations of three killed comrades, three German soldiers and a young boy whom he failed to protect. Additionally, there is an instance when a stretcher toppled itself for no apparent reason which could also have been a hallucination. Mostly, this is done in cutscenes but does occur at a few specific points during gameplay. "Well doesn't this look familiar?"
* After [[PlayerCharacter Captain Martin Walker]] in ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine'' [[spoiler:uses [[KillItWithFire white phosphorus]] on a civilian camp]], his [[SanitySlippage sanity quickly begins to break down]] as he [[NeverMyFault cannot accept what he has done]]. Later on, he comes across a Damned 33rd Soldier and a civilian, both charged with crimes -- with their arms tied to ropes hanging from a bridge. [[BigBad Col. John Konrad]] tells him to choose, but [[spoiler:both the people hanging from the ropes are already dead - Walker simply sees them as struggling. In fact, every conversation with Konrad is a hallucination, because [[DeadAllAlong Konrad was dead]] long before Walker even arrived in Dubai]]. The hallucinations become stronger and more depressing the more the game goes on. After [[spoiler:John Lugo]] dies, Walker hallucinates [[spoiler:a [[LargeAndInCharge 33rd Heavy]] as Lugo]], yelling at him:
-->'''[[spoiler:John Lugo]]:''' '''''You left me to die!'''''

* ''[[Webcomic/AsteroidQuest Polokoa Quest]]'' discusses and invokes this briefly with Rokolo. After the discussion, images of Polo and Rokoa show up whenever the [[HearingVoices personality fragments]] speak:
-->'''CAI:''' [[AC:You know, Rokolo, a lot of the symptoms of insanity are actually coping mechanisms. Maybe if you let yourself think of the fragments as separate voices in your head, just temporarily, it'd be easier to deal with them? We can help it along right easy by jiggering a few neurons.]]\\
'''Rokolo:''' Ugh. I have enough trouble with these girls in my dreams. Alright, [[https://questden.org/kusaba/quest/res/590364.html#622445 bring on the hallucinations.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/JimmyTwoShoes'' had Jimmy suffering from them during a WholePlotReference to ''Film/IAmLegend''.

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'':
** During his "cynical" phase in "[[Recap/SouthParkS15E7YoureGettingOld You're Getting Old]]" and "[[Recap/SouthParkS15E8AssBurgers Ass Burgers]]", Stan sees everything and everyone around him (his friends, flowers, the sun, you name it) as ''literal'' piles of feces and hears everything (particularly music and other people's words) as the sound of ''literal'' flatulence.
** In "[[Recap/SouthParkS6E7SimpsonsAlreadyDidIt Simpsons Already Did It]]", after one evil plot too many ends up on the cutting room floor due to being an idea that ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' came up with first, Butters/Professor Chaos starts seeing everyone and everything around him as being drawn in ''Simpsons''-style animation.

* In ''Anime/AfroSamurai'', [[spoiler:Ninja Ninja]] turns out to be either this or [[spoiler:an ImaginaryFriend]] depending on how the viewer looks at it.

* In ''ComicBook/{{Violine}}'', Muller sees wall paintings come alive while in a cave filled with amnesia-inducing gas.

* Throughout the second part of ''WebVideo/FrostKillingHour'', Elsa suffers from visions of a frozen version of her brother haunting her.
* In ''Fanfic/LittleMissHeropants'', due to Lilac's [=PTSD=], she has auditory hallucinations of Lord Brevon even though he isn't there.

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]

* Played with in ''Film/SinCity''. [[spoiler:Jack Rafferty]] existed and was dead but Dwight hallucinated an entire conversation with him. Unlike most of the examples here, Dwight knew he was hallucinating due to stress.

* In ''Film/OpenYourEyes'' and its remake ''Film/VanillaSky'', [[spoiler:the protagonist keeps seeing the woman he's with as having the face of the woman who died in a car crash]].

* In ''Film/{{Holes}}'', as Stanley is being led by bus to the camp, he stares out the window and briefly sees Onion Sam with his donkey. Later in the film, [[spoiler:the dying Kate converses with the dead Sam outside her overturned wagon.]] Given the movie's supernatural overtones, it's possible Sam's spirit is really present.
* In ''Film/{{Go}}'', one stoned character thinks a cat is talking to him.
* In ''Film/{{Hitchcock}},'' [[Creator/AlfredHitchcock Hitch]] has repeated visions of murderer Ed Gein, who is the inspiration for ''Film/{{Psycho}}'', the film he's directing. Some of these visitations are nightmares, but others happen while Hitch is awake. At one point, Gein even functions as a HelpfulHallucination by pointing out [[spoiler:the sand on the bathroom floor]].
* ''Film/MissMeadows'': It's revealed that [[spoiler:Miss Meadows' conversations with her mother only happened in her mind. [[DeadAllAlong Her mother's been dead for years]]. Near the end, she manages to banish them]].
* ''Film/CassanovaWasAWoman'': The first time she tries to have sex with Lola, Cassanova hallucinates that a hot naked man is there with them due to her insecurity, freaks out and leaves. It turns out "he" is a representation of her feeling anxiety due to having identified as straight. Near the end a naked Latina woman also appears, clearly representing her attraction toward women. [[spoiler:The ending reveals the man was also based on a real guy whom she dates.]]
* ''Film/EmbraceOfTheVampire2013'': Charlotte begins having these in college, such as seeing [[BloodBath blood come down from the shower all over]]... then coming to outside.

* ''Literature/TheBurningKingdoms'': Malini has them of her dead handmaids when she's suffering withdrawals, which are very vivid and appear real to her.

* In a couple of episodes of ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'', [[spoiler:dead or dying friends of]] the characters are hallucinations.
* The title character in the ''Series/{{Lost}}'' episode "Dave" is Hurley's hallucination. Watching in retrospect, it seems the Dave in the flashbacks was a hallucination, while the Dave on the island is an apparition of the Smoke Monster, attempting to get Hurley to kill himself.
* ''Series/TerminatorTheSarahConnorChronicles'' has Sarah hallucinating long-dead Kyle Reese as she tries to get a bullet removed from her leg. Possibly brought on due to her medical condition.
* In an episode of ''Series/TheInside'', Rebecca, injured and dazed from a plane crash, is helped through the woods by what she thinks is the little girl whose family she's trying to save, but who turns out to be a hallucination of herself as a child.
* In the seventh season of One Tree Hill Clay Evans has hallucinations of his dead girlfriend Sara. This may have or may not have been related to the mental illness he was diagnosed with in the ninth season
* ''Series/{{House}}''. House hallucinated Amber for a while, which turned out to be very entertaining.

* In ''Series/{{Bones}}'', Booth, while trapped on a ship at sea scheduled for remote demolition, hallucinates the presence of a dead former squadmate. Another time, he gets helpful advice from a hockey player after a blow to the head. Yet another time he has involved conversations with Stewie from ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy''. All of this leads Bones to conclude that something is ''seriously'' wrong. [[spoiler:He has a brain tumor.]] Though there is also a MaybeMagicMaybeMundane aspect to the first one, since there were a couple unexplained things related to it.

* One episode of ''Series/DocMartin'' had a patient whose husband just died. [[TruthInTelevision As occasionally happens in real life]], in her grief she hallucinated that her husband was still present and giving her advice.
* At the start of season 2 of ''Series/AgentsOfSHIELD'', Fitz hallucinates [[spoiler:that he's talking to Simmons, when he's actually talking to himself]] due to brain damage brought on by oxygen deprivation.
* In the ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' MirrorUniverse episode "[[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS04E18InAMirrorDarkly In A Mirror, Darkly]]", mirror-Archer is taunted by images of his alternate self [[ImaginaryEnemy telling him that he'll never amount to anything]].
* ''Series/{{Accused}}'': Stephen sees Creator/AlastairCampbell telling him from the television screen to kill his stepmother to save his family from what he believes to be her poisoning them.
* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'': {{Discussed|Trope}} in "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S1E10CornerOfTheEye Corner of the Eye]]". Father Jonascu sees a police officer as having a demonic visage initially but is unsure what's going on. After his doctor tells him he has a terminal brain tumor causing him to hallucinate, he accepts this. However, when a homeless man is revealed to have seen the same things, he learns it was real.
* ''Series/DarkDesire'': Alma sees Darío dead several times quite vividly when he's actually alive. She also sees her friend Brenda, who is dead. It's later said to be a symptom of PTSD.
* ''Series/VagrantQueen'': Elida suffers from them after being poisoned with Clabwrok venom. They're severe, with her delirious and not recognizing Isaac (who she attacks, believing that he's an insectoid monster). Gradually she recovers however.
* ''Series/{{Dickinson}}'': Emily sees fantastic things frequently, usually unaided by drugs although once when she uses opium too. Ben later also suffers them when he's struck by fever.
* ''Series/Next2020'': Paul increasingly suffers these as his neurological disease progresses, to the point that he's having entire conversations with imaginary people (including a double of himself). He eventually resorts to giving himself improvised electroshock therapy to make the hallucinations go away.
* ''Series/{{Himmelsdalen}}'': Helena imagines seeing Siri gazing back at her in the mirror at one point, then attacking Dr. Fisher with a hammer.

* ''Series/{{Gotham}}'': After [[spoiler:seemingly murdering Penguin]], Ed Nygma spends an entire episode talking to a drug-induced hallucination of his [[OnlyFriend dead best friend]]. Played with in that he's fully aware that the character is a hallucination, and [[LivingEmotionalCrutch intentionally summons it]] out of repressed guilt.

* ''Series/KeepBreathing'': After she's left alone in the wilderness, Liv hallucinates that Sam is there and he criticizes how she'd dealt with it. She also hallucinates herself as being in previous situations from her life prior as well at times, sees herself as a girl running around, her mom, entire situations etc.
* ''Series/InterviewWithTheVampire2022'': Paul de Pointe du Lac has hallucinations which make him think that birds in his head are talking to him, imparting God's will. His family put him in a mental hospital to treat this, but he only got worse.

* In ''VideoGame/SilentHill2'', Maria is James' hallucination. [[MindScrew Maybe]].

* In the Valley of the Mad scenario in ''VideoGame/RiseOfLegends'', [[TheHero Giacomo]] starts going loopy and the rest of the army has to defend him until he gets over his madness. Among other things he is attacked by hallucinatory chicken monsters during the scenario.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'' episode "The American Dad After School Special", Stan receives weight training from an abusive trainer named Zack, who turns out to be an anorexia-induced hallucination. [[spoiler:He fades away into nothing when Stan starts eating again.]]

* ''Anime/FutureRobotDaltanious'': [[spoiler: When Earl took Prince Harlin with him to Earth in 1945 after the destruction of [[ParadisePlanet Helios]], he set up his cryo-sleep device to wake them up in 50 years. Unfortunately, a mishap happened that resulted in Harlin waking up earlier than intended while Earl remained asleep. He was found by a Japanese kite painter named Kazuto Tate, who was shocked to see a three-year-old boy wandering around without any supervision. He decided to take him in as his son, naming the boy "Hayato" and raising him to follow his traditional Japanese culture. As a child, Hayato would often receive vivid visions of another world, but didn't know where they were from. These were actually his memories of his true home, the Helios Empire. He became a sailor so that one day, he could find the mysterious place that frequently appeared in his mind. Subverted as they weren't really hallucinations and were actually repressed memories, but Hayato and Kazuto referred to them as such.]]

* In ''Film/RequiemForADream'', Ellen Burstyn's character experiences vivid hallucinations as a side effect of her amphetamine addiction.

** In "[[Recap/SouthParkS15E7YoureGettingOld You're Getting Old]]", Stan sees everything and everyone around him (his friends, flowers, the sun, you name it) as ''literal'' piles of feces and hears everything (particularly music and other people's words) as the sound of ''literal'' flatulence; since he describes his experiences in an extremely vague manner ("It looks/sounds like shit"), they are ultimately dismissed as him being a "cynical asshole" and needing to "grow up" and accept change in his life. It is unknown whether this is truly the case and these hallucinations are mood-congruent and a direct reflection of Stan's mindset or if they are mood-incongruent, have nothing to do with anything, and the whole "cynicism" aspect is all just one big misunderstanding, but ''everyone'' -- the characters in the show itself, those who watch and talk about the show (including editors on this very website), and eventually Stan himself -- ends up buying into that explanation.
** In "[[Recap/SouthParkS6E7SimpsonsAlreadyDidIt Simpsons Already Did It]]", after one evil plot too many ends up on the cutting room floor due to being an idea that ''The Simpsons'' came up with first, Butters/Professor Chaos starts seeing everyone and everything around him as being drawn in ''Simpsons''-style animation.

* ''LetsPlay/WitchCraftSMP'': Invoked; the Insanity curse causes the victim to hallucinate monsters which do not actually exist. The hallucinated mobs can attack the victim, but the victim cannot attack them back. On the SMP itself, Scott tries to test out the curse on his friend El with her consent, but quickly removes it after the hallucinated monsters cause El too much trouble while she's collecting resources.

* In ''[[ComicBook/RobinSeries Robin]]'', Tim suffers vivid hallucinations of his family and friends while laying dying from the [[SyntheticPlague Clench]].

** In "Burgerboss", Bob gets obsessed with getting a high score on an old 8-bit video game, thanks to his rival Jimmy Pesto writing "BOB SUX" on the leaderboard. After popping too many pain pills for his carpal tunnel, Bob starts seeing people as characters from the game.
** "An Indecent Thanksgiving Proposal" has Bob getting bombed on absinthe and experiencing a ''Anime/MyNeighborTotoro''-inspired holiday fantasy.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'': The MusicalEpisode "Really Loud Music" has Luna wonder what is a song the whole world will love, to which she starts seeing her family randomly sing songs out of nowhere; when she asks them about it, they claim they weren't singing. It's implied by Lisa that Luna was really hallucinating her family singing, because of her brain trying to find the right sound for her song.

** In "Fear of a Krabby Patty", after staying awake and working for 43 straight days, [=SpongeBob=] hallucinates everyone he sees as giant Krabby Patties.
** In the episode "The Night Patty", all the strange creatures [=SpongeBob=] encounters at the Krusty Krab were revealed to be hallucinations he had from overworking.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/WeBareBears'' episode "Primal", Panda and Ice Bear, who were at the time going insane due to luxury deprivation out in a forest, see a tree as a frozen yogurt machine.

** In the episode "You’re Getting Old", Stan sees everything and everyone around him (his friends, flowers, the sun, you name it) as ''literal'' piles of feces and hears everything (particularly music and other people’s words) as the sound of ''literal'' flatulence; since he describes his experiences in an extremely vague manner ("It looks/sounds like shit"), they are ultimately dismissed as him being a "cynical asshole" and needing to "grow up" and accept change in his life. It is unknown whether this is truly the case and these hallucinations are mood-congruent and a direct reflection of Stan’s mindset or if they are mood-incongruent, have nothing to do with anything, and the whole "cynicism" aspect is all just one big misunderstanding, but ''everyone''—the characters in the show itself, those who watch and talk about the show (including editors on this very website), and eventually Stan himself—ends up buying into that explanation.
** In "Simpsons Did It", after one evil plot too many ends up on the cutting room floor due to being an idea that ''The Simpsons'' came up with first, Butters/Professor Chaos starts seeing everyone and everything around him as being drawn in ''Simpsons''—style animation.

* The ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' episode "Objects In Space" has an instance where River hallucinates the sound of a crashing ocean wave, followed by seeing leaves scattered around the cargo bay and mistaking a pistol for a branch on the ground. Other episodes have her hallucinating and having flashbacks to her time at [[SchoolForScheming the Academy]]. In ''Film/{{Serenity}}'', she has several hallucinations relating to Miranda.

** House also had a patient who had been hallucinating her (unbeknownst to her) dead mother. In the end, the team manages to diagnose her by asking her to "speak with her mother", through which she remembers symptopms her mother had before dying and the team is able to identify the disease they're both carrying.
* Towards the end of the second season of ''Series/{{Providence}}'', Sydney Hansen began experiencing these of various characters from ''Franchise/AliceInWonderland'', before finally collapsing and being admitted to the hospital with a diagnosis of [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalitis encephalitis]] [[note]] The actress was pregnant and this was part of the show's HideYourPregnancy plan to have her confined to bed. [[/note]]

* In the ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' episode "Hello Cruel World", Sam went around yelling at his hallucination of Satan for a whole day before he finally broke down - at which point he saw Dean taking him to a random office building. He was understandably freaked out when his image of Dean turned back into Lucifer and the building turned out to be a storage, and by the time the actual Dean came to get him, he was shooting at walls.

* In ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', Herald Volazj, a [[EldritchAbomination Forgotten One]] in the Ahn'Kahet instance uses this as an attack, in combination with a ShapeshifterGuiltTrip- He puts a debuff on the party called "Insanity," which makes the player believe his party is trying to attack him.
** This can be rather terrifying if no one in your party tells you what's going to happen the first time you battle him.
* In the first ''VideoGame/MaxPayne'' game, after being drugged by the villains, Max hallucinates about being a video game character.

* One of ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'''s expansion pack adds a questline, where you must go into a swamp and meditate in front of the cult´s sacred tree to gain entrance. Once you get to the tree, it sprays some kind of pollen what stuns you and when you turn and start walking away from the swamp, you'll be sent to a 'nice' little trip to horror lane where - for example - ghouls appear out of nowhere, you'll find your mom´s skeleton next to birthday decorations and you'll find the corpses of familiar characters floating in the swamp.
** And to a lesser extent there is the Vault full of hallucinogenic gas, where you find terminals with ''notes to yourself written by you'', 'friendly' characters appear out of nowhere and you are forced to kill them as enemies and more miscellaneous facts.
* "Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway" has plenty of this. The player, as Baker, sees hallucinations of three killed comrades, three German soldiers and a young boy whom he failed to protect. Additionally, there is an instance when a stretcher toppled itself for no apparent reason which could also have been a hallucination. Mostly, this is done in cutscenes but does occur at a few specific points during gameplay. "Well doesn't this look familiar?"
* After [[PlayerCharacter Captain Martin Walker]] in ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine'' [[spoiler:uses [[BodyHorror white]] [[KillItWithFire phosphorus]] on a civilian camp]], his [[SanitySlippage sanity quickly begins to break down]] as he [[NeverMyFault cannot accept what he has done]]. Later on, he comes across a Damned 33rd Soldier and a civilian, both charged with crimes - with their arms tied to ropes hanging from a bridge. [[BigBad Col. John Konrad]] tells him to choose, but [[spoiler:both the people hanging from the ropes are already dead - Walker simply sees them as struggling. In fact, every conversation with Konrad is a hallucination, because [[DeadAllAlong Konrad was dead]] long before Walker even arrived in Dubai]]. The hallucinations become stronger and more depressing the more the game goes on. After [[spoiler:John Lugo]] dies, Walker hallucinates [[spoiler:a [[LargeAndInCharge 33rd Heavy]] as Lugo]], yelling at him:
-->'''[[spoiler:John Lugo:]]''' '''''You left me to die!'''''

* In ''Rob Zombie's Film/HalloweenII2009'', Michael Myers has hallucinations about his [[EtherealWhiteDress mother]] (and a selection of other random things, including pumpkin-headed aristocrats and white unicorns.)

* In ''Film/VanillaSky'' and the Spanish movie it was based on, ''Open Your Eyes'', [[spoiler:the protagonist keeps seeing the woman he's with as having the face of the woman who died in a car crash.]]

* In ''Film/{{Hitchcock}},'' [[Creator/AlfredHitchcock Hitch]] has repeated visions of murderer Ed Gein, who is the inspiration for ''Film/{{Psycho}}'', the film he's directing. Some of these visitations are nightmares, but others happen while Hitch is awake. At one point, Gein even functions as a HelpfulHallucination by pointing out [[spoiler:the sand on the bathroom floor.]]
* ''Film/MissMeadows'': It's revealed that [[spoiler:Miss Meadows' conversations with her mother only happened in her mind. Her mother's been dead for years. Near the end, she manages to banish them.]]

* [[Series/GreysAnatomy Izzie Stevens]] hallucinates the ghost of Denny Duquette due to her [[spoiler:brain tumor.]]

* On ''Series/{{Bones}}'', Booth, while trapped on a ship at sea scheduled for remote demolition, hallucinates the presence of a dead former squadmate. Another time, he gets helpful advice from a hockey player after a blow to the head. Yet another time he has involved conversations with Stewie from ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy''. All of this leads Bones to conclude that something is ''seriously'' wrong. [[spoiler:He has a brain tumor.]] Though there is also a MaybeMagicMaybeMundane aspect to the first one, since there were a couple unexplained things related to it.
* On ''Series/TheWalkingDead'', Rick hallucinates a ringing telephone and a long conversation thereon in the third season following [[spoiler:Lori's DeathByChildbirth]].

* At the start of season 2 Series/AgentsOfSHIELD, Fitz hallucinates [[spoiler:that he's talking to Simmons, when he's actually talking to himself]] due to brain damage brought on by oxygen deprivation.
* In the ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' MirrorUniverse episode "In A Mirror, Darkly", mirror-Archer is taunted by images of his alternate self [[ImaginaryEnemy telling him that he'll never amount to anything]].

* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'': {{Discussed}} in "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S1E10CornerOfTheEye Corner Of The Eye]]". Father Jonascu sees a police officer as having a demonic visage initially but is unsure what's going on. After his doctor tells him he has a terminal brain tumor causing him to hallucinate, he accepts this. However, when a homeless man is revealed to have seen the same things, he learns it was real.

When caused by drugs, see MushroomSamba. When caused specifically by alcohol (or alcohol withdrawal), see PinkElephants.

* ''LetsPlay/WitchCraftSMP'': The Insanity curse from the Bewitchcraft mod causes the victim to hallucinate monsters which do not actually exist. The hallucinated mobs can attack the victim, but the victim cannot attack them back.

* ''Film/MazeRunnerTheScorchTrials'': After downing a drink spiked with hallucinogens, Thomas starts freaking out when he sees hallucinations of his friends turned into [[TechnicallyLivingZombie Cranks]] and a Griever, one of the spider-robot monsters from the previous film.

** [[http://scp-wiki.net/scp-943 SCP-943 ("Repayment in Kind")]]. When SCP-943 is put on a subject's wrist they start to suffer from visual, auditory, and tactile hallucinations that are based on their guilty feelings about a crime they committed.
** [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1346 SCP-1346 ("Phobia Induction Corridor")]]. When someone passes more than 50 meters down the corridor labeled SCP-1346, they start to have random audible hallucinations and eventually will hallucinate the presence of an entity or object that [[SupernaturalFearInducer causes them extreme fear]].

-->-- "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcZUPDMXzJ8 Pink Elephants on Parade]]", ''WesternAnimation/{{Dumbo}}''

* In ''Film/ABeautifulMind'', John Nash has quite a few hallucinations-- including [[spoiler: his roommate/best friend, his niece, and even the intelligence assignment he had been working on.]]

* In the Vincent Price film ''Film/TheTingler'', a scientist wonders whether it's possible to literally scare someone to death, and he experiments with a drug that gives its victims scary hallucinations. Later in the film, we see the vivid hallucination of a woman who is the selected murder victim. [[spoiler: It is later revealed that the scene was not a hallucination, but set up with props.]]

* In ''[[VideoGame/TwistedMetal Twisted Metal: Black]]'', [[spoiler: the Preacher]] was having these in his prologue. What he thought was [[spoiler: an exorcism]] was really [[spoiler: a baptism.]]

** [[spoiler:The first arc]] has the arc's main character hallucinating due to [[spoiler: his paranoia]]. Unfortunately for... everyone involved, it ends violently. His friends [[spoiler:try to give him a send him off as he's being taken away for treatment]], but he freaks out and thinks they're trying to murder him. So, [[spoiler:Keiichi beats them to death in "self-defense"]] and ends up [[spoiler:[[DrivenToSuicide clawing out his throat]]]] a while afterwards. The [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness reader isn't explicitly told these were hallucinations]], not reality, until later arcs.
** That's not the only case, either. Shion's freak-out at the end of the fifth arc (although that entire arc is one giant FreakOut) and Rena's hallucination about the [[spoiler: maggots in her blood]] are other prominent examples.

* In ''Anime/AfroSamurai'', [[spoiler: Ninja Ninja]] turns out to be either this or [[spoiler: an ImaginaryFriend]] depending on how the viewer looks at it.

* In ''Film/FightClub'', [[spoiler: Tyler Durden]] isn't real.
* Played with in ''Film/SinCity''. [[spoiler: Jack Rafferty]] existed and was dead but Dwight hallucinated an entire conversation with him. Unlike most of the examples here, Dwight knew he was hallucinating due to stress.

* In ''Film/VanillaSky'' and the Spanish movie it was based on, ''Open Your Eyes'', [[spoiler: the protagonist keeps seeing the woman he's with as having the face of the woman who died in a car crash.]]
* In ''Film/JacobsLadder'', the protagonist is a Vietnam vet beset by visions of demons. [[spoiler: The movie later suggests that he's really dead and in limbo, or on the verge of death, having never survived Vietnam.]]

* In ''Film/{{Holes}}'', as Stanley is being led by bus to the camp, he stares out the window and briefly sees Onion Sam with his donkey. Later in the film, [[spoiler: the dying Kate converses with the dead Sam outside her overturned wagon.]] Given the movie's supernatural overtones, it's possible Sam's spirit is really present.

* In ''Film/{{Hitchcock}},'' [[Creator/AlfredHitchcock Hitch]] has repeated visions of murderer Ed Gein, who is the inspiration for ''Film/{{Psycho}}'', the film he's directing. Some of these visitations are nightmares, but others happen while Hitch is awake. At one point, Gein even functions as a HelpfulHallucination by pointing out [[spoiler: the sand on the bathroom floor.]]

* In a couple of episodes of ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'', [[spoiler: dead or dying friends of]] the characters are hallucinations.

* [[Series/GreysAnatomy Izzie Stevens]] hallucinates the ghost of Denny Duquette due to her [[spoiler: brain tumor.]]

* At the start of season 2 Series/AgentsOfSHIELD, Fitz hallucinates [[spoiler: that he's talking to Simmons, when he's actually talking to himself]] due to brain damage brought on by oxygen deprivation.

* In ''Webcomic/CommanderKitty'', [[http://www.commanderkitty.com/2011/08/21/missing-pieces/ Nin Wah has a brief vision of someone who was captured and presumably dismembered by]] [[BigBad Zenith]]. [[spoiler: As appropriate for this trope, it soon comes out that the hallucinating Nin Wah [[http://www.commanderkitty.com/2011/12/11/did-you-try-rebooting/ was actually an android duplicate.]]]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'' episode "The American Dad After School Special", Stan receives weight training from an abusive trainer named Zack, who turns out to be an anorexia-induced hallucination. [[spoiler: He fades away into nothing when Stan starts eating again.]]

* ''Film/LetThereBeLight'': The doctor Sol consults says his {{near death experience}} was this, the result of what's called the "dying brain" (not always literally, but in life-threatening situations the hypothesis says it can happen). It's then dismissed without ever showing that she's wrong, once Sol talks to a pastor for a second opinion.

* In ''VideoGame/GoddessOfVictoryNikke'', [[spoiler:Dorothy is forced to MercyKill her best friend Pinne and experiences SanitySlippage when her [[DrivenToSuicide attempt to shoot herself]] fails. She soon begins to hallucinate Pinne, having [[TraumaInducedAmnesia blocked the memory of Pinne's death]] and acting as if she were still alive and talking to her even when the rest of Dorothy's teammates cannot see or interact with her.]]

* ''Series/InterviewWithTheVampire2022'': Louis' brother Paul had hallucinations making him think that birds in his head were talking to him, imparting God's will. His family put him in a mental hospital to treat this, but he only got worse.

* In ''Literature/{{Twig}}'', after the deaths of several of his friends, Sylvester begins to experience auditory and visual hallucinations of them which offer him advice and comfort, which eventually expands to include his entire social group, including Evette, an aborted experiment whose role in the gestalt of the Lambs he filled.