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Go Mad From The Revelation / Western Animation

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People going mad from the revelation in western animation TV.


  • The Animaniacs short "Wally Llama" has the eponymous llama, who claimed to know the answer to every question, go crazy when he realises he doesn't know why it's 8 hot dogs to a pack but 10 hot dog buns. Admittedly, the seven minutes of harassment by the Warners prior to this probably didn't help his psychological state.
  • Batman: The Brave and the Bold: In "Deep Cover for Batman!", Batman's only ally in this reversed dimension, Red Hood, is being questioned and tortured. We learn that he was disfigured by being thrown into a vat of chemicals by this universe's version of Batman. Sure enough, we see him look in a mirror, get a glimpse of green hair and bleached skin — and hear a truly maniacal laugh start to rise. Averted when he grabs a chair and smashes the mirror, presumably at the last minute he could retain his sanity. What made this so effective? Really, it's the voice actor — that laugh is as scary as anything Jeff Bennett ever unleashed.
  • On one episode of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, the villain loses it when he realizes he's just been defeated by chipmunks.
  • The DC Animated Universe has many villains that were driven to crime because of the horrible circumstances forced upon them (Clayface, Parasite, etc.) but only one character seems to snap purely because of the knowledge he has received: The Question. When he cracks the Project Cadmus secret files and learns of the overthrow of the government of a parallel world and the ever-increasing likelihood that our Superman will likewise kill the president and instigate a worldwide catastrophe he loses it, begins to mumble incoherently to himself, and eventually tries to kill Lex Luthor himself so that Superman will never have the chance. Things go downhill from there.
  • One episode of Ed, Edd n Eddy titled "Little Ed Blue" involved Ed being in an uncharacteristically hateful mood towards everyone and everything around him, and Edd and Eddy's attempts at cheering him up only succeed in pissing Ed off even more while also frustrating Eddy due to a lack of progress and repeatedly getting hurt by Ed throughout the episode. When it turns out that Ed's horrid attitude was the result of having a pebble stuck in his shoe, the episode ends with Eddy dissolving into a fit of insane cackling upon realizing that he endured all of that pain over something so minor.
  • In the Evil Con Carne episode "Gridlocked and Loaded", Hector wants to steal all the gold from a boat but gets caught in traffic. When he finally makes it to the dock, he finds that somebody beat him to it. That somebody turns out to be the dorky intern he kicked out of the car moments before. This causes him and Boskov to literally go blind with rage.
    Hector: That guy. That guy. THAT GUY I HATE!!!
    Officer: Are you...all right, sir?
    Hector: Yes, thank you. I have merely gone blind with rage. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to jump off the pier.
  • Played for laughs in the Family Guy episode "Brian's Play" during a Cutaway Gag wherein Brian replaced Peter's I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! with real butter. Upon tasting it, Peter can't process it and the scene Smash Cuts to him being restrained after he murdered three children offscreen.
  • Gravity Falls:
    • In "Society of the Blind Eye", Fiddleford Hadron McGucket is revealed to have gone under this after working with the journals and repeatedly erasing his memory of any unusual events that occur in the town.
    • It's further revealed in the episode "A Tale of Two Stans" that McGucket was college friends with the Author — who has since been revealed to be Stan's long lost twin brother, "Ford" — and agreed to help him build the universal portal. While doing a test run with a dummy, McGucket was accidentally pulled through the portal, but was pulled out by Ford. However, what McGucket witnessed while in the portal proved too much for him and he quit on the spot, only cryptically saying, "YROO XRKSVI GIRZMTOV [Bill Cipher Triangle]... When Gravity Falls and Earth become sky, fear the beast with just one eye." After that, McGucket became extremely paranoid, which propelled him to create the memory eraser, which only drove him further into madness.
    • In "Weirdmageddon", Farmer Sprott gets exposed to a "bubble of pure madness", and whatever he saw in there drives him to scream in horror and tear his shirt off. The next we see him, Sprott is trying to curry Bill Cipher's favor by making all the signs in town triangle-shaped.
  • An episode of Jimmy Two-Shoes had Jimmy finding that the horrible episode was All Just a Dream... until he realizes he just fainted and the situation is, indeed, as bad as it was. This happens several times until he's reduced to a blabbering mess.
  • Inverted in the King of the Hill episode "Dale to the Chief". Dale Gribble is a noted conspiracy freak, believing in everything from aliens to army experimentation. While reading the Warren Commmission report to Joseph, he ignored a crucial detail, and goes crazy when he concludes the Warren Commission was credible. The thought of the government being correct sends him into a daze. After encountering a genial police officer, he trades his paranoia with insufferable patriotism.
  • In the Looney Tunes short Cheese Chasers, the dog goes insane when he tries to process the facts that the mice want the cat to eat them because they are tired of cheese and the cat wants the dog to kill him because the mice' behavior put him off of eating mice forever. He screams, "It just don't add up!" and chases after a dog catcher to turn himself in to the pound.
  • In the Love, Death & Robots short "Beyond the Aquila Rift", Thom is trapped in the hive of a terrifying spider-like alien that keeps him in a psychic Lotus-Eater Machine out of a startlingly human empathy. She is trying to ease him into his new reality because it is implied that past attempts where she just showed herself and broke the bad news right away resulted in mental breaks and suicide. When Thom actually sees what Greta really is and what he's been having sex with the entire time, he understandably reacts very poorly. He screams his lungs out at the sight of her and never really stops.
  • In The Owl House episode "Keeping Up A-fear-ances", Eda's mother is given a tome with the knowledge to heal Eda's curse, but is specifically warned to not let anyone else see what's written inside because they'd be struck blind. She's actually being scammed, and the reason why she was told to not show other people is because anyone less desperate than her would immediately recognize the "cures" written inside as complete garbage.
  • In the episode of The Powerpuff Girls (1998) which deals with Mojo Jojo's origin, he is shocked to discover that prior to gaining his intelligence, he caused Professor Utonium to hit the container of Chemical X that poured into his 'Perfect Little Girl Formula' resulting in the birth of the Powerpuff Girls. He is so shocked that he continuously mumbles "It was me?"
    • Also to point out, since it was the blast the girls were born from that transformed Mojo and gave him his intellect, it can be pointed out that he also caused his own origin.
  • Averted in The Real Ghostbusters episode, "The Collect Call of Cathulhu."note  The guys lay eyes on Cthulhu himself... and aren't driven to madness. Word of God reasoned that it's because the Ghostbusters encounter horrifying things on a regular basis.
  • The titular Ren from The Ren & Stimpy Show often went completely insane in various episodes leading to much horror. Two notable examples of this came at the end of "Svën Höek" where Ren completely lost it upon finding out what a mess Stimpy and Sven made in his house and the episode "Stimpy's Fan Club" at the end of which he contemplated strangling Stimpy in his sleep.
    • This happens rather frequently with Ren:
    • In "Hermit Ren," he gets so sick of Stimpy he leaves to join a hermit guild. They provide him with a cave and a boulder to lock him in forever. Completely alone. It doesn't take long for him to lose his mind. He gets kicked out for creating imaginary friends.
    • His Recycled In SPACE counterpart goes insane in "Space Madness" when, confined to a spaceship on a long mission, he is deprived of all contact besides Cadet Stimpy. Interestingly Stimpy does absolutely nothing to instigate this as the only bit of mischief he causes in this episode occurs after Ren is long gone.
    • Ren goes more than a little nuts at the end of "Farm Hands" when he thinks he and Stimpy are the last survivors after a devastating tornado. However, it turns out the farm's cow (a gorilla) also survive (and took a dump on them).
    • Ren and Stimpy both slowly lose their sanity in "Big Flakes" while they're trapped in the cabin.
  • Rick and Morty:
    • Much of "Morty's Mind Blowers" can be described as this. However, it is most pronounced when Morty experiences "true level".
      Morty: Everything's crooked! Reality is poison! I wanna go back! I hate this! I can't live like this! Can't live like this! Lambs to the cosmic slaughter!
    • In "Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktim's Morty", Rick performs a mind scan on a talking cat to find out why it can talk. What he sees is apparently so horrific, that Rick nearly commits suicide, while Jerry vomits and goes into a Troubled Fetal Position.
      Jerry: He was in my home... WHERE I KEEP PHOTOS OF MY PARENTS!
  • Played for laughs in the "Pluto Nash Day" skit from Robot Chicken, where a bunch of studio execs, upon learning that The Adventures of Pluto Nash was a Box Office Bomb, go crazy and start killing themselves and each other.
  • Occurs in the Scooby-Doo crossover with Supernatural. When Sam and Dean reveal to Mystery Incorporated that monsters exist and the ghost trying to kill them was real, they immediately have nervous breakdowns and don't fully snap out of it until Sam & Dean trick them into thinking the ghost was fake to restore status quo. Note 
  • The Simpsons:
    • This is parodied in "Treehouse of Horror IV", in which Bart promises that a story based on a particular painting was so terrifying that it would instantly drive people mad. "..but it was far too intense. So we just threw something together with vampires. Enjoy!"
      Homer: They're dogs! And they're playing poker! AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!
    • In "Homer's Enemy", this is basically what happens to Frank Grimes after spending a bit of time with Homer. Grimes snaps after seeing how a Fat Idiot like Homer can have a better job than him, get paid more, have a nice house, and have decent food while he had to endure the hardships of his parents abandoning him when he was young, making just enough money to get cheap food, and living in an apartment that is above a bowling alley and beneath another bowling alley. After he sees people praise Homer for something so mind-numbingly simple, Grimes goes off the deep end before he accidentally kills himself via electrocution.
    • "The Blunder Years" has a magician make Homer return to his twelve-year-old self, only to have him go into a screaming fit throughout the night and a good chunk of the next day. It turns out that it was a repressed memory of Homer finding the corpse of Smithers' father at the bottom of a quarry.
  • South Park:
    • In "Tsst":
      • Played for laughs when a group of television nannies try to correct Cartman's bad behavior before realizing what he is and giving up. Supernanny is the last one to attempt it. Within three days she's confined to a psychiatric hospital where she spends most of her time eating her own excrement and sobbing uncontrollably while screaming "From Hell! It's from Hell!".
      • Almost happens to Cartman himself. He considers for just a brief moment that maybe the world doesn't revolve around him. The mere thought almost breaks his mind.
    • In "The Return of the Fellowship of the Rings to the Two Towers", Butters fittingly turns into a Gollum-like personality when he accidentally sees a porno instead of Lord of the Rings. Token is simply traumatized and goes home.
  • She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Hordak, after Double Trouble tells him that Entrapta wasn't with the other princesses, having been sent to Beast Island instead - by Catra, Hordak's second-in-command - and is probably dead now. That makes him destroy half part of the Fright Zone and try to kill Catra, just to suffer a humiliating defeat. He then tries to kill Glimmer, but is stopped by Bow and teleported with her to Horde Prime's ship. The shock and pain he suffered are so great that, even after Hordak was mind-wiped, just remembering Catra's name causes him so much despair that he begs for Horde Prime to free him from the suffering.
  • Star vs. the Forces of Evil:
    • Glossaryk warns Star that the Evil Chapter in the Book of Spells could easily drive her mad, but he's summoned away before he has a chance to talk her out of reading it. When he gets back, he discovers she's read it, but she's perfectly fine. Yeah it was a bit weird, but nothing too extreme. Glossaryk learns once again not to underestimate Star, and the two share a hug. Then Star mentions that Marco read the chapter too—cut to him screaming while surrounded by a swirling vortex of dark energy.
      Glossaryk: ...I can fix this.
    • Supplementary material in The Magic Book of Spells reveals that one of Star's ancestors, Queen Soupina the Strange, went a little crazy after getting stuck in her "Butterfly" form, which allowed her to see into multiple dimensions at once. She got hopelessly distracted wandering through the multiverse and was never heard from again.
  • Turtles Forever — As The Shredder surveys The Multiverse, he discovers that each of its infinite worlds contains its own group of Turtles, a revelation that causes him to hatch a plan to destroy it all— even if it kills him in the process.
  • In Welcome to the Wayne, normal people can't handle interacting with Wayne Phenomena: First, they go into denial thinking it's not real, then go loopy and blurt out nonsense. If they are exposed for too long, they get Wayne Brain, and if it's not reversed quickly by putting them in a safe place, it becomes permanent.


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