Basic Trope: A character's sanity begins to slip.
- Straight: Bob starts losing his sanity over a lengthy period of time.
- Exaggerated: Bob becomes an Omnicidal Maniac within a day.
- Downplayed:
- Bob starts hearing voices in his head after a matter of months.
- Bob becomes a bit of a Cloudcuckoolander, but otherwise remains mentally sound.
- Justified:
- Bob got poisoned with a slow-action Psycho Serum.
- Alternatively, Bob was already insane, but lost or ran out of his medication.
- Bob is going or has gone through a pretty brutal Trauma Conga Line, and loses touch with reality as a way of coping with his misfortune.
- Mental illness runs in Bob's family. The symptoms don't start to show until adulthood.
- Bob had a Personality Swap with somebody who was insane, or borderline insane.
- Bob was raped in the past.
- Brainwashed and Crazy
- He Who Fights Monsters
- Bob is starting to get up there in age
- Inverted: Bob starts out a madman and becomes more sane as time goes on.
- Subverted:
- Bob goes insane, and then becomes sane.
- Or, he found his medication or got a refill.
- Bob appears to have gone insane, but it was just an act.
- Double Subverted:
- ...And then he becomes insane again.
- Becoming the Mask
- Parodied: Bob believes that somehow, somewhere... a duck is watching him.
- Zig Zagged: Bob slips into and out of sanity.
- Averted:
- Bob is completely sane and never becomes crazy.
- Bob has always been insane to begin with.
- Enforced: "Crazy Bob is just more popular than sane Bob."
- Lampshaded: "Is it just me, or is Bob acting stranger then usual?"
- Invoked:
- Bob's mental illness is genetic and he got it from one of his parents.
- Bob was a drug abuser and his lifetime of drug abuse caused brain damage.
- Exploited: Bob's hallucinations tell him the future, and he uses this to save lives.
- Defied: "I'm not going crazy, I'm not going crazy, I'm not going crazy!"
- Discussed: "Bob seems a little different..."
- Conversed: "Why is it always the nice ones who go nuts or are badass?"
- Implied:
- Bob seems normal, but the show gives off subtle hints he might not be as mentally well as everyone thinks.
- Bob was originally pretending to be crazy, but "crazy act" slowly becomes more natural and his "real sane self" becomes more stilted and awkward.
- Deconstructed:
- All the people Bob once knew and loved are now scared of him and don't trust him because of his slipping sanity.
- Bob is put away in a mental hospital.
- Reconstructed:
- Bob's family and friends decide instead of avoiding him they should help him regain his sanity.
- Bob is declared not a threat to himself or others.
- Played For Laughs: Bob's craziness is nothing more than saying stuff that doesn't make sense and doing silly things.
- Played For Drama:
- Bob goes nuts, and becomes a Serial Killer and starts killing his loved ones.
- Bob slowly starts to go insane and is horrified by the fact that he doesn't even know what is real anymore.
Back to Sanity Slippage
