Power Born of Madness

Isn't sanity really just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean all you get is one trick, rational thinking, but when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh, oooh, the sky is the limit!

—The Tick

The strength of a madman is proverbial, and with good reason. Madness allows people to brush aside the instinctive and conscientious inhibitions that stop the rest of us using our full potential, and perform feats of great strength. Unfortunately, this is also very likely to throw the person right into the prison or the cemetery. Obviously, the same principle will work for supernatural powers. The mad can break through all those barriers meant to keep humans safe, and access their true potential, which would be nice if they weren't stark raving bonkers.

Particularly common forms of this include:

  • Mad Genius - Somehow no longer seeing the world as others has unlocked a brilliance that is far beyond what a sane mind can achieve. Until you apply it to those few select areas at least.
  • Mad Oracle - Unfooled by the illusion of linear time, these prophets see all eternity at once—and maybe can't do a thing about it.
  • Fourth Wall Observer - Their perception altered to see beyond the borders of their fictional world, these characters have become Dangerously Genre Savvy.
    • It's got to be especially maddening if they realize that they don't exist, but are figments of someone else's imagination. It's a little better if they realize that they are nothing more than a representation inside a massive computer.
  • Reality Warper - They force reality itself to reflect their madness, often unconsciously. With mild madness, this can actually be beneficial, but if they are truly deranged reality starts to crumble, and eldritch abominations flock round.
    • Mad God - What happens when a being with godlike power has no concept of limits and unfettered creativity? Anything.
  • Insanity Immunity - The minds of the mad are so alien and incoherent, Mind Control and mind-breaking spells and psychic powers targeted at conventional human minds simply slide off, letting them see through the Masquerade and shrug off would-be puppeteers.
  • Unstoppable Rage - Violent mania grants inhuman strength and endurance.

When used for humour, these characters simply live a few notches lower on the realism scale than the world around them.

One form of Deadly Upgrade and sometimes Charles Atlas Superpower. Compare With Great Power Comes Great Insanity (the sister trope), where the power came first, the madness later. Contrast Enlightenment Superpowers, where it's a sanity/morality uplifting epiphany that grants power. Do not confuse with Crazy Awesome.

Examples of Power Born of Madness include:

Anime and Manga

  • In Ranma ½, Ranma taps into this whenever he uses Nekoken/Cat Fu, which he can only use when his phobia of cats peaks and he becomes convinced that he himself is a cat.
  • In Shadow Skill, this caused the Start of Darkness of Fallen Hero Kain Phalanx.
  • Kaori Sakiyama (you must say her full name, it's a rule) in Airmaster. Little training, yet is a formidable martial artist against anyone except the main character simply due to her insane rage against her lot in life. She has even unlocked special attacks simply because she's that ticked off.
  • In Fate/stay night, Berserker class Servants have a Mad Enhancement ability that increases all of their stats by one rank at the cost of their sanity while in use.
  • In Soul Eater, the madness of the Demon God Ashura not only warped reality around him slightly, but actually was infectious, forcing those near him to see threatening hallucinations and more importantly, if left to run rampant, the madness would blanket the world, driving everyone insane.
    • The black blood is an even better example. Since Chrona and Maka gain a great deal of power from being insane under its influence.
    • Later on in the manga, (the anime didn't get that far) Insanity is a full-blown phlebotinum. It is researched and used for attacks, creating "clowns" from it for additional power boost or protection, etc. The main researcher is Medusa, the creator of above-mentioned black blood. She herself is notably sane and chastised by rival factions for creating "fake clowns". Noah's fraction, notably Justin, are more about using natural White Clown.
    • Later on, Black*Star and Kid both utilize insanity as well, having earned the favor of the Eldritch Abomination from the Book of Ebon. They were both already somewhat crazy anyway, so it's a fairly logical step to just go the whole way.
      • All characters make use of the phlebotinum, but Kid is a slightly different instance, seeing as - if one believes the Salvage arc - he's a clone/Soul Jar of a Eldritch Abomination, who in this universe are (supposedly) incarnations of madness. Also demonstrated that these beings are susceptible to one another, as Kid reacts badly to both Asura (fear) and the Great Old One (power) inside the book.
    • Stein also makes use of the madness to gain advantage in battle, in his case the madness was always there (increasing since around half of the story), it was just being repressed; in the Battle of the Moon, he releases all his madness in the beginning and then regains control latter in the battle.
  • Maniwa in Paranoia Agent becomes utterly convinced he's in touch with another plane of existence. He hears voices, sees things that aren't there, and acts like a superhero. The plot even starts calling him "Radar Man," and that lunatic may or may not be our last best hope at figuring out what the Hell's really going on.


Comic Books

  • This is a common theme in the Batman mythos.
    • The Joker is sometimes portrayed as being able to see through the Fourth Wall because of his insanity.
      • In one issue of his own series from the 1970s, the Joker was able to simultaneously fight off both Black Canary and Green Arrow using a "strength born of madness".
      • In more than one comic, the Joker's madness is presented as a type of superpower; in an Elseworlds comic where every meta was depowered, he was rendered sane.
      • In a Batman/Judge Dredd crossover, Judge Death tried to possess Joker's body but ended going straight through his head and falling out through the other ear.
      • It's also implied in Batman: Arkham Asylum that the Joker's insanity was literally the only reason why he retained his mind after injecting himself with Titan.
    • Batman himself is often shown to possess a form of Power Born of Madness - his obsession with justice is so great that mental powers meant to play on any other trait simply slide off.
  • My frequent fourth wall breaking tends to be portrayed this way. Also, since I'm on good terms with most of my authors, they sorta kinda provide me with whatever power I need to, if not once again save the City of Townsville, then at least get out of whatever suicidal adventure they've signed me up for, as usual without asking for my consent first, with life and limb intact... Well... Life intact, at least... My sheer manly awesomeness also gives me mind control/reading immunity.
    • Naaah, not really. Truth to be told, the immunity to mind control is actually because my brain is constantly in flux between being a cancerous tumour and something akin to a brain due to my healing factor. It's very much like jelly beans, really, but without a bowl to keep them in.
      • You're a bowl.
  • Rorschach from Watchmen, Captain Ersatz to The Question, is similarly able to do things like fighting off cops with some hairspray and a match because he is crazy, crazy, Badass, and crazy.
  • The deadly threat that Frank Castle represents is often credited to his psychotic pain threshold and utter lack of inhibition towards hurting people.
  • The first Question's abilities after Steve Ditko consisted of having an odd mask and paranoia. Lots and lots of paranoia. Originally he was just a good detective, fighter and skilled at criminal psychology.
  • Peter Milligan's Shade the Changing Man is the prime example of the Reality Warper ("forge what you need on the smithy of your soul".) He began merely poetic, and therefore only insane to his native culture, so he was able to survive being flung through the Area of Madness relatively insane. With time on Earth, he got much madder.
  • Hulk's rage and anger is shown to be so powerful that not only does it cause Unstoppable Rage but also gives him immunity to mind control and other telepathic attacks, often showing him simply shrugging it off. Also Banner's fear of his father coming back from beyond the grave has given him the power to see ghosts, and astral forms.
    • The fact the Hulk exists at all may be an example of this. When Banner first got hit by gamma radiation, his various personalities manifested themselves as the Hulks.
  • Max's mind is so screwed up he's immune to all forms of mind control and hypnosis, has various psychic powers (which mostly served as Deus Ex Machina or one time gags until The Devil's Playhouse) and awareness of the fourth wall. Granted this awareness is shaky, so is his awareness of his own world.
  • Dr. Will Magnus, creator of the Metal Men, does crazy things when he's not on his meds.


Fan Works

  • In the Harry Potter fanfic Flying Without A Broom by Ruskbyte, the Death Eaters spike Harry's drink with recreational wizarding drugs, the effects of which are indistinguishable from Harry temporarily losing his mind. The Death Eaters thought it would render Harry helpless, but instead it lets him tap into vast magical powers, powers which he uses to keep himself amused.
  • In the Bleach fanfic Uninvited Guests, after the first "arc", Hitsugaya goes insane and decides that the best way to solve his problems is to charge headfirst, alone and with no sort of plan whatsoever into Las Noches and beat the crap out of Aizen. It works.


Film

  • In the movie version of Silent Hill, Alessa's powers are born of overwhelming hatred and despair, which ultimately adds up to madness. Plus, have you seenthe Abandoned Hospital slash Black Bug Room she calls home!?
  • Apparently this is the reason "Howling Mad" Murdock from The A-Team is recruited in the first place. The movie version of him can make various airborne vehicles perform in ways that defy all laws of physics and decency.
    • Murdock appears to be able to fake any foreign accent required (but often just for fun) and even manages to speak Swahili at a customs desk, despite showing no previous knowledge of foreign languages to his teammates or to the audience.
      • He also appears to be immune to electroshock therapy, even enjoying it while the frustrated doctors keep cranking up the voltage to no avail. It takes nothing less than a bullet to the head to make him feel sane for a while.
  • Gallian in In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale is one of the last magi. He figures out how to be independent from servitude (a magus must serve a king) by naming himself king of the mindless Krugg. He then forges them into a fearless horde that he uses to try to conquer the kingdom of Ehb. He also gains more power by sleeping with Muriella, the daughter of Merick, the king's magus. When confronted by Merick, they converse while dueling with magical swords suspended in mid-air. Merick finally realizes that Gallian has truly gone insane with power. Gallian doesn't deny and shows him exactly what madness can do, even though Merick is the older and more experienced magus.

Gallian: You have no idea... how powerful madness can be.

  • Insanity seems to be the primary source of physical strength for the antagonists of the Scream series. In the second installment, even a middle-aged woman with no sign of physical training is able to overpower and kill young men who should be in their prime.
  • One could argue that the only reason Donnie can screw around with the time stream and see Frank is because of his increasingly severe paranoid schizophrenia.


Literature

  • In the Star Trek novel, Q-Squared, Trelane is more powerful than his fellow Q because of this.
    • In another series of novels, the Q-like entity 0 has gone insane after being locked out of the can for millennia, and thus has no limits on what he can do. Q specifically invokes this trope by saying, "0's insanity gives him an insane amount of power."
  • Big Fido, the Canine Supremacist in Men At Arms. He's a small poodle, but his madness gives him the power to rip a man to shreds, and cow all the other dogs through sheer force of personality.
    • Agness Nitt's split personality allows her to resist mind control. When one personality is dominated, the other takes over.
    • Carcer and Jonathon(?) Teatime as well, both psychotic, but it took Vimes and Susan respectively to bring them down.
      • Carcer was, as it were, worse, because he wasn't psychotic. He'd passed through insanity and circled around to sanity from behind. The thing that made him dangerous was that he had realized that all of society's rules that keep it ticking over nicely only apply to you if you let them. And he didn't want to let them.
    • Thief of Time : Excessive sanity as a form of insanity. Jeremy Clockson is completely sane and has a paper that confirms it (not a lot of people have those). At first Igor has to admit that after working for Mad Doctor Scoop, Crazed Baron Haha, Screaming Doctor Berserk, Dribbling Doctor Vibes, and Nipsie the Impaler "when it came to getting weird things done, sane beat mad hands down" but it eventually becomes clear Clockson's so sane he's gone around the bend and come out the other side. "Stark, staring sane" has to lead somewhere bad... like nearly ENDING TIME ITSELF.
  • In the Doctor Who New Adventures novel arc "Timewyrm", the titular villainess tries to possess Adolf Hitler and is instead trapped in his mind by his madness. Yes, there's a group of aliens trying to take advantage of this. Yes, things go exactly as planned in the end.
  • In Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Strange takes a Psycho Serum that lets him see one of The Fair Folk so he can learn more magic from it.
  • In the Mistborn trilogy, by Brandon Sanderson, allomancers come into their powers after Snapping (something like a breakdown after a horrific event) - the most notable being Kelsier, who came into his powers after spending an unidentified amount of time working in a really nasty mine, followed by watching his wife being beaten to death before his eyes.
  • Lampshaded at least as early as Dracula where Renfield mentions having heard of the strength of madmen, and reasons that as he's mad he must have it. He successfully uses this strength to knock Dracula out of his mist form and, for a moment, get the upper hand in the fight.
  • Shiro from the Samurai Cat illustrated novels, an 8 kg kitten, is able to use a GAU-8 Avenger tank killer gatling gun due to "the strength of madness".
  • From the Nightside, there is the one known as Madman, who was driven mad by perceiving the truth underlying reality? He's a dangerously powerful Reality Warper whose hallucinations manifest around him. Most notable is that he's accompanied by his own personal soundtrack.
  • In This Alien Shore by C.S. Friedman, "Outpilot's Syndrome" is paranoia dialed Up to Eleven, and those suffering from it require massive amounts of medication to do more than lie around whimpering. However, Hyperspace Is a Scary Place, so scary that they're merely Properly Paranoid when in it, so they're the only people who can pilot spaceships through it without getting eaten by Eldritch Abominations.
  • In On Stranger Tides, hero Jack Shandy suffers a blow to the head just before confronting an evil sorcerer, who attempts to trap him in illusions. The illusions keep breaking down as a result of Jack's disorientation, causing the villain to exclaim: "What's wrong with your mind? It's like a stripped screw!"
  • The Dresden Files: Molly Carpenter by Ghost Story, who displays how completely terrifying a master of illusion can be.
    • In the same story, when told that only truly insane or insanely determined ghosts can make themselves solid, Harry runs over his past exploits (Zombie T-Rex springs to mind) and concludes that he must be one or the other. Which one isn't clear—but it works.


Live Action TV

  • The reason the Reavers from Firefly are so dangerous is more because of them being insanely furious all the freaking time more than anything else.
  • Helen Magnus in Sanctuary engineers a Batman Gambit to catch a bad guy that involves pretending to kill a friend and putting a critter in her brain that will make her seem insane to throw off the psychic powers of those meant to determine if she committed the murder since one of them was aforementioned bad guy.
  • Doctor Who: The New Who version of the Master.
    • As well, Dalek Caan, who managed emergency temporal shift into the Time War, which was supposed to be impenetrable. The process drove him mad, but in the process, he saw everything.


Tabletop Games

  • Warhammer 40,000: "In the darkness, a blind man is the best guide; in an age of madness, look to the madman to lead the way."
    • To be precise, psykers have incredible powers, but as a general rule are batshit insane, to the point that burning witch-erm, psykers, at the stake is in fact a perfectly reasonable and wise precaution. Not to mention that in places where laws of physics go to hell (such as a planet engulfed in a warp storm) sufficiently mad people can become spontaneous reality warpers. And each and every psyker across the galaxy is at constant threat of CREATING one of these places. Every second of the day. Along with breaking the barriers that hold of the entirely omnicidal Powers-that-Be in the package. Along with an entirely literal horde of daemons. Forget reasonable, it's only because the Imperium is so stringent about shepherding psykers up into the Black Ships that the Imperium's 'only' teetering on the brink of utter annihilation from every named force in the universe. Darker and Edgier indeed.
  • In Unknown Armies, all mages works on this principle. Ritual magic can be done by the sane, for rather wide definitions of sane. The faster and more powerful adept magic, however, can only be powered or cast by individuals who are crazily obsessed with money, books, historic places, alcohol, or danger to the point of that obsession overwriting local reality. A typical bibliomancer, for example, would be so obsessed over books that he or she would cajole or even kill for a given text, and take an assault on the Library as a personal assault. Mechanically, becoming an adept after character creation usually requires five failed Stress checks in a single column and the resulting madness. GMs are instructed to punish adepts who don't let their character's insanity shine through with drops in power or odd spontaneous magical effects.
  • Old World of Darkness: the Marauders from Mage: The Ascension. Something went wrong during their Awakenings, resulting in them seeing reality through a skewed lens. They are extremely resistant to the effects of Paradox, which can sometimes slide off them and affect any other mages in the area. If they get crazy enough, they're eventually shunted off into their own pocket dimension in the Umbra.
    • The Malkavians in Vampire: The Masquerade are driven insane the second they are turned, and this very insanity powers their unique ability to cause delusions and hallucinations in others, as well as see 'patterns' in reality that their saner fellows cannot. In the computer game, Bloodlines, Malkavians also get different dialogue options, many of which hint at or warn about future events... albeit in such a confusing manner that you need to finish the game through a sane character first to get all the references. Malkavians are also able to ignore the existence of certain objects rendering them useless against that character, e.g. the machete that did not repeatedly hack into their necks. In games where most of the PCs are Malkavians its more a case of the NPCs hallucinating the object...
    • The werewolves of Werewolf: The Apocalypse are angry. Angry enough for some to cannibalize their own species or molest allies to death if they don't keep a lid on it. Angry enough to fuel regeneration or shapeshifting through rage alone.
    • In Genius: The Transgression, Geniuses wouldn't exist if their mind wasn't influenced by a mental breakdown fueled by discovery. This often leaves them quite mad. Consequentially, their Wonders, while not quite as blatantly as the Mages' magic, (the sourcebook says, for example, that simply putting Mania into a wooden bird won't make it fly just because it's "enchanted") can bend or break several important laws of physics. And they are quite explicitly not science as they're non-repeatable phenomena, which leads to...
  • In the world of Exalted, when The Fair Folk use up all their Virtue Channels for one of their Virtues, they enter bedlam, a state of absolute madness. Some Fair Folk charms are made specifically to benefit from this state when it happens.
    • There are also a number of Charms for the various types of Exalt that use the madness of the Great Curse to their advantage. For example, Stubborn Boar Defence allows a Solar in Limit Break to totally ignore unnatural mental influence.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • The kuo-toa are a race of mostly-insane fish-men who seem able to combine this power with Clap Your Hands If You Believe, as it explains how their truly bizarre gods came to be. Supposedly, some kuo-toa who fancied himself a Mad Artist found a nude statue of a human woman, struck its head and arms off, then replaced them by tying or gluing a giant lobster's head and claws to it. Then he called it "Blipdoolpolp" and decided to worship it, and his tribe followed suit, then more tribes, and then whole Underdark nations of kuo-toas. Somehow this insane devotion caused an actual entity resembling the mauled statue to come into being, and "she" became the power worshipped by the kuo-toa, a Goddess of Madness and the Sea. Possibly they "created" other lesser-known gods this way, but one can only hope they aren't as successful.
    • In 3rd Edition a cleric with access to the Madness Domain (offered by Tharizdun, Dionysus, and a few ancient evil deities) gains a Insanity Score equal to half his class level. This lets them add this score to his Wisdom Score whenever Wisdom applies to spellcasting. However, it has a disadvantage: for anything else that involves Wisdom he subtracts the Insanity Score from his Wisdom Score.
      • The Madness Domain also gives the cleric the ability to "act with the clarity of true madness", meaning he gains the above benefit to any roll involving Wisdom, but only once per day (and he must decide to use this effect before making the roll; if it fails anyway, it still counts as used).
  • Failing a Madness save in a Ravenloft game is usually bad news, but a couple of possible outcomes do provide fringe benefits, e.g. a bonus to Fear saves because you don't think the threat is for real.
  • People known as "The Lost" from the obscure RPG "In Dark Alleys" have such a bad direction sense that it defies time and space. By wandering randomly through streets and corridors they can, in about 15 minutes, get just about anywhere. The other side of town? They could go there. Another continent? yes. Your baby brother's subconscious? Yes, and they'd probably enjoy it, since most of them are either complete Cloud Cuckoo Landers or constantly high/drunk. The same stupidity/clumsiness/insanity also allows them to pull just about anything out of a bag or pocket. Some people can just casually accept the fact that there could be, say, a hand grenade in their wallet they don't remember ever having put in there.
  • Don't Rest Your Head, a system where you literally become more powerful the longer you haven't slept. Indeed, your insomnia grants you "madness powers" which can be used to warp the world around you as you see fit. One of the examples in the sourcebook is the madness power of preparedness, where, if you activate it to a certain degree, you can have "conveniently" happened to have picked up the combination to a vault you are just now getting to. And then there's probability.
  • Magic the Gathering: this is the case for decks built around the keyword abilities Hellbent, Madness (yeah) and, to a lesser extent, Dredge. Sanity is represented by the cards left in your hand and in your library; an empty hand is unstable, an empty library is when a planeswalker is just about to completely lose their mind. Madness allows you to sacrifice short-term sanity to play the card you're discarding cheaply; Hellbent denotes cards that gain an advantage when your hand is empty; and Dredge allows you to affect your long-term sanity to recur things from your graveyard.
  • In Kult, this is a way to see through the illusion that is our reality. If you proceed long enough, you may become the immortal superbeing every human really is, but you risk to be swallowed by the Achlys.

Video Games

  • City of Heroes plays this straight at moments, and subverts it as well. Rularuu's Lanaru aspect broke free of and became powerful enough to frighten Rularuu himself thanks to Lanaru's remarkable insanity. On the other hand, the Clockwork King is undeniably and completely insane, a Mad Scientist, but one of his particular delusions -- that he can create working robots out of random junk -- prevents him from realizing his true abilities in our universe.
    • He's actually a godlike psychic, animating every Clockwork in the city like a puppet through the power of his fractured subconscious. Detailed examination of Clockwork reveals that they're just collections of parts that couldn't possibly work, and they don't... they function because the Clockwork King believes they should. One of the alternate universes you visit in the late game is a world where the King DID understand his true power. He and his Clockwork are the only ones left alive.
  • In the Geneforge series, serviles aren't able to do magic until the proper Geneforge and canisters are developed. Before then, though, a few serviles would develop the ability to cast spells anyway, by forming small cults where they could meditate and engage in self-harm until they went insane.
  • The Suffering has some fun with this. The main character has suffered blackouts his whole life, and in-game develops the ability to trigger those blackouts and turn into a hideous monster. There's a reason this ability is called "Insanity," though--he doesn't actually change, he just goes into an Unstoppable Rage and tears foes apart, hallucinating that it's not really him.
  • From the Oblivion, Shivering Isles expansion, and less directly in previous releases, there is Sheogorath, Daedric Prince of Madness. In this case the power isn't born of his madness, but is in fact the primordial essence of madness; Sheogorath himself is essentially just an avatar of a larger, immortal force which periodically replaces the avatar with another.

Sheogorath: Now get out of here before I change my mind... or my mind changes me.

  • One of the possible character backgrounds in "Arcanum", a Victorian Steampunk-meets-high-fantasy RPG, is that you are really an escaped asylum lunatic. Because you are deranged, most people have a lowered initial reaction to your appearance, but you are also so crazy that you take 10% less damage from everything.
  • Parsee Mizuhashi, the bridge-haunting Green-Eyed Monster of Touhou: Subterranean Animism, is explicitly stated in-game to have powers fueled by her jealous rage. There's a reason it's called the "Bridge People No Longer Cross".
  • In Alpha Protocol, Steven Heck (don't call him "Steve") is one of the world's most talented secret agents. He's also totally batshit insane. Although never stated outright, there are some suggestions that Steven doesn't even work for the CIA like he claims, but is just some crazy guy who decided to become the world's greatest operative on a whim, and now is.
  • Portal has Doug Rattman, a programmer at Aperture Science with paranoid schizophrenia who was the only employee that saw GLaDOS as a serious threat to everyone. His schizophrenia manifested in the Companion Cube talking to him and giving him sound advice as he traversed the Aperture Science testing chambers. When he actually takes his meds, he becomes less capable, even getting clipped by the turrets.


Webcomics

  • 8-Bit Theater has very many characters that work like this. Let us categorize them:
    • Mad Genius: Red Mage, a Munchkin who believes that the universe runs on Tabletop RPG rules. Considering the fact that he has survived certain death TWICE by not writing down the damage he took it is very well possible that this is true. As far as RM goes, at least... And skeletons are wholly vestigial, anyway. Everyone knows that... However, whenever RM is trying to come up with a plan, as usual completely detached from logic, realism and the fundamental physical laws of the universe, this backfires, because reality doesn't work that way! ... Except when it's funnier if it does.
      • At least once, Red Mage tries to invoke this deliberately. Logical plans are flawed, he tells Black Mage, because of their very reliance on logic. A failure at any given step causes the whole plan to fall apart. By formulating a plan that is completely detached from logic, he has actually insulated it against such failure; since no one step actually relates to any of the others, screwing up won't have any effect on the overall plan.
    • Mad Oracle: Sarda is an interesting case of this, since, due to the Timey-Wimey Ball, you may or may not say that he may or may not have gotten his powers before he turned into an Ax Crazy, Sociopathic Jerkass.
      • He also doubles over as something of a Mad God, since he is older than the entire universe itself, borderline omniscient, and is, as mentioned above, an Ax Crazy, Sociopathic Jerkass... Earth used to have 36 hour days, but Sarda keeps them at 24 hours just to make everyone hurry.
    • Reality Warper: Though they probably are more stupid than crazy, both Black Belt and Fighter shows signs of this category. E.g., Black Belt has, due to his No Sense of Direction, on numberous occasions altered the space-time continuum in ways that shouldn't be possible. And when their deathtrap of a submarine was filling with water, Fighter was able to return it to normal by pulling out the plug and letting the water drain out.

Thief: I hate it when he makes things that don't make sense make sense.

  • Achewood features this in the Great Outdoor Fight. Those with Blood of Champions are known for entering fugues which destroy their minds afterward. Ray succumbs to this at first, but gradually channels it into a productive "berserker" state, which according to Roast Beef is the difference between "a lunatic [and] a pissed man with goals[.]"
  • Girl Genius does this with Mad Science: Sparks have phases where they're deeply intuitive, focused, driven, and scientifically brilliant, although they might forget to eat for days... or not to be evil.

Mayor of Mechanisburg: In my experience, a strong Heterodyne will take about two hours to truly warp laws of nature

    • When in their zone, they're also shown to pull off physical feats of determination. Even the Jaegermonster know better than to approach a Spark when they're in their 'Madness Place'.
  • In Mortifer, the less connections a demon has between his mind and reality, the more of their power they can access (this only applies when they're on earth, though).
  • It isn't the main source of his power, but Xykon in Order of the Stick definitely seems to be more powerful thanks to being completely mad. Inscribing a symbol of insanity onto a bouncy ball and throwing it into a room full of people isn't the sort of tactic a sane sorcerer would come up with.


Web Original

  • Monster Clown and maddest of the mad scientists Rhyme in Star Harbor Nights is able to produce feats even other mad scientists can't duplicate (like making helium burn like hydrogen) because she follows "an alternate ordering of the universe"
  • Doctor Steel. "Being insane allows me to be who I want to be. There are no longer any rules. I am crazy, and I will become World Emperor. Even if it's simply because I'm convinced I'm World Emperor." "You can get away with pretty much anything if you're bonkers."
  • Over at DC Nation, the crazy but lovable Shift swings between this and the Eeyore depending on whether or not his pills have worn off yet. If he's on his pills, he's more of a Cloud Cuckoo Lander hero, and if they've worn off, everything is trying to kill him (or at least that's what he says). Of course, he might just be trying to comprehend every single probability at once with a brain that cannot handle the knowledge. So the powers cause insanity, and then the insanity fuels the powers...
  • Most of the Channel Awesome reviewers believe this applies to Dr. Insano in Kickassia. First the Nostalgia Critic attempts to get Spoony to let him out, followed by those rebelling against him. Only Linkara sees that this is a dumb idea, but the others are convinced that you need a madman to stop another madman. Sure enough, Insano gets his ass kicked, although he comes closer to defeating the critic than any other individual rebel.


Western Animation

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