World Gone Mad: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* The Digital World in ''[[Digimon Adventure]]''. The weather is forecast as: "Sunny with occasional ice cream". Sadly, it fails to actually rain ice-cream.

* ''[[Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei]]''.

* This is what happens to Tokyo in [[Paprika]] after the mad parade (a conglomeration of surreal and maddening dreams) gets enough power to intrude into the real world.

 

== Comic Books ==

* ''[[Marvel Zombies]]'' is certainly a World Gone Mad.

* In the ''Emperor Joker'' storyline in DC Comics, [[The Joker]], having gained [[Reality Warper|godlike powers]], turns the entire world into a surreal hell. The world of the Joker's mind in ''[[Superman and Batman Generations|Superman & Batman: Generations II]]'' is similar.

 

== Film ==

* In ''[[Who Framed Roger Rabbit?]]'', Eddie Valiant must get himself back into the proper, insane frame of mind to be able to cope with Toon Town.

* ''[[Dr. Strangelove]]'' is what happens when you give Cold War paranoia that last little nudge into the abyss, then watch it fall.

 

== Literature ==

** [[Dirk Gently]] doesn't live in a mad world, it's just that being a [[Weirdness Magnet]] makes it locally insane.

* Almost anything written by [[Kurt Vonnegut]].

* Almost anything written by Alexis Gilliland. His cartoons for the old RPG ''[[GURPS]] Illuminati'' set the tone. ("It'll be tough to test my theory without destroying the universe... but what the heck... it's a really neat theory!" or "Paranoid police, sir. You're under arrest. Nobody could look that innocent unless they were plotting against the state.")

* The ''[[Discworld]]'' sometimes verges on this, especially in the books that star [[The Chew Toy|Rincewind]].

* ''Of Two Minds'' is set in a world that ''used'' to be one of these, before the local [[Reality Warper]]s got their act together and turned everything internally consistent. The sequel, ''More Minds'', sees the whole thing falling apart again. It's not quite as dangerous a place as most examples on this list, since everyone has some influence on what the world is like, and since [[Death Is a Slap on The Wrist]], but the constant shifting isn't very good for one's psychological stability.

* Inverted in a short story by [[Robert Sheckley]]. The protagonist, who lives in one of these, finds himself crossing dimensional boundaries into a universe where your physical surroundings don't change completely at random; the implication is that he finds ''ours'' to be the real World Gone Mad. By the end of the story he's a raving street preacher who spends his days ranting about how ''of course'' nothing can ever truly change and it's stupid to pretend otherwise.

* The world in ''Fahrenheit 451'' or ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'' is this.

* [[Alice in Wonderland|Wonderland and Looking-Glass House]] read rather like this, more than once reducing Alice to tears of frustration at trying to deal with their nonsense.

 

* ''[[One Foot in the Grave]]''. The Meldrews are afflicted by a constant barrage of cruel and surreal events at their expense. Nothing nice ever seems to happen to them, or indeed ''anyone'' in the Purgatory-like suburbia they live in.

* Many sketches on ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]].''

* The sections of ''[[The Daily Show]]'' where Jon Stewart talks to a "correspondent on the scene" are often like this, where the correspondent pretends to be a government shill and gives [[Cloudcuckoolander]] justifications for stupid or criminal government programs.

** It's eerily possible to say that ''[[The Daily Show]]'' and ''[[The Colbert Report]]'' both point out the absurdities of government in the World Gone Mad perspective. Eerie because, well, ''it's the real world''. Truth IS sometimes stranger than fiction.

 

== Music ==

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBJePxdPX3Y Mad World], by Tears for Fears, famously covered by [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N3N1MlvVc4 Gary Jules] - no pun intended, and it is also a [[World Half Empty]].

 

* The 1950s "Theatre of the Absurd" (especially Eugene Ionesco's work) may be the [[Trope Maker]]. Ionesco, by all accounts, based his World Gone Mad on bad experiences with Romania's Communist bureaucracy.

* Absolutely every play written by Christopher Durang. Summed up in the famous [http://www.whysanity.net/monos/crisis.html Peter Pan Monologue,] which would be the opening quote for this page if it weren't so long.

** His play '''Dentity Crisis,'' where the Peter Pan Monologue comes from, may be the best example of this trope. Jane lives with her mother, her brother, her father, her grandfather, and a visiting French count. However, Jane is the [[Only Sane Man|only person]] who realizes that the brother, father, grandfather, and count are actually a single person with multiple personalities. Everyone else thinks they're separate people, even though they see him switch personalities in front of them all the time. When Jane points this out, they think she's crazy. If you can't guess how the play ends from this description, [[Tropes Will Ruin Your Life|TV Tropes has not sufficiently ruined your life yet]].

* [[Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead]]. As [[Hamlet]] puts it, "the time is out of joint."

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** The Orks are fungus-creatures with the ability to reproduce their entire biosphere anywhere they go thanks to the spores they shed when they are killed. To make up for their crazy breeding rates, they seek out battle constantly, 'cause it's fun. Personality-wise, the entire species resembles football hooligans who have been given guns and axes.

** The forces of Chaos are empowered by warp entities to pursue their deepest desires. Unfortunately, they are shackled to those desires and are mostly twisted to the point that the terrible mutations induced by their patrons are of no concern to them. Also, their patrons are not exactly nice, [[Blue and Orange Morality|at least in human terms]].

 

== Video Games ==

* The city of Stillwater in ''[[Saints Row]]'' is practically a playground for various gangs, criminals, and other forms of mayhem. Driving a septic truck around spraying sewage on people's houses to lower property values is pretty par for the course.

** Steelport, of ''[[Saints Row the Third]]'' is even worse. Aside from [[The Syndicate]] consisting of hackers and Luchadores, costumed mascots seem to be a sizable minority within the city and is also home to [[Deadly Games|Professor Genki's Hyper Ethical Reality Climax]] (not to mention Professor Genki himself occasionally running around and killing civilians himself). As such, only a man such as Burt Reynolds is capable of being the mayor of such a city.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* In the ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' episode "The Return of Harmony, Part 2", Equestria gets turned into this under [[Anthropomorphic Personification|Discord]]. Everything gets crazier and more chaotic as the episode goes along and ''everyone'' is pretty much driven insane.

** To state a few examples: The dirt roads are transformed into soap, some houses are turned into flat props, others are uprooted and float seemingly of their own accord, the very sky shifts rapidly from day to night and back again, along with truly random creatures roaming the chaos-stricken land (buffaloes in tutus, rabbits with impossibly long, spindly legs, ''pies''...)

 

== Web Comics ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Absurdity Ascendant]]

[[Category:Settings]]