United States Patent: 6,935,954 - Nintendo Owns "Increasing Insanity"

This ain't no joke, folks. Nintendo has patented in-game insanity. And it appears as though they've had the technology since 2002 with their title Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. In this game, you, the player, encounter monsters, and as you do, you start to lose your mind. The game actually begins to misbehave, such as muting your televsion by itself.

If only there was some way to prove that this idea is just a derivative of something that's in the public domain. Perhaps some short fiction from the 1920s. Yes, that's all public domain by now. If only there was some author from the 1920s who had written stories about people losing their sanity by interacting with horrifying or grotesque things. The following is a quote from the patent, only I have taken the liberty of removing all occurrences of the words "video" and "game" from it:

During play, a character may be exposed to many horrific scenes such as one or more creatures or a gruesome situation that affect a character's sanity.

Yes. Yes, I think we may be onto something. If only I could remember a story — in the public domain because it was written in the 1920s — where a gruesome situation affects a character's sanity.

Oh, if only.