http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheTetrisEffect

When the game shows up in your Real Life

Announcement trailer for Tetris Effect (2018) for Tetris Effect (2018) "One of the first formal studies of the phenomenon was at Harvard Medical School in the year 2000. Participants played the game for seven hours each, spread over the course of three days. Remarkably, 63% of the participants - almost two thirds - reported seeing imagery from the game hours after they finished playing."

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You've been playing a game for so long that you start seeing it everywhere outside the game.

The game follows you. Every time you stop playing, you feel like you still have some pending business. You're seeing passwords in your Alpha-Bits. You try to power-slide on the drive to class. Clouds are looking suspiciously like troop formations to you. You may even begin to dream about tetris blocks and playing cards. The game is the only thing you can think about, even, and especially when you should be concentrating on other things.

Don't feel bad. It's happened to the best of us. The Tetris Effect — when a game permeates every aspect of your life. Named after the original, Tetris, which has superimposed itself on more ceiling tiles and eyelids than any other video game ever.

An amusing variant can occur if you've got two such intrusive games (or two characters in the same game — even worse if they both have good points) at once, and have to split your time between them. Once they start intermingling in your head, the result can be anything from laugh-out-loud ridiculous to seriously creepy.

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Extreme cases lead players to say: "I Know Mortal Kombat!".

There are as many examples as there are gamers — which is why this trope neither needs nor wants specific ones. If you'd like to discuss yours, might we suggest our fine forums .

This effect is likely due to the process your brain is thought to undergo when learning a new skill through repetition. In order to separate the 'noise' of non-repeating activities from the 'signal' of activities which will need to be performed frequently, and should thus be optimized for recall and performance (within procedural memory/Muscle Memory), the brain relies upon consistent manual repetition of an activity to identify the activity as a candidate for optimization (thus, 'practice makes perfect'). During this process, activity in the brain of the same sort generated by the undertaking of the activity is observable, as the brain undertakes to optimize the patterns of behaviour within the given activity. This can result in the sometimes distracting and disconcerting organization of other aspects of Real Life according to the patterns of a game skill in the process of being optimized - and thus, the specific symptoms of The Tetris Effect.

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This trope can drive one to insanity, especially when combined with the game music also being stuck in your head.

On an interesting note, TV Tropes can have this effect, as evidenced by this page.

Compare Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality.

This is not about games that keep you playing until three in the morning, although most examples of this will be a result of that. That trope is Just One More Level.

Not to be confused with the official Tetris game titled Tetris Effect, though this trope is the reason for the name.

Well-known Examples:

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Valve Games

How many Left 4 Dead players steer clear of the sound of crying, and twitch when they hear a cough or see someone wearing a hoodie?

Team Fortress 2: Many are proud of obtaining rare, silly hats in real life, and attempting to trade them for other hats. Some Spy players may start to think that human backs could really use a knife in them. On the other hand, players of other classes may start identifying suspicious Spy-like behavior among random passerbys. Snipers will find themselves scanning roofs for others of their ilk. Beware of auditory hallucinations: spies decloaking, sentries beeping, dummkopfs bleating "MEDIIIC!"... Ever feel like not standing still when you're outside? Want to just move around randomly. Just in case of snipers. How many Soldier mains here have picked up another FPS and immediately tried rocket jumping?

Half-Life gives us the Barnacle, which not only has people looking for its long "tongues" in other games, but can and does make one paranoid when you see things-that-look-like-tongues hanging from ceilings. And oh dear god, one mustn't forget the headcrabs.

Portal players frequently find themselves speculating what they would do with an Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device in real life. Now you're thinking with portals! Even if you've never played the game, it's still entirely possible for you to go through this. After all, who wouldn't want a real life Portal gun? Try wondering what would happen if you put portals on roofs in a suburb, as a slanted spot for a puzzle, then realizing that it's the wrong surface for portals because it has shingles, and it isn't white and smooth. It gets worse. "Okay, so I just arrived at my (school/work/insane asylum) and I need to get to my (class/office/padded cell) fast. I could just walk there, but I'm in a rush and that would take too long. I could run faster, I guess, or put a portal over there and my other one there and DAMMIT." Ever looked around, and seen an oddly portal-shaped part of a wall that is more white than the rest of the entire area and thought, "Oh, I found the portalable wall, now I can escape this level." Cracked has an entire article on this. The author got Portal 2 stuck in his head, then was heartened to meet a guy who was stuck on Tetris.

Thanks to Valve Software's addictive games, the entirety of the games by them are consolidated HERE ! (No, not there, but here.)

Driving Game

Try to avoid driving immediately after playing Mario Kart. It's not just the temptation to shoot Koopa shells at passing cars that you should be worried about... Immediately, heck, if you've ever played Super Mario Kart, when driving a motorized vehicle you need to keep in mind at all times that you don't actually have a jump button.

F-Zero GX has your racer regularly going at speeds greater than 1000 km/h. And the game allows you to put it in a first-person perspective and is compatible with a gaming wheel and pedals. Any speed less than 70 mph is going to seem ridiculously slow if you just got done playing an hour or two of the game.

The Burnout games, which feature realistic graphics and reward the player for dangerous feats like driving on the wrong side of the road, tailgating, and near-misses, may be the most egregious offender. They should really come with a warning not to attempt to operate a real motor vehicle immediately after playing. Unfortunately they don't.

Crazy Taxi is a lesser offender - unless your radio starts playing anything by The Offspring or Bad Religion.

Just because Gran Turismo prides itself on being a realistic racing sim doesn't make it any less guilty of this trope than the others on this list. If anything, the realism (and the presence of street-legal cars like the one you might own in Real Life) just makes it even more tempting to cut over a grass curb or drift around a turn at high-speed on the way to work. Don't Try This at Home, folks!

More than any of the above examples, you'll probably want to avoid driving for a while after playing Carmageddon , unless going to jail is something you plan on doing.

4 X

Galactic Civilizations II: referenced in one notable Let's Play that crossed this over with Earth-Shattering Kaboom and The All-Solving Hammer. It's my answer to everything. How did I try to mend relations with the Terrans? I destroyed a sun. How did I vanquish the Dread Lords? I destroyed their sun. How did I tackle the volatile Drengin? Destroyed all their suns. Drath relations dodgy? Gear up to destroy some suns.

It was spreading to real life, too. Deputy Editor Tim called just now to ask how this diary was coming along, and all I could say was "It's taking a while. Couldn't we just destroy the sun?"

Playing any of the grand strategy games by Paradox Interactive for long enough may typically warp your perception of diplomacy. An individual's opinion of you may become a variable mental value. Did you offend someone that you want to respect you? "I should send them $20-50." The subreddit /r/ParadoxPolitics is dedicated to posting links to articles about real world political and diplomatic events with a title describing those events in terms of Paradox game mechanics.



First Person Shooter

Wolfenstein 3D and Doom made older games feel the urge to strafe around real-world corners. Numerous stories tell of people stuck at closed doors searching for a space bar to press to open it. Another story tells of a gamer that opened a door, peered, quickly strafed and backed and muttered something about waiting there till the janitor shows so he can shoot her and proceed. Then he snapped back to his senses and asked not to tell anyone.

Play Modern Warfare 2 and be scared shitless whenever you hear a plane in fear that it's a Harrier, or start diving into cover whenever you hear a low series of metallic clinks because you think that the grenade proximity alarm has gone off.

BioShock. Who plays this for a few hours and then is not scared shitless every time they hear footsteps or metallic noises? Not to mention turning around after staring at something for a few seconds. Not to mention imagining the outside as underwater on occasion. No less hearing the words "Would You Kindly?" by other people.

by other people. One could argue that any FPS genre game (any WASD key game in general, actually) will forever alter your hand's natural position on the keyboard.

Playing The Darkness for very long will have you scanning your surroundings for light sources everywhere you go, just try to remember not to break all of them.

Playing No One Lives Forever will cause you to examine any room you walk into for security cameras and then think up ways to defeat or evade them.

Players of Borderlands 2 who picked Zer0 as their character / drift in and out of haiku / without noticing.

Fans of shooters of any kind will start seeing an aiming reticle overlaying their vision in real life.

Try playing Alien vs. Predator for a few hours without starting to be afraid of every air shimmer (Predator cloak), a woodpecker (the sounds it makes when pecking are eerily similar to a Predator growl), beeping sound (Space Marine motion detector), or dark spaces in general. In fact, playing as the Alien is the least scary part of the game.

Play any Serious Sam game for any length of time, and you WILL start mistaking the whine of your computer's cooling fan for the screaming of a Beheaded Kamikaze.

Spend too much time playing Killing Floor, and the sound of a girl crying will make you start looking for the Siren. You may also start speaking with an English accent.

Playing Descent for too long in one sitting may cause you to hear the "homing missile locked on" sound quietly in the background long after you've closed the game.

Going outside after a lot of GoldenEye will make you want to shoot out security cameras.

Titanfall may inspire you to instinctively assess architecture for chain-Wall Run paths.

Players of Rainbow Six: Siege often find themselves searching for and wanting to take out security cameras as is so important in game.

Anyone who has been on a serious Payday 2 bender will try to not bump into security guards or stay still in front of security cameras, as even when you don't wear your masks, this causes guards to spot you and sound the alarm. That, and looking for CCTV and security guards become a second nature.

Miscellaneous Games

Puzzle Game

Rhythm Game

osu! is a rhythm game where you click on circles. Naturally, you can expect to see them every time you close your eyes after playing.

If you play beatmania, Dance Dance Revolution, Pump It Up, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, or the like for long enough, listening to music on the radio will start to evoke a picture of a note track, not to mention moving your fingers (or feet) like you're playing the song you're listening to on an invisible controller. Air Guitar Heroing, if you will. Driving after playing Guitar Hero only to catch a setlist song on the radio may cause the driver to see the notes coming at him on the road. Related is an effect called "velocitization" that players of games with note tracks scrolling toward the player (Frequency, Amplitude, Guitar Hero, Rock Band) will notice after playing a song. After looking at the same spot, watching the notes scrolling towards you, for a few minutes then suddenly looking away, you'll notice your perspective seems to warp at the new spot you're staring at. It's not exactly the same thing but a more short-term phenomenon of your eyes themselves adjusting to constant movement in a certain dimension. When you look at a surface that isn't moving towards you, your eyes still try to compensate for the previous situation, leading to the feeling that it is in fact moving/warping away from you. Scantron test sheets have been compared to Guitar Hero solos because they have 5 slots for an answer corresponding to the five buttons in Guitar Hero, and only one is filled in. There is a Facebook group dedicated to this phenomenon. In some cases, playing a fast-paced song in a rhythm game can cause the person to have a sort of slowed perception of time, similar to Bullet Time.

One player of a DS rhythm game started seeing little circles closing in on his focus, like the keys on his keyboard or... well just where he looked. Turns out it came from an overdose of saving the world with AWESOME. Any rhythm game with a touch interface will make you compulsively tap to pretty much anything. One jubeat player demonstrates using his calculator.

Go play Rhythm Heaven, get a "perfect" on one of the minigames, and then listen to the minigames song by itself. You'll end up doing the actions yourself. Occasionally, you might find yourself bouncing your head like the characters do when you listen to a song.

Patapon has you drumming in time with a steady "1-2-3-4" beat that issues out commands to your army of 'Pons. After playing for even a few minutes, you'll never get the "Pata-Pata-Pata-Pon" chant out of your head and will likely find yourself walking in time with that beat for awhile as well.

Roguelike

Dwarf Fortress is notorious for causing people to start dreaming in ASCII. note Although, technically, the game's standard display is CP437, not ASCII. The Bay 12 forums are full of stories (be they their own threads or small diversions from the ones theyre posted in) of players wondering about putting things on artifact items, thinking about creating perpetual motion machines, and seriously debating mermaid enslavement to farm bones and internal organs.

After playing Diablo II (especially with friends who quickly grab everything), you will start to hear the "ding" noise that happens whenever a jewel/rune drops.

NetHack: Have you ever looked at an e-mail address and thought you were in a corridor filled with monsters?

Role Playing Game

People who played Persona 3, Persona 4, and/or Persona 5 might check their relationships with other people in terms of Social Links/Confidants, making sure that they advance it, not reverse it, or are not in an already established relationship while "forming" a new one when they make new acquaintances.

People who have played Ōkami have discussed drawing circles with their finger around dying vegetation, or where one would be placed to get it to come to life.

When meeting up with friends, it's common for some people to remark that their friend has just joined the party.

Many MUD players have reported dreaming in text. Starting sentences with "say" is also fairly common.

Sometimes, playing Tales of... games and spending too much time on the cooking makes you forget you can't actually make cake with bread, eggs, and milk.

Walking across campus (or any large area where a car is either not practical or simply not available) and wanting to reach into one's pocket and mount one's horse.

Playing lots of Skyrim and other RPGs can lead people to think about quickloading in real life when screwing up. There have also been cases where after playing a lot of RPG, players will walk or drive along searching the side of the road or fields for collectibles.

Any RPG that has Dialogue Trees can have a noticeable effect on how its players talk to other people and think about conversations in real life. Ever played Mass Effect all night and started seeing a dialogue compass pop up whenever it's your turn to say something?

Pokémon fans may look for type matchups in EVERYTHING.

Resonance of Fate players wind up plotting Hero Runs in their head, figuring out how to make the lines intersect and still make a big enough area to maximize Tri-Attacks.

There have been some claims that playing Fallout: New Vegas DLC Dead Money, in which you have an Exploding Collar that is activated by radios will make people feel uncomfortable when around said radios or even hear the beeping sound the collar makes when it's about to explode. Many beer and soft drink companies still bottle their beverages in glass bottles with steel crown-cork caps that require a bottle opener to remove, usually as a novelty "throwback" product. A Fallout player drinking from these bottles might catch themselves compulsively hoarding the caps.



Stealth

Anyone whom has played games of the Metal Gear series will sometimes either play the enemy alerted tone when they spot somebody sneaking about, or... when they themselves are spotted while sneaking around. Alternatively, play a lot of MGS1 and then talk to a friend or listen to a teacher who tells you about an unfamiliar concept. Resist the urge to respond "Unfamiliar concept?!". You can pretty much guarantee that after a run in a Metal Gear Solid game you'll find yourself shouting "METAUL GEAAAURRR?!" at random intervals. More extreme cases involve cardboard boxes. It's a given.

Playing Hitman can make one extra-observant towards any potential accidents, especially falling chandeliers. Or it might only make one wonder how to sneak undetected into the "Emplyees Only" sections of stores.

After enough hours in Dishonored, you might find yourself frequently looking up at roofs and imagining clickable blue arrows on shopfronts and street lamps.

Games like Assassin's Creed, Metal Gear, and Splinter Cell may have you studying your environment in search of the best spots to hide, plant mines or gently push people. The first game (if wearing a hoodie) has a tendency to make one walk slower and bow your head when you don't want to be noticed. Any of the Assassin's Creed games will have you unconsciously plotting improbable routes from point A to point B if you play them too much. It's worse if the area you currently happen to be in has a lot of Middle Eastern and/or Renaissance architecture. And even more so if a building was actually seen in-game. Try walking through Rome or Jerusalem now... If you've ever played multiplayer, you will very quickly develop a phobia of people walking behind you.



Survival Horror

Good horror games will leave players in pant-wetting fear of certain noises or places, especially in the dark. Alien: Isolation players learn to fear the sound of footsteps and may find themselves hiding away from people while thinking of ways to distract them. Resident Evil 4 players get jolly nervous when they hear the sound of a chainsaw... Silent Hill 2: scrape...scrape...scrape... ANY Silent Hill gamer would quiver in fear at the sound of a fire siren...

Dead Space ... one word: vents. Play for a while and holes in the real world start making you nervous. If you take the time to learn the insane scrawls left all over the game (the cypher is hidden on a viewscreen of the Ishimura), you will eventually try to decypher spraypaint writings left by graffiti artists.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent players probably avoided water for quite some time. And pretty much everything else that could make a sound. Loud crashing noises were the worst. Hearing the monster's howl will most likely make them jump.

People who played Metro: Last Light for more than a couple hours at a time probably caught themselves looking at their watch to check if they were visible and how long they have left on their mask filter. Or start monologuing in a Russian accent

After playing Five Nights at Freddy's, you'll be shutting your windows and lighting your hallways for weeks just to keep the killer animatronic faces away. Good luck going to any restaurant or other entertainment place that uses animatronics. Those characters may hold a special place in the hearts of children, but you might find it hard to shake off the feeling they're out to murder you gruesomely when your back is turned. And don't even get us started on Five Nights at Freddy's 4. You thought at least your own house was safe? Think again. Oh, and you might want to take a look at your bed. Something just might be gathering in there... Thanks to Fazbear Entertainment, you can now spend an eternity (or 999 years) having endless amounts of fun in the form of Special Deliveries directed to your doorstep!!



Turn-Based Tactics

From the review for X-COM: UFO Defense on Gamespot: Finally, I finished my first game, and proceeded to stumble about for weeks after, having paranoid delusions that aliens really were invading Earth, cautiously looking for a flashing red "enemy in sight" warning in my peripheral vision.

for X-COM: UFO Defense on Gamespot: Not surprisingly, its re-make XCOM: Enemy Unknown, has had the same effect, with people seeing "cover shields" everywhere, and making them wonder if a particular object is able to give half or full cover. Veteran Ironman Impossible players will find themselves avoiding overturned tables, cars, and similar half-cover in other games because they're "unreliable," even if they would work just fine.



Visual Novels

Play through 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors a few times and you'll be calculating digital roots for weeks.

Try playing any Ace Attorney game for a few hours then get into an argument with someone without shouting Objection!... And even then, try not to point while shouting. Good luck!

Wide Open Sandbox

Players of Wide Open Sandbox games, especially ones with extra mobility options, like Spider-Man 2, [PROTOTYPE], or Just Cause 2, are often found remarking in various online community forums that they wish they could web-sling around town (or run up walls) to make it easier to get around town and that they occasionally fantasize about what it'd be like to do so at the local mall.

Players of Assassin's Creed will start seeing paths of horizontal lines up every building they go by. It's even worse with Mirror's Edge. If you start getting the effect off of Mirror's Edge, you had better hope your favorite color is red.

Crackdown may cause an effect of seeing passable ledges on real buildings, as well as the ability to estimate what agility level you'd need to be in order to scale the building.

Factorio will make you see transport belts moving monotonously in the same direction, never stopping.

Grand Theft Auto: Despite all the fears generated by these games, one key thing was missed: the temptation created to just drive on the pavement killing dozens of innocent pedestrians or barge other cars out of the way when players are on the road IN REAL LIFE. Many people find themselves identifying real life cars by their GTA counterparts. After San Andreas, graffiti tags start setting off little lightbulbs in your head. Trying to enter the wanted level cheat when seeing a police car drive down the street after playing GTA for hours. This has happened more than once. Some may end up imitating the walk cycles of the playable characters, alongside forcefully pulling car doors open.

After playing L.A. Noire for too long you'll probably start mindlessly picking up random objects and turning them in your hand.

Minecraft: Players have reported starting to see everything as cubes. Walk up behind a Minecraft player and make a hissing sound. Ideally you should be wearing a football helmet when you try this. Play or watch the game for half an hour. You will never take the real meaning of the word "creeper" seriously again, trust me. Seeing something large enough to be made of blocks on a stand. "Why is there a stand there? I mean, it's not one of the gravity-affected blocks."

Playing inFAMOUS for extended periods of time may make one thirst for that extra boost, and start eyeballing power boxes, lamp posts, and even possibly cars.

Specialise in Alchemy in Oblivion or Skyrim and after awhile you'll find yourself staring speculatively at shrubs and flowers you see in real life, wondering if they're worth harvesting for their magical effects. And feel the urge to eat them in order to discover such effects.

Playing Spore long enough WILL make you look at animals, buildings and vehicles differently.

Second Life can be like this as well. You'll find yourself trying to get somewhere quickly, and trying to look for the fly button, or for the transport button if you spend any amount of time using a HUD such as EmDash. Ditto goes looking for the mute button when you wish someone would be quiet.

[PROTOTYPE]: It seems that 'outbreaks' of 'illnesses' are enough to set a seasoned player on edge. You won't hear the word Zeus the same again. BEE-BEE-BEE! Anyone accustomed to running away when the Viral Detector goes off will flinch when encountering actual sirens/alarms. The game's stance on cannibalism will make you wonder if you, too, should eat that security guard to get access to the military building so you can find and eat someone else useful to the mission...

Play Watch_Dogs for a while. Then just try to suppress the urge to whip out your smartphone and try to scan every person in sight to learn what juicy secrets they've got, or if they've got some cash to hack out of their bank account. Worse if you're already used to hack into security cameras and do basic parkour in order to prank your friends.



Non-video game examples:

Anime & Manga

If a fan were to spend a few weeks of their life watching Soul Eater each night after school or work, the aftermath would be much like this. After finishing the final episode and moving on to something else, it becomes confusing when characters in a World of Badass or even Adventure-Friendly World don't immediately introduce their weapons, who are in fact, not people. The effect can last up to a week.

In the manga version of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, insane Neat Freak Chiri's spring cleaning ultimately indulges in this trope. She becomes obsessed with filling dead space and starts stacking objects and people like blocks. Harumi comments that Chiri was always good at Tetris.

An in-universe non-gaming example in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Elma's OL Diary. Elma tries to erase Tohru by mashing delete on an imaginary keyboard after spending extra time at the office due to a deadline coming up.

Many anime fans will often envision the anime version of what is going on around them, at times. Complete with exaggerated expressions, sweat drops, and perhaps even the odd Japanese (or Japanese-pronounced) word.

Watching too much Death Note can make you slip into a manipulative and hyperanalytic mindset, and if there are people you don't like, you might find yourself planning and pulling schemes against them. You may also never eat potato chips the same way again.

Going to or seeing photos of a pool or beach after binge-watching Naruto makes for an odd experience. Why is everybody standing in the water instead of on top?

Comic Strips

Films — Live-Action

Psycho gave people a pathological fear of showers.

Jaws made people afraid to go to the beach or swim in the ocean, and started a (temporary) killing spree on sharks.

This effect is demonstrated near the beginning of the Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times with a factory worker continuously going through the motions of his task even when not working.

In Computer Chess, Shelley remarks that she has started seeing people as chess pieces during the tournament.

LARP

The live-action game Assassin, usually played on college campuses, is known for its paranoia-inducing effects on dedicated players. Always sitting with one's back to the wall, hanging out near exits, scanning for snipers....

Humans vs. Zombies can have this effect on its players. Looking over your shoulder to check for someone sneaking up on you, looking for choke points and other areas that would be useful if chased, so on and so forth.

Literature

Live-Action TV

Meta

This wiki. To the point where we have two tropes dedicated to the phenomenon.

Tabletop Games

GURPS players often start statting random everyday items, because they can. Similarly, almost every GURPS player has tried making a character sheet for their real-life self.

Dungeons & Dragons or SPECIAL games have been known to make people think in terms of stats, perks, etc. D&D alignments are especially dangerous: see tropes like Lawful Stupid for illustrated examples. This has reached far enough that the first thing many authors do is figure out what a characters alignment would be in D&D.

Mekton players on the Mekton Zeta Mailing List have drawn up stats for most anime mecha, most real military vehicles and even stats for Tupperware.

Many a BattleTech player, especially those who know of it's connection with certain anime series', will try converting most Mecha or vehicle stats to Battletech's own construction system.

Toys

Spend a few days on a LEGO project and try not to see the blocks on the insides of your eyelids.

Web Comics

From Scott McCloud's My Obsession With Chess : My brain was being rewired. I began to see diagonal lines of force emanating out of the corners of any orthogonal pattern such as the tiles of a floor or the legs of a chair.

: Awkward Zombie: Katie sets her ringtone to be the Metal Gear "enemy spotted" tone... and freaks herself out whenever the tone actually sounds.

to be the Metal Gear "enemy spotted" tone... and freaks herself out whenever the tone actually sounds. Homestuck: The official forums have threads full of people talking about what the webcomic has made them do, including more than a few mentions of attempting to captchalogue items and jumping at the sound of bicycle horn honks.

Web Original

Web Videos

Have you taken in a lot of media regarding Slender Man? You might laugh at the first tall shadow you see, but over time it stops being funny and starts becoming pure Paranoia Fuel. Tobuscus encounters this effect in this video .

. Mike of Outside Xbox exhibits this with regard to Peggle 2. Mike: This week, I've been playing a lot of Peggle 2. Too much Peggle 2. I'm having trouble distinguishing reality from Peggle 2.

[Clip of Mike throwing scrunched-up paper at the bin, only for it to go into slow-motion and play Ode to Joy when he manages a hit]

Western Animation

The Doug episode "Doug's Lost Weekend" had Doug winning a Super Pretendo and becoming obsessed with beating a game called Space 'Munks. When Roger Klotz bothered him in class, he imagined his game's targeting system locking on.

The Simpsons had several in-universe examples. When the family buys too much stuff at Rainier Wolfcastle's yard sale, and Homer goes through a Tetris sequence (complete with the 8-bit Korobeiniki theme lifted directly from the Game Boy version of the game) to fit everything inside the car... except himself. When Lisa became a crossword puzzle addict, she started to see crosswords in everything. Apu sometimes answers with his trademark quote outside of work. "Thank you, come again." In one episode, Homer attempts to jam Lenny's head into a jigsaw puzzle while trying to complete it, hallucinating he fits the spaces perfectly. Lenny ends up with several jigsaw pieces in his eye, as is usual for him.

Watch enough Transformers and you could find yourself visualizing what every vehicle or household appliance would look like if it spontaneously turned into a robot.

During an interview at the end of an episode of Jackie Chan Adventures, Jackie muses that he started having Tetris nightmares after playing.

Happened in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Skill Crane". After being stuck playing (and losing) the Krusty Krab's new crane game all day, Squidward goes home to find that he's lost all his motor skills, dropping everything he tries to pick up while hearing the sound of the crane's claw closing down.

Used in a Robot Chicken sketch: Kid: (while using a hammer and nail) Where's the delete key on this thing?! Grandpa: (turns the hammer around to the claw side) Kid: Wow! Grandpa: I hate your entire generation.

South Park had an episode which asked the question of video game haters: If kids are supposedly imitating violent games, why isn't the same true for non-violent games? As well as pointing out there are plenty of nasty things on television as well that no one cares about. In the episode, the kids are worried that watching "informative murder porn" will make their parents want to kill each other, so they put a blocker on the TV, with the unlock code being "How do you tame a horse in Minecraft?" Wanting to watch their shows, the adults end up getting hooked on Minecraft and start punching trees and making castles out of blocks of junk in real life.

Real Life