Today, we look at that guy. The one guy in the movie that just can not handle his shit. The one guy that WILL snap and, quite possibly, slaughter one or two party members with gleeful abandon.
That guy...
No, man! This guy's totally cool! You can trust him!
Now, obviously, we've got some tension that needs to be resolved but our characters aren't really in a place to get it done. Whether they're being corralled by zombies, trapped in a futuristic prison-like testing facility, despairing over the cramped conditions in outer space or underwater, frayed nerves are an inevitability but there's always ONE character that will declare, through his actions, non compos mentis status. Well, not ALWAYS but there's pretty good bettin' odds.
There a couple of different ways this character can be portrayed. On the one hand, we've got the "normal" dude who, due to the circumstances, just takes a shortcut to Crazy-Town. On the other hand, we've got the skeevy loose cannon that we know is gonna be a total douchebag and happily dance across the moral line, swinging a lead pipe.
He seemed so nice...
Now, this is a relatively new trope. It really didn't even show up in literature until Joseph Heller's Catch-22 in 1961. (Trivia note: the number 22 in that phrase has no actual meaning. The original title of the book was Catch-18. 18 didn't mean anything, either. WHYYYYYYYYYOh, I don't care.)
ANYWAY! Most times, this character is there to add fuel to the fire. From Ash in Alien to Pinbacker in Sunshine, these characters give our heroes one more front to fight on. Granted, this new front doesn't last very LONG, because once this characters actions are discovered, karmic retribution is usually swift and painful but that added touch of paranoia is delicious.
HA, HA! Eat it, Ash.
Occasionally, this character is revealed to be the big bad. Like William Weir from Event Horizon or Burke in Aliens, these characters could have ulterior motives that aren't fully revealed until the climax and are, often, the reason our heroes are in their situation to begin with. That doesn't relieve these characters from their punishment but their role is significantly expanded in these cases.
One thing you DON'T want to confuse these characters with is the zombie/vampire/monster transformation. The psycho-snappy-snap is entirely mental (or programming-related). Any other type of change comes from outside and that is a separate trope entirely.
I'm not entirely convinced that these characters are at all necessary in any kind of media, myself. The most paranoid television show, EVER, Lost, actively avoided this trope. It came close but never quite nailed it. The psycho teammate, though, IS fun and gives us something to talk about after the movie is over. Words like "asshole", "dickbag" and "complete fucktard" are perfectly valid to use.
Watch your backs, kids. And seriously, if your buddy starts getting twitchy, give him the double-tap.
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