Tulpas and Tulpa-like Things in the Media

[Shui]

The book The Universal Baseball Association is about a man with hundreds of unimposed tulpas. His wonderland is a baseball field, and his tulpas are the players and their families. They possess him, especially when he's drunk, but never seem to actually be aware of him or the real world.

 

In the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde, the main character fights a being with the power to manipulate memory, who infects her with memories of a daughter she never really had. Her family has to pretend that the child is there but just out of sight for years until they all end up believing in her too. The thing is, the child is imposed and sentient, but she can't be seen by real people.

 

In the Barsoom series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, there's an entire race of people can create tulpas at will, except the tulpas can be seen and interacted with by anyone. Some of the people of this race think they're tulpas imposing themselves.

 

The webcomic Paranatural is about a group of kids (and some adults too) who can see and interact with beings that normal people can't see.

 

The book The Supernaturalist is similar.

 

The pen and paper roleplaying game Changeling: The Dreaming (and to some extent, the remake, Changeling: The Lost) is also about a world of things that only certain people can see.

 

The play and movie Harvey is about a man who has a friend who is a humanoid rabbit who only he can see. The rabbit is capable of interacting with the world though -- or at least that's what people sometimes think.

 

Real life example: Nikola Tesla could supposedly impose machines to see how they worked before he built them.

 

Another real life example: Bob Hoskins visualized many of the cartoon characters from Who Framed Roger Rabbit so that he could act in scenes with characters he couldn't see. After the film, he said he couldn't get rid of the characters for months afterwards.

[Angus and Alexis]

Pennywise the happy clown from "IT".

[Jun and Alexis]

It's already been mentioned, but I'd like to extend the Mirai Nikki (Future Diary) tulpa theory. THERE WILL BE SPOILERS

 

I want to say either Yukiteru or Yuno is a tulpa, however it's more likely that it's Yuno. Yes, they can interact with the real world, however the world jumps, different timelines and worldbreaking, fullout memory sealing and retrieving by Murmur (More of a servitor than tulpa), and Wonderlands (Episodes ~23+) point towards tulpa a lot more than most other media stated with loose connections.

 

It's stated even in episode one by Yukiteru before it fades to black indicating the beginning of the series that it's all in his head. He later becomes super-mega-host-god at the end of episode 26.

 

Even in the sequel/prequel Redial Yuno talks to herself while wrapped in a blanket which gave me an eerie feeling of how we look when forcing.

 

 

 

For Yugioh mentioned many pages back, Dark Yuugi is probably more of a tulpa based on Kid Yuugi's shadow. In the early episodes of Duel Monsters (The first card series everyone knows and grew up with), kid Yuugi switched with Dark Yuugi, however there wasn't enough distinction between the two for them to qualify as separate people, merely a more confident and risk-taking self. When his friends are in trouble, he would use his persona/tulpa as a confidence boost to royally fuck them up such as setting people on fire. For justice!

 

This is also true in the manga before he fought Bakura in the Dark RPG. As time went on, instead of Dark Yuugi referring to Yuugi as "Another Self," he referred to him as "Partner" and kid Yuugi began to become more aware of him as a person rather than his other self, though kid Yuugi throughout the entire series always referred to Dark Yuugi as "Another Self." Wonderlands are also used in the Egypt arc as it was merely Dark Yuugi playing a tabletop RPG with Bakura's dark self/tulpaform, however once this is realized by Dark Yuugi, he opts to go in and finish the game with real Wonderland bodies. It's also noticed that each of the characters also has a healthbar (Though it's unseen when in-game), which is not uncommon for NPCs and servitors for Wonderland games.

 

There's also that whole thing where Yuugi can go INSIDE his head Wonderland to talk to Dark Yuugi, something which only he can do and see.

 

Clusterfuck of Possessions: The Card Game.

 

 

Maybe the Yugioh one is a stretch as the series evolved, but it definitely seemed like Yuugi created an accidental tulpa, to the point of him actually growing afraid of what it might do and how it would influence him. Yugioh is more like a Happy End variation of that doppelganger creepypasta from way back. Dark Yuugi as far as I know does not leave Yuugi's body the entire series outside of Wonderland Egypt and the Ceremonial Duel at the end.

[Mr. Duke and His Attorney]

What's your guys' take on the TV show "Perception" on TNT? One of the characters is a tulpa. She is treated as an imaginary friend of sorts spawned through the paranoid schizophrenia of the main character. I've only seen one episode, but the themes seem to focus on issues of validity (and constructs and neuroplasticity and shit. The title says it all). That is, schizophrenic hallucinations/episodes are helpful because they can reveal things one wouldn't have thought of, or that an imaginary friend can independently help solve issues on a case. All in all, it goes really in depth into how people perceive the world. At this point, I can't tell if it's being intelligent/deep or if it's "TV intelligent" which amounts to something just tricky enough for the audience to follow and therefore feel smart about themselves. Hopefully, both.

 

I really want to go watch the episodes where the tulpa character is the focus to see what's what. She is described by the wiki as his best friend and adviser.

 

My theory is that one or both of the series' creators had a very real imaginary friend somewhere in their life.

 

Besides all this, it has LeVar fucking Burton as a goddamn cultural anthropologist. Hell. Yes. Oddly enough (read "not odd at all"), the issues/themes of the episodes are currently trending in cultural anthropological theory.

[Kaz with a K]

@Chao: I haven't seen the full series, so I couldn't read your whole post, but Deus Ex always seemed to be like a Tulpa-gone-godform kinda thing to me :P

Also, Oryx from Oryx and Crake is a Tulpa after Jimmy starts seeing her all night.

[Shui]

Everybody knows Alice in Wonderland, but not many people know about Sylvie and Bruno, the two-volume novel Lewis Carroll wrote near the end of his life. The narcoleptic protagonist dreams of a fantasy world where he spends time with two fairy children named Sylvie and Bruno. Eventually the children cross over into his waking life, initially visible only to him, but eventually visible to everyone.

 

How long this humiliating scene would have continued, if I had been the only external influence, it is impossible to say; for at this moment Sylvie, with a swift decision worthy of Napoleon himself, took the matter into her own hands “You go and drive her, up this way,” she said to Bruno. “I’ll get him along!” And she took hold of the stick that Arthur was carrying, and gently pulled him down the lane.

 

He was totally unconscious that any will but his own was acting on the stick, and appeared to think it had taken a horizontal position simply because he was pointing with it. “Are not those orchises under the hedge there?” he said. “I think that decides me. I’ll gather some as I go along.”

 

Meanwhile Bruno had run on behind Lady Muriel, and, with much jumping about and shouting (shouts audible to no one but Sylvie and myself), much as if he were driving sheep, he managed to turn her round and make her walk, with eyes demurely cast upon the ground, in our direction.

 

The victory was ours! And, since it was evident that the lovers, thus urged together, must meet in another minute, I turned and walked on, hoping that Sylvie and Bruno would follow my example, as I felt sure that the fewer the spectators the better it would be for Arthur and his good angel.

[Semi-Nomadic]

I've played Penumbra: Black Plague recently, and it struck me how very tulpa-like one element seemed.

 

Spoilers ahead.

 

 

 

Your protagonist gets infected by a virus which incorporates its victims into a hive mind, but he manages to resist, and the virus instead stays in his head as a separate consciousness, "Clarence". It behaves much like a tulpa -- it can talk to you, states that it's living in your mind, can read through your memories and remove them, watch movies you've already watched (and complains that you haven't watched "It's a Wonderful Life" all the way through, so he can't see the ending); it can give you hallucinations and partially control your body, and at one point even suggests that you two might develop a permanent, amiable relationship where you "take turns to drive". At one point, it also shows you what is it like to live inside your mind... which is to say: void, with no sensory input.

 

Also, the first thing you hear him say is: "Hello?... Hello, can you hear me?... What am I even doing here?... Who am I?... Why can't I hear their voices?... Well, thanks for the help. I am having an existential nightmare and you won't even say a word!" It's actually a part of the hive mind panicking because it has no connection with the rest, but it sounds very much like the confusion of a newly born tulpa.

[Spartanelete]

Reznov form Black Ops.

---

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

 

welp

 

Thread's over.

 

Several people on the reliable internet have claimed to have created some, with beliefs ranging from "It's magical" to "It's a self-induced schizophrenia". Tulpa.info is probably the largest website about the phenomenon.

 

 

Nice.

[Silver]

World War Z's 30th chapter contains a survivor of the Zombie Apocalypse

, whos shear will, and encouragement is revealed to originate from a Tulpa

[nilink]

Creepypasta's the new horror stories of the internet they are what brought me here and the wiki has over 560,000 users has a popular tulpa story that I am surprised I overlooked until a month and a half ago.But it basically has a experiment where a innocent (male) bystander is met in the paper with a ad that is for mental experiment's that pay him to create his own tulpa with a brain activity monitor attached but you can guess it goes wrong or it wouldn't be on the site .If you want the rest I sudgest you read it. But be warned its not for the feint hearted or bronies.