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Early in Thor: The Dark World Dr Erik Selvig causes a disturbance at Stonehenge while naked and is shortly taken into care by the British state services. Later, he behaves oddly, for example, working in his underwear.

This is not merely eccentricity. Although his scientific mind is working as well as ever, something is amiss with Erik Selvig. What accounts for this development on his mental health since the earlier movies?

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    IAN [as Erik grabs his bag of meds off him]: I’m Ian by the way, uh, Darcy’s intern. Yeah, I don’t get paid either. Are you alright? ERIK [knocking back pills]: I’ve had a God in my brain. I don’t recommend it.
    – Vahx
    Commented Dec 23, 2017 at 15:09
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    "Later, he behaves oddly, for example, working in his underwear." I'd hardly call that a case for insanity.
    – Pharap
    Commented Dec 23, 2017 at 21:24

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There seems to be a couple of things going on here;

Erik was under Loki's mind control for several days. Exposure to such a powerful alien technology and Loki's own intense (but eccentric) psyche apparently unhinged him. The actor describes it thusly;

“Having a god in your head for a while creates some psychological problems,” he says, “and I’m trying to get rid of them. I start this film in a, let’s say, disrupted mode.”

Thor: The Dark World Second Trailer Breakdown

His recent behaviour is also skewed by taking a whole bunch of psychotropic(?) medications.

enter image description here

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    +1 for bringing the actor's own view of his motivation into the conversation. I had thought that the bag of medications that Selvig discards were prescribed to him during his detention, but perhaps they were from beforehand. That feels better, because I don't like the idea of Selvig binning medication that he needed to recover!
    – EleventhDoctor
    Commented Dec 23, 2017 at 13:00
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    Looking at that picture makes me wonder if I could have an acting career after all ...
    – Will Crawford
    Commented Dec 24, 2017 at 2:52
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    @WillCrawford - It takes hours to make someone who looks like this look like that...
    – Valorum
    Commented Dec 24, 2017 at 3:01

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