VHS appears upside down, colors wonky?
 

Never seen this one!
Tape plays fine for 1minute+, then all heck happens.
There is visible damage to the VHS-C tape, and I get similar results from 4 machines, and no audio in the bad section. I've used a JVC-S7800/S3500, Toshiba W808, and Mitsu U778.
As for TBC...same with DataVideo TBC1000, and the CMD1200.
Really just posting for posterity, not sure I even have a question.
Might have to call this one a loss.

The magnetic tape is flipped over, Stop it right where it changes and find the fold, It's a tedious job to fix especially if the reversed section is too long.

The shiny side is still facing the heads, so methinks it’s got to be spun/rotated end to end.
A little surgical work and a transplant to a full size shell in my future.

According to your description it plays fine then it reverses, If the whole tape is rotated it wouldn't have any sections that plays normally, This only happens if someone intentionally had reversed it and then recorded few minutes on the tape to see if it records, So it would play the new recording fine then when it reaches the old reversed recording it shows the reversed image.

By the way I did this trick back in the day but my reason was to use the tape for future recordings as it was curled on the bottom where the control track is and it would miss track when recorded on. So I spun it over to put the curl on top in the linear audio section since I was recording Hi-Fi stereo and was not interested in linear mono, It worked and saved the then potential blank tape, It was damaged by someone else and was trying to save some money by repurposing it.

The time code is running backwards!
EDIT: I went through 75% of that $%^&n tape by hand, twice, and found 1 splice.
Must be a good splice it went through 4 machines.

Odd - VITC or linear track time code, or burned in time image?

Is the motion backwards too?

Nothing makes things clearer or more confusing than a video sample.
Note at the time of the first upside down frames the audio remains going forward normally.
The splice I found is where it goes crazy after, but if the tape itself is placed in any other orientation than as designed, it wouldn't play at all...is that correct?
I chose MPEG2 to preserve the interlacing. You will also see the time code run backwards at the end.
One more thing...the trails on the timecode, shouldn't they be "dragging" or bleeding to the right?

After cutting out blank areas it becomes obvious the shooting sequence is also backwards.
So…upside down, reverse, backwards, no audio, crazy colors. Fun stuff.