Don't make him angry. You won't like him when he's angry.
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by el-grimlock. Used with permission.
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by el-grimlock. Used with permission."When I try to remember, everything goes by too fast. I had it by the neck. It pulled Jenna toward its open mouth. I squeezed hard... pulled... The kids say I tore the thing's head off, just ripped it right out with all the flesh and muscle and whatever else hanging in tatters."
— Mary Jo Miller, Californian soccer mom, World War Z
One of the worst things you can ever do with a hero is to do something that gets them well and truly furious, because rage makes good guys unbeatable. They will go into a frenzy and become stronger, faster, braver, more agile and more indestructible than they've ever been, and they will annihilate you. This holds particularly true if the character in question is generally meek and feeble. Often indicated with Angry Eyebrows in animation. Caution must be employed by the character, since such tantrums can sometimes lead to a Heroic BSoD.
Used widely in shonen anime. Perhaps because the young male demographic likes to see fast and brutal retribution against enemies who most likely brought it on themselves.
Sometimes referred to gaining Heroic Resolve, particularly if it's in response to a threat against somebody or something that the hero cares about. This is a common result of pressing the character's Berserk Button, and especially occurs if a nice person is pushed a little too far. They might cry but won't stop their attacks. Characters in the grip of an Unstoppable Rage are prone to a Foe-Tossing Charge. They might Kick Them While They Are Down without realizing that they are doing it.
For the quantum leap in badassery achieved without an emotional overflow, see Let's Get Dangerous!. In videogames, this is often a Limit Break, or a 11th-Hour Superpower.
However, there is always the Subversion where a character ends up Blinded by Rage, where making them angry usually causes them to lose focus, make poor decisions and fall victim to Untouchable Until Tagged. Interestingly enough, this case usually happens to villains. Unless they are a video game enemy.
Compare with Superpowered Evil Side. See also Rage-Breaking Point, where this is set off by a multitude of things piling up until a final event proves to be the last straw. The Power of Hate is a similar concept, but focused on hate instead of simply fury.
Contrast with Tranquil Fury, often preceded by a Death Glare or Dull Eyes of Unhappiness. May be instilled in Actual Pacifists with Teach Him Anger. A character who lives by this and counts on it may be The Berserker. A Roaring Rampage of Revenge (or its smaller, arguably more spontaneous counterpart, Extreme Mêlée Revenge) may include this.
This trope is WAY older than you might think—it was so well established by their time the ancient Greeks actually referred to this trope as "aristeia". Literal translation? "An act of supreme excellence". Yes, seriously. Even more surprising is the longstanding association with angsty and broadly appealing characters like Achilles.
Examples:
- Anime & Manga
- Comic Books
- Fan Works
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Tabletop Games
- Video Games
- Webcomics
- Western Animation
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Comic Strips
- In Scary Gary, sometimes Leopold gets angry enough to go all-out on a violent rampage, although the results are usually just lightly talked about after the fact, since it would be just a bit much for a newspaper comic to show in detail.
Films — Animation
- During the big showdown at the end of An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, Chula the spider takes Miss Kitty hostage. This causes Tiger to flip out, barking ferociously and singlehandedly kicking the asses of all of Cat R. Waul's Mooks before dragging Chula down and tossing him on the mousetrap's arm with the rest of the baddies.
- The Beast in Disney's Beauty and the Beast often calls upon this trope, particularly when Belle is placed in danger.
- Big Hero 6: When Hiro learns Callaghan was Yokai, and he was responsible for Tadashi's death, he goes absolutely berserk (albeit in a Tranquil Fury way) and turns Baymax into a killing machine in order to kill Callaghan. He doesn't even calm down until he sees Tadashi's video.
- Queen Elinor as Mum-Bear in Brave gets some moments while going Mama Bear to protect Merida from Mor'du. Also, her husband, Fergus, when he thinks Mor'du had kidnapped or killed her and chases her, gets this moment, despite Merida's desperate protests about the bear's identity.
- Madam Blue towards the end of The Magic Roundabout film Dougal and the Blue Cat. She is quite livid upon finding out from Buxton that Blue Peter is actually Dougal, that she strips Buxton from his title of King and unleashes a violent thunderstorm around the treacle factory, causing it to collapse. By the time she calms down, Madam Blue screams in agony over her failure of turning everything in the universe blue.
- Hannover Fiste towards Captain Sternn in Heavy Metal: "STEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!" Subverted when it turns out it was all an act.
- The titular character from The Iron Giant when he's threatened. Explicitly stated to be part of his programming, that has absolutely nothing to do with rage and he has no conscious control over it initially. To be clear, he resists with his little friend's help and runs away, but when the attacks persist and his friend appears to be dead, the giant emotes some very clear rage and engages his attack-response programming
- From The LEGO Movie, we get to see what's beneath Unikitty's Genki Girl persona when it slips. Woe betide anyone she unleashes her rage onto, as the climax could attest.
- In The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Bowser goes into one HELL of an unstoppable rage after Mario ruins his wedding.
- The Lion King (1994):
- Pumbaa the Warthog (and the Timon & Pumbaa series) goes into an Unstoppable Rage charge whenever someone calls him a pig.
Pumbaa: They call me... MISTER PIIIIIIIG!!!
- Simba himself is in this state◊ throughout the movie's climax after Scar reveals that he killed Mufasa.
Simba: MURDERER!!
- Pumbaa the Warthog (and the Timon & Pumbaa series) goes into an Unstoppable Rage charge whenever someone calls him a pig.
- The Little Mermaid:
- King Triton has one when he destroys Ariel's secret grotto after she confesses her love to Eric. The second it ends and he sees his daughter sobbing her heart out, he regrets it.
- Ursula the Sea Witch becomes angry (after what Ariel did to Flotsam and Jetsam), causing the evil hag to grow into a 50-foot giant (while wearing King Triton's crown and using King Triton's trident to wipe the mermaid out).
- In Turning Red, the main reason why Mei's family wants her to seal her red panda form is because her mother went on violent rampages when angered. The first time it happened resulted in Ming accidentally scarring Wu and the second time led to Ming destroying half the temple when Wu initially refused to bless her relationship with Jin. When her red panda form is unleashed in the climax, she does massive damage to the SkyDome, and gets angrier when Mei finally stands up to her.
Films — Live-Action
- In 300, the Captain flies into such a rage when he sees his son Astinos get his head chopped off on the battlefield during a lull in the action. A decent amount of single-handed ass-kicking ensues until three of his fellow Spartans have to physically restrain him and drag him back to their camp.
This is even more badass when his screams are carried all the way to the Persian camp, and scares them more than the deepest battledrums. - Avatar: The Way of Water: Neytiri flies of the deep end of this after Neteyam is killed, going on a murderous rampage and gruesomely slaughtering all of Quaritch's squad by herself. The rampage is such that Spider is forced to go into hiding, cowering in fear as he watches the carnage unfold, and culminates with Neytiri killing the last squad member in her vicinity, screaming in pure, blistering rage at the top of her lungs and snarling like a rabid wild animal.
- The Blind Side: Michael, normally a Gentle Giant, gets his Berserk Button hit and hulks out when a drug dealer makes sexual comments about Leigh Anne and Collins.
- Ralphie in A Christmas Story. After getting a C+ on his "What I Want For Christmas" essay, and feeling really despondent, neighborhood bully Scot Farkus pelts him in the face with a snowball. After he adds some verbal taunting, Ralphie snaps and beats the everloving crap out of him, while other neighborhood kids look on, reducing Farkus to a sobbing, miserable wreck.
- District 9: Wikus in the final battle.
- Due Date: After Peter Highman finds out Ethan had stole his wallet to make him join him for a ride across the country, he furiously rages at Ethan and is on the verge of strangling him until his wife calls.
- Equilibrium's John Preston goes into a Tranquil Fury version of this after DuPont spends a moment to gloat about how Preston played right into his hands. No one survives the resultant Gun Kata asskicking spree.
- Jason Voorhees, the main killer from the Friday the 13th series, is made of this. A bad childhood with him used as the other kids' chew toy, nearly got drowned and has seen his own mother, the only person in the world who treated him as a human being, killed by some girl are all the ingredients needed to create an immortal, vengeful serial killer who is spending his time butchering people that get too close to him. Hell, his rage is so great that not even the Dream Demon Freddy Krueger himself can fight it.
- The Fugitive: Richard Kimble displays this upon finally encountering the man who murdered his wife, and upon confronting his so-called friend who set the murder plot in motion.
- Galaxy Quest: After Quellek is shot, Alexander Dane charges the perpetrator in a fury and takes him down. When we next see him, he's still fighting his way through Sarris' armed and armored troops — and, from the look of things, he's winning.
- Godzilla destroys cities because he's angry.
- Go ahead. Mess with Godzilla's son. That's a dare. That's a double-dare. No matter what the timeline, messing with Godzilla's kid is a very painful way to commit suicide, because Godzilla won't just KILL you, he'll END you.
- Oddly enough, in both GoodFellas and Casino, Joe Pesci seems to have a dangerously psychotic Unstoppable Rage that goes off from something as simple as a misunderstood compliment. Actually averted in Pesci's famous "You think I'm funny?" scene. He's just screwing around with Henry Hill. What he does to Billy Batts and Spider, on the other hand...
- Jack, of Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, is prone to this as a result of his Dark and Troubled Past. It comes in handy against the monsters.
- In Jurassic World, Rexie is already furious when she sees the I. rex intruding on her territory. But after receiving a savage beating and Blue giving her a Heroic Second Wind, she goes full-on berserk and gives I. rex an even more intense beatdown.
- In Legends of the Fall, Brad Pitt's character Tristan Ludlow goes on an Unstoppable Rage-fueled Roaring Rampage of Revenge after he watches his younger brother die on a WWI battlefield from machine gun fire and mustard gas. He not only slaughters every German in the vicinity but arrives back at field camp the next morning wearing warpaint of mud and blood and strings of fresh German scalps.
- In Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Big Chris, for all his ruthless coercion and threatening demeanor, is rather a reasonable chap . . . until a man takes his son prisoner. He goes full Papa Wolf on the man, smashing his head repeatedly in a car door while roaring incoherently.
- Lancelot in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in his hilarious, over-the-top, and gruesome assault on Swamp Castle. He is snapped out of it by "unexpected" nature of his "princess", is verbally accused back into the rage again, then apologizes to his victims profusely, in sheer embarrassment. "Sorry. Sorry. You see what I mean? I just get carried away. I'm really most awfully sorry. Sorry! Sorry, everyone." This is a trait of the character in the original legends.
- In The Muppet Movie, Miss Piggy flies into one of these, complete with Nightmare Fuel eyes, when a villainous scientist tells her he's about to zap Kermit's brain. Mentioning bacon didn't help his cause.
- Subversion: In Mystery Men, Ben Stiller's character Mr. Furious was a superhero seemingly built around Unstoppable Rage — except that when he raged, he wasn't much less stoppable than a "normal" adrenaline-fueled angry person. He didn't become substantially stronger, tougher or faster, which wasn't very useful. During the final battle, however, his rage apparently gave him enough momentum to overcome the Big Bad, as the other instances were him trying to invoke this trope, and failing miserably.
- In The Patriot (2000), French & Indian War veteran Benjamin Martin is fueled with unstoppable rage when his second-oldest son is shot point-blank by the evil British Cavalry officer Col. Tavington. With minimal help from his two pint-sized sons, Ben brutally takes down a contingent of British Redcoats, not satisfied with making them dead but burning through all of that rage by hacking at one soldier's bloody corpse.
- The 3rd act of the Jackie Chan film Police Story features a rare look at Jackie's typical happy go lucky character snapping and going to town on everyone that's done him wrong. This includes beating the crap out of people who can't fight worth a damn like a doctor and a lawyer, but they've all been such huge jerks through the whole film that it's easy to cheer him on every step of the way.
- Rage,(previously known as "Tokarev"), Nicolas Cage as Paul Maguire. "Rage" is actually the point of the movie, as it blinds our hero to actuality and drives him to execute a misconceived bloodbath of friend and foe.
- Played for Laughs in the short film The Saw (by Rooster Teeth collaborator Samantha Ireland), where a woman attending an anger management group decides to use her fury to become a "heroine", The Saw (shortened from the original Super Angry Woman).
- Serenity:
- River Tam is rendered catatonic and helpless by the madness of the Reavers pushing in on her mind during the final battle, until her brother gets shot. Ass-kicking results.
- The name in the Latin American dubbing is Serenity: Unstoppable Rage.
- Reavers are like this ALL THE TIME.
- Spaceballs features a comedic example when one of the eponymous villains manages to singe Princess Vespa's hair with a laser blast, causing her to flip out and annihilate an entire squad.
- The eponymous hero in the Spider-Man Trilogy flies into a fit of rage anytime his loved ones are threatened or harmed, usually resulting in beatdown for the villains.
- In Spider-Man, Green Goblin taunts that after finishing him in their fight, he will kill Mary Jane, whilst making her death 'nice and slow'; Spider-Man quickly recovers and beats the crap out of him.
- After kidnapping Mary Jane in Spider-Man 2, Dr. Octopus rather smugly refuses to give up her location and Spidey attacks him in retaliation.
- This happens several times in Spider-Man 3, once where he confronts and almost kills the Sandman for killing his uncle, the next where he thrashes Harry Osborn in his own home for ruining his life with Mary Jane, the next where Harry takes a blow (two spikes attached to his board) from Venom meant for Peter and is killed because of it.
- After Kirk dies of radiation poisoning, Spock goes absolutely ballistic and almost beats Harrison to death at the end of Star Trek Into Darkness. If it wasn't for him being told that they needed Khan's blood to save Kirk's life, Spock likely would've killed him with one more punch. This is why Vulcans are trained from birth to have complete control over their emotions. A Vulcan's rage is far more intense than a human's, and they have Super-Strength to go with it.
- Star Wars:
- Luke Skywalker spends most of the original trilogy actively not giving in to anger because that leads to The Dark Side, but when Darth Vader makes the mistake of threatening to turn Leia to the Dark Side during their final confrontation in Return of the Jedi, he immediately goes berserk, interrupts Vader's sentence, and beats Vader on sheer, Force-augmented aggression (despite being a full foot shorter and with the corresponding reach disadvantage), only stopping after he chops off Vader's mechanical hand and realizes just how close he just came to becoming like him.
- It runs in the family: when Anakin completely destroys a village of Sand People after they killed his mother. "Not just the men, but the women and the children too."
- The final Luke-Vader duel would be the Ur-Example of sometimes-Force-enhanced psychological warfare gone wrong. Although, sometimes spurring someone into this (particularly with repressed anger) was actually the intended effect; Palpatine had actually been attempting this on Luke right before and after the duel... but his obviousness of intent probably helped Luke pull himself back from the brink.
- Obi-Wan Kenobi goes into a Tranquil Fury after Darth Maul mortally wounds Qui-Gon Jinn. He succeeds in chopping Maul's lightsaber in half and knocks him down at one point, but Maul uses a Force push to get the best of him. Obi-Wan then calms down and uses an unexpected strategy to defeat him.
- The duel between Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Dooku at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith mirrors the one in Return of the Jedi in a lot of ways. Dooku knocks out Obi-Wan and then proceeds to taunt Anakin, which enrages him enough that he flies into a rage and pummels Dooku, ultimately chopping both his hands off. Then while he has Dooku at swordpoint (like the Sword over Head scene with Luke in Jedi), Palpatine urges him to execute the Sith Lord. Unlike Luke, Anakin goes through with it, though he instantly regrets it.
- Chewbacca gets one in The Force Awakens when he sees Kylo/Ben murder Han. He roars in outrage, then shoots Kylo with a BFG and proceeds to ignite a chain reaction that blows up the whole planet.
- Kylo Ren himself, who tends to get really pissed about things not going to plan and uses his lightsaber to vent his rage in a fury of screaming and destruction. Unfortunately he never puts this into use in any practical way (as any time he gets into a conflict he tries to force a facade of composure, which probably weakens him to a degree).
- Kylo goes completely berserk in The Last Jedi when Luke shows up at Crait. He manages to stay calm for a few seconds, long enough to give the order to attack, but quickly loses it and starts screaming maniacally for more firepower, much to Hux's bemusement. He has a similar reaction a little earlier when the Millennium Falcon appears, although his rage is still nowhere near as violent as that sparked by his former mentor.
- Kham in Tom-Yum-Goong (aka The Protector). After discovering that his elephant had been butchered and the bones set with gold and jewels, he goes into serious Heroic BSoD mode. He doesn't notice the horde of thugs beating on him until one makes the mistake of stabbing him in the side. This snaps him out of his grief and turns his BSOD into a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
- In Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, Optimus Prime fights Megatron, Starscream and Grindor by himself and is eventually overpowered and blasted halfway across a forest area. After Megatron tries to justify his means for wanting to kill Sam, Optimus denies his reasoning, charges right into the midst of them, slices off Grindor's arm, beats down Megatron, slices off Starscream's arm (and whacks him across the face with it) then leaps onto Grindor and tears his face in two, killing him.
"You'll never stop at one! I'LL TAKE YOU ALL ON!"
- In DOTM, Optimus might as well be fueled by Unstoppable Rage.
"We will kill them all."- Ditto for AOE when he learns of Ratchet's fate.
"THEY SLAUGHTERED RATCHET?! I'LL TEAR THEM APART!!!" - In The Vindicator, Carl's cyborg body is fitted with a "rage program" that senses when he is in danger and sends him into a frenzied state before returning to normal once the threat has been eliminated.
- X-Men Film Series:
- Beast against Magneto in X-Men: Days of Future Past, which is decidedly in Beast's favor, to the extent that Beast almost drowns him. Magneto only barely manages to save himself by using a nearby sculpture to restrain Beast.
- Wolverine/Logan flies into at least one of these in almost every X-Men film he's in.
- Since it's genetic, Wolverine's daughter-clone Laura/X-23 has a few in Logan.
- Wonder Woman (2017) after Steve Trevor's self-sacrifice. Diana proceeds to tear through German soldiers like they're wet tissue.
Music
- In Akuno P's Evillious Chronicles, the sin of Wrath is represented in The Muzzle of Nemesis, sung by Gumi. The singer, an assassin appropriately named Nemesis, is seeking revenge on her former employer, who ordered her to kill her lover. In a twist, the employer is not only her father, but the corrupt judge who represented Greed. Notably, she does give him a chance to repent.
Mythology
- Older Than Dirt: Sekhmet, an Egyptian goddess of war, pestilence, and healing, went on a bender when some mortals dared suggest that her father, the sun god Ra, was getting a little old. She had no intention of stopping and nearly exterminated humanity. Finally, Ra himself stopped her, and then only by making a literal sea of beer mixed with pomegranate juice. Sekhmet, mistaking it for blood, drank herself stupid, and thus the world was saved by alcohol.
- A version of the legend makes this even scarier by having the massacring goddess being Hathor, the nice and happy goddess of the moon, music, dance joy, feminine love and motherhood, with Sekhmet being the one who made the sea of beer mixed with pomegranate juice. Another version would see Sekhmet and Hathor being similar.
- Cuchulainn from Irish mythology has a prime example of the "monster within" kind of unstoppable rage. In the epic, Táin Bó Cúailnge, he enters a "ríastrad" or "Warp Spasm". In this state, he transforms into a horribly mutilated monster who doesn't know friend from foe. At one time, they broke him out of his rage by dunking him into three separate water barrels. The first one exploded, the other began boiling, and the last one finally cooled him down.
- This would later be co-opted into 2000 AD's Slaine, where they got really creative.
- In Classical Mythology, Hercules killed his wife and children in a rage induced by Hera. Less supernaturally, as a kid Hercules killed his music teacher with a lyre.
- The normally gentle Hindu goddess Uma can transform into death-dealing, world-ending Kali. She does this to kill the demon Raktabija, after all the gods cut into the demon, only to find that his blood creates clone of himself once it hits the ground. Kali fixes the situation by inhaling all the blood before it touches the ground as she goes on her killing frenzy. Some legends continue that she would have turned her violence on the gods if Shiva, her husband, didn’t lie amongst the dead in a desperate gambit to get her to stop. This is particularly sobering as Shiva has the ability to unmake all of creation and was pretty sure the only thing that could stop his wife from killing everyone was to gamble on his importance to her.
- Norse Mythology is the very source of the word 'berserker' (from an Old Norse word meaning "bear shirt"), and was full of them, most famously Thor. The god of the berserkers (and Thor's father) was Odin, whose very name means "The Furious One".
- According to Japanese Mythology, the storm god Susano-o flew into a drunken rage and did everything possible to mess up his sister Amaterasu's life. He defiled all her shrines, killed her handmaidens, and threw shit in her temples. The gods were unable to stop his overwhelming douchedness.
Other
- Crops up in Professional Wrestling at times; it's typically called 'Hulking Up'. The bigger you are, the more you can get away with here.
- Hulk Hogan built a whole career on this trope, getting beaten badly in the early minutes of his fights only to become unstoppable and nearly invulnerable to his opponent's attacks once he hulked out.
- This was also a key part of Tazz's gimmick in ECW, to the point where Joey Styles would often ask, "Who can stop the path of rage?"
Pinball
- Featured in The Avengers (Stern), where the The Incredible Hulk sits on the playfield. During the game, he flails his fists and grabs pinballs; premium editions even include a "Ramp Throwing" action where the Hulk throws a ramp.
Theatre
- Hamlet is theoretically in unstoppable rage after the last soliloquy of the play ("...from this point forth/my thoughts be bloody or nothing worth"), but, given that this is Hamlet, two scenes later he's cracking jokes with a gravedigger.
- In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo goes into unstoppable rage after Tybalt kills Mercutio ("...Mercutio's soul/is but a little ways above our heads.../either you or I or both must go with him.") Also seen again when he kills Paris ("Tempt not a desperate man"). Romeo's always in some exaggerated emotional state or another. (What do you expect? He's fifteen.)
- The Winter's Tale is about what happens when an extremely powerful man gives in to paranoia and unstoppable rage and takes it out on his subjects.
Web Animation
- When Flint kills Ruby in Bunnykill 4, Snowball proceeds to flip out in a manner that can only be described as Super Saiyan meets frenzied Mimiga.
- And in 5, Dust does Snowball one better after killing him under the influence of the Psycho Serum that Smoke had injected into him by completely devastating Smoke's army of mooks, wrecking his helicopter gunship as he tries to get away and then sending the bastard right through its rotor blades.
- Flippy of Happy Tree Friends goes into this whenever anyone does something that reminds him of the war he fought in. Subverted in "Remains To Be Seen", "Class Act", "Autopsy Turvy", and "By The Seat Of Your Pants" when he is killed while in his flipped-out state. In "A Vicious Cycle" his rampage continues even after his death.
- In If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device, the Emperor is prone to do this when he hears about something particularly wrath-inspiring about the Empire, such as the Inquisition, senseless waste of resources or Traitor Legions. As he's immobile, this mostly manifests by him spawning warp storms.
- This went to the logical extreme when he found out that the Inquisition had killed off nearly all of the Senseis, his biological children, while the others had gone into hiding and are now nearly impossible to find.
- Millie in Helluva Boss is a very competent Cute But Psycho Professional Killer at normal times. Threaten her husband Moxxie and she goes into deadly Mama Bear mode. But (as seen in season 2 episode 3) try to get her out of the way and force Moxxie to marry a really annoying guy who's both her and his ex... words don't begin to describe it, and eighteen or so mafia goons trying to stop her are little more than something to vent her emotions on. Things she does during this battle include biting someone's heart out, kicking a bullet out of mid-air, and pulling someone's skull out of their head.
- Mystery Skulls Animated: When Lewis stops his rampage and seems to be connecting with Vivi, Arthur (understandably) takes the opportunity to grab Vivi and run, Lewis and Vivi lose their moment to reconcile, breaking Lewis' heart (literally). As a result, Lewis becomes enraged and cuts loose with his power.
- SMG4: In the episode "Princess Capturing Simulator", after Bowser cheats, Mario gets so angry that he teleports to where Bowser is and shoots him once for all.
Web Original
- Arthur has one in a Creepypasta centered on a lost episode:
"I went to school, I went to church, I played the tag team football, I learned about sharing and caring and playing, but... CLOTHING!" Arthur screamed. "CORRECTIVE EYEGLASSES!" He screamed some more. "THAT’S MY FUCKING FACE. MY FUCKING. FACE!" Arthur got really angry.
- In Episode 18 of Dragon Ball Z Abridged, when Vegeta discovers that Gohan stole his dragon ball, he completely loses it. His scream of rage can be heard over the entire planet, in space, in the afterlife, and on another planet in another solar system twenty years in the future. When he catches up to Krillin, he's been driven temporarily insane, his perception of color keeps changing, and he's shouting at Ghost Nappa. Gohan receiving a power-up from Super Kami Guru is the only thing that saves Krillin from a horrible death.
- While it is debatable whether Nist Akath of Dwarf Fortress falls under this or Video Games, the scene where Ironblood is betrayed by the nobles certainly springs to mind. Ironblood is poisoned by the nobles who are servants of an evil god, stripped naked, and thrown into the arena he himself ordered constructed. Then, to kill him, they release a hydra to kill him. While naked, poisoned, and vomiting, Ironblood kills the Hydra with his bare hands. By crushing its skulls. Then, he climbs out of the arena, and... well...
"As he watched the dwarf crushed his wife's form, he came to a sudden, horrid realization. Ironblood didn't use an axe because he needed it. He used it to be kind. And right now he wasn't being kind."
- In Fine Structure, a series of otherwise normal humans acquire Flying Brick powers. In each case, for the first 15.8 seconds after getting their new powers, they are stuck in an absolute berserker rage wherein they immediately attempt to obliterate anything and everything around them. Since they also perceive time at an accelerated rate, this gives them long enough to kill millions of people if the local population density is high enough.
- From The Gamers: 'Barbarian rage! Blood, death, and vengeance!'. Success rate? 1 for 2.
- A humor website called Grudge Match (Where Useless Knowledge Breeds Champions) was a site in the vein of Celebrity Deathmatch or DEATH BATTLE! run by two guys named "Brian" and "Steve" who pitted pop-culture icons against each other and argued about who would win. Butt-Monkey characters were often prone to what was simply known as "The Rage", which made an otherwise weak character virtually invincible. The most awesome manifestation of "The Rage" appeared in the Beavis vs. Butthead fight, when Beavis, pushed beyond his limits by Butthead's constant mistreatment of him, experienced such an explosion of "The Rage" that he split into four separate personalities: himself, Cornholio, Carrotjose, and Rutabagajuan. These four "maniacs" proceeded to give Butthead the beatdown of a lifetime.
- The whole point of the RAEG TRAIN.
- The Angry German Kid, which is a staged performance of a kid getting angry after his computer breaks, and then he proceeds to scream and throw his keyboard across the room.
- Along with his better-known abilities, SCP-682 is noticeably prone to these. Given that he's unstoppable even outside his rages, this is a bad thing.
- SCP-096. When someone sees its face (it doesn't matter if it's in person or 4 pixels in a picture) it will enter a homicidal and unstoppable rage that won't end until the person who saw his face is dead. One attempt to see just how far it would go involved putting a guy in a bathysphere over six miles underwater and hundreds of miles away from its containment before showing him a picture. It bought the guy forty minutes.
- Among the boards of 4chan, /v/ is (rightly) the butt of many jokes as being rage incarnate...
- The mere mention of the infamous Bat Credit Card from Batman & Robin has this effect on The Nostalgia Critic.
- Arthéon in Noob Season 4 finale, after Kary turns out to be more interested in the new game content than in their wedding ceremony.
- Shows up as a players' actual in-game Limit Break in Noob: Le Conseil des Trois Factions.
- Badfic is so horrendously bad that unstoppable rage is a common reaction for Protectors of the Plot Continuum agents, especially when a favorite canon character is threatened.
- Caboose tries to intentionally invoke this in himself when he and Sarge are trapped in a bizarre land of eternal war in Red vs. Blue. 'I am Michael J Caboose ... and I HATE BABIES!' Followed by 'Hurk! Blagh!' repeatedly.
- Comes back in Season 10; as the Blood Gulchers are lining up for a battle, Church says he needs Caboose to get a little angry; Caboose replies that he forgot how to do that. Church helps him remember, and Caboose charges headlong through a massive group of Tex copies.
- Sailor Nothing: Although Himei usually just wills her opponents into non-existence, she has been known to tear them apart with her bare hands if put under sufficient emotional stress.
- Happens occasionally in Survival of the Fittest, especially when a nice guy is pushed too far.
- Such as Adam Dodd going ballistic on Cody Jenson near the end of V1, who he has every reason to want dead.
- Whateley Universe: "Ragers", as they are called in-universe, are common enough that they actually classify them into three groups: Class One ragers are basically the equivalent of a person with Intermittent Explosive Disorder, and tend to forget to use their powers; Class Two ragers use their powers while raging, and can cause considerable damage; Class Three ragers actually grow more powerful the angrier they get (similar to the Hulk, except affecting all their powers), with their powers buffed higher and higher as they continue to rampage.
- On campus at the time of the original stories, the best known class-3 rager is Razorback, who has the appearance of a Velociraptor and communicates through sign language. While he is a nice guy most of the time, anything that sets him off is likely to result in a drawn-out fight, as he has both Super-Speed and a Healing Factor. For their combat finals, the teachers pitted him against Jimmy T.; the fighting went on until they were both too exhausted to continue, with the match being decided by a coin toss.
- Parodied in Linkara's review of Wolverine: Adamantium Rage.
- "ADAMANTIUM RAGE! * Punches Spoony* ADAMANTIUM RAGE! * Punches Kirby* ADAMANTIUM RAGE! * Tries to crush a can against his forehead and fails* ADAMANTIUM RAGE! * Is punched by The Angry Video Game Nerd.
