History Main / Freakout

** Aang could be viewed as having undergone a Freak Out upon learning of the genocide of his race that lasted most of the first season, and then on and off until he finds peace in the GrandFinale. In the flashbacks with Gyatso and Bumi he's earnest but calm and somewhat reticent, and his [[{{Keet}} hyperactivity]] might just be a way of trying to distract himself from the horror.

* ''Series/{{Degrassi}}'': Campbell completely breaks down in an anxiety attack in ''Say It Ain't So''. Bianca finds him in a sobbing heap in the girls' bathroom which he didn't realize he had gone into until she calls him a stalker and he notices the tampon dispenser.

** Act 6 is all about main characters freaking out. John, after two-and-a-half consecutive years of doing nothing but play non-character-building videogames and watching con-air, performs an out-of-character freak-out about how bland con-air is and starts yelling hysterically at an invisible Davesprite when he broke up with Jade over personal differences. . Terezi does something really stupid (kinda like someone not blind ripping her eyes out; seriously) because her boyfriend manipulated her then broke up. If you count that... hangover incident... with the Beta-Scratch universe heroes a "freak-out", then yes that was a very big wasn't-a-dream freak-out. Vriska doesn't LeanOnTheFourthWall, she attempts to angrily lampshade it to death(which fails) when she finally realizes that someone (though she doesn't know it's the guy who tried to marry her) has been screwing with the story the whole way as a means of scarcasm. Dave meets up with a brainwashed Jade and complains about the pointlessness of his weapon sidequest (weapon now weaker but it can hurt Lord English... OH WAIT, ITS BASE ORIGINALLY HAD THAT ABILIY(maybe)), and then they realize that Dave has been spending too much time with Karkat. Karkat freaks out frequently, like usual. Some of the antagonists get angsty too, but a lot of them stay calm and most of them are more about being angry than freaking out: Jack Noir (Beta Scratch) turned into an angry screaming English-themed... yeah, after getting blown up and mutating his eyes into English's pool-eyes, the REAL Lord English is usually in one of four states (Angry, freaking out, annoyed, and actually happy)

* Princess Zelda turned into a creepy, screaming lunatic for one whole cutscene in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSpiritTracks'', when Anjean revealed to her that a male demon was going to take over her body soon. She even scared Link while telling him that ''HE'' needs to ''GO OUT'' and ''BRING BACK HER BODY'' while ''SHE'' waits in the Tower like ''[[{{Lampshading}} A GOOD PRINCESS]]''. It's played for laughs, still, the change was so frightening that not only was Link understandably scared to death, a good percentage of the players were as well. She snapped out of it rather quickly, when Anjean told her that she couldn't force Link to do it alone (like usual), since several traps in the Tower of Spirits needed teamwork to be survived.

* In Literature/AShadowGirlsSummerOfLoveAndMadness: [[spoiler: Juniper]] freaks out, after hallucinating [[spoiler: her sister's mangled corpse]]. It is stated this is a regular occurrence, whenever [[spoiler: she looks down from up high, as she saw her sister fall to her death.]]

* In ''[[WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButtheadDoAmerica Beavis and Butt-Head Do America]]'', Beavis has one when the plane he and Butthead are on takes off, causing him to scream "WE'RE GONNA DIE!" over and over.

In "Roleplay/DoubtAcademy", the usually very placid Roxy has a very violent one after discovering that [[spoiler: Kuu murdered Tama and let Akari (her best friend) be executed in his place]]. This also leads to her delivering a "Main/GroinAttack".

** The ending of the third episode, the first of the series' several [[WhamEpisode Wham Episodes]], caused a small one from [[CarrieKeranen her English voice actress, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKraFH64gCo#t=5m15s as she recalls here]].

** Funnily enough, the ending of the third episode, the first of the series' several [[WhamEmpisode Wham Episodes]], caused a small one from her English voice actress [[spoiler:CarrieKeranen]], [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKraFH64gCo#t=5m15s as she recalls here]].

** Gaara suffered this twice in his life. The first time was when [[spoiler: Yashimaru crushed all of Gaara's hopes and tried to kill him]] resulting in the homicidal maniac we all have vivid nightmares about. The second was when he saw his own blood after Sasuke injured him.

** Poor, poor [[spoiler:Obito]]. [[spoiler:Survived from being crushed with boulder, he ends up watching Rin die in the hand of Kakashi. Both of them are his best friends. No wonder he got snapped... and that's how Madara/ Tobi was born.]]

* In ''Manga/ACruelGodReigns'' Jeremy has almost too many of these to keep track of. Some good examples are when [[spoiler: Ian grabs his arm while trying to ease him out of his HeroicBSOD DumbStruck, Ian asks who Valentine is after Greg does something very unpleasant with the wooden egg she gave Jeremy, and when Ian finds Jeremy taking heroin after being sexually assaulted at school in UsefulNotes/{{Boston}}.]] His other major episode is when he [[spoiler: hallucinate Greg is following after he and Ian go over all of his {{Embarrassing Old Photo]].

* After the horrible, ''horrible'' events [[TotalEclipseOfThePlot during the Eclipse]] in ''{{Berserk}}'', and he awakens [[AsleepForDays days later]], Guts goes through a monumental freak out that consists of [[ManlyTears many tears]], [[DespairEventHorizon utter despair]], bursts of rage, and finally [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome an epic]] [[ThisMeansWar vow of revenge]] [[RedemptionInTheRain in the rain]], the point at which Guts becomes a changed man. It's too bad that his lover, Casca, [[BreakTheCutie did not come out of the Eclipse]] [[GoMadFromTheRevelation no where near as intact as Guts]] (her mentally damaged state also provoked Guts' freak out).

* [[Comicbook/{{Batman}} The Joker]] is a firm believer in this trope, once saying that all it takes to separate the sane from maniacs such as himself is "one bad day." ''The Killing Joke'' storyline features him trying to give Commissioner Gordon his Bad Day.

* ''Comicbook/{{Batman}}'' is '''the''' poster comic of {{Freak Out}}s, with most Rogues' minds breaking at some point, [[StartOfDarkness creating the other selves]] which drive Batman's duality theme close to home.

* Ivan's manic episode in ''TheBrothersKaramazov'' took its time in developing. You can see him start to go insane from very early on in the book. It becomes obvious to us when he starts to [[TheDevil talk to the devil]]. But he finally has his Freak Out moment at Dmitri's trial, when he [[spoiler:confesses that he killed his father through Smerdyakov, who has conveniently [[DrivenToSuicide committed suicide]]]] which would sound ridiculous even to us if we didn't know it was the truth. When the people in the courtroom voice further doubt, Ivan loses it. Spectacularly.

-->--'''SelfDemonstrating/TheJoker''', ''TheKillingJoke''

* In ''BeavisAndButtheadDoAmerica'', Beavis has one when the plane he and Butthead are on takes off, causing him to scream "WE'RE GONNA DIE!" over and over.

In "Roleplay/DoubtAcademy", the usually very placid Roxy has a very violent one after discovering that [[spoiler: Kuu murdered Tama and let Akari (her best friend) be executed in his place]]. This also leads to her delivering a ''Main/GroinAttack''.

In "Roleplay/DoubtAcademy", the usually very placid Roxy has a very violent one after discovering that [[spoiler: Kuu murdered Tama and let Akari (her best friend) be executed in his place]]. This also leads to her delivering a "Main/GroinAttack".

* ''Film/TheDescent''. A year after being in a car crash that killed her husband and daughter [which itself caused a Freak Out] Sarah goes on a caving trip with her friends. Then they get trapped down there. Then monsters arrive. Then she ends up alone and hiding about two feet from a group of monsters eating one of the other girls. Her long due full blown Freak Out occurs when she grants her best friend's ICannotSelfTerminate request, and she becomes a killing machine unable to feel emotions except for hate and bloodlust. By the end, [[spoiler:she's so crazy that she murders one of her other friends, then hallucinates that either her daughter or her murdered friend is right beside her, depending which version of the ending you're watching]].
** Interestingly, Juno waffles back and forth on this trope. Alone, she starts down the same path as Sarah on the bloodlusty killing machine bit, but this stops once she finds two of the other girls. [[spoiler:They die - bloodlusty killing machine time. Sarah meets up with her, and for a minute Juno is normal again, but Sarah herself being a bloodlusty killing machine causes Juno to follow suit again before being murdered herself]].
** An alternative interpretation is that [[spoiler:virtually the entire film is a hallucination after Sarah goes AxCrazy and kills her friends, inventing the monsters as a rationale]].
* Harvey Dent suffers one of these after losing half his face in every version, but it's especially pronounced in ''Film/TheDarkKnight'', where he spends two thirds of the film as the "White Knight" before losing half of his face to [[spoiler:a bomb planted by the Joker]] and it's hinted that he sustained brain damage in the accident. Also, the HannibalLecture afterwards couldn't have helped, especially since [[spoiler:he had lost his girlfriend Rachel in the same SadisticChoice that led to his own scarring]]...

* "Freaking Out" (2001) is the name of one of {{Adema}}'s most well known hits and it's a truly chilling metal song about the symptoms of a helpless person finally at the brink of their breaking point.