History VillainousBreakdown / Literature

* In JohnCWright's ''{{War of the Dreaming}}'', Azrael de Gray has a comb* Arianna Ortega experiences this in TheDresdenFiles book 12. Throughout the book she's been a SmugSnake, and the fact that she plans to murder a little girl purely for selfish reasons only adds to this. Eventually she faces the father of her would be victim in single combat and ultimately looses badly, getting impaled by numerous ice spears (including one as thick as a man's fist.) As Harry stands over her she simply looses her cool and first says "no no no" over and over again before telling Dresden that he is cattle. Harry responds by mocking her before blowing her head off.

* In JohnCWright's ''{{War of the Dreaming}}'', Azrael de Gray has a combination VillainousBSOD and breakdown during the second book, eventually leading [[spoiler: to a HeelFaceTurn.]]

* Arianna Ortega experiences this in TheDresdenFiles book 12. Throughout the book she's been a SmugSnake, and the fact that she plans to murder a little girl purely for selfish reasons only adds to this. Eventually she faces the father of her would be victim in single combat and ultimately looses badly, getting impaled by numerous ice spears (including one as thick as a man's fist.) As Harry stands over her she simply looses her cool and first says "no no no" over and over again before telling Dresden that he is cattle. Harry responds by mocking her before blowing her head off.
** Her dad the Red King also suffers an implosive one. After getting heavily injured and overpowered by Harry, he first summons all his soldiers despite earlier showing fear at the prospect and he is reduced from a SmugSnake Chessmaster into a screaming lunatic who inadvertently cuts one of his deputies in half.
** According to WordOfGod, the Denarian leader Nicodemus hasn't been the same since Harry nearly killed him by strangling him with the Iscariot's Noose. The SmugSnake BigBadWannabe is now ''utterly terrified'' of Harry Dresden.

* In ''Saga of the Seven Suns'', [[spoiler:Basil Wenceslas]] is a classic of this trope. When things stop going according to plan, they Ski Down The Slippery Slope. I call it thus because they stop just short of jumping off entirely, but still make an impressively rapid descent.

* In JohnCWright's ''War of the Dreaming'', Azrael de Gray has a combination VillainousBSOD and breakdown during the second book, eventually leading [[spoiler: to a HeelFaceTurn.]]

* In John Gardner's ''Grendel'', the eponymous monster who has been philosophical and introspective while he terrorizes the Danes throughout the book has a breakdown when he finally meets someone stronger in Beowulf. Grendel is reduced to blindly running away while crying for his mother after Beowulf tears off his arm.

* KerryGreenwood's Phryne Fisher sometimes has to cope with these.

* In Will Elliott's ''ThePiloFamilyCircus'', Kurt Pilo has a particularly spectacular breakdown; convinced that his underlings are turning traitor on him and overcome by rage, he begins [[OneWingedAngel mutating into a monstrous demonic reptile]] with a habit for [[GigglingVillain giggling insanely under his breath]]. Then, he proceeds to kill just about every single carny in his path to killing off the suspected traitors, before being fooled into descending into the depths of the funhouse- and [[spoiler: coming face to face with his [[EldritchAbomination less-than-approving Employers]].]]

* Will Elliott's ''The Pilo Family Circus'', Kurt Pilo has a particularly spectacular breakdown; convinced that his underlings are turning traitor on him and overcome by rage, he begins [[OneWingedAngel mutating into a monstrous demonic reptile]] with a habit for [[GigglingVillain giggling insanely under his breath]]. Then, he proceeds to kill just about every single carny in his path, before coming face to face with his [[CosmicHorror less-than-approving Employers.]]

** Mugabo, the Circus Magician, apparently has one every once in a while: being a gifted sorcerer and [[PlayingWithFire pyromancer]] he feels degraded at having to perform the "bunny trick," and breaks into fiery temper-tantrums when pushed into it. However, when [[spoiler: the Freedom Movement]] sabotages his tent and scrawls graffiti all over his equipment near the end of the book, he enters a fully-fledged pyrokinetic psychotic episode, resulting in the death of several carnies and the utter astonishment of the circus-goers.

*** Slagar the Cruel in ''Mattimeo'' is already crazy at the start, blaming Matthias and the Redwallers for the horrible scarring on his face. By the end, he's pretty much raving, frantically reassuring himself that however events turn out, he will "win" somehow. He even plans to steal Matthias' sword, now convinced that it is magic and grants victory to whoever wields it.
*** Tsarmina in ''Mossflower'' also does this. Granted she's being driven insane by a constant dripping noise and the fact that everything she tries to destroy the resistance fails.

* The climax of PiersAnthony's ''[[ApprenticeAdept Blue Adept]]'' sees Stile, in order to win his [[TournamentArc Great Game match]] against Adept Red (A dance competition in which Red was demolishing Stile due to Stile wrecked knees) throws himself into [[AssPull a self-induced trance]] to see Red as his true love, Lady Blue. Red, who had just confessed that she DoesNotLikeMen, completely loses it over his show of affection and goes into an UnstoppableRage right on stage.

** Lord Hong in ''Interesting Times'' goes from a smooth, scheming, [[SmugSnake would-be Vetinari]] of [[VillainSue near-perfection]] to just another raving tyrant.

*** And then there's Cosmo Lavish in ''Discworld/MakingMoney''. He finally snaps right at the end, but it has already become evident as the story progressed that he's been going odd in the head from the start, even while his plans still seemed to be working. Basically, he's been having a ''potential'' villainous breakdown the whole time, just waiting for something to trigger it. The whole thing is symbolised by the finger on which he's wearing a far too small ring, which starts to sound more and more worrying, until near the end when his glove comes off what's happened to it is revealed much the same way as what's happened to his mind.

* Prince Xizor in ''StarWarsExpandedUniverse'' novel ''ShadowsOfTheEmpire''. At numerous earlier points points in the novel, Xizor is shown to consider himself superior to "mere humans" because his literally cold-blooded nature leaves him incapable of going into an uncontrollable rage. Turns out it's not that he can't, just that it takes a lot longer. As his palace collapses underneath him and Darth Vader lets him know that he's quite aware of Xizor's attempt to kill Vader's son, he starts to get a little... antsy?

* {{Animorphs}} largely averts this by having most of the villains start off [[AxCrazy Pre-broken-down]]. However, when [[SixthRangerTraitor David]] finds out he has been deceived and trapped, he begins sliding into this, and when he finds out that his fate is to be [[BalefulPolymorph trapped in]] [[BodyHorror the body of a rat]] for the rest of his life, he slides over the scale. All through the two hour morph limit, and up until they transport him out to a small island and leave him, he ''never stops screaming the word [[BigNo "No"]], even after they leave.'' Understandable, [[NightmareFuel considering]] the [[FateWorseThanDeath circumstances.]] Even [[DarkActionGirl Rachel]] is haunted by that experience throughout the series.

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* ''Sisterhood'' series by FernMichaels: In books like ''Sweet Revenge'', ''Lethal Justice'', ''Free Fall'', and ''Hide And Seek'', the Vigilantes will drive the BigBad into this, and then go directly to them to administer justice face-to-face. ''Sweet Revenge'' has Rosemary Hershey suffer one spanning almost the entire book. First she finds out that Isabelle Flanders, the woman she framed and ruined, is back in action and is preparing to sue Rosemary. Then Rosemary gets more than one envelope containing pictures of the three people she killed, and images of her at the trial, with words like "thief" and "liar" scrawled on them. She is told by her husband Bobby Harcourt that he wants a divorce. She finds out from her horoscopes (she puts a lot of stock in it, apparently) that bad things are going to happen to her in the near future. She gets an original set of blueprints made by Isabelle, which Rosemary thought she destroyed, and she wrecks her bathroom in a frantic attempt to destroy it. She gets questioned by reporters about the trial. The big important men she slept with are questioned by said reporters, and these men bombard her with phone calls. She ends up firing all her employees when they can't come up with a good set of blueprints. She seems to regain her composure when she gets a good set of blueprints delivered to her. However, when she and Isabelle Flanders go to an event in which their architectural blueprints will be charged, Myra comes up and reveals to the entire architectural board that Rosemary and Isabelle's blueprints are ''exactly'' the same, with their signatures being the only difference, and that as far as it can be determined, Rosemary plagiarized Isabelle's work! By the time the Vigilantes go to Rosemary and threaten to bury her alive if she does not confess to her misdeeds, Rosemary has basically lost it. Oh, and it doesn't need to be said that Rosemary went to an institution and may never become lucid again by the end of the book.

* CriticalResearchFailure and DanBrowned aside, the 'DanBrown' novel Angels & Demons has a particularly spectacular example of this with the popes aide Carlo Ventresca, whom poisons the now late pope and [[TheChessmaster manipulates a series of events, involving the assassination of the preferiti and the holding of the Vatican hostage, just to turn the world against science]] only for the penultimate scene of the book to reveal that A)the pope committed no lie or falsehood in his service as a priest and B) Carlo Ventresca had killed his own father who'd sired him completely through scientific means just to add insult to the injury of his hatred of science. What followed after this arguably combines VillainousBSOD and RedemptionEqualsDeath.

* Having a breakdown is quite literally the last thing that the usually stoic King Haggard does in [[PeterSBeagle Peter S. Beagle]]'s ''TheLastUnicorn''.

* In the ''{{Outlander}}'' series, Captain John Randall normally, in [[AxCrazy all]] [[InterplayOfSexAndViolence his]] [[DepravedBisexual villainy]], has two main expressions: arrogant calmness, and being annoyed. The first time he's shown to completely break down sobbing is when he [[AnguishedDeclarationOfLove confesses to Jamie that he loves him]], and goes ''completely psycho'' when Jamie refuses to respond in the affirmative when he orders Jamie to tell him that he loves him too.

* How could have we gone so far without mentioning:
-->''[[EdgarAllanPoe IT IS THE BEATING OF HIS HIDEOUS HEART!]]''

** Her dad the Red King also suffers an implosive one. After getting heavily injured and overpowered by Harry, he first summons all his soldiers despite earlier showing fear at the prospect and he is reduced from a SmugSmake Chessmaster into a screaming lunatic who inadvertently cuts one of his deputies in half.

** In ''{{Coraline}}'' the normally sickeningly sweet StepfordSmiler Other Mother loses her cool when Coraline refuses to accept gifts and love, and she imprisons Coraline behind a mirror as punishment. This is taken to further extremes in the movie when Coraline manages to blind the Other Mother and escapes back to her world. The Other Mother responds by trying to reconnect the real world and the Other World all while screaming madly at Coraline "[[PleaseDontLeaveMe NOOOOOOOOOOOO! DON'T LEAVE ME! DON'T LEAVE ME! I'LL DIE, I'LL DIE WITHOUT YOU!!!!!!]]"

**** Of course, the TranquilFury only comes after he goes ''[[UnstoppableRage completely fucking berserk.]]''

* CriticalResearchFailure and DanBrowned aside, the 'DanBrown' novel Angels & Demons has a particularly spectacular example of this with the popes aide Carlo Ventresca, whom poisons the now late pope and [[Chessmaster manipulates a series of events, involving the assassination of the preferiti and the holding of the Vatican hostage, just to turn the world against science]] only for the penultimate scene of the book to reveal that A)the pope committed no lie or falsehood in his service as a priest and B) Carlo Ventresca had killed his own father who'd sired him completely through scientific means just to add insult to the injury of his hatred of science. What followed after this arguably combines VillainousBSOD and RedemptionEqualsDeath.

* {{Animorphs}} largely averts this by having most of the villains start off [[AxCrazy Pre-broken-down]]. However, when [[CompleteMonster David]] finds out he has been decieved and trapped, he begins sliding into this, and when he finds out that his fate is to be [[BalefulPolymorph trapped in]] [[BodyHorror the body of a rat]], he slides over the scale. All through the two hour morph limit, and up until they transport him out to a small island and leave him, he ''never stops screaming the word [[BigNo "No"]] even after they leave.'' Understandable, [[NightmareFuel considering]] the [[FateWorseThanDeath circumstances.]] Even [[AxCrazy Rachel]] is haunted by that experience throughout the series.