[[MiraiNikki http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/YunoBSoD.jpg]]
[[caption-width:311:Yuno has encountered a problem and needs to shut down. We are sorry for any inconvenience.]]

-->''"Well, lad, the brain be a funny thing. Sometimes, it just stops workin' right when ye've been through a bad scene."''
-->--'''Durkon''', ''OrderOfTheStick'', on Haley's aphasia.

-->''"Boy looks like he took a shit and found his liver in the bowl."''
-->-- '''T.C.''', ''{{Preacher}}''

Heroic Blue Screen of Death: An earth-shattering revelation or horrible event affects the hero or someone he cares deeply about, leaving him flummoxed or shocked to the point of mentally shutting down for a while. Alternatively, if this occurs during a fight with one of the BigBad's minions, the hero may have a [[FoeTossingCharge violent outburst]], with the ensuing catastrophe killing EvilMinions and knocking his companions in different directions. In the latter case, the hero may disappear into the fog of war and have to be tracked down by his friends and given a heaping helping of EpiphanyTherapy.

Reasons for the BSOD vary, but usually involves something that shakes the very core of the character's being. Classic examples include [[DeadLittleSister losing a loved one]] (especially one that the character [[FailureKnight failed to protect or save]]), discovering that the character is [[TomatoInTheMirror not who he thought he was]], being [[EtTuBrute betrayed by someone]] [[HeartbrokenBadass the character cared about]], being forced to go against a personal code, core belief or deep abiding reason to live, being delivered a nasty HannibalLecture by a particularly crafty villain, or [[MyGreatestFailure failing miserably at something that everything was riding on]].

That or they've just realised they've left the oven on.

In any case, the result is a form of non-consensual TenMinuteRetirement. The aftermath may cause the hero to become [[TheStoic emotionally]] [[AngstComa comatose]], [[OutDamnedSpot obsessive and guilt-ridden]], [[DumbStruck mute]], or in really bad cases, a [[JadeColoredGlasses jaded]] violent [[AmnesiacDissonance amnesiac]]. The most literal BSOD effect would be catatonia. Such personality changes may also scare the hell out of people who are now worried the hero is [[FallenHero as much a danger as the villain was]]. If the incident happened before the story takes place, it provides a rationale for him to be the ShellShockedSenior. Compare FreakOut.

The best thing that can happen to a person suffering from a HeroicBSOD is meeting a friendly WarriorTherapist, or for an extra layer of awesome, [[GetAHoldOfYourselfMan getting rebooted with percussive force]]. Meeting a hostile WarriorTherapist, on the other hand, is the ''worst'' thing that can happen to them, as they'd [[HannibalLecture make damn sure]] that [[DespairEventHorizon the character crashes completely]].

The villain version of a HeroicBSOD is a VillainousBreakdown, which often involves the villain going completely crazy instead of shutting down.

A subtrope of HeroicBSOD is the AngstComa, which specifically refers to entering a comatose or catatonic state as opposed to other forms of mental breakdown.

Named in honor of the infamous [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSOD Blue Screen of Death]], common term for the Microsoft Windows error that indicates that the system [[strike:cannot continue functioning]] has screwed itself big time and must be rebooted.

Compare HeroicRROD. Sometimes inflicted by MindRape.
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!!Examples:

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[[folder:{{Anime}} and {{Manga}}]]
* Pictured above, [[StalkerWithACrush Yuno Gasai]] of ''MiraiNikki'' fame does this when she realizes that, due to the rules of the Future Diary game, [[spoiler:she will eventually have to kill Yukiteru, the boy she's been working together with and is [[{{Yandere}} hopelessly in love with]]]].
* In ''{{Robotech}}: New Generation'', Scott Bernard spends an entire episode in this state after the heroes go to join a force of over 6000 soldiers (and giant robots) only to find the entire army completely wiped out. He only snaps out of it to save the helpless amnesiac (who he then names after his dead fiancé. Yeah...).
* Takatsuki from ''Hourou Musuko'' seizes up and [[http://media2.onemanga.com/mangas/00000250/000150282/04.jpg curls up on the ground]] when her gym teacher [[spoiler: [[http://media2.onemanga.com/mangas/00000250/000150282/02-03.jpg yells at her to wear a bra]] ]]. Her class thinks it's funny, but [[spoiler: being a transsexual, she takes it badly]]. She gets over it, and does some shopping.
* ''PeacemakerKurogane'': Quite a lot of characters have several, with Tetsunosuke being the most frequent victim. Also, Suzu after he finds his master Yoshida dead.
* ''SchoolDays'': Sekai has one after [[spoiler: Makoto kisses Kotonoha in front of her]], and Kotonoha very likely has a '''[[GoMadFromTheRevelation permanent one]]''' after [[spoiler: she is raped by Makoto's friend Taisuke]] and then dumped by Makoto.
* Kaede in ''{{Shuffle}}'' has one after her mother dies and another after Rin starts dating Asa.
* Ichigo of ''{{Bleach}}'' has a very brief one after his friends are almost [[spoiler:killed by the arrancar]] and he was unable to save them because of his inner psycho. After visiting Orihime in the hospital, Ichigo basically shuts down internally because of his failure. Then Rukia kicks him in the head and forces him to handle his problems rather than freaking out about them.
** Right now, [[spoiler: poor Orihime is barely getting out of an ''epic'' one what hit her in full force after she and Ishida witness Ichigo being pretty much ''killed'' by Ulquiorra]]
** Only to have [[spoiler:witness Ichigo turned into... ''[[SuperPoweredEvilSide that]]''. Poor girl really [[BreakTheCutie doesn't have much luck.]]]]
* In ''Ichigo 100%'', Satsuki has one when whe witnesses what she thinks is Junpei out on a date at a movie theatre when he is really showing the new girl the awesomeness that he sees in movies.
* Yomiko Readman suffers a HeroicBSOD late in the ''ReadOrDie'' manga [[spoiler:when she relives the events that led to her lover Donnie's death, and learns that ''she'' was the one who was [[ShootTheDog forced to kill him]]]]. It gets so bad that she doesn't even want to read books anymore for a good few chapters.
**In ROD: The TV, all of the Paper Sisters, especially Maggie and Anita more so, suffer from collective {{Heroic BSOD}}s when [[spoiler:Joker reveals that them becoming sisters, their powers, and all of their memories from before their joining were all planned.]]
* Chrono suffers from this ''several'' times in the manga ''ChronoCrusade''. The worst is probably after the carnival battle in volume 5, during which [[spoiler:he flies into a rage and uses up so much of his power that he nearly kills Rosette in the process]]. Afterwards, he [[spoiler:forces himself into a [[ConvenientComa Convenient]] [[AngstComa Coma]] to keep from hurting her again. It takes Rosette [[JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind going into his mind and digging around in his memories]] before]] he's prepared to continue on his quest.
* In ''MahouSenseiNegima'', when the title character is confronted by the [[OneWingedAngel true form]] of Graf Herrman, he goes into an ''UnstoppableRage'' that nearly gets him killed.
** He later has a more traditional BSOD when Jack Rakan reveals how weak Negi is compared to his enemies.
** And has a [[http://www.onemanga.com/Mahou_Sensei_Negima!/33/20/ more comedic one]] when a series of stressful events is followed by [[ShrinkingViolet Nodoka]] confessing her love for him.
** Yue has a dramatic one when [[spoiler: she finally accepts that she does, in fact, love Negi; believing that she's betrayed her best friend (the aforementioned Nodoka) by [[MatchmakerCrush developing feelings for Negi herself]] when [[ShipperOnDeck she's supposed to be supporting Nodoka's relationship with him]]. Nodoka, of course, doesn't look at it that way and has to [[GetAHoldOfYourselfMan slap Yue out of it]]. ]] The breakdown is even more pronounced due to Yue mostly being an EmotionlessGirl up to that point.
*** Negi has an epic one in the GeckoEnding of the anime, after [[spoiler:Asuna dies. He manages to hold it back for a short while, but then he finds one of the bells she used to wear in her hair and completely breaks down. He does eventually find a way to save her.]]
* Being as ''NaruTaru'' is an unapologetically brutal {{deconstruction}} of the {{Mon}} genre, lead character [[ActionGirl Shiina Tamai]] is rather prone to this trope. The first time it happens is after [[spoiler:a painful ShootTheDog scenario, in which [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds her crazed friend Hiroko]] is killed right in front of her]]. Several volumes later, [[spoiler:she learns at the ''worst'' possible time that her Mon companion Hoshimaru isn't actually ''hers'', but instead belongs to her ally [[ManipulativeBastard Takeo]].]] Finally, [[spoiler:witnessing the death of her beloved father]] leaves her in such a terrible state that [[spoiler:her friend Akira - a ''ShrinkingViolet'' - has to [[GetAHoldOfYourselfMan slap her out of it]].]]
* The titular character in ''[[RanmaOneHalf Ranma 1/2]]'' all but shuts down when he believes [[spoiler:Akane has died]]. He snaps back to form when he finds out [[spoiler: she hasn't, not ''yet'', but is in desperate danger anyway]].
* Half the [=HiME=] throughout ''{{Mai-HiME}}'' as their loved ones are eliminated one by one in the [[ThereCanBeOnlyOne "HiMElander"]] arc (almost the only reason the other half didn't go into HeroicBSOD is because they died. [[spoiler: The only ones not BSOD'ing are Yukino and Nao, and even ''then'' they don't look good: Yukino is ''even more'' of a ShrinkingViolet and Nao gets beaten up by the thugs she robbed and humiliated as revenge for her childhood trauma]] ).
** Mai Tokiha herself gets quite a few of these, even in situations that aren't really that dramatic, but in which a real person would probably react this way. For example, in the first episode, after becoming an unexpected witness of the fight between Natsuki and Mikoto that wrecks her ship to Fuuka, Mai is so shocked that she wanders aimlessly through the garage, nearly catatonic, until Yuuichi rescues her.
** Natsuki suffers a mental breakdown, unable to summon her CHILD for a few episodes after she learned that [[spoiler:the story about her mother escaping from the First District lab to save her was a lie, and that she was actually going to hand her over to Searrs to continue her research]]. Another few traumatic episodes later, it takes a [[FriendshipMoment pep talk with Mai]] to snap her out of her funk.
*** It also happens to her in [[Manga/{{Mai-HiME}} the manga]], when [[spoiler:it becomes evident that [[FirstGirlWins Yuuichi has chosen Mai over her]]]]. This is also roughly the point where [[spoiler:[[NotQuiteDead her mother steps in]] and takes over the school]].
* ''{{Mai-Otome}}'' -- after the events of the MoodWhiplash WhamEpisode near the midpoint of the series, Arika is virtually catatonic.
* ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'': Asuka after being {{mind rape}}d, and Shinji during most of ''End of Evangelion'' after being forced to ShootTheDog.
* A far less serious version of this is Dororo from ''KeroroGunsou'', whose "Trauma Switch" (triggered by feeling ignored, or by a reminder of how Keroro took advantage of him in their childhood) would frequently cause him to sulk in the CornerOfWoe, on the verge of tears. In one episode this became a plot point, where the Trauma Switch got "stuck", and Keroro, Tamama, and Giroro had to [[JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind enter Dororo's mind]] to fix things. Ironically, Keroro can sometimes go through something similar when all the pentup remorse from being ''responsible'' for Dororo's childhood trauma kicks in.
** In an earlier episode, the Garuru Platoon's invasion is pinned on Keroro at first, and even his best friend Fuyuki doesn't believe in his innocence. Keroro is reduced to an emotional wreck as a result. [[GetAHoldOfYourselfMan Cue Giroro's intervention.]]
** New character [[HospitalHottie Pururu]] gets something like this as well, shutting down as she quietly babbles to herelf, whenever anyone calls her ''obasan'', meaning 'auntie'. The fact that she's Keroro's childhood sweetheart, and he's possibly a few hundred years old, makes her the oldest female in the show...
* A similar situation happens in ''SerialExperimentsLain'' halfway through the series. [[spoiler:Lain Iwakura's older sister Mika is shocked beyond description after witnessing all the weirdness caused by Lain. During the rest of the series, she spends most of her time staring into blank space, pretending she's calling someone by phone and murmuring "Bee bee bee... ga ga", imitating the phone sound.]] If you look closely, this can be explained by [[spoiler: Mika's mind slipping into the Wired and getting lost forever]].
** Or even better with that [[spoiler:she's an imperfect copy that slowly deteriorates after the original was deleted from reality - the episode ends with Mika coming face to face with herself, and then only the other Mika remains. Lain walks past and briefly sees the original Mika's fading ghost with horrified expression on her face.]]
** A much shorter BSOD also happens to [[spoiler:Alice after Lain [[LaserGuidedAmnesia wipes Alice's humiliation from the memories of everyone they know]] and then talks to and gruesomely kills [[AGodAmI the self-declared god Masama Eiri]]. Lain]] had to hold the poor girl up or she would've fallen, and hitting the floor probably wouldn't have changed her heartbreakingly blank expression. [[spoiler: What a friend, though--Lain proceeded to [[ResetButton rip reality a new one]] to fix Alice.]]
* More than once in ''SoukouNoStrain''.
* Yusuke Urameshi during the fight Dark Tournament finals in ''YuYuHakusho'', where Toguro [[spoiler:pretends to kill Kuwabara in order to bring Yusuke's PowerLevel to his own level becoming a WorthyOpponent]] Interesting though at this time, his BattleAura becomes the polar opposite of Toguro's own BattleAura which killed well over a quarter of the stadium's spectators.
* Yugi in ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh}}'' was plunged into a near-catatonic state after losing a duel to Seto Kaiba on the ramparts of Pegasus' castle. Kaiba played a desperate and cruel XanatosGambit in order to win; he stood on the edge of the castle wall and threatened to jump to his death if Yugi attacked his Blue Eyes White Dragon. Yugi's Heroic BSOD was brought on when he had to stop the Pharaoh from ''killing'' Kaiba, which for the first time ''fully'' alerted him to the presence of his KnightTemplar of an "other self" and made him realize just how dangerous it could be. [[spoiler: Anzu half-pulled him out of it after duelling with Mai, but it wasn't until ''his'' duel with Mai that Yugi fully recovered.]]
** Kaiba, of course, takes awhile to recover mentally whenever he loses a duel: [[YuGiOhTheAbridgedSeries "I lost a card game! I no longer have a reason to live!"]] One of these duels, however, makes it worse: [[spoiler: not only he was fighting to rescue his kidnapped brother Mokuba, practically turned into a zombie after his soul is stolen by Pegasus, but ''he'' gets his own soul stolen as well when he loses ''badly'' against his rival.]] He also almost had one [[spoiler: when he arrived to ancient Egypt and witnessed the tragedy that surrounded the creation of his Blue Eyes White Dragon.]]
*** This troper doesn't recall Kaiba giving any real reaction at all to that.
** Atemu/The Pharaoh has his turn in the Doma filler arc when he gives in to his inner darkness, plays the [[ArtifactOfDoom Seal of Orichalchos]], and loses Yugi's soul.
* Judai Yuki in ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh GX}}'' goes into this state after realizing [[spoiler:all the suffering [[StalkerWithACrush Yubel]] caused his friends -- including forcing a HeroicSacrifice out of his new HoYay partner Johan/Jesse -- was because of its twisted devotion to ''him'' and ire at being launched into space. Not only is Judai stuck in a catatonic state of guilt soon afterwards, but becomes obsessed with finding Johan alone.]] Judai's subsequent discovery of his SuperpoweredEvilSide -- the Supreme King Haou -- while in this state leaves him in an even ''deeper'' BSOD state after his rescue. But unlike Yugi, who recovered within the same arc, Judai never fully recovers. [[spoiler: In the fourth season, he's still pissy and emo, even after reconciling with Yubel. Apparently, he's been dueling so long for the fate of the world and/or his friends, that the game isn't fun for him, anymore.]]
** Never fully recovers? Apparently somebody never got to see the end of GX, where Yuki [[spoiler: duels against Yugi. Partway through the duel, he finally gets it pounded back into his head just how fun the game can be, and concedes the duel to the Pharaoh in spectacular fashion: by sending Neos on a suicide charge at a massively-powerful Osiris/Slifer. The series ends with a smile and one last "GOTCHA!"]] I'd say he recovered ''quite'' nicely.
* When the true identity of Deep Blue is revealed, poor Ichigo of ''TokyoMewMew'' is shocked into a loss of common sense, attacking her teammates and then refusing to fight, until Minto [[GetAHoldOfYourselfMan slaps her back to sanity]]. We wouldn't blame her; after all, it ''was'' [[spoiler: her boyfriend and ex MysteriousProtector, Masaya]].
* In ''RurouniKenshin'', after Enishi defeats Kenshin, he [[spoiler: [[FakingTheDead fakes Kaoru's death]] ''[[FakingTheDead very]]'' [[FakingTheDead realistically]] ]], causing Kenshin to go into shock and spend a good few weeks catatonic in Rakuninmura (a village for people who no longer have anything to live for), with his sword chained shut. It takes [[spoiler: Yakiho almost being killed]] to return.
* In ''RevolutionaryGirlUtena'',[[spoiler: Touga defeats Utena causing Rose Bride Anthy to be engaged to him.Utena ends up wearing a girl's uniform afterwards.]] Wakaba ends up [[spoiler: being the one to snap Utena out of it and seek a rematch with Touga.]]
** Touga's sister [[TheLibby Nanami]] gets one of these later on in the series after [[spoiler: [[{{Squick}} she finds out]] [[BrotherSisterIncest exactly how much Anthy and her brother Akio 'love' each other]].]]
* After being forced to [[ShootTheDog kill someone]] [[spoiler: (Legato)]] for the first time in his life to save the life of his friends Milly and Meryl, thus shattering his long-held pacifism, Vash the Stampede from ''{{Trigun}}'' has a mental breakdown and spends an entire episode in an emotionally crippled and nearly catatonic state.
* This occurs in ''[[HotaruNoHaka Grave of the Fireflies]]'' to the main character Seita before he dies, though it is no wonder due to him [[spoiler: losing his entire family and everything that he ever cared for in a horrifically tragic manner]].
* In ''ElfenLied'', Kouta, the male lead, suffers amnesia and spends an entire year in an AngstComa after [[spoiler: watching his little sister Kanae and his father get slaughtered right in front of him by Lucy]]. Lucy herself suffers some pretty bad ones, like...her ''entire'' [[strike:childhood]] life.
** Many of the main Diclonii characters suffer this at one point or another, usually after an episode of [[UnstoppableRage Berserker Rage]]. [[spoiler: Nana is a noticable exception, [[{{Pollyanna}} maintaining her positive outlook]] no matter [[{{Understatement}} how awful]] the situation has become. Even when her [[BerserkButton Papa is threatened]], she still maintains control of herself.]]
** I'd argue that Lucy is more an example of {{Despair Event Horizon}} in that she doesn't really recover from the break. Lets face it, she's pretty much homicidal from the day [[spoiler:those kids literally {{Kicked The Wrong Dog}}.]]
* This is spoofed in ''FullmetalAlchemist'', when Second Lieutenant Jean Havoc, after getting [[LeisureSuitLarry soundly rejected by several women]], falls into a catatonic state for the rest of the episode, with a simple, yet comedic, whistle-like sound playing every time the camera focuses unto his blank face (which is done three times in the episode).
** Although there is a real one in the [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Anime/FullmetalAlchemist anime]] for Roy Mustang, caused by his participation in the Ishbal Massacre (in particularly his orders to [[spoiler: kill Winry's parents]]) and shown in a flashback.
** In the manga Alex Louis Armstrong, known best for being the PluckyComicRelief, has a complete nervous breakdown during the Ishbal Massacre, [[TearJerker clutching a dead Ishbalan child while crying]], and is forced to go home.
** In the manga, [[HeroicSociopath Barry]] confronts Al that he is actually [[ReplacementGoldfish just a construct built by Ed]] (though Barry just suggested this for laughs.) Poor suit of armor got [[CloningBlues nervous breakdown]] until [[WrenchWench Winry]] [[PercussiveMaintenance set him up]] [[GetAholdOfYourselfMan angrily and tearfully.]]
** Ed gets this too, notably right after the failed attempt to bring back their mother in the manga and the new anime. Hawkeye even notes that he looks lost. Of course, in this series, characters get the BSOD so often, they must be running on Windows Millennium Edition.
**Hawkeye gets one of her own in the manga and the new anime series, after [[spoiler:Lust told her that she just killed Mustang]], which was a lie, of course, but neither of them knew that until [[spoiler: Mustang made his dramatic reappearance.]]
* Happens to Kazuma in ''{{s-CRY-ed}}'' after the death of [[spoiler:Kunihiko Kimishima]]. Rather than making precision strikes against his enemies (often for money) he madly swings his fist at anything with a HOLY logo on it until [[WorthyOpponent Ryuhou]] comes out to stop him.
* Chief Ikari from ''ParanoiaAgent'', after being fired for his and Maniwa's mishandling of the Shonen Bat case, effectively has one of these, retreating into a ''LotusEaterMachine'' based on how he would ideally like the world to be.
* A significant portion of the main cast of ''BloodPlus'' experience {{Heroic BSOD}}s following Diva's mid-series crossing of the MoralEventHorizon ([[spoiler: raping and killing poor Riku]], especially Saya (who attempts to cut herself off from the rest of the cast and become an emotionless killing machine) and David (who spends a timeskip and several subsequent episodes depressed and pretty much [[DrowningMySorrows constantly drunk]]).
** Haji had one himself after the events of Vietnam, though it was mostly offscreen. Prequel manga "City of Nightwalkers" reveals that he spent the next several decades slowly starving himself to death, refusing to drink blood out of a combination of fear of losing control of himself and self-imposed penance for having been even momentarily afraid of Saya.
* ''GundamSeed'': After the climactic battle between Kira and Athrun where Kira's friend Tolle is killed and he realises he caused the same pain to Athrun by killing Nicol, Kira alternates between unconsciousness and hysterical sobbing until he gets a pep talk from Lacus and thinks things over.
** In the [[GundamSeedDestiny sequel]] Athrun goes through a slow forming one after he realizes that his plan to help Orb by rejoining Zaft to fight that EA just went up in smoke after Orb joined the EA instead and Kira and Lacus went rogue. His skills in combat continue to get poorer and poorer as he find himself fighting against Orb and eventually Kira as well and comes to head when Kira outright tells him that by staying with Zaft Athrun is only causing Orb and his friends pain and isn't helping them at all. After this Athrun freezes up entirely and basically lets Kira defeat him, causing him to mope around for about 10 eps before finally snapping back.
*** Shinn Asuka also gets one near the end of the series (although in his case it plays out more like the traditional VillainousBreakdown) for... well, no discernable reason. By the end of the FinalBattle he is literally hallucinating and this close to landing a lethal blow on his own ally/girlfriend before Athrun forcibly stops him. [[WallBanger This is another one in a long list of reasons why fans hate the series' ending.]]
* A slow build over the course of five specific episodes leads to the main character of ''OjamajoDoremi'', Doremi Harukaze, going into this in the series finale. [[spoiler: Her best friends for the past four years are moving or going to a different school, so Doremi locks herself in the Maho-dou on the day of her elementary school graduation. It takes Hana-chan threatening to reveal her identity as a witch to force her out.]]
* ''TengenToppaGurrenLagann'''s Simon goes into a big one of these after [[spoiler:Kamina dies]]. However, when Simon [[HesBack reboots]], he ''[[CrowningMomentOfAwesomeMechaAnime reboots]]''...complete with [[TookALevelInBadass several levels in badass]].
* In ''{{Gundam 00}}'', [[DefrostingIceQueen Tieria Erde]] suffers a ([[EpilepticTrees literal?]]) HeroicBSOD after [[spoiler: his partner and close friend Lockon Stratos is killed.]] And before that, [[spoiler: he had one when VEDA was hijacked and crashed, making him completely lose their connection.]]
** In the second season, poor [[spoiler: Louise Halevy]] has ''several'' of those in different degrees, [[spoiler: as a side effect of her [[IllGirl medical treatment]].]]
* Freesia in the second season of ''{{Jubei-chan}}'' engages in psychological warfare on Jiyu; [[spoiler: By revealing herself as ''not'' her best friend, stabbing her, throwing her off a cliff, and then turning her beloved father against her. This causes Jiyu to reject Ayunosuke and go catatonic, which results in Ayunosuke to turn into a tree. It takes some serious PowerOfLove to get everyone back.]]
* In ''{{X}}'', Kamui does this after a REALLY rough day in which his childhood best friend [[spoiler: turns murderously insane, impales Kamui on assorted objects, molests him, and forces him to watch as he kills his ''other'' childhood best friend.]] Team mystic Subaru Sumeragi, who once went through an HeroicBSOD himself [[spoiler: after his boyfriend revealed himself to be an evil murderer who never cared for him and then killed Subaru's beloved older sister]], is called upon to [[JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind go psychic-spelunking through Kamui's head]] to find his reboot button.
* For being such a MagnificentBastard otherwise, Lelouch Lamperouge of ''CodeGeass'' goes into one of these nearly every other episode.
** Considering the consequences some of his IdiotBall moments have had, some Heroic BSOD is rather called for. Not to mention the fact that [[ChewToy the show's universe is pretty much designed to screw him]].
** Fellow castmate Suzaku suffers one when [[spoiler:the Geass command on him causes him to [[NuclearWeaponsTaboo "nuke"]] Tokyo, killing millions]]. His response is to stand in the crater for hours, then finally break down in crazy laughter. He gets better.
* Chiko in ''TheDaughterOfTwentyFaces'' predictably suffers this after [[spoiler: Twenty-Faces himself is seemingly killed.]] Given that she's [[ActionGirl The Littlest Ninja]] and still intends to take hold of her destiny as per the advice Twenty-Faces gave her, however, she doesn't take all that long to reboot.
* In ''PrincessTutu'' Fakir suffers a brief one after Ahiru digs up the [[spoiler:suppressed memories of his parents' violent deaths--that were the fault of his powers]].
* In ''SentouYouseiYukikaze'', Rei suffers this when his beloved aircraft is destroyed. Somewhat justified that he is a loner, and somewhat a [[LonersAreFreaks freak]] at that. Freak as in, he prefers the company of his aircraft (and the titular AI inside it) rather than anyone else, even his [[HoYay unusually very close commanding major]]. Thing is, the AI uploaded itself into a new aircraft before the old one got blasted, and it seems that the new AI, in the new aircraft, destroyed the old one in what seems as a MercyKill. As a result, Rei doesn't trust the new aircraft, even if it contains his old AI. [[MST3KMAntra Better not think about this too much...]]
* In ''{{Higurashi no Naku Koro ni}} Kai'', [[spoiler: Rika Furude, revealed as the true protagonist behind the scenes of the entire series, goes through temporary BSOD every time she inevitably dies in each arc at which point Hanyū Furude, an ancestral victim turned shrine god, resets her. It takes a while, the aid of Hanyu and events that create deja vu, to spark Rika's memory each time, since she lives her live over each and every time until her memories slowly flood back to her. Hanyu herself has gone through an epic BSOD in which she has lost all hope for changing Rika's fate and just goes through the motions of resurrecting her each time. It takes Rika's changes in attitude (which happens as a result of K1's loyalty and hope) to change Hanyu's attitude.]]
** [[spoiler: Rika]] gets a more tangible and obvious HeroicBSOD moment during Minagoroshi-hen. [[spoiler: When Satoko's EvilUncle Teppei returns to Hinamizawa (a sign Rika usually takes as making a lost cause of a particular world), she's inspired to reach out for help, which she at first gets from Irie and Takano. However, when she's told that nothing can be done because the Uncle is already being tracked by the authorities, which forgoes any interference by the "Institute", she breaks down and curses at each one to die (in ways she knows they die by in past worlds), and then proceeds to drink herself into a stupor serious even by her standards.]]
** In its sequel, {{UminekoNoNakuKoroNi}}, Battler goes through such a bad episode of Heroic BSOD upon the revelation that [[spoiler:Asumu is not, in fact, his real mother]] that he doesn't just stop functioning temporarily - [[spoiler:he erases his (meta) physical presence]]. Don't worry [[IGotBetter he gets better]].
***Followed by similiar [[spoiler: Beatrice's]] epic BSOD in EP5. [[spoiler: Do worry, [[ItGotWorse she doesn't get better.]]]]
* Grovyle in ''{{Pokemon}}'' has a Heroic BSOD when he finds out his love interest, a cute and motherly female Meganium, is already in a relationship with his rival. It only worsens when he evolves into a Sceptile, yet loses his ability to attack. It takes Ash almost getting killed two episodes later to rescue Pikachu ''and'' Sceptile from Team Rocket to make him get better.
** In the manga, Silver practically passes out after [[spoiler:he finds out Giovanni is his father.]]
* Subaru in the ''[[MegaManStarForce Ryuusei no Rockman]]'' anime has one when the villain of the week informs him that his alien partner whom he fuses with to become Rockman [[spoiler:killed his father]]. The shock of the revelation is enough that his body literally forces itself away from said partner and he reverts to normal. Four hundred feet above the ground. Whoops.
* Fate of ''MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha'' got one in the first season after [[spoiler: she discovers [[CloningBlues what she is]]]], followed by a tirade from [[EvilMatriarch her mother]], Precia, that ends with her stating how much she has despised Fate ever since she was born. The mind of [[TheWoobie poor]], LoveMartyr Fate simply couldn't take it and temporarily shut down in despair.
** She almost had amother in ''Striker's S'' when [[MadScientist Jail Scaglietti]] subjects her to a cruel HannibalLecture about how she is raising Caro and Erio, which in Jail's opinion [[NotSoDifferent makes her just as evil as Precia]]. She's luckier this time, though, since Erio and Caro go all "ShutUpHannibal" on Jail and reassure Fate about her motherly attitude to them, which gives her enough HeroicResolve to defeat Jail.
* Sousuke spends a significant portion of ''FullMetalPanic The Second Raid'' in the throes of a HeroicBSOD after he's ordered to cease serving as Kaname's bodyguard and cut off all contact with her. Eventually it gets bad enough that he simply walks away in the middle of a mission and wanders aimlessly around Hong Kong, getting a bottle of scotch and picking up (or allowing himself to be picked up by) a prostitute who looks like Kaname. And then [[ItGotWorse It Gets Worse]]...
* [[spoiler: Tsukasa]] suffers one in ''[[DotHack .hack//sign]]'' [[spoiler: after Morganna tortures him]].
**[[spoiler: In fact, this was Morganna's plan: to build Tsukasa up and make him feel safe so that when it was "BSOD time" it would be more traumatic.]]
**To be honest, it's kinda hard not to when you've been [[spoiler:Data Drained.]]
** In ''.hack//ROOTS'', Haseo has a breakdown, then goes on a rage-driven warpath, throughout the last third of the series after Tri-Edge[[spoiler:/Azure Kite]] [[spoiler:puts Shino into a coma]].
* In ''DaiGuard'', Ibuke shuts down when she learns that [[spoiler: her father died in a monster attack, not because he was trying to save the world, but because he was trying desperately to prove his pet theory]]. Problem is, she shuts down in the middle of a mecha-fight and almost gets her team killed, leading to a TenMinuteRetirement.
* Dio of ''LastExile'' goes into one of these after the ship he's on (the Silvana) is captured by his evil sister Delphine and he believes his [[BattleButler friend and companion]] Luciola has betrayed him. He only snaps out of it right before his [[MindRape Rite of the Covenant]]. And then [[ItGotWorse it gets worse.]]
*Luffy gets two of these in ''OnePiece'', both under similar circumstances. The first is in the sixth movie when he thinks his crew is dead after witnessing them being absorbed into a [[NightmareFuel life force draining plant]]. The second happens later in the manga when [[spoiler:Bartholomew Kuma vanishes his crew one by one before his eyes]]. In both cases, [[IGotBetter he gets better]] after realizing that they are still alive.
** The second one is a particularly long-lasting one. In both Manga and Anime, the entire crew gets one of these as they simultaneously face off against [[spoiler: an [[AuthorityEqualsAsskicking Admiral]], the admiral's top subordinate (who [[LethalUpgrade Monster Chopper]] couldn't land a single hit on), and a SECOND Pacifista, after they struggled to beat the FIRST Pacifista, and were more tired than they'd been in recent memory, '''Then''' [[YourMileageMayVary Bartholemew]] [[TricksterMentor Kuma]] shows up, and [[HopelessBossFight utterly]] [[FakingTheDead annihilates]] them]]. in the anime adaptation, it starts off as this at the BEGINNING of the episode, and by the end becomes one of the most heart-breaking [[FreakOut freakouts]] possible when a hero of this caliber realizes he's failed completely, and never stood a chance.
** While his status as a hero is questionable, a recent manga chapter shows that, [[spoiler: Squad seems to go into one after realizing how thoroughly the Marines had manipulated him into stabbing Whitebeard.]]
*Takumi in ''InitialD'' goes into one after [[spoiler:his Trueno's engine breaks down in mid-race]].
* In ''{{Cyborg 009}}'', Francoise (003) almost suffers one of these when [[spoiler: she witnesses the destruction of a whole city with her powers and is unable to stop it]], and Joe (the titular 009) has to talk her out of it. Later, Joe has a full one when [[spoiler: he lands into an AlternateUniverse where the Black Ghost organization, the group he and his people have fought against during the whole series, have actually ''won'' the war and now own the world.]]
* The Major from ''GhostInTheShell'' has a BSOD at least twice over the course of the anime series. In the first, she's shellshocked after [[spoiler: encountering a traumatic memory in Kuze's cyberbrain]]. Later, she adopts this expression after [[spoiler: a rag-tag refugee takes down their super-duper V-22 with fifty dollar's worth of suicide bomb, severely injuring super-hacker Ishikawa and sending Section 9's million-dollar tiltrotor tumbling into a chasm. This is right after a team member has been killed.]] And all of this occurs in the time span of about one hour. Wouldn't you?
* ''{{Gravion}} Zwei'' has ''three'' people suffering HeroicBSOD in a relatively close time together:
** Leele after finding out that [[spoiler:Sandman is her father]] (no thanks to [[TheWhitePrince Touga]]), right after finding out her real name [[spoiler:Leele Zeravire, which means she is connected with the invading enemies]], was too much in a shock she goes into a frantic walk that got her slipping off the bridge falling to the lake.
** Then, Touga, based on those events regarding on Leele (and [[WhatTheHellHero being called out]] by Eiji), made worse by [[spoiler:Eina's HeroicSacrifice for his sake]], eventually fell into one, leaving the castle, hanging in silence in the slums and lets himself be a victim of beating by punks (and here, we speak about some sort of {{Tykebomb}} with fighting skills)
** And meanwhile, Sandman, after hearing all the disasters and how his past caught up with him along with how Gravion is losing as well as [[spoiler:his brother's coming with Zeravire]], finally fell into it. He got reprimanded by Raven [[spoiler:or to be exact his lover Ayaka]] and quickly got back to his composure.
* {{Madlax}} completely lost the will to live after [[spoiler:her love interest Vanessa was apparently killed. Nakhl and Elenore pointed out that Madlax had specifically promised Vanessa to live, though, and so Madlax was able to carry on until the series' MindScrew of an EarnYourHappyEnding.]]
* ''{{Naruto}}'' has one when his mission to find Sasuke fails after [[spoiler:Tobi/Madara spirits him away without leaving a trail]], and when he hears about [[spoiler:Jiraiya's death]]. Tsunade has one when [[spoiler:Pain destroys most of Konoha]]. Naruto also gets one again when [[spoiler: Hinata is seemingly killed before his very eyes.]] He then goes [[spoiler: into six-tails mode, skipping the 5-tails mode completely! ]]
** Also after Naruto [[spoiler: goes four-tails for the first time]], he has a brief BSOD when Yamato tells him that it was his (Naruto's) fault [[spoiler: Sakura was hurt]].
* In ''DeathNote'', [[http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eSMtT5rQeQU&feature=related L has one of these and falls off his chair]] when he hears about 'Shinigami'.
** And another one after he decides that [[spoiler:the Kira power must switch between people]], so his investigating is useless. He becomes depressed and loses his will to work. It cumulates in him and Light having a punch-up that breaks vases and overturns couches, and is probably one of the most fangirled-over fight scenes in recent history.
* In ''AngelSanctuary'', Rosiel seems to have one of these when [[spoiler: he kills Katan. He turns even more insane than he already was and breaks down completely.]]
** That's more appropriately a VillainousBreakdown, given that Rosiel, while he might not be the real BigBad of the series, is definitely not one of the heroes.
* In the tie-in manga for the ''{{Metroid}}'' series, a 14 year old Samus Aran rushes back to her home planet of Zebes upon getting word that Space Pirates have conquered the planet, to find her Chozo surrogate family imprisoned, powerless, and fated to die. A confrontation with Ridley and Mother Brain results in them tag-teaming her with taunts, going on about the circumstances under which her family died, how the Chozo will be killed, and culminating in Mother Brain dropping the bombshell on her that she was never viewed as a person by her and possibly the Chozo, she was designed and trained to be nothing more than the ultimate biological weapon, and that as a result, Samus using her suit and everything she was trained to fight in the war was just playing into Mother Brain's schemes. Samus finally has a breakdown, alternately sobbing and looking utterly dead and emotionless as Ridley and Mother Brain continue to taunt her during her breakdown.
*Lina Inverse of ''{{Slayers}}'' undergoes this briefly at the end of season two. In her defense, [[spoiler: a dark lord was killing her love interest ''and'' all of her friends like they were nothing, and was about to destroy their souls as well in an attempt to get her to destroy the world by casting a particular spell]]. [[SadisticChoice No win situation, much?]]
** ...Of course, one could argue that what happened [[spoiler: after she ''did'' cast the spell]] was, in fact, the ultimate HeroicBSOD, [[spoiler: as the Lord Of Nightmares completely takes over Lina, pretty much ''killing'' her]].
* Tamaki of ''OuranHighSchoolHostClub'' has a pretty epic (and hilarious) one during one of [[strike:Casanova's]] [[strike:Bossa Nova's]] Kasanoda's visits to the music room.
* Vegeta of ''DragonballZ'' gets one of these in the first Brolly movie. Upon realizing what they're dealing with, he goes almost catatonic with hopelessness and actually sits out most of the fight. Then Piccolo grabs him by the hair and tries to insult some sense into him - he just hangs limp, blathering about the pointlessness of it all until Piccolo gives up and tosses him to the ground. He's on his feet and fighting a few minutes later, so apparently it sank in.
** Arguably, the violant rampage varient of this happens when several of the characters become Super Saiyans, particularly Goku's transformation while fighting Freiza, Gohan while fighting Cell, and Trunks in the special about his past.
** Piccolo gets a minor one in the anime version of the Buu saga, when [[spoiler:Gotenks' reckless fight with Buu blows Kami's lookout to hell and back.]] He stands there [[spoiler: holding a chunk of the floor]], gaping at it and rambling until circumstances force him to... y'know, ''[[DragonBallAbridged dodge]]''.
** Gohan has two simultaneous ones during his fight against Cell - first when Cell prepares to blow up the Earth, which he blames himself for, and then when Goku [[HeroicSacrifice sacrifices himself]] to [[spoiler: try to]] kill Cell, which Gohan also blames himself for.
* Mai Kawasumi from ''{{Kanon}}'' has her HeroicBSOD when Sayuri is attacked by the demons that she had been fighting. Said demons are [[spoiler:actually manifestations of her own denial of her healing powers.]]
* Kotomi Ichinose from ''{{Clannad}}'' has her HeroicBSOD when she thinks that Ryou was involved in the bus accident at the intersection. Justified in that [[spoiler:she lost her parents in a plane crash]].
** Kyou herself has a BSOD when the epic ShipSinking of ''{{Clannad}}'' took place. Apparently, she had [[IPromisedMyselfIWouldntCry promised herself that she wouldn't cry]], but when Tomoya's unconscious actions tell the rest of his [[UnwantedHarem harem]] who he's picked, she, to say the least, does not take it well.
* Kouji Kabuto from ''ShinMazinger'' experiences one of these when he realizes that by fighting in his HumongousMecha, he has accidentally killed dozens of civilians.
** In the original ''MazingerZ'' series, Kouji's [[BattleCouple girlfriend and partner]] Sayaka Yumi has another when [[spoiler: her HumongousMecha, Aphrodite A, is destroyed]]. It's so bad that [[spoiler: she almost kills herself by drowning, as she believes that Aphrodite is calling her from a nearby lake]]
* During [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel the Great Eclipse]] in ''{{Berserk}}'', Guts briefly experiences a HeroicBSOD. Casca, on the other hand, ''[[BreakTheCutie thoroughly]]'' experiences hers, to the point of being driven completely insane. Those who have seen the Eclipse in action know that this need not be elaborated further.
** Let's not forget when Guts finishes his assassination on Julius, where he had to kill a kid who very much reminded him of... him.
** And Griffith had one when Guts left the Hawks and defeated him, which would soon lead to worse things to come for him.
* In the ''{{Bastard}}'' manga, Dark Schneider occasionally experiences Heroic BSOD's for a variety of reasons. Some of them are very minor and short (often triggered by a spat with Yoko in the beginning of the series, when Rushe still matters), but a major one (off-screen) when he [[spoiler: finds out that Yoko apparently died, then goes to hell.]] He's promptly snapped out of it by Porno Dianno by virtue of her wandering all over the place pretty much naked. Talk about priority placement.
* Comedic use in Episode 7 of ''{{Haruhi-chan}}'' when Haruhi had Kyon go Scavenger Hunting for "A barrier of the heart", and Kyon grabbed Koizumi.
--> '''Haruhi:''' "A barrier to the heart", why him? \\
'''Kyon:''' So, Koizumi. [[HoYay I love you]]. \\
'''Haruhi:''' Gack! (insert metaphor for her world shattering) \\
(scene change) \\
'''Kyon's Sister''': Attention! Haruhi-chan has fainted so we're taking a break!
* ''PokemonSpecial'': When the comments of a blind girl make Ruby realize how selfish he's been all along, putting the entire ''world'' aside so he can pursue his own goals, he has one.
** Ruby's pales compared to Crystal's. She has a rather harsh one after not only ''failing'' to catch Suicune, but also failing to confirm why it was at the Tin Tower (their confrontation site) in the first place. And unlike most [=BSODs=], hers came with a driver crash; she lost the ability to catch even the simplest Pokemon as a result of her BSOD. It took a BrightSlap from her ''mother'' and a trip back to her old training ground before she completely finished rebooting.
* In ''FushigiYuugi'', Tamahome goes into the violent rampage variety of BSOD when he [[spoiler:comes home to find his entire family - including his younger siblings ranging in age from five to twelve years old - have been gruesomely murdered.]]
* At the end of the second episode of ''GundamX'', [[FaintingSeer Tiffa]] [[TheWoobie Addil]] has a ''memorable'' one (screaming and collapsing included), after [[spoiler: Garrod fires the Satellite Cannon with her help and she senses the deaths of ''many'' people under its powers]].
* Joe himself experiences this in the ''ViewtifulJoe'' anime adaption after[[spoiler: finding out that Captain Blue is the BigBad. It takes Blue Jr. and people Joe met through Movie Land to get him out of it]].
* Takato of ''DigimonTamers'' suffers a relatively short, Shinji-like [[HeroicBSOD one]] [[spoiler:after transforming his digital pet into a [[DeadlyUpgrade ravenous monster]] and watching it lose to Beelzebumon]], though he was pretty much out of it from the moment Girumon went monster and [[spoiler: his [[TransformationTrinket digivice]] shattered]].
**Jeri has one in the same episode after her partner Digimon, Leomon, [[spoiler: is killed]]. Through almost all of the episode after the event, she's staring at her Digivice and not moving, despite the fact that there's a massive fight going on around her that is ''causing the ground she is standing on to crack in half''.
**Earlier in the franchise [[DigimonAdventure (the first season)]] Tai has one. After having been convinced that he cannot die in the Digital World, his carelessness gets [[DieForOurShip Sora]] captured. He is then told that he CAN die in the Digital World, and when confronted by a dangerous wall he had carelessly passed through earlier, he BSOD's.
* Blade/D-Boy in ''TekkamanBlade'' starts suffering hallucinations and nightmares that cause him to be unable to fight after his corrupted sibling Saber/Evil causes him to overstay his HourOfPower and suffer a FaceHeelTurn. While he was brought back to normal, he almost tore apart one of his friends before he snapped out of it, and things come to a head when the military reveals its new [[PowerArmor Teknosuits]] and he gets arrested. He is left an utter wreck until Aki/Star [[GetAholdOfYourselfMan slaps and shouts some sense into him]].
*In ''YuYuHakusho'', as Yusuke is getting the tar bearen out of him by Younger Toguro, Keiko, unable to bear seeing her boyfriend go through such unimaginable agony, snaps and becomes completly catatonic for one and a half episodes.
* Played for laughs in ''SoulEater'', when Death the Kid is taking his exam, crying about not being able to write his name neatly enough...and then rips the paper. Fainting and blood ensue.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:ComicBooks]]
* Strongbow the elf archer in ''ElfQuest'' loses his shooting skills after being forced to kill an elf who attempted to kill his son (up until this point in the series no elf has ''ever'' killed another elf, barring numerous threats and a couple of failed attempts). Only when he is able to commune with his victim's spirit and beg its forgiveness does he return to his old self.
* In ''AnimalMan'', Buddy Baker has a BSOD lasting at least several days when [[spoiler: an assassin murders his wife and children]]. This subverts [[spoiler: temporarily]] the normal tendency of DarkAge superheroes to immediately go on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge.
* In ''{{Runaways}}'', Victor Mancha, a cyborg, goes into what characters describe as a Blue Screen of Death when he hears three pre-determined questions that conflict with his logic programing and spirituality. As of writing, only one has been used ( Q: Could God make a sandwich so big, he could not eat it? A: [[spoiler: Yes, and then he would finish it anyway.]]. It only works once.
* The quote above from ''{{Preacher}}'' is taken from the ''All In The Family'' StoryArc, where one of the villains comments on the eponymous protagonist's HeroicBSOD, after he [[spoiler: saw his lover shot dead right in front of him]].
* The titular character of ''The Desert Peach'' (Erwin Rommel's brother) suffers one (complete with "Attempting reboot" comment) after some men in his army unit give him some compelling evidence about the implementation of Hitler's Final Solution.
* ''{{Nightwing}}'' has an enormous BSOD after a series of events [[spoiler:including an attack on Oracle, who proceeds to dump him; his circus, which was burned down; his apartment building being bombed]] that culminates in the death of a certain villain, and he plunges further into mind breakage when [[spoiler:he's subsequently raped by his [[AntiHero particularly]] [[FemmeFatale disturbed]] accessory to the death of said villain.]]
* Batman has one of these in the Elseworlds series ''"The Nail"'' (set in a world where Superman was not raised by the Kents) when [[spoiler:he kills the Joker after being forced to witness the Joker's extremely sadistic double murder of Robin and Batgirl (I ''said'' it was an Elseworlds story).]] He makes it back to the Batcave but is catatonic [[spoiler:until Catwoman (who did a HeelFaceTurn to help him against the Joker) puts on the Robin costume and shocks him out of it.]]
* Cyclops, in {{Joss Whedon}}'s ''Astonishing X-Men'' run, has a severe one of these when [[spoiler:Emma Frost reveals to him that his inability to control his powers is the result of a complex he developed about self-control as teenager, rather than a brain injury resulting from a concussion, as he had previously believed.]] He spends and issue or two in a completely catatonic state, his powers not functioning. He soon recovers enough to move around and lead the team (perhaps even more effectively than usual, with his self-control issues out of the way) and later [[spoiler:surprises everyone by revealing (with a point blank blast in the face of his interrogator) that his powers still work, and that he now has full control over them. At the end of the arc, this control fades as, for reasons this troper still doesn't understand, the "clarity" he got from Emma's intervention wears off. See {{Status Quo is God}}.]]
* The title character has one of these in ''CerebusTheAardvark'' after witnessing what he believed to be the death of his love interest: Jaka. He spends several issues hanging out in a dinner/inn while in a near-catatonic state until somebody pushes his BerserkButton.
* [[SpiderMan Spider-Man]] is a master of this. The death of Gwen Stacy is the best and most famous example. In ''Clone Saga'' it happens one time after another and the level of his {{Wangst}} is just ridiculously big. In JoeQuesada's ''One More Day'' [[ItGotWorse it gets even worse]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:{{Fanfiction}}]]
* In the SuperSmashBros fanfiction ''Smash Generation'', Mario appears to have one of these after [[spoiler: finding out that Dr. Mario dies in a year, since they're being visited by their future children. Yeah, it kind of slipped out. It didn't help that they were about to fight the ''zombie'' of said doctor]]. Bonus points to the writer who even referenced the site for the idea.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:{{Film}}]]
* In ''FerrisBuellersDayOff'', Cameron seems to have one of these when he sees that the valet took his father's car - his most prized possession, for a joyride. He screams at the top of his lungs for the whole city to hear, then lapses into his BSOD. Ferris and his girlfriend Sloane try desperately to revive him, which culminates with the two of them in a hot tub, and Cameron on a folding chair at the end of a diving board. He falls (or jumps) in, and Ferris "rescues" him, reviving him from his coma in the process. He reveals that he wasn't really BSOD'd the whole time. Sloane then asks if he saw her get changed, which he replies to with a grin.
* ''SleepyHollow'' used it twice, first when Ichabod first sees the "monster" ("It was a headless horseman. But it was a headless horseman. No, you must believe me. It was a horseman, a dead one. Headless.") and then at the finale: [[spoiler: the Horseman brings a woman with him to the underworld, her hand is stuck at the roots of the "tree portal". The hand beckons. Ichabod promptly faints.]]
* John "Scottie" Ferguson gets one of these in ''{{Vertigo}}'' that lasts long enough for him to be put in a mental hospital [[spoiler: after the woman he loves is killed. She comes back later.]]
* In Disney's ''TheGreatMouseDetective'', Basil snaps after falling for Ratigan's XanatosGambit, silently and stoically sits through the ToThePain lecture, and just waits for the DeathTrap to go off, feeling completely humiliated, outwitted, and defeated.
-->'''Dawson''': Dash it all, Basil! The queen's in danger, Olivia's counting on us, we're about to be horribly splatted, and all you can do is lie there feeling sorry for yourself!
**Well, how else would Dawson have been in a position to influence Basil's mind and force him to save the day?
* In ''TheDarkKnight'', Harvey Dent's blue screen is burnt and scarred on one side. Pretty much all the scenes in the hospital after he finds out what happened are just him on his bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. Of course, you either die a hero, or [[FallenHero reboot into a villain]]...
* Barbossa (arguably this rather than a VillainousBreakdown, given his brief stint as a "hero" in the third movie) has one in the third ''PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' movie, after his plan to save the pirates by releasing Calypso fails miserably. Upon seeing the maelstrom that the Pearl is forced to weather, he just stands on the deck staring at it, before Elizabeth snaps him out of it by reminding that he's needed at the helm.
* ''NightOfTheLivingDead'': Barbara has one after seeing her brother killed by a zombie, then being chased across the countryside by said zombie. She recovers [[spoiler: almost the whole film later, when her brother leads the mob of zombies that kill her.]]
* In the Korean action movie ''Shiri'', the main character has a bit of a BSOD when he discovers [[spoiler:his girlfriend is in fact a North Korean assassin]].
* Ditto the Korean thriller ''Oldboy'', where the main character [=BSODs=] hardcore (AND dumps core, AND probably files a cosmic bug report) when [[spoiler:he finds out he's been manipulated into sleeping with his own daughter as karmic payback for talking too much about a schoolmate who got his own sister pregnant]].
* Done pretty well for a comedy in ''TropicThunder'', when extreme method actor Kirk Lazarus is called out for his methods, used because he's afraid of what's deep inside, by a rather insane Tugg Speedman (who's suffered his own BSOD after accidentally killing a panda, then supposedly "[[IChooseToStay found a family]]"). It takes the OnlySaneMan, resident {{geek}}, and PromotedFanboy (of sorts) Kevin to shake Kirk out of it...and, well, he ''attempted'' to do so with Speedman.
* Oskar Schindler in ''SchindlersList'' [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvyZnOukZLg&feature=related breaks down towards the end of the film]] after thinking that even if he had saved the lives of about 1,100 Jews, he might have been able to save more had he used his money wisely.
** More like if he'd been less greedy with his personal possessions, at least to hear him tell it.
* ''SweeneyTodd'' goes into a not-so-heroic one of these after [[WhatAnIdiot Anthony's colossally bad timing in telling him about Johanna and his plan to elope with her]] [[SpannerInTheWorks blows his first shot at revenge on Judge Turpin straight to hell]]. This leads to him launching into the epic number "Epiphany" that marks his transition into full-on VillainProtagonist mode.
* In ''[[StarWars Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back]]'', Luke suffers a BSOD after [[LukeIAmYourFather Darth Vader's notorious reveal]]. Which brings us to...
* In the {{Bollywood}} movie ''{{Pukar}}'', the main character, Jai, goes through this after having been wrongfully accused of treason and facing court martial. Made all the worse that his girlfriend has left him and his family has been shamed. Ironic, that the only one listening is [[WomanScorned the person who put him in that predicament]] (though she never thought it would go so far) and her father. He gets better.
* Shilo has a fairly extensive one by the end of ''RepoTheGeneticOpera''.
* Nicole Kidman's character in ''Birth'' has a BSOD while [[AtTheOperaTonight at the opera]]. The camera locks on her face for ''a full three minutes'' while she shuts down. The result is fairly haunting.
* An early cinematic example occurs in ''{{Metropolis}}'' when Freder collapses and has a [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNVbFLaO2jQ&feature=PlayList&p=F3AAC80014E0AC58&index=18 four-minute apocalyptic vision]] after he (apparently) discovers [[spoiler: [[RobotGirl (Robot) Maria]]]] is in league with his father, Joh.
* From the recent CGI movie ''[[TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles TMNT]]'', Raphael confronts Leonardo, breaks his swords and beats him for once - leaving him vulnerable when the Big Bads gang up on him and capture him. The realisation that this was all his fault turns Raphael into a babbling, incoherent emotional mess.
* Sarah Connor Blue Screens in ''{{Terminator}} 2'' upon seeing a Terminator very much identical to the one that persistently tried to kill her in the previous film. Complete with slow motion, Deer in the Headlights Look™, and lying on the floor motionless.
** Which contrasts nicely with her put-on catatonia earlier in the day after she's shown photos of the Terminator walking around a shopping mall.
* At the end of ''Warrior King'', Tony Jaa has a pretty epic Heroic BSOD when [[spoiler:he sees the skeleton of his father's elephant (which he has been trailing all film) behind the throne of the big bad]] and collapses to the ground, getting kicked in the head repeatedly while he reboots, before unleashing the ''mother'' of all {{Unstoppable Rage}}s on every last motherfucker in the room.
* [[spoiler:The character Sarah]] has one of these about two thirds of the way through ''TheDescent'' and doesn't come back for the rest of the movie. On the upside, her BSOD is [[ActionGirl very]] [[BadAss hardcore]], and in all likelyhood it saved her life [[spoiler:in the American version with the revised ending.]]
* During the final battle of ''SavingPrivateRyan'', Upham gets one, being only able to walk among the carnage (justified in that [[NewMeat he never fought such a big battle before]]) - and the Germans realize his condition and never shoot him, even though he has loads of bullets around his neck. He gets over the BSOD only after TheCavalry arrives.
* In ''SpaceCamp'', Katherine (played by Lea Thompson) has one of these after finding the manual override switch. Katherine didn't know whether to pull the switch so they could save their camp counselor Andie (played by Kate Capshaw of ''IndianaJones and the Temple of Doom'' fame), or not pull it and allow mission control to bring them back to Earth on auto-pilot (they were low on oxygen). It eventually takes Kevin (Tate Donovan) who previously "didn't ask to be responsible" to do just that and pull the switch to rescue Andie.
* This typically happens in the [[MadeForTVMovie TV movies]] the {{Lifetime Channel}} airs (some they made themselves, others not) when either the main protagonist (or any other character for that matter) discovers some horrible (or otherwise shocking) [[TheReveal Reveal]] in whatever the context happens to be in at the time. It's happened so often that it has now become a stereotypical plot element in such movies.
* In ''[[DistrictNine District 9]]'', Christopher is purely interested originally in getting himself, his son and maybe a few others the hell off Earth. However, when he and Wikus raid MNU's lab, he enters this state realizing the horrifically evil things being done to his people. Once he snaps out of it, he is now dedicated to return to both free his people and help Wikus.
* [[StarTrekIIITheSearchForSpock "You Klingon bastards, you've killed my son!"]]
* ''{{Ghostbusters}}'' gives us another lovely quote after the team has viewed the transformation of Gozer into the Stay Puft Marshamallow Man.
-->'''Peter''': ''Ray has gone bye-bye, Egon. What have you got left?''
-->'''Egon''': ''Sorry, Venkman. I'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.''
** It's worth noting that Egon's line here is also CasualDangerDialog; his tone of voice is completely normal whenever he describes anything negative, up to and including his own [=BSOD=].
* ''TheHurtLocker'', in following an Army [=EOD=] team in Iraq, gives us an escalating scale of [=BSODs=] through all the main characters:
** James is basically a walking [=BSOD=] through the entire film, with some moments shoving him deeper in than others. Arguably, he only manages his reboot at the end of the film when he [[spoiler: realizes he genuinly enjoys his ridiculously dangerous job despite his wife and son waiting for him at home, and re-enlists to go back.]]
** Sandborn is pretty stable, but he eventually swerves right into a [=BSOD=] when being around James gets him thinking that if he dies, there isn't anyone in the world who would care except his parents. They don't count.
** Eldridge goes through ''several'' traumatic experiences starting from the very first scene, to the point where he has a counselour popping up around him every now and then. Eldridge actually tells him, sincerely, that he appreciates his efforts and that he feels better having someone to talk to. [[spoiler: Then the counselour is killed, and Eldridge is indirectly responsible. Then he's shot.]] He has precious little sanity left by his last scene.
* In ''ReturnToOz,'' Dorothy manages to endure a lot, including the destruction of virtually everything she ever loved about Oz, but with a lot of [[XanatosSpeedChess hastily-revised plans]] and some helpful friends, she remains stable. However, when the Nome King transforms the Scarecrow into an ornament and abandons her in a chamber deep inside his palace, Dorothy finally bursts into tears. After a PetTheDog moment from the Nome King and then a KickTheDog moment, she falls into a period of despair which she finally recovers when she [[SpannerInTheWorks beats the Nome King at his own game.]]
* ''{{United 93}}'''s entire cast (besides the passengers aboard the titular flight) suffers one after United 175 smashes into the South Tower.
* Katherine, the protagonist's love interest in ''Fury'', has one after seeing an angry mob burn her fiance alive. [[spoiler: He gets better.]] Afterwards she's [[DumbStruck unable to speak]], and has a post-traumatic freakout whenever she sees fire (including people lighting their cigarettes).
* ''CemeteryMan''. Learning [[spoiler:the rest of the world doesn't exist for you because you're not real]] could do that to anyone.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:{{Literature}}]]
* Dash Rendar from the novel ''ShadowsOfTheEmpire'', which takes place after ''Empire''. The bounty hunter was suppose to have fended off a missile attack from the Suprosa, the ship carrying the plans of the new Death Star, when it wiped out the Alliance's Bothan ships. Dash doesn't take kindly to the aftermath and continuously blames himself at the end of the battle. [[spoiler: Towards the end of the novel, the Rebels inform Luke that the Suprosa had been using [[InvincibleMinorMinion diamond-boron-armored]] weapons that are impenitrible to laser fire. He learns this only after Dash's supposed death...]]
*''[[{{Inkheart}} Inkdeath]]'', anyone? Author Fenoglio spends almost the entire book being depressed and cynical because he no longer controls what happens in the world he created, and it's going to the [[UnusualEuphemism H-word]].
**Not all of it; [[ItGotWorse just the latter half]].
* The ''StarTrekVoyager'' novel ''Mosaic'' details when Captain Janeway goes through one of these. Considering that Kathryn lost her father and her fiancee on the same day, I'd say she's entitled.
* Captain Picard suffered something like this in ''StarTrek: Destiny'' when he came to the conclusion that the Federation could not win the war against the Borg.
* In AnneRice's [[TheVampireChronicles vampire novels]], Lestat spends several books in a catatonic state after an encounter with a being he believes to be {{Satan}}.
* Lymond has these throughout Dorothy Dunnett's ''Lymond Chronicles''. The most blatant is when he freezes [[spoiler: after the chess game in "Pawn in Frankincense" when he is forced to sacrifice someone he cares for]] and has to be led back to his room, where he promptly faints. He subsequently experiences blinding migraines whenever he is reminded of that trauma or when he feels that the life of someone he cares about is at risk because of him.
* Ivan Karamazov's FreakOut near the end of ''TheBrothersKaramazov'' is brought on by this, which takes the form of a conversation with a ManipulativeBastard.
* Possibly subverted in ''{{Harry Potter}}'', where Harry locks himself in his room and refuses to talk to anyone after hearing that [[spoiler:he is being possessed by the BigBad]]. However, he is promptly told by another main character [[spoiler:that he is being completely silly, nothing of the sort is happening, and everybody was jumping to conclusions anyway.]] Oops. Admittedly, this trope was played straight elsewhere in the series a couple of times, specially in the latter books.
* Drizzt, in some of R.A. Salvatore's later books (specifically ''The Hunter's Blades Trilogy''), especially ''The Lone Drow'', where he flips back and forth between this, [[BerserkButton murderous]] [[UnstoppableRage rage]], and pure {{Wangst}} for most of the book.
* Jake has one that lasts a whole ''year'' in the final ''{{Animorphs}}'' book, as a result of the final battle, in which he [[spoiler:ordered his cousin to kill his brother - which she did at the cost of her own life, gaining nothing - and gave the order to massacre ''seventeen thousand'' defenseless Yeerks]].
** To his credit, though, he waited until ''after'' the battle was over to have his breakdown.
* Bella spends nearly the ''entire book'' of ''[[{{Twilight}} New Moon]]'' in this state after [[spoiler: Edward breaks up with her]]. She spends four months in survival mode and until [[spoiler: he comes back]], she is still in a locked down state of mind. According to WordOfGod, [[spoiler: Edward]] also spent most of this time curled up in a fetal position hating the world, seeing as [[spoiler: he pretended not to love her anymore because he thought she'd be safer without him around]].
** In {{Twilight}}'s fourth book, ''Breaking Dawn'', Edward freezes up and apparently goes into shock after hearing [[spoiler: Bella is pregnant with Edward's baby; something that wasn't thought possible. Edward also knows the myths of things like this, and in the myths, [[DeathByChildbirth the mother never survives]].]] Vampires in {{Twilight}} are normally very in control of themselves (socially; bloodlust is another thing), and Edward's mind basically shuts down. He lets his phone ring for quite a while, and his expression doesn't change at all after hearing about Bella's situation. While this might not sound like much, it's basically means that Edward mind asploded.
* A common theme the novels of HPLovecraft is for the main character to witness something so horrifying that they pass out or [[GoMadFromTheRevelation go insane]].
* The StarWarsExpandedUniverse contains a textbook example. In the book ''[[XWingSeries Wraith Squadron]]'', by AaronAllston, Myn Donos's Talon Squadron is destroyed around him in an ambush. He escapes, but becomes emotionally numb. Later, his astromech--whom he refers to later as "the last Talon" -- is destroyed when his X-wing is hit in combat, and he shuts down completely for a while, feeling that he had now ''completely'' failed his squadron.
* This is how [[TheThreeMusketeers Aramis]] reacts to Porthos's death in ''Forty Years After'', but it's arguably more of a Villainous BSOD.
* This happens to [[LoisMcMasterBujold Miles Vorkosigan]] from time to time. With all he's been through, it's a wonder he ever comes out of it.
* At the end of the third ''SirAproposOfNothing'' novel, the titular (anti)hero gets an (anti)HeroicBSOD when he learns that [[HurricaneOfPuns Verah Wang Ho]], the leader of an Asian-like crime syndicate and his temporary lover, [[DroppedABridgetOnHim is the Emperor's...brother]]. [[spoiler:The BSOD consists of Apropos saying "I don't care" over and over, which just happens to be the trigger word of his InfinityPlusOneSword, and the repeated triggering of the sheathed sword eventually causes a Hiroshima-like explosion (which is lampshaded in the last chapter, when he gives the sword to a fat man and his little boy).]]
* In DavidEddings' ''{{Belgariad}}'' and ''{{Mallorean}}'', both Garion and C'Nedra have [=BSODs=]: Garion's comes after he [[spoiler: burns Asharak to death]] outside the Forest of the Dryads and is relatively minor as BSODs go. C'Nedra has at least one brief one in the Belgariad when she realizes the fate in store for the soldiers she has recruited as the Rivan Queen; it could be argued that she spends virtually the whole Mallorean in one, with brief remissions.
** And then there was Garion's reaction in the Malloreon to the birth of his son. His ''entire brain'' shut down. [[IdiotHero Of course, Garion's brain isn't the most powerful organ in his body, but...]]
* In ''ArtemisFowl: The Lost Colony,'' Artemis suffers a very, very brief one of these when [[spoiler: Holly is killed.]] To all appearences, he's completely unmoved, continuing to concentrate on the [[spoiler:bomb]], ignoring everything else as the same guy who [[spoiler:killed Holly]] goes on to quickly [[spoiler:murder everyone but Artemis]]; however, it's all he can do to keep his concentration, which turns out to be what saves them all. Just before Artemis gets killed himself, he looses a single shot from Holly's Neutrino in a seemingly random direction. Turns out that Artemis had the TimeyWimeyBall all figured out, and the shot got pulled back in time to just the right second to [[spoiler:stop Holly and everyone else from being killed in the first place.]]
--> '''Artemis''': "You didn't [[spoiler:kill my friends]]. That never happened."
* In ''{{Nation}}'' by TerryPratchett the main character Mau goes into this while disposing of the bodies of his tribe in the sea. While his body drags the bodies out and ritually prepares them, his mind goes somewhere else, refusing to let the faces of the dead register in his mind. His BSOD is so intense that he doesn't even notice the other main character, Daphne, even when she stands right in front of him. He only snaps out of it in time to prevent himself from drowning himself. Longterm effects of his BSOD turn him into a sort of [[FlatEarthAtheist Flat Earth Agnostic]]: he's unsure whether or not the gods exist, but he refuses to worship them if they do because they either sent or didn't stop the apocalyptic tidal wave that starts the story off and decimated Mau's people.
* In the ''{{Discworld}}'' novel ''Discworld/MenAtArms'' this is Detritus' reaction to [[spoiler: Cuddy's death,]] eventually snapping out of it into a [[UnstoppableRage Unstoppable]] [[CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass Rage]]. [[spoiler: Well, unstoppable by anyone but Carrot, but he's Carrot]].
** There's also Rincewind in ''Discworld/{{Sourcery}}''. Finally returning to the Library after Coin orders it burned. What follows is almost tragic, as Rincewind frantically searches through the ashes for anything familiar, possibly sobbing.
** Also, Dangerous Beans has one in ''Discworld/TheAmazingMauriceAndHisEducatedRodents'', after learning the book that inspired him to dream of a world where rats and humans live in harmony, ''Mr. Bunsy Has an Adventure'', is merely a children's storybook by the Discworld equivalent of Beatrix Potter.
* An [[OlderThanTelevision early example]] occurs near the end of H.G. Wells' ''TheWarOfTheWorlds''. While exploring the lifeless ruins of London, and already teetering on the ragged edge of sanity, the narrator comes upon a tripod and a dead Martian inside it. The mixture of exuberance and grief that follows is too much for him to handle, and he only regains his sanity several days later, learning from his caretakers that he was found roaming the streets crying and shouting "last man in the world, hurrah, last man in the world".
* Talia of the ''[[HeraldsOfValdemar Arrows]]'' trilogy suffers two, one relatively minor one when she is forced to confront the fact that she has [[PowerIncontinence absolutely no control]] over her [[TheEmpath empathic powers]], and a later, much more serious one when she lapses into an AngstComa after [[spoiler:being tortured nearly to death]]. Naturally, ThePowerOfLove brings her back.
** Vanyel from the ''Last Herald-Mage'' has {{HeroicBSOD}}s all over the place. The first is in his SuperHeroOrigin, where the death of his lover and a massive infusion of magical power sends him into near-catatonia, and the last comes after being tortured and using his magical powers to slaughter an entire camp of bandits in the culmination of a RoaringRampageOfRevenge.
** For that matter, Tarma and Kethry do this in their backstories, both of which involve rape. MercedesLackey employs this trope rather liberally.
* [[InheritanceCycle Eragon]] has one of these after he finds out the identity of his father [[spoiler:(both times}]]. He gets better freakishly fast.
* Bluestar of ''WarriorCats'' suffers a major BSOD after the extent of her trusted deputy Tigerclaw's treachery is laid bare. She is almost completely withdrawn from the world for the next book, leaving new deputy Fireheart to pretty much run the Clan in her place, and in the ''next'' book, [[spoiler:when Tigerclaw (now Tigerstar) takes over [=ShadowClan=], she loses her mind and begins to see her ''entire Clan'' as a pack of traitors. Only minutes before her HeroicSacrifice [[RedemptionEqualsDeath does she finally regain her full sanity.]]]]
* In ''HIVE: Escape Velocity'', when [[spoiler:Overlord reveals that all of Otto's unnatural abilities exist because he is a super-clone created for the sole purpose of being taken over by Overlord and used to destroy the world]] Otto stares at Overlord in horror for a few seconds before [[spoiler: Overlord tries to take him over but is stopped by HIVEmind.]]
* In ''March Upcountry,'' Prince Roger etc. MacClintock discovers a) that his father is a traitor, b) that everyone assumed he knew this already, c) that everyone thinks this is the reason he's such a jerk, and d) his mother sent him away because she distrusted him (for reasons a, b and c). This is why he's stuck on a deathworld, and this is also why several hundred people have gotten killed trying to protect him. Understandably, he gets angry, swears at his guards, and trashes his room, causing everyone else to doubt his sanity.
** "I heard he called the Empress a bitch!" "No, he called his mother a bitch." "What's the difference?" "One is treason, and the other is just being really, really pissed at your mother."
* Rand al'Thor from ''TheWheelOfTime'' goes through several of these, such as when he hears about the death of [[spoiler:Herid Fel in ''A Crown of Swords''.]]
*Will from ''TheGoodnessGene'' slips into this when he discovers [[spoiler: that he's a clone of Hitler.]]
* Rowan Mayfair has gone into one of these at the beginning of ''Taltos'', (the third book of the Lives of the MayfairWitches trilogy) [[spoiler:after killing and burying Emaleth, her daughter by Lasher]].
* Hana and Kip's backstories in ''TheEnglishPatient'', when their father and [[AFatherToHisMen mentor]], respectively, are killed. Kip gets one at the climax of the book, when [[spoiler:he learns about the bombing of Hiroshima]].
* Túrin from ''TheSilmarillion'' undergoes one of these for a while after [[spoiler:he accidentally kills his best friend Beleg]].
* In ''WatershipDown'', the rabbit language actually has a word, ''tharn'', for this state of mind. Rabbits, being small, flighty animals at the bottom of the food chain, have a lot of opportunities in their lifetimes to bluescreen in the face of hopeless danger.
** Heartbreakingly, this is TruthInTelevision, as baby rabbits often suffer heart attacks if sufficiently frightened. Poor things...
*** In ''TheStand'', Stu recalls the description of ''tharn'', realizes he's close to a similar mental state himself, and that he has to keep himself out of that state to have a chance at escaping from the Plague Center.
* The titular character of ''TheDresdenFiles'' has one at the end of ''Grave Peril'' after [[spoiler: his girlfriend is partially turned into a Red Court vampire]], and another one in a later book after seeing an EldritchAbomination. He arguably has one in ''Fool Moon'' as well, when he basically shuts down for a little while due to being completely worn out and completely despairing because [[spoiler: Murphy doesn't trust him anymore and has arrested him for withholding information in a murder investigation, when he had just begun to regain her trust after losing it in ''Storm Front'']].
* Richard suffers this in ''Confessor'', from the SwordOfTruth series, after finding a contradiction that he can't explain.
* Jonathan Harker, from ''{{Dracula}}'', suffers one after his imprisonment in the villain's castle [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel and no wonder]]. His physical health breaks down right along with the mental, and he refuses to believe it was real until quite some time afterward.
* In StephenKing's ''Pet Semetary'', [[spoiler: after killing his son, who CameBackWrong]], Louis Creed crouches down in a corner, and sucks on his thumb for two hours.
* Roland in ''TheDarkTower/WizardAndGlass'' goes to a catatonic state for weeks, after witnessing Susan burned to death.
* In JimButcher's DresdenFiles novel ''Grave Peril'', Harry suffers one [[spoiler:after escaping Bianca by burning up the house, killing innocents inside]]; Michael has to tend him as if he were a child.
* Mike Jenkins has one after finding out that the young woman he loved was killed on a mission, in ''[[PaladinOfShadows Unto the Breach]]''. Granted, this is with a somewhat flexible definition of "hero", given the victim of the BSOD.
* Achilles falls into one ''twice'' in ''TheIliad,'' first after Agememnon steals Briseis, and then again [[spoiler:(and more legitely) after his [[HoYay friend]] Patroclos dies in Achilles' place.]]
* Sinuhe from ''TheEgyptian'' has several, usually triggered by the death of a loved one or the revelation of a secret.
* In TheBible, David has an epic and heartbreaking HeroicBSOD when he learns about the deaths of King Saul and his son Jonathan, David's [[HeterosexualLifePartners best]] [[HoYay friend]].
** It can be said that the whole "prayer at Gethsemane" scene is about Jesus having an HeroicBSOD as he realizes that he's just hours away from dying and only then fully aknowledges what ''that'' means for him.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:LiveActionTV]]
* [[DoctorWho The Doctor]] goes into one of these in [[spoiler:The Stolen Earth.]]
** Also in [[spoiler: Bad Wolf, when he freaks out after Rose is apparently vaporized.]]
** As well as in [[spoiler: The Waters of Mars when he sees Ood Sigma after his whole 'Time Lord Victorious thing.]]
* In the season five ''BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' episode "The Weight of the World", the idea that a moment of doubt had caused her to fail in her mission to protect Dawn caused Buffy to mentally check out for several hours, scaring the heck out of her friends and requiring [[JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind magic]] to snap her out of it.
** She has a brief BSOD in season 2 when she realizes that [[spoiler: it was her having sex with Angel that caused him to lose his soul and become the evil Angelus once more]].
** The events of the Season 2 finale cause her to do the "Walk into the mist" version of this trope.
** Giles has one in the season 2 episode "Passions" after discovering that [[spoiler:Angelus had murdered his girlfriend, laid her corpse in the bedroom, and set up everything to look like she had planned a romantic encounter for the two of them]]. When he comes out of it, he's...[[DeathSeeker a little different]] for the rest of the ep.
** Let's not forget Willow's BSOD after Tara is killed right in front of her.
* In the first season of ''[[BabylonFive Babylon 5]]'', Commander Sinclair is kidnapped, drugged, and interrogated by a bad guy of the week who wanted to know why Sinclair disappeared at the Battle of the Line, the climactic final battle of the Minbari War, which Sinclair blacked out during and has no memory of. While in this state, he discovers what happened to him (kidnapped, interrogated, and brain-washed by aliens), escapes from his captors, and spends some time in a state of drug-induced confusion, evading and fighting against B5's station security as they try to rescue him.
** Londo gets two of them concerning his lover Adira: one when she is poisoned, and the other when he learns that [[spoiler: Morden]] is responsible. Both instances are accompanied by revenge ''[[CrowningMomentofAwesome with style]]''.
** Garibaldi has a more literal one after [[spoiler: Bester's implanted orders trigger, forcing him to report his findings to the PsiCorps; literal in the sense that his brain really is pretty much locked until Bester releases it]].
*** He then has a more traditional one after [[spoiler: Bester releases him from this state and he is faced with the realization that he just betrayed everyone and everything he cares about and none of his friends are going to believe him or ever trust him again.]]
** Delenn [=BSODs=] when Anna Sheridan arrives and remains in a semi-BSOD state during Sheridan's first death.
* This actually occurs to Dr. Cox on ''{{Scrubs}}'', after three of his patients (one of whom he was actually friends with) died due to an error on his part.
**He really has two, although the first is very short. After the first two die, he starts to go into one, but JD snaps him out of it by pointing out they would have been dead much earlier if he hadn't done anything. Only when the third patient (who happens to be both the friend and the one that could have survived for at least a few months) dies does this take effect fully.
** Cox has another HeroicBSOD in season 3, when [[spoiler:his best friend unexpectedly dies]], causing him to have a breakdown complete with hallucinations.
** Really, [[spoiler: Ben]] just tends to inspire hallucinatory BSOD in people. Remember the episode where [[spoiler: JD diagnosed him?]]
* During the final battle with the Reavers in ''{{Serenity}}'', River temporarily goes helpless and catatonic as the Reavers' madness presses in on her mind. It takes [[spoiler:her brother getting shot in the stomach]] to break her out of it. Then she [[spoiler: takes them on alone and kills them all]].
** In fact, for most of the series, River is stuck in near-permanent BSOD mode as a result of the [[MindRape trauma]] she received, alternating between schizophrenic emotionlessness, abortive attempts at rebooting, hallucinations, nightmares, post-traumatic stress events, and uncontrolled crying in the corners, all of which tend to render her effectively non-functional.
** Moreover, much of Mal Reynolds' character and development revolves around his attempts to gradually put himself back together after suffering the massive BSOD (caused by the crushing Independent defeat at the Battle of Serenity Valley) shown during the pilot episode's cold open.
*In the season 5 episode "Latent Image" of ''StarTrek: {{Voyager}}'', the Doctor is revealed to have done an almost literal (as he's a computer program) version of this (using the OutDamnedSpot version) following an incident in which two patients were equally at risk and equally treatable; he chose the one he was better friends with, which was contrary to his programming. The memory was erased from his program, and when it was restored he suffered the same condition, but eventually recovered.
**Why didn't they just put Jetal into stasis until they were done with Harry so both could be saved?
**Janeway had one of these in Equinox when she became obsessed with hunting down Ransom after she found out he was responsible for murdering hundreds of senient lifeforms. She also went a little crazy in Year of Hell and Scientific Method. See BerserkButton and MamaBear
** Kirk has occasional [=BSODs=], usually triggered by the death of a RedShirt, which result in him angsting for about fifteen seconds and then getting over it very quickly after a pep talk from [=McCoy=]. Spock has a much bigger one in "Amok Time" after apparently killing Kirk, and almost quits Starfleet. He presumably has another one offscreen some time between the end of the series and the first movie, and '''does''' quit Starfleet!
** Also, Sisko had a few moments of depression during the Dominion War. Plus a minor breakdown after [[spoiler:Jadzia's death.]]
***Also, he was like this for years after Jennifer's death, only coming out of it when the Prophets told him to stop living in the past in Emissary.
**Trip went into shutdown mode for at least a season after his little sister was killed in the Xindi attack.
* ''{{Supernatural}}'' loves these and it also loves never really making them better either. John had his after his wife died, causing him to drink and treat his sons like soldiers. Sam had his after his girlfriend died, causing him to be just as obsessive as John was about hunting this demon. And Dean? Someone dies to save him in a Season One episode, John dies to save his life in the Season Two premiere, Season Two completely breaks him down in as many ways as possible and all of it prompts a suicidally guilty breakdown in which, after Sam dies (and gets better), he ends up selling his soul in an incredibly poor and desperate bargain.
* Admiral Adama in ''BattlestarGalactica'' has a huge one after [[spoiler: his best friend reveals himself as a Cylon and tells Adama to use him as a bargaining chip during a MexicanStandoff with Cylons.]] Although Adama has displayed intense emotion over key events before, this time he destroys his office, drinks an entire bottle of liquor and is reduced to weeping nearly incoherently in his son's arms.
** Colonel Tigh has one of these very briefly in the third season while still on New Caprica, [[spoiler: immediately after he discovers that his wife has been feeding information to the Cylons]]. Following all of this, he totally TookALevelInBadass.
** Athena has one when Boomer takes revenge against her for stealing her life. [[spoiler: She gets brutalized, tied up, and stuffed in a closet where she is forced to watch helplessly as Boomer has sex with her husband, who can't tell the two apart. Boomer then kidnaps their daughter and successfully escapes the ship.]] When Athena realizes the full extent of Boomer's actions, she breaks down in Helo's arms [[spoiler:only pulling herself together for the rescue mission.]]
* In Act III of ''Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog'', [[spoiler: Dr. Horrible gets a simultaneous [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor dream come true]] and Villain BSOD, and expresses both in song to carry out the [[TwistEnding denoument.]]]] This [[InvertedTrope inverted]] Heroic BSOD is appropriate for a show that inverts the very superhero genre by adroitly representing [[CardCarryingVillain self-proclaimed villain]] as protagonist, and self-proclaimed hero as antagonist.
*Although he isn't strictly a hero, this trope is the best way to describe what happens to Avon at the end of the last episode of ''[[BlakesSeven Blake's 7]]'' when he [[spoiler: kills Blake.]]
* Mack, the Red Ranger from ''PowerRangersOperationOverdrive'' has one of these upon [[spoiler: learning that he is an Android]]. Shortly thereafter, he turns into the DeathSeeker.
* In ''TheSarahConnorChronicles'' episode "Allison from Palmdale", [[RobotGirl Cameron]] goes through several of these when her processor malfunctions, and she begins [[BecomingTheMask confusing herself with]] Allison Young, [[spoiler: a girl whose personality and appearance she mimicked, and then later killed.]]
* Happens to Stevie in ''MalcolmInTheMiddle'' when he learns his mother had abandoned him. He also regresses back into speechlessness and refuses to move anything other than his fingers (to operate a text-to-speech machine).
* Boukenger does this with Masumi a few times whenever Yami no Aiba appears to fight him. However none were as bad until the last stretch of the series where after supposedly beating him, the guy still lives and forces Masumi to use the ArtifactOfDoom to beat him. This leaves him out of action in heroicBSOD as Satoru disappears in the worse time as well. However they came back just in time to save the world.
* In ''KamenRider 555'', Takumi had one when [[spoiler: he thought that he was the one who attacked the Ryuseiji on their reunion night and when his friends found out he was an Orphnoch, going as far as almost joining Lucky Clover]] however he got over it just as [[spoiler: Yuji suffered from a permenet one when Yuka was gunned down by police after being tortured and experimented on]].
**Then again Takumi didn't want to be Faiz anyway....
* In ''Kamen Rider Kiva'', Wataru has two of these: once when Nago Keisuke brutally attacks him with his own "Garulu Saber" and again when [[spoiler: Bishop awakens his Fangire blood, causing him to attack his friends.]] [[IGotBetter He got better.]]
* In a flashback in the Season 1 episode of ''Series/{{Heroes}}'', "Company Man," [[{{Invisibility}} Claude]] has one right after his partner, Noah Bennett ("HRG") shoots him. He puts his hand to the wound, [[ContemplatingYourHands stares at it for a moment]], and then looks back at HRG, who shoots him two or three more times. Suddenly, Claude's present misanthropy and lack of faith in humanity makes a lot more sense.
* In ''{{Carnivale}}'', Apollonia is in an AngstComa after giving birth to Sofie [[spoiler:who was conceived via rape at the hands of Justin Crowe, thus bequeathing Sofie an avataric nature, which means her birth is traumatic to her mother, as per the show's mythology. Whew!]], and Sofie herself experiences an HeroicBSOD after [[spoiler: her mother dies]].
* In ''{{Generation Kill}}'', Sgt. Colbert goes into a BSOD after he grants Lance Corporal Trombley the authority to shoot what Trombley identifies as enemy combatants. [[spoiler:The "combatants" turn out to be kids with camels, who eventually end up at the Marine camp after getting zipped with Trombley's SAW]]. Also a total TearJerker.
** Happens again later. Walt Hasser, also a good shot with a SAW, [[spoiler:jumps the gun on firing at an incoming car at the Marines' blockade, aiming for, and hitting, the civilian driver before anyone attempts a warning shot]]. Colbert ''wigs out,'' made worse by the fact that Colbert's "Iceman" reputation would mean something that bothers him at all is ''really terrible,'' certainly doing nothing to help ''Walt's'' ensuing BSOD over the incident.
* Happens to Dr. Shepherd in ''GreysAnatomy'' when he loses a pregnant patient, is sued by her husband, and learns that he's saved fewer patients than he's killed.
* Happens to another "Dr. Shepard" in ''{{Lost}}'': Jack goes into a really serious one in the season three finale's flashforward. ("We have to go back, Kate! We have to go BACK!") We only learn that it was [[spoiler: Locke's death]] that caused it in season five.
* [[TheSarahConnorChronicles Sarah Connor]] suffers a BSOD when the fact that [[spoiler:Derek Reese is dead]] hits home. It lasts all of six seconds -- Sarah's got used to this sort of thing.
* In ''BeingHuman'', [[spoiler: Mitchell has one when he has to turn a small boy who he befriended into a vampire to save his life. This is with the boy's mother's blessing, and seems to prove the {{Big Bad}} is right. Mitchell almost does a {{Face Heel Turn}} because of this.]]. In the next episode, [[spoiler: Ghost Annie has one when she fails to either scare her ex-fiancee (who murdered her), or warn his new girlfriend. She gets out of it when she learns that Mitchell is in trouble.]]
* A very understandable one in ''{{NCIS}}'', when [[spoiler: Gibbs is suffering amnesia all the way back to his Gulf War days, and his {{Mentor}} tells him what happened on 9/11/2001.]]
* Happens several times in ''HouseMD'' to the titular character. In season 2, [[spoiler: he admits he loves his ex-girlfriend and asks her to stay, but she refuses and he's upset for a WHOLE EPISODE]]. Most notably, though, at the end of season 5 when [[spoiler: one of his fellows commits suicide and he starts hallucinating a previous fellow applicant/best friend's dead girlfriend, hallucinates sleeping with his boss and then ends up in a mental institution]].
* ''{{Farscape}}'' had one at the end of the Peacekeeper Wars after [[spoiler:John stops the wormhole weapon and Einstein takes the wormhole knowledge out of his head. John collapses and Aeryn gets as upset as we ever see her, sobbing over his body. It takes him a while to snap out of it.]]
* In the ''{{NUMB3RS}}'' Season Five finale Charlie's usual plot-saving mathetmatical genuis (and indeed his basic coherent function) completely shuts off for a while after [[spoiler: Amita is kidnapped.]]
** Charlie has proven prone to Heroic BSODs since the first season when he successfully [[spoiler: predicts a bank robbery]] and [[spoiler: his brother is shot at.]] It is then revealed that he suffers BSODs whenever someone near him is close to death, such as [[spoiler: when his mother had cancer.]]
* In ''{{Torchwood}}: Children of Earth'', Captain Jack Harkness shuts down twice. The first time is [[spoiler:after his defiance of the [[MonsterOfTheWeek monster of the week]], the 456, results in the release of a virus that kills everyone in the building]], [[spoiler: [[TearJerker including Jack’s lover Ianto Jones]]]]. Later, [[spoiler: he goes AWOL from England, and ultimately Earth, after he kills his grandson in order to save the millions of children who would otherwise have been taken by the 456]].
* Played for laughs in ''JeevesAndWooster''. Jeeves had built up a reputation for being the Ultimate Fashion Police (albeit some TruthInTelevision, as valets were primarily in charge of their master's wardrobes) which usually just amounts to a gentle disapproval of one of Bertie's jackets or hats. However, at least two occasions with Bertie's friends upgraded to Heroic BSOD levels. Bingo's horseshoe-patterned tie sends him unresponsively into the kitchen complete with a Hitchcockian score, and Rocky's remarks about never changing out of his pajamas almost makes him ''cry.''
* The entire premise of ''{{Monk}}'' is Monk's struggle to reboot from a huge BSOD occurring four years before the series begins, when his wife is killed by a car bomb.
* King Henry VIII suffers one of these in ''TheTudors'', when [[spoiler:his third wife Lady Jane Seymour dies of childbed fever after giving birth to a healthy son]]. He spends several days (possibly weeks) sequestered with his Fool, drinking, drawing up impossible plans for palaces, and writing the tenets for the Church of England.
* In ''HerculesTheLegendaryJourneys'', Hercules lays on the ground for three days in shock after Iolaus is killed by Dahak. When his efforts to get him back fail, he goes into a more violent outburst.
* Hawkeye has a pretty famous one in ''[[{{MASH}} M*A*S*H]]'' ("Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen"), where he has a mental breakdown (complete with a paranoid claim that one of the anesthesiologists was attempting to suffocate his patient with the oxygen mask, and a joyride in a jeep through the mess tent), in response to a traumatic experience on the ride home from a day at the beach a few weeks prior. So determined is his mind to deny what it had witnessed, Hawkeye seems to regress into an even more rambling and manic state than usual. He is only shaken back into reality when he is pressed by his psychiatrist Sidney Friedman to recall the pivotal incident on the bus, at which point he breaks down, remembering now in horror a peasant woman having smothered her own infant son out of the fear of being discovered.
* At least two characters in ''BandOfBrothers. ''
** Private Blythe spends the first night after parachuting into France on D-Day lying in a ditch. Later on, during the attack of Carentan, he becomes psychosomatically blind. Finally, he goes into a serious panic during the battle outside the city, until "woken" back to life by Captain Winters. His story doesn't end too well, apparently the man died of shell shock.
** Bud Compton shows some signs of going into BSOD when we hear that his girlfriend dumped him while he's lying in a trench in the Ardennes winter. Then it really sinks in when he witnesses two of his friends hit by an artillery shell later in the battle of the bulge. He's never the same again.
* Tom Quinn from ''Spooks'' undergoes a BSOD about halfway through Series 2 after a series of missions that put magnets to his moral compass make him grow deeply cynical. Unlike some BSODs, he doesn't recover. It comes to a head when [[spoiler:he is forced by his boss to effectively ruin an old university professor's life and put his family in extreme jeopardy by having him pretend to sell explosive materials to terrorists. The end of the episode is something of a heroic reformat as he is fired from the team.]].
* {{Angel}} suffered from one of these when he encountered a powerful demon that seeks out true heroes and terminates them. The demon looked him over and walked away. He is later told the demon did that because it detected Angel's status as a vampire, and assumed he was evil.
** I thought it was because he eats hearts and Angel's heart doesn't beat?
* On ''{{Merlin}}'' - [[spoiler: Arthur, after finding out the truth about his birth, and getting the idea that his father is to blame for his mother's death. He tries to kill Uther. It takes Merlin telling him that it's all lies (which it isn't) to snap him out of it.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Mythology]]
*Achilles gets two of these. In ''TheIliad'', he mopes around mourning for his friend Patroclus until the ghost of Patroclus has to tell him to snap out of it and burn his body on a pyre. Later in the Trojan War, Achilles kills the Amazon Queen Penthesilea and then [[LastDanceWithMaryJane falls in love with her corpse]]. He is inconsolable for a while until he finally burns her body as well.
* The oldest and probably most famous example of this is Arjuna, from the ''Mahabharata''. He stops in the middle of the battlefield, overcome with distress that he is fighting against his own kin, and has to be talked out of it for hours by Krishna, who is his charioteer. This event forms the basis of the Gita, of course. Given that the battle involved approximately four million combatants on either side, that's pretty damn dramatic.
** By some accounts Krishna STOPPED TIME during this occurrence and this is also considered by Hindus the moment where he reveals his divinity.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:VideoGames]]
* ''FinalFantasyIX''. After her mother's death -- suffered whilst trying to ''kill her'', after finding out that she never loved her and just wanted her powers -- Garnet/Dagger spends a good chunk of the later game completely catatonic, unable to talk and just dragged around by her comrades. Oddly enough, she could still join you in battle, though her hit chance went right down, and occasionally, she just gave up, with the notice "Garnet can't concentrate".
** Well, she doesn't become catatonic until [[spoiler: her homeland is nearly wiped off the map by an invasion of undead monsters and an incredibly destructive magical attack that had been stolen from Garnet herself.]] You can hardly blame Garnet for developing post-traumatic stress disorder after a trauma like that.
***Also, during her death scene, Brahne apologizes for it and claims that she did it out of overwhelming (and recently realized) greed, not that she never loved Garnet in the first place.
** Another prime case of HeroicBSOD occurs near the end of the game to Zidane. After finding out his true origins and the morbid purpose of his existence he goes temporarily insane, turning into a raging, foul-mouthed misanthrope who attacks everything in his path both verbally and physically.
*** He was having his soul sucked out by his creator. It'd put ''you'' in a foul mood. Before Garland did the soul drain, Zidane was shocked about his origins, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BFR8-PBsSM&feature=related but he immediately turned against his maker, on the grounds that his true place was with his friends]]; [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZg__mP0l30 when the party finds him after the fact, he's slumped in a chair and when he walks, its at a slow stumbling gait.]]
* In ''FinalFantasyVII'', Sephiroth [[MoreThanMindControl convinces]] the hero Cloud [[spoiler:that he (Cloud) is not who he thinks he is; that he is in fact an attempt at "duplicating" the real Cloud, who had died several years earlier. The hero is so distraught at discovering he's the TomatoInTheMirror that he gives up the Weapon of Mass Destruction to his enemy. As all hell breaks loose, Cloud disappears, only to be found nearly comatose by his teammates a week later]].
** Cloud is really, really good at these in general. He has a spectacular one [[ItWasHisSled after Aeris dies]], blaming himself for ''another'' BSOD ''during'' her murder at the hands of Sephiroth. '...But I just let her die.'
** Prequel ''Crisis Core'' seems to be gearing up to give [[ButtMonkey poor Cloud]] yet another BSOD during [[spoiler: Zack's traumatic death scene]].
*** Well, okay, it's more like [[spoiler:'Snaps and starts believing he IS Zack, or at least basing his entire personality on Zack's...(Thus leading into his intro in the original game.)]]
*** Really, it's more of an inversion of the BSOD - [[spoiler: Cloud was comatose before this happened (due to having his nearly-lifeless body used as a science experiment rather than the traumatic encounter with Sephiroth that lead up to it), and actually snaps out of it and is in the most lucid state he's been in (or will be in) in a long time right after Zack's death. Of course, this doesn't last long, but that's at least as much the fault of the experiments as the trauma.]]
** Though his [=BSODs=] may pale in comparison to Cloud's, Vincent Valentine deserves a mention. He convinced himself that it was his fault for not protecting his beloved one, Lucrecia. So he lay in a coffin. For ''three decades''.
***Barrett has a good one in Midgar when one of the city's upper plates crashes into the slums bellow killing his friends and, seemingly, his daughter. All he could do is scream and shoot into the rubble.
* This occurs to Kratos from ''GodOfWar'' after he [[spoiler: unknowingly murdered his wife and child]]. He spends all of GodOfWar 1 and 2 in a constantly enraged state and on the brink of madness (although he may have had this personality even before his HeroicBSOD.
** He has another one on ''GodOfWar II'', during a Boss Battle, after [[spoiler:accidentally killing the last survivng spartan (perhaps he should stop killing people in the dark...)]] He's so pissed off and distraught, shouting challenges to the gods and lamenting his fate that he completely ignores the giant monstrous Kraken climbing up the tower until it actually grabs him.
* In ''FireEmblem'', the [[spoiler: half-human, half-Dragon]] bard Nils suffers a HeroicBSOD [[spoiler: after his leader and protector, Eliwood, kills Nils' sister, the dancer Ninian, under the control of the powerful Durandal sword]]. He snaps out of it and returns two stages later.
** Eliwood himself suffers one earlier on in the game, after [[spoiler:seeing his father post-torture, and being powerless as he dies]].
** Averted in ''Path of Radiance''. After his father's death, Ike seems afflicted with HeroicBSOD which manifests itself as insomnia. However, aside from appearing more tired than usual, the other characters do not notice. It doesn't affect his performance on the battlefield either. [[spoiler: When he finally avenges Greil, the narration describes Ike as sleeping well past dawn the next day.]] A CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming.
*** Ike went through something similar, but more severe, when he learned about his mother's death. At least, his insomnia that night was more obvious.
* Happens to the main character in ''ShadowHearts 3'', when he's [[spoiler: killed by TheDragon]]. Effectively, it unleashes a SuperPoweredEvilSide, and he nearly ends up killing his friends before being brought to his senses.
* Slightly subverted in ''SuikodenII'' to the little girl Pilika, whom after watching [[strike:her parents]] Polk get murdered in front of her by Luca Blight, is emotionally scarred and mute for the rest of her life.
**False, she's able to talk after [[spoiler:reuniting with Jowy.]]
* [[spoiler: Frank]] gets one in the best ending of ''DeadRising'' when he sees [[spoiler:the helicopter that was supposed to get him and the survivors out of the mall go down and explode]]. He's so out of it that he doesn't notice [[spoiler: the zombie shambling up behind him]].
**Looked to me like he was completely aware of the horde of zombies behind him... he just didn't care anymore. Made the ending a lot better in my eyes, especially in a somewhat story-light game.
***Except that isn't the [[spoiler:true ending]].
* Kyosuke Nanbu in ''SuperRobotWars OriginalGeneration [[GaidenGame Gaiden]]'' suffers this. Just when he thought he saved his RobotGirl companion Lamia Loveless, he got a bit distracted and that caused a cheap shot to get fired at him and promptly lose her, leading him to think that it's his fault she's dead. HeroicBSOD occurs for about 10 minutes, after the said killer was taken care of, and he vanished from the player's control for several missions. Shortly after he came back in action (or get controlled by the player again), he found out that Lamia is NotQuiteDead and BrainwashedAndCrazy. Another HeroicBSOD occurs in Kyosuke for about 10 minutes again after the battle concludes. And in their next encounter, Kyosuke was about to suffer another HeroicBSOD recalling his failure to protect her, until [[HeelFaceTurn his rival turned good Axel Almer]] proved otherwise and completely saved her. From thereafter, Kyosuke no longer suffers casual [[HeroicBSOD Heroic BSODs]], but it's kinda worth noting that in one game he suffers this trope THREE TIMES.
** Calvina Coulange from SuperRobotWars Judgment suffers this in the early portion of the game, though this is justified that she hasn't been piloting for years and fears her skills have deteriorated so it doesn't ensure survival for the imminent battle.
** Ryusei in ''SuperRobotWars Alpha 3'' takes it very literally when Hazal destroyed his SRX and seemingly killed Aya. Took about a TimeSkip (just several months) and several missions to get him back to fighting state. And since this hasn't happened in the OG Universe... He may get one later.
** Kazuma Ardygun in ''SuperRobotWars W'' has one when Blessfield is [[spoiler:apparently killed in a Boson Jump accident at the Bloody Valentine]]. A six-month timeskip later, his family finds him working with the [[GundamSEEDAstray Serpent Tail]], seemingly amnesiac under the name of Kite.
* Flint from ''{{Mother 3}}'' gets one [[spoiler:halfway through chapter one. The good news? The drago tooth his friend found would be an awesome weapon! The bad news? The tooth was found ''after it went through Flint's wife's heart!'' Flint literally has to be knocked unconscious after hearing the news and breaking down.]]
** He gets another near the end of the game, [[spoiler:when he finds out the Masked Man is Claus. He snaps out of it in time to [[TakingTheBullet take the bullet]] (well, PSI attack) for Lucas.]]
* The PC for ''PokemonMysteryDungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness'' has one when [[spoiler:they find out they have to die to save the world. Just when they're starting to snap out of it they have another one over Grovyle taking the hit from Dusknoir for them.]]
* Laharl from ''DisgaeaHourOfDarkness'' suffers his [[spoiler:after Seraph Lamington kills Flonne. His only response, after a few seconds of silence, are a series of guttural growls followed by murderous rage.]] Afterwards, depending on what ending the player got, either [[spoiler:Laharl spares Lamington and it's revealed that it was all a test, and Flonne is revived]], [[spoiler:Laharl spares Lamington... in the sense that he's still BREATHING... and Flonne is revived, though Laharl is so apalled by his actions that he departs, never to be seen again]] or, finally, [[spoiler:flat out KILLS Lamington, only to go completely insane when the truth is revealed and kill himself.]]
** Also happens to Adell in the [[MultipleEndings Bad Ending]] of ''{{Disgaea 2}}'' after he [[spoiler: is forced to kill Rozalin]]. This being the Bad Ending, of course, things immediately go from [[ItGotWorse bad to worse]] as it jumps right into a big bloody pool of NightmareFuel.
* [[IdiotHero Lloyd Irving]] of ''TalesOfSymphonia'' does this when [[spoiler: he discovers that [[ChosenOne Colette]] is giving up her life to save the world ''and then gets a front row seat to watch her [[NotQuiteDead "die"]]'', the angel Remiel who had previously acted as a guardian angel for the group is actually evil, and [[TheStoic Kratos]], who had previously been traveling with them to protect Colette, turns out to be Remiel's boss. Poor boy practically needed a kernel reinstall to get over that, which hidden pseudo-ally [[HeelFaceTurn Yuan]] neatly provides.]]
* Fellow IdiotHero and TalesSeries protagonist, Luke fon Fabre of ''TalesOfTheAbyss'', also has an epic one when, after the first part of the game, he begins to realize the gravity of what he's done: [[spoiler:[[WhatTheHellHero killed thousands of people all at once]], [[NiceJobBreakingItHero sunk a huge portion of the world]], and refused to accept responsibility for it all until [[TearJerker the entire party turns their backs and give up on him. Even his best friend and the love interest]]. Oh, and by the way, [[CloningBlues he's a clone, and the party seems to like the original better]].]] He comes out of the BSOD with wide eyes and new resolution, [[CharacterDevelopment deciding that he'll do whatever it takes to become a better person.]] Indeed, throughout the rest of the game he completes his transformation from {{Jerkass}} to TheMessiah. [[CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming And it's great.]]
**However, there are several fans who think it was too [[MoodWhiplash rushed]] and [[{{Wangst}} unrealistic]] to be believable. YourMileageMayVary.
***And others who think that the party was a bunch of [[JerkAss Jerk Asses]] for [[spoiler: turning on someone who was post-hypnotically forced to do it by the most trustworthy member of his party, who also happens to be his beloved mentor/father figure, especially when two members of the party withheld critical information from him beforehand, two worked for said mentor's co-conspirator (though neither knew the depths of Van or Mohs' plans at the time, though they both knew the latter was trying to start a world war), and two of them were actually traitors for varying reasons (with one of them being Van's co-conspirator and technical Lord up to that point) and ditching an unconscious seven year old in a poison world in order to go questing with the guy who knocked him out... and also had tried to kill him twice before, had helped repeatedly kidnap Ion, presumably helped slaughter Jade's crew, and created the situation that allowed Van the opening to plant the post-hypnotic command in Luke in the first place]].
* Part of the end sequence of ''FinalFantasyVIII'' involves Squall trying and failing to make it out of Time Compression using ThePowerOfFriendship, getting stranded alone outside of time, and having an ''epic'' HeroicBSOD complete with hallucinations.
* Mitsuru Kirijo, in ''{{Persona 3}}'' gets this when [[spoiler: the Chairman betrays the party and murders her father in cold blood, and then, wounded himself, falls off the edge of the tower. During the Kyoto trip, it's Yukari that brings her to her senses. After Mitsuru gains her resolution, her persona ascends from Penthesilea to Artemisia.]]
* Sera in ''DigitalDevilSaga 2'' gets one of these when she [[spoiler: watches Heat kill Serph, in a scene that mimicks the scene where [[MagnificentBastard other]] [[EtTuBrute Serph]] killed other Heat five years ago and threw her into her original BSOD that kinda started the destruction of the world. Unfortunately, watching this reiteration of the previous BSOD causing trauma caused God to decide to finish the job. Whoops.]]
* Jade from ''BeyondGoodAndEvil'' has one of these. [[spoiler:When she returns home to her lighthouse, she discovers that it's been destroyed, and all of her adoptive children have most likely been killed. She breaks down and delivers a [[TearJerker heart-wrenching soliloquy]] (see the quote on the top of the page) about her uselessness.]] Said soliloquy was so impressive that they even included it on the official OST album under the trackname "Enfants Disparus".
* Adrienne Delaney of the {{Sierra}} game ''Phantasmagoria'' is a shining example of this trope at game's end, walking away from her former home with an utterly blank expression on her face. Of course, by that point [[spoiler: she had personally witnessed visions of Zoltan Carnovash brutally murdering his wives, been raped by her husband Don while he was [[DemonicPossession possessed]], lost her cat Spazz and her two new vagrant friends, murdered ''Don'' in order to keep him from killing ''her'', and had successfully faced off against the demon who had possessed him, trapping it in a talisman.]] So yeah, it's easy to see why she'd be so messed up...
* [[spoiler:Higashizawa]] drives [[spoiler:Shiki]] into one in ''TheWorldEndsWithYou''. The next day, [[spoiler:she is quite silent, not even saying her usual run-away-from-battle quips.]]
**The games end, where Neku [[spoiler: realizes that Joshua actually DID kill him and is about to do it again and, subsequently, erase Shibuya. Seriously, to say it with Neku's words: WHAT THE HELL?!]]
* ''AlienSyndrome'' had an early case of the HeroicBSOD when Aileen was searching for survivors on the Kronos, despite finding the survivors, they have all turned mad and tried to kill her (without much success) and when she got back, she entered a stage of HeroicBSOD before getting the pieces together in order to find her boyfriend. Needless to say, she hears of the fateful log where her boyfriend suffers something akin to Prey's second boss later on. It only gets worse as she learns of her roots and how the alien queen is really an young girl who is the sole sentient survivor of her people and she wants to die so she can finally rest in piece.
* Wonderfully averted in ''Riviera: The Promised Land'' after Ein's memory block is released and he remembers that he's a Grim Angel who is supposed to destroy the world: instead of [[WAngst angsting]] about it, he immediately vows to find a better way to defeat the demons, because the Sprites really aren't so bad.
*Jude from ''{{Wild ARMs 4}}'' has one after [[spoiler: witnessing the deaths of his mother and several of his former neighbors while escaping from the military's base]]. He snaps out of it after his teammates convince him to keep going and [[spoiler: fulfill his mother's wish of seeing the Divine Weapon destroyed]].
*Lan Hikari has one of these in ''MegamanBattleNetwork'' 3. Lan has just [[spoiler:helped Mr. Match place fire data throughout SciLab, resulting in his father's injury]]. Lan misses school for about three days, even lashing out at Mayl and Yai, and it takes Chaud asking for his help after an "I didn't hear anything" to bring him out.
*It takes three games, but Geo, the protagonist of ''MegaManStarForce'', finally gets one in the third game when [[spoiler:his best friend is seemingly murdered in front of him.]] Just to rub it in, the villain immediately goes on to the EvilLaugh.
**Geo was having [=BSODs=] waaaay before that. In the first game he had a BSOD for 3 years or so when his dad went missing. Then he has ANOTHER one when [[spoiler:Pat betrays him]]. And then ANOTHER one in the second game when he only manages to save just one of his friends from falling in a non-lethal hole of doom. Geo's the king of this trope, no kidding.
* In the course of fighting off an alien invasion, ''{{Iji}}'' is shaken by the death of her father and sister, and she suffers a HeroicBSOD [[spoiler: if she fails to save her brother, which is particularly heartbreaking because she goes on talking to him as if he's still alive.]] Also note that failing is ''very'' probable in the [[TrialAndErrorGameplay first playthrough]] unless you've read about it in advance.
* ''Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Soulstorm''. [[spoiler:The ''entire'' Tau faction has a Heroic BSOD when their Ethereal is slain at the finale of their stronghold mission, and retreat from the Kaurava system ''thoroughly'' shamed by their inability to protect them. The Tau Commander even exclaims something along the lines of ''"NOOOOOO! Noble Ethereal! We have lost you! We have lost all!"'']]
** It happens in any situation an Ethereal dies. And the commander didn't live, he joined the Ethereal in death
** Another case is from the earlier ''Dark Crusade'', when the objective in the Tau stronghold is to kill the Ethereal Aun'El. As Aun'El falls whispering "All is lost... all is lost...", a crisis commander begins to freak out before Shas'O Kais, barely keeping things together, announces "Fall back, now! All forces, fall back. Evacuate the city. We will return Aun'El to T'au for burial. There is nothing left for us here..."
*** Worth noting that about ''half the planet's population consists of Tau'' when they evacuate...
* Link partially suffers one, collasping to his knees and breathing heavily, in ''{{The Legend of Zelda}}: Twilight Princess'', after he learns [[spoiler:how the Fused Shadows came into existence]].
* By Episode 3 of ''[[PhantasyStar Phantasy Star Universe]]'', Laia Martinez has gone through one after a series of events near the end of Episode 2. First [[spoiler: she failed to save the virus-infected young Beast boy who turned into a SEED form, thus [[ShoottheDog having to be purified]]]]. Then [[spoiler: during an Illuminus attack on the GUARDIANS colony by [[BrainwashedAndCrazy SEED-infected CASTs]], President Dallgun, her adopted father, is forced to perform a [[HeroicSacrifice Heroic Sacrifice]] to save the residential area, leaving the rest of the colony (w/Dallgun still inside) to crash into Parum, destroying a city along with thousands of people.]] The fact that the GUARDIANS [[spoiler: have [[HeroWithBadPublicity lost the trust of the people for failing to prevent it from happening]]]] doesn't help. In the first chapter of Ep. 3, it's revealed that Laia had [[spoiler: unceremoniously left the GUARDIANS and has no intention on returning.]] She gets better.
* Oersted (Orsted in the first translation patch) from ''LiveALive'' has one following TheReveal. It doesn't end well.
* ''{{Call of Duty}}: World at War'', Sgt. Roebuck suffers this in the last American mission, when Pvt. Polonsky dies from a Japanese [[ISurrenderSuckers fake surrender]] ambush and they're forced to take on a massive wave of enemy forces. [[spoiler: Alternatively Polonsky suffers this is it's Roebuck who dies in the ambush.]]
* ''SilentHill 2'' has James do at least 3 (maybe 4) of these: [[spoiler: when Maria is killed by Pyramid Head, when Maria is killed by Pyramid Head *again*, when he remembers that he killed his wife, and (arguably) a brief one when the Pyramid Heads kill Maria YET AGAIN]].
** Let's not beat around the bush, [[spoiler: The entirety of the game is basically James having one massive BSOD. From getting out of the car...to the bitter end, it's all the awful truth catching up to a man in deep denial.]]
* Mio in ''FatalFrame II: Crimson Butterfly'', right at the end of the game in the BittersweetEnding. [[spoiler:After all, she just murdered her twin sister Mayu via strangling to complete a ritual to keep demons away, resulting in Mio turning into a blubbering, disbelieving mess. She follows after the spirit of her sister, crying out that she's sorry and begging her to come back.]] And this is the ''canon'' ending!
* Will has one in ''AdvanceWars Days of Ruin'' [[spoiler: after Cpt. Brenner is destroyed by Caulder's new weapon.]] He snaps out of it when Isabella tells him that his happiness is her happiness. He then goes on to [[spoiler: become the new commander of Brenner's Wolves.]]
** Isabella has one [[spoiler: when Caulder tells everyone his daughters are clones and Isabella is one of them. Being kicked out by the civilians doesn't exactly help her condition. But after the battle on the Great Owl, Will tells her it doesn't matter what she is.]]
* Zero from ''MegaManX 4'' gets an exceedingly [[Narm narmtastic]] heroic BSOD after being forced to kill his girlfriend Iris. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LISmPmdUhYA See it in all its glory here.]] He continues to {{wangst}} about it [[spoiler:even in his last breath in ''X5'']].
* ''KingdomHearts 2''. When Sora learns that his killing Heartless is ''exactly what the Organiztion wants him to do''. He recovers ''really'' quickly, after a pep talk from Goofy, which basically boils down to "The Heartless still need to be stopped, because they hurt people."
* Shiki in ''{{Tsukihime}}'' when Arcueid disappears. Throughout the day he's in a state of total shock and numbness, merely going through the motions at school. He's only at school because it was less effort than dealing with Akiha if didn't. He gets better when [[spoiler:after sitting alone waiting for a teacher for several hours, Roa and Arcueid show up and start fighting to the death.]]
* In ''MetalGearSolid 2'', Raiden quite understandably [[spoiler:suffers one hell of a BSOD when Olga is shot by Solidus. Her death was merely the spark which was fueled by previous knowledge that his role as a rookie was a lie... and that he was actually a child soldier with years of experience (and trauma). Add that to one secret after another revealed beforehand, and not knowing of the [[ThirtyXanatosPileup unbelievable mess]] that awaited him in the next scene...it's a wonder Raiden even recovered enough to duel Solidus in the end.]]
** Solid Snake constantly wrestles against the BSOD throughout the [[MetalGearSolid series]], suffering a literal barrage of conspiracies and mindbenders that could be named by the entire [[XanatosPlannedThisIndex Xanatos index]] right to the bitter end. Yet somehow, Snake generally manages to keep it together and not crash (though he comes pretty damn close at times in four, when he's obviously reached his limit.). A true blue soldier he is!
*** Although...between Metal Gear: Solid Snake (second game) and Metal Gear Solid it's said that a [[LukeIamyourfather certain event]] shook him up a bit to the point he disappeared into Alaska for a while. This ''may'' be an off screen slight BSOD he suffered.
**** Snake can have an on-screen BSOD in ''Guns of the Patriots;'' kill around fifty enemies (kill, not just knock out) and he'll have a flashback to his brother Liquid accusing him of enjoying all the killing he does before vomiting right then and there.
*** In a sense...at the end of MetalGearSolid 4 [[spoiler: Snake has to kind of force Ocelot into a BSOD. I admit this is stretching it though.]]
** At the end of MetalGearSolid 3,[[spoiler: Big Boss turns his quiet little BSOD at the revelation of his master, the Boss' many sacrifices into one of the most remembered examples of [[ManlyTears manly tears]] to ever appear on a gaming console.]]
* Steve Burnside in ''ResidentEvil Code: Veronica'' gets a short one when he discovers that his father has been zombified, and he becomes unable to "kill" it. Only when Claire is threatened by the zombie does he finally turn his submachine guns on it, proceeding to drain his entire supply of bullets into the corpse, and his fingers remain locked into the triggers despite the clicking from the drained guns.
* Edge Maverick from ''[=~Star Ocean: The Last Hope~=]'' gets a BSOD after [[spoiler: he introduced futuristic technology to a 1950's Earth that will bypass that of the nuclear age, therefore avoiding the nuclear war that would eventually nearly cause massive destruction to Earth in the future. However, the scientist he gives it to immediately puts it into a technologically inept reactor, causing the destruction of the entire Earth]]. While this is an understandable case of BSOD, it has received fan criticism for the shear length and overreaction of his BSOD, refusing to even speak for the subsequent chapter of the game, despite being the main character. [[spoiler: Also, his actions create an alternate timeline fate of the Earth, the Earth of his dimension was NOT destroyed when he and his crew returned.]]
* In ''LaMulana'', YOU, that's right, YOU, after discovering the [[spoiler:skimpy swimsuit]].
* Much of the entertainment value of the Let's Play videos of ''IWannaBeTheGuy'' comes from watching the LP'ers experiencing heroic BSOD's.
** One particular epic heroic BSOD comes from a user who had a complete mental breakdown after MANY failed attempts to kill Mecha Birdo. In fact, he uploaded the attempted fights as a completely separate video in the LP he was doing of the game just to show how crazy he had went.
* Ratchet gets one during the first ''{{Ratchet and Clank}}'' game after [[spoiler: [[BrokenPedestal Quarks betrayal.]]]] At this point, the only thing keeping him from dumping Clank and packing it all in is a need for mutual cooperation. [[spoiler: He does become determined to get back at Quark though.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Comics ]]

* In ''{{Megatokyo}}'', after a dramatic conversation with Miho, Ping the RobotGirl ends up with all of her emotional statistics jumbled up.
**Piro nearly turns catatonic when he finally [[http://www.megatokyo.com/strip/535 connects the dots]] between 'co-worker' and 'my favourite VA ever that I had a body pillow of'.
**Erika has a minor one when Largo starts explaining, completely truthfully, why he's late for dinner. [[http://www.megatokyo.com/strip/1095 He probably shouldn't have mentioned the zombies]].
**Inspector Sonoda [[http://www.megatokyo.com/strip/1117 underwent one upon finding out his daughter was a troublesome magical girl]].
**More recently, after a quick-thinking intervention by Ping, our plucky RobotGirl may have just [[http://www.megatokyo.com/strip/1169 broken the Junko]]. In deference to the [[http://www.megatokyo.com/strip/1000 last time this happened]], which didn't stick, we'll see how much of that really registered to the [[ClassRepresentative class rep]].
**As a possible subversion, Ping (A robot, and therefore possibly capable of a literal BSOD) seems to be having one after nearly accidentally hurting her friend [[http://megatokyo.com/strip/794 here]]. It's commented upon by Piro [[http://megatokyo.com/strip/808 here]].
* In ''{{Erfworld}}'', when Jillian is unable to rationalize her way around a conflict between Wanda's [[MoreThanMindControl influence]] and [[ThePowerOfLove her loyalty to Ansom]], she briefly collapses. [[spoiler: She recovers and charges into battle, resulting in a major victory for Ansom's side. This stuns Wanda into a considerably more severe BSOD of her own.]]
** Later, it turns out that this may simply be [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0093.html backlash]] from the breaking of Wanda's suggestion spell.
* Parodied in ''ExterminatusNow!'' After hearing that an old friend of his is behind an assassination attempt on his boss, Eastwood goes into a trance and spends a few minutes repeating his name. His teammates take the opportunity to steal his wallet.
* [[ElGoonishShive Grace]] ''kinda'' has one of these after [[spoiler:making BigBad Damien blow himself up.]]
** Yeah that's an example. Ellen also went through one of these when she was created.
* In one of the rare dramatic moments of ''[[EightBitTheater 8-Bit Theater]]'', Fighter has a [[http://www.nuklearpower.com/2004/02/12/episode-383-spinal-snap/ brief moment of sadness]] when [[spoiler:Black Mage is killed by Lich]]. He replaces it with [[UnstoppableRage a screaming rage]] though.
** Black Mage later ''[[DangerouslyGenreSavvy fakes]]'' one when he [[spoiler: accidently killed White Mage. [[IGotBetter She got better]].]]
* Hanners of ''QuestionableContent'' has one after learning [[http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1187 her underwear was showing]] while she was drumming-from both of her MALE bandmates.
* Ash from ''{{Misfile}}'' suffers one during her first defeat at the hands of [[BigBad Kamikaze Kate]] in [[http://www.misfile.com/index.php?page=206 this strip]].
** Although having [[GenderBender his]] first [[NoPeriodsPeriod period]] might have contributed to that emotional rollercoaster.
** Ash gets it ''[[http://www.misfile.com/?page=1108 again]]'' when Vashiel tells her that Rumisiel won't be able to return to Heaven for another ''72 years'', meaning he won't be able to correct his misfile mistake until then. Considering the average human lifespan, Ash realizes that she (he?) will have to stay the way she is for the rest of her life. It takes a visit from Emily to snap her out of it.
***Looks like she's about to have ''another'' one.
* In ''SluggyFreelance'', Torg goes through a mild one of these after [[spoiler:an AlternateUniverse version of Zoe he'd been dating]] dies, and immediately jumps to Roaring Rampage Of Revenge mode. He never completely ''stops'' being his goofy self after the ordeal and returning to his home dimension, but he is a lot angrier and mopier for a while, especially around [[spoiler:Zoe]].
* Lilah's miscarriage in ''CtrlAltDel'' forces Ethan to go into HeroicBSOD mode. He spends the next several comics wandering around in a zombie-like state (the lack of sleep might have contributed to that), and was seen trying to get a soda out of a vending machine until moments later, when he says he's not even thirsty and that seeing Lilah inconsolable was far too much for him.
*Dan from ''DanAndMabsFurryAdventures'' experiences one of these in [[http://www.missmab.com/Comics/Vol_529.php this strip]] due to a troubling suggestion.
*The innocent titular character in ''Rice Boy'' has to [[spoiler: travel the harsh wilderness, be dosed with liquid despair, learn cosmic secrets at the cost of other people's lives, see a hundred clones of himself spawned and cut down, and know that he must save the world and die. Suffering a HeroicBSOD he throws himself off a cliff ... into the next stage of his quest.]]
* ''OrderOfTheStick'': [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0245.html "I think we broke Haley."]]
** Vaarsuvius as well, as the result of what the elf perceives as a great [[MyGreatestFailure failure]] back in Azure City and in everything that has happened since, to the point where everything the elf does has the underlying tone of being horrifically, terribly afraid of continuing to fail in new and horrifying ways.
* In ''FletcherApts'', Doug often blanks out and mentally reboots when he sees a girl flash her breasts. Like in [[http://www.fletcherapts.com/archive/20060217.html this strip]], he forgot the answer to the homework problem he was talking about, and in [[http://www.fletcherapts.com/archive/20060331.html this strip]] his brain literally flashes a BSOD, causing Doug to forget his lesson and possibly the entire week beforehand.
* Lampshaded in ''Shortpacked!'' When Ethan realizes how gratuitously evil he's being, his shock and horror causes the strip itself to "crash"--[[http://www.shortpacked.com/d/20090331.html complete with BSOD]].
* A comedic version appeared in ''VGCats'', when Aeris had a major FreakOut on the subject of ''DonkeyKong'''s stare.
* In "4our-Calendar Cafe", Cambel and Sara both had a BSOD moment when they heard of MichaelJackson's death in [[http://4calendarcafe.cloverian.net/2009/06/25/gone-too-soon-or-blue-screen-of-death/ this strip]]. Although clearly not part of the cannon, the author himself said "pretty much all of us entered a state of Blue Screen of Death when we heard about the news".
* Misho, from ''KeychainOfCreation'', suffers one of these in [[http://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0220.html #220]] as a result of his Heart of Tears Limit Flaw.
* Torvald of ''Dante Residential'' gets a literal BSOD in [[http://community.livejournal.com/dante_res_comic/25635.html this strip]] after being liked and rejected by the same girl within mere seconds.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: WebAnimation]]
* Shandala goes through a ''serious'' one in ''BrokenSaints'' after her [[spoiler: adopted brother is killed as result of her own actions. Considering she's also surrounded by mysterious foreigners on a boat half an ocean away from the only home she's ever known, it's even less surprising.]]

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Original ]]
*This happens on a number of occasions in ''SurvivalOfTheFittest''. After the deaths of [[spoiler: his entire group, including the sickening deaths of Madelaine Shirohara and his love interest Amanda Jones at the hands of Cody Jensen]] Adam Dodd of V1 wanders across the island for some days in the throes of a HeroicBSOD - the whole matter getting worse as he gets attacked and is forced to kill classmates more than once.
** A more minor example is with Sean O'Cann, who breaks down after his estranged best friend [[YaoiGuys boyfriend]] and cousin are killed over the course of a couple of days.
** Madelaine Shirohara goes into one of these as well after she is forced to kill her childhood friend Nanami Nishida following Nishida turning on her and her other friends.
* Vatsy, from the dark-humor webstory ''[[VatsyAndBruno Vatsy and Bruno]]'', suffers one of these shortly after receiving the following rejection letter:
-->To whom it may concern: We do not regret to inform you that this submission is unusable, unintelligent and frequently illegible. We do not regret that your mental seepage, poured in such an ungainly fashion on your half-cent-per-thousand-sheet paper, will not be gracing this or any future publication of the Writer’s Guild World Newsletter. We do not regret that you will—most probably—die alone, penniless, unloved and foul-smelling. We do, however, regret that we were exposed—even through this protective screen of incomprehensibility—to this most unspeakable body of work. We regret that our sanity and our lives can never be whole again after even a brief perusal of your first page. We regret that the stink of hideous purple prose and suspiciously fecal ink will forever saturate our desk space. Most of all, we regret that you had slithered, like a diseased rat infiltrating an unsuspecting granary, into this world on whatever dark day you were born (from the art inherent in your prose, we would estimate about a year ago.) If we ever see the name “Vatsy”—or that name spelled differently, or any name with a superficial resemblance, or anything that even reminds us of you—on any volume, essay, poem, or bill that ever crosses our threshold, we will ensure that you will not survive the night that follows. Wishing you well, The Writers Guild
* ''{{Sapphire}}'': [[spoiler:When Boris kills Ivanka. He even tries to shoot himself, but backs down before pulling the trigger.]]
* Phase, at the SuperHeroSchool Whateley Academy in the WhateleyUniverse, nearly goes catatonic, and spends a week hideously depressed, despite tons of psychiatric help by powerful psis, when powers testing reveals that her screwed-up body is not [[AppliedPhlebotinum Gross Structural Dystrophy]], but [[spoiler: a bizarre Body Image Template, which means that her subconscious fears drove her mutant manifestation into her current shape and hence ultimately she did this to herself.]]
** Tennyo, in ''Ayla and the Great Shoulder Angel Conspiracy'', is confronted with ghosts of her alien side's ancient past, and 'remembers' the horrific things it did. She doesn't handle it well.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* In ''{{WITCH}}'', Hay Lin suffers a HeroicBSOD after believing that her grandmother Yan Lin has [[FaceHeelTurn started serving Nerissa]], and that her boyfriend has betrayed her as well. Hay Lin becomes depressed and nearly catatonic, culminating in a TransformationSequence where her teammates call out their own elements happily, and Hay Lin just stands there, her head bowed.
* In ''ToyStory'', when Buzz Lightyear finally realizes he's just a toy.
* In an episode of ''TheFairlyOddparents'', Timmy tells the Crimson Chin that he's only a comic book character, resulting in CC going into a HeroicBSOD where he is curled up in a ball crying for most of the episode feeling unimportant. He snaps back to normal when Timmy has a brush with death at the hands of his nemesis.
* Fitz from ''12. Oz Mouse'' goes through a BSOD after [[spoiler:his best friend Skillet is killed]]. He completely gives up on everything, and wanders off to play a game of Pinball.
* Mr. Krabs, in the ''SpongebobSquarepants'' episode "One Krab's Trash," has a HeroicBSOD when he hears how much his drinking cap is worth.
* Happens to Leela from ''{{Futurama}}'', when Fry [[spoiler: jumps in front of her to save her from being impaled on the stinger of a giant killer bee, and apparently dies on the spot. Made much worse by the fact that not only did Fry die for her, but Leela ignored all of Fry's pleas to be careful, as well as all warning signs that their current expedition was a festering death trap, simply in order to appear tough. She spirals into a deep, guilt-ridden depression and loses her mind, becoming more and more deranged and confused as she is shoved through a series of nightmares involving Fry. In the end, it thankfully turns out to be just a dream, as the stinger went right through Fry and pierced her, leaving her in a deep coma.]]
* Dante Vale from ''Huntik'' has a BSOD when he [[spoiler: gives up the amulets of power on the offchance that his enemy will save Metz, his mentor. Zahlia has to protect him for most of an episode as he's literally non responsive.]]
* Kyle suffers one of these on ''{{South Park}}'' after Cartman convinces him to see ''[[The Passion of the Christ}}'', claiming that it "proves" the Jews butchered {{Jesus}}. The Jewish Kyle is horrified at what he sees, to the point where he becomes ashamed of his Jewish heritage, just as Cartman had hoped. The Gentiles Stan and Kenny are less impressed with the movie, with Stan going so far as to declare it a "[[ExploitationFilm snuff film]]."
* Suffered by Leonardo (''[[WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' 2003) twice. The first time occurs after he is badly beaten and almost killed by the Foot Clan, which leaves him comatose and melancholy afterwards. The second time occurs after the turtles are handily defeated and have to resort to sacrificing themselves just to stop the BigBad from winning. This necessity is fortunately prevented, but just the idea that the situation got [[ItGotWorse that bad]] disturbs Leonardo. As the [[BigBrotherComplex Big Brother]], he blames himself for failing his family and goes into a self-destructive spiral, training obsessively, forcing his brothers to do likewise, and being surly and moody in general. [[spoiler: It takes 13 episodes of not listening to Splinter, a literal journey, and a Star Wars-esque "yourself behind the Vader mask" moment to get Leonardo to recover his senses.]]
* In the episode of ''HigglytownHeroes'' 'Kip's Dad Gets a Strike', Kip's Dad has a Heroic BSOD moment when his X-57 bowling ball breaks. And for nearly the entire episode, he sits in his massage chair whimpering over the remains of his shattered bowling ball. Ughh, more like Idiotic BSOD.
* Toki Wartooth of ''{{Metalocalypse}}'' has had two in the series so far- In season 1 episode 'Dethfam' he spends almost the whole episode pretty much catatonic due to [[spoiler: being around his parents]], and in the season 2 episode 'Dethdad' he does it again when [[spoiler: he learns his father is dying of cancer and has to go home to Norway to see him.]]
* ''{{Avatar the Last Airbender}}'' does this a lot, in particular with Aang. When he goes through BSOD, he goes into the Avatar State. The most memerable is when he [[spoiler: finds Gyasto's skeleton, surrounded by Fire Nation soldiers]]
* She isn't really a heroine, but Charlotte of ''MakingFiends'' falls into a [[BreakTheCutie depression]] trance after hearing a sad poem about a kitten stuck somewhere high. She gets [[IGotBetter over]] it by the end of the episode though.
* In ''BrotherBear'', this trope happens when Kenai finally listens to Koda's story about his mother and realizes it is about the fight he and his brothers had with a bear. Kenai puts the pieces together and realizes to his horror that he killed Koda's mother. At that, Kenai flees the bear gathering in profound fear and shame.
* Nightscream in ''BeastMachines'' experiences one upon finding a cave full of fossils and realising that if he wasn't so selfish, he could have saved a lot of Transformers from Megatron.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Tabletop RPG ]]

* In ''White Wolf'''s ''Werewolf: The Apocalypse'', Werewolves can go into a state of deep spiritual sadness called Harano. However, overcoming it provides the Werewolf with permanent Willpower.
*If done correctly a GM can even get a player to do this. It's immensely satisfing when it happens.
* An occupational hazard of Astartes and Guard officers in ''{{Warhammer 40000}}''. One of the more typical comes from the Primarch Corax: after resorting to desperate measures to rebuild his devastated Raven Guard during the HorusHeresy, he reluctantly and personally executes the horrific monstrosities his orders created, then locks himself in his room for a year and a day, after which he emerges and takes a ship on course for the Eye of Terror, his only word being [[ShoutOut "Nevermore..."]]
** As mentioned above in DawnOfWar, The Tau have a chance of getting the blue screen if their Ethereal dies. Or, they could go into UnstoppableRage... [[MoreDakka with plasma guns]].
* In the free [[TheMatrix Matrix]] game [[http://www.steved.org/rp_rules_tins.html "There Is No Spoon,"]] the Sick At Heart optional rules model damage to a character's belief system, and reduces their Matrix stat (the stat that gives them their ability to kick serious ass) on a failed Matrix roll when they choose (or are forced) to act in a way that contravenes or works to destroy their beliefs, personal code or deep abiding reason to live, or are severely tortured or have something else extreme happen to them. A character can actually be worn down to no Matrix stat at all this way, making them little more than another mook under the system's rules, and recovery of Matrix points is difficult, as it involves rebuilding the character's faith in themselves. The notes on this particular optional rule says that it should not be used excessively, as this is meant to be an action game, not a dark tale of the fragility of the mind.
* ''{{Exalted}}'' has a defined set of these as part of the Great Curse afflicting all Solar Exalted. Called "Limit Breaks" (unrelated to [[LimitBreak the trope]] except by name), they occur whenever Exalts reach a particular threshold of stress related to their Compassion, Conviction, Temperance, or Valor traits. Effects include catatonia, UnstoppableRage, wallowing in vice, collapsing in a [[WaterWorks fit of crying]], and plenty more; all are highly destructive, incapacitating, or both.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* Slight subversion: TerryPratchett went into "[[strike: an incoherent]] a ''frighteningly coherent'' rage" after finding out he had early-onset Alzheimer's disease.
* ChevyChase claimed to have suffered something like this after JohnBelushi died.
* Everyone's had (or will have) at least one, some worse than others.
* Pretty much anyone still alive in Japan after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed.
* After 9/11.
[[/folder]]
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