Ax Crazy / Video Games

A sharply dressed groom-to-be.

#-E

• AI: The Somnium Files: The Cyclops Killer had the M.O. of brutally murdering people while taking out one of their eyes. The main culprit was born with a brain defect that gives him a dopamine rush when killing people. Saito Sejima joined with Rohan Kumakura to get more kills while Rohan took the eyes. After being transferred into a body that doesn't have that defect, Saito is aggravated that killing doesn't give him that same rush and will do anything to get it back, including swapping into more bodies and killing them to find his original body.
• In Alan Wake's American Nightmare, Mr. Scratch, a Humanoid Abomination Evil Twin (and implied Enemy Without) of the protagonist, is everything Wake isn't, which means that he's a flamboyant, psychopathic Serial Killer as well as a particularly sadistic Psycho Knife Nut. Worse still, he's hopeful of attempting a Kill and Replace.
• In American McGee's Alice, well, pretty much everyone. Although with Alice, her goal is to win her sanity back.
• From Amnesia: Justine, we have the titular character, who at the ripe old age of eleven murdered her father. And that was just the beginning. Throughout the relatively short game, it's revealed that she enjoys manipulating her lovers, or "suitors", into doing horrible things to each other and themselves, breaks them mentally and physically, and even puts herself through hell and back as she's revealed to be the player character at the end of the game. She willingly put herself through horrible scenarios and dangerous puzzles just to "test" herself to see if she has any humanity left in her. However, it's safe to say that she doesn't though, because regardless of whether you save the three hostages found throughout the game, she still locks them in with the suitors to quite possibly be killed by them at the end!
  • As it eventually turns out, The Engineer from Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is a cackling megalomaniac who wants to exterminate all of humanity because it's a fragment of the protagonist's consciousness given life and driven completely insane by the atrocities of the 20th Century.
• Amnesia: Memories has Ukyo's darker, evil side. This side of him seems to pop up out of the blue, and his facial expression makes it clear that whatever is keeping his last shred of sanity around is hanging on a silken thread. He makes no secret of his vast but creepy knowledge about the heroine and the people around her, and often gives thinly-veiled lines to get the heroine into danger. He delights in telling her that he'll kill her and he succeeds in killing her in various Bad Endings.
• Adele in Arc Rise Fantasia is an Unlucky Childhood Friend. She did not take it well.
• Scharlachrot in Arcana Heart 3. However, this is as a result of being Brainwashed and Crazy by the Drexler Institute. She snaps out of it in her ending.
• In BAD END THEATER, there is an early-game ending where the demonic Underling embraces their evil reputation and becomes a crazy killer. First they eat the Maiden alive, then they head to the human village and start happily slaughtering humans just to hear them scream. The Underling is killed by the Hero in the end, but they still think it was Worth It.
• Lilarcor the talking sword in Baldur's Gate II. It's a fairly powerful sword that houses the soul of a bloodthirsty idiot. Every bit of Lilarcor's dialogue consists of it whining about how it's not killing anyone at the moment and asking you to hurry up and kill someone with it.
• Batman: Arkham Series:
  • The first game introduces Quincy Sharp, who is by all appearances normal when you speak to him except in the Spirit of Arkham, where it can be seen that he is an absolutely insane Knight Templar.
  • The main villains of the plot, some of the most deranged of Batman's Rogues Gallery. Zsasz, the Joker, Killer Croc... among others.
  • Anyone who has been injected with some form of the Lazarus Vector: Lazarus Elixir, Lazarus Phoenix Pinion, Venom, or Titan. Who made these potions and how they are interconnected in the series is a major spoiler, but they're responsible for about half of the plot. And yes, Batman also took it.
  • The Penguin is a gleeful, brutal, homicidal sadist who takes joy in actively torturing others and is very open to the idea of senseless violence. The fact that Penelope Young has diagnosed him with anti-social personality disorder certainly doesn't help as it should.
  • In a strange way, the player character makes Batman crazy. What else would you call gliding around Gotham City and Arkham Asylum looking for gang members to horrendously punch, explode, electrocute, freeze, glue, hang, and humiliate, all while leaving them alive and in tremendous pain/fear? For "EXP" so that you can equip Waynetech that Batman already has? Or leaving criminals to do their thing while you scour the map looking for trophies that look like green hooks?
• Bendy and the Ink Machine: By the time Susie Campbell gets turned into an ink creature, she is largely Lost in Character and has also developed multiple personalities, one of which claims of her murders that Gollum Made Me Do It. She has personally eviscerated at least ten other Toons, whose corpses she leaves on display. When Henry goes to see her on Level 9, she's in the middle of torturing a Butcher Gang clone, and between Chapters 3 and 4, she kidnaps Henry's friend Boris and reforges him into a minion. She suffers from mood swings and sometimes sets her own outbursts off with her monologing, such as the time at the end of Chapter 3 when she breaks down in the middle of talking about heaven — first crying then laughing — and sabotages the elevator with Henry and Boris on it. Other things set her off too, like the time at the end of Chapter 4 when she enters a murderous rage because Henry survived the Boss Fight with Boris.
• BioForge: The victims of the cyborgization process kept becoming this until the Mad Scientist in charge found out how to stop it. (The player also has the option of acting Ax-Crazy themselves, as there are points where you can kill someone even though they pose no threat to you.)
• The Splicers in BioShock have been reduced to this from repeated use of the Psycho Serum ADAM. Later you learn that they've been targeting you specifically because the ADAM they've been using has an additive that makes them susceptible to Mind Control by Andrew Ryan. If it weren't for that, they'd probably be going ape on what's left of each other as well. By comparison, the Splicers in the sequel seem to be in better control of their faculties, if still mentally unstable and in the habit of constantly talking to themselves; the Spider Splicers may be an exception.
• Big Bad Mordred from the Black Mirror games. Whenever Darren/Adrian lays a hand on anything with a sharp edge, Mordred goes nuts with admiration for the weapon.
• BlazBlue:
  • Yuuki Terumi. He trapped the world in 725 time loops of 100 years each, through which it, during just the first 10 years, got ravaged by an enormous, hydra-like monster. This is also arguably one of the less horrifying acts he has done, solely because the result of it was a continuously repeated impersonal and indiscriminate mass-slaughter on over 50% of the human race. Y'see, it's not until Terumi gets personal with people that his maniacal depravity really shines through. He gets worse after reuniting with his original body, the Susanoo Unit. He becomes a lot more serious and focused and actually has the power to back up his threats.
  • Nu-13 becomes this in regards to anyone who isn't Ragna. Or even because of Ragna. And if you happen to look like Ragna but aren't, God help you.
  • And there's also Arakune, the Laughing Mad unintelligible Eldritch Abomination who will never stop hunting for the Azure, and kill and/or consume anyone who gets in his way.
  • There's also Jin Kisaragi, who becomes this around Ragna or Noel, courtesy of the Yukianesa.
  • Carl Clover. Especially if you touch Nirvana/Ada, or try to hide information about his father Relius. In Tsubaki's story mode, losing to him leads to him killing his childhood friend.
    Carl: Oh, please don't die yet, Miss Tsubaki...
    Tsubaki: ... U-Ugh...
    Carl: Well, if you'd be so kind as to tell me the whereabouts of my father... Preferably before you bleed to death.
  • With names like The Mad Dog, Massacre King, The Genocider, and The Deathbringer, it's extremely clear that Azrael's an extremely dangerous being who relishes considerably too much in carnage, so much so that he had to be locked inside a dimensional prison to prevent him from destroying anything and everything in sight.
  • Act 3 of Central Fiction reveals that the kind, loyal, hardworking Hibiki Kohaku we saw in Chronophantasma was a mask that hides a deeply disturbed individual. He's willing to kill Kagura to become truly emotionless.
  • Hades Izanami. Naturally, being obsessed with death and trying to make a world of death makes her this. She acts calmer than the other examples, but that makes it all the more terrifying.
• The Assault Bomber in Bomberman Generation is both a Mad Bomber and Trigger-Happy.
• Most of the cast of the Borderlands franchise is ax-crazy. And those that are not still see murder as a pretty normal thing. This is this kind of game, yes. More specifically:
  • The Psychos and most other human enemies. Krieg, the playable Psycho, deserves special mention for taking this trope literally, with his special skill being to run around with a giant axe.
  • There's also Handsome Jack, who is a different form of Ax-Crazy than Krieg. At first, Jack just seems to be a Corrupt Corporate Executive who enjoys mocking the Vault Hunters at every chance he gets. However, later points in the game imply that he is a pure sociopath who absolutely relishes in torturing his enemies, and one ECHO recording strongly implies that he murdered an employee's children because that employee pointed out a few flaws in his plan to build Opportunity, a city dedicated to himself.
  • The Sheriff of Lynchwood, AKA Nisha Kadam, in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! and Borderlands 2. A Trigger-Happy sadist who loves watching her enemies die, her "retirement" from Vault Hunting consisted of ruling a town with an iron fist and filling it with bandits just so she had something to kill.
• Fritz from Brain Dead 13, whose deranged methods of killing involve eggbeaters, harpoons, and a blender. Combine that with him being a Determinator, and, well... you're screwed.
• Sunshine Bear, the mascot-costumed serial killer from Camp Sunshine, is a psychotic maniac who butchers everyone in his path indiscriminately, leaving a trail of bloody corpses littering the game's entire layout.
• Clive Barker's Undying: Most of the Covenant family are insane in one way or another, like with Ambrose beating his father to death with a pool cue simply because he was tired of him meddling in personal affairs, or Bethany settling a rivalry with her brother by gleefully removing his jaw, tying him up in the basement, and setting a swarm of hungry rats on him.
• Ripper Roo from Crash Bandicoot, one of the very first evolved animals made in the series, speaks entirely in insane laughter and loves explosives.

• Heartless from Crossing Souls is a Sociopathic Soldier. When sent after Bronson for failing the Big Bad, Bronson's attempts to reason with him fall flat because A) the plan could lead to potentially wiping out humanity, and Heartless is such a Blood Knight that he's looking forward to it, and B) the Big Bad is going to use a machine to connect the world to the afterlife and use a ghost army to conquer the world, so even if Bronson is right and Heartless does die in the process, it won't stop him. Later, when Heartless actually tries to negotiate with the heroes to get the McGuffin, they refuse because they know what kind of person he is. Heartless actually congratulates them on their common sense and thanks them for the chance to shoot them, and the protagonists are kids mind you.
• While most of the murderers in the Danganronpa series acted out of desperation, there are some outliers.
  • Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc:
    • The Big Bad Monokuma set up the entire death game because of his obsession with despair. The Ax-Crazy doesn't really come out until The Reveal, though. After Junko reveals herself, she can't even keep her own personality straight and is clearly mentally unwell. Her obsession with despair is so deep that she is willing to kill the people she loves for the sake of cultivating her own despair.
    • The Serial Killer Genocide Jack/Jill also counts, as she kills cute boys for a sexual thrill. In the final chapter, Monokuma/Junko and Jill even share a bit of crazy banter with each other.
  • Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair:
    • Nagito Komaeda reveals that he's willing to commit murder for the sake of hope. His completely bizarre mindset leads him to believe that anything for the sake of hope is necessary, even cultivating despair for the sake of having a powerful hope defeat it. Even as a member of Junko's Ultimate Despair, he's still just as deranged. And the fact that he's willing to kill all his classmates to stop them from becoming Ultimate Despair just for the sake of propping himself up as the Ultimate Hope shows how far gone he is even without Junko corrupting him.
    • Mikan wasn't too mentally stable to begin with due to a lifetime of abuse, which made her that much easier for Junko to manipulate. When she gets her Ultimate Despair memories back, all pretenses of sanity promptly go out the window after she's outed as a double murderer.
  • Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony:
    • Korekiyo's general creepiness is commented on so often it that would've been more surprising if he hadn't ended up becoming a killer, although the true extent of it isn't shown until he's outed as a Serial Killer with a split personality.
    • The mastermind Tsumugi is a psychopath obsessed with the Deadly Game she and her associates cultivated, and murders Rantaro solely because The Show Must Go On.
• The Dark Souls series:
  • Dark Souls:
    • Lautrec is a loner vagabond who uses and kills Anastacia, the fire keeper of Firelink Shrine.
    • The Darkwraiths you meet in-game became Ax-Crazy after becoming Drunk with Power.
    • Undead that have lost all their remaining humanity are insane, violent shells of who they once were. That said, some hollows you find are docile and often huddle themselves into corners, crying.
  • The Brotherhood of Blood in Dark Souls II are murderous wingnuts who worship the God of Blood. Their leader, Titchy Gren, gives a huge rant about slaughter when you meet him.
  • Mound-Makers in Dark Souls III are easily the least stable of the "evil" covenants: Rosaria's Fingers and the Aldrich Faithful have religious or personal motivations, but the Mound-Makers exist solely to rampage around killing anyone in their path and are rewarded in the same way for killing fellow invaders as they are the Host of Embers. The Mound-Maker NPC you can encounter, Holy Knight Hodrick, views the skulls of his victims as "family"; when you summon him for a rematch on the Road of Sacrifices, instead of focusing primarily on the player like most invaders, he'll charge blindly at anything that crosses his path... which can save you a lot of trouble if you kite him towards Yellowfinger Heysel or the Exile Watchdogs, since those won't respawn if he kills them.
• Dead by Daylight:
  • The Entity, a God of Evil whose chosen feeding method is to put random innocents through a Death Resurrection Loop to consume their souls.
  • Each and every Serial Killer workong for the aforementioned God of Evil.
• Dead Rising:
  • Pick a boss, any boss. We have Crazy Survivalists, chainsaw-juggling clowns, "Humanitarians", pyros, infidel-slaying cultists... Maybe going berserk is something of an advantage in a zombie infestation.
  • Arguably ,the most disturbing example is Brandon Whittaker from Dead Rising 2, a C.U.R.E protester who watched people die during the outbreak and subsequently lost his mind. He now serves "the cause" by deliberately feeding people to zombies to turn them. When Chuck protests, he goes absolutely batshit and attacks him with a giant glass shard. What's worse, after you defeat him, he gets bitten by the same zombie he tried to use on a hostage, and immediately commits suicide. And if Off the Record is any indication, he is the one who started the second game's outbreak.
• Demon Hunter: The Return of the Wings: Jabra is a Naru hunter with a short fuse and drops whatever he's doing to fight to the death the last person who has bothered him, enemy or ally alike, then gets bored just as quickly.
• Crypto from Destroy All Humans!. He's a nigh-unstoppable killing machine who plans to rip out your brain and destroy your entire town.

• Sapphire of Disgaea 3 qualifies. Not as dangerous as some here, but still quite violent.
• In The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile, Yuki starts out killing enemies with her teeth and doesn't see much reason to stop.

• The Darkspawn of Dragon Age are a race of Ax-Crazy Blood Knights. Being the embodiment of The Maker's condemnation of mortals (according to The Chantry), the Darkspawn exist to kill and do horrible things to the world. They will do their best to kill anything and everything they come across that isn't also Tainted; if they can't find anything nontainted nearby to kill they will readily try to kill each other. Only an Archdemon has the power and will to unite the murderous bastards and keep them from killing each other when they get bored. Unfortunately, Archdemons, being Tainted dragon gods, are also Ax-Crazy. That's why Blights happen. Even some of the "freed" Darkspawn in Awakening are Ax-Crazy.
• Arioch from Drakengard is an Ax-Crazy Elven Action Girl. Due to the loss of her children (presumably right in front of her eyes and in some gruesome way), she's now a cannibal and has a preference for small children. She's also on the player's side.
  • The funny thing is, the protagonist of the game, Caim, possibly surpasses Arioch in terms of sheer homicidal mania. Imperials? Monsters? The Watchers? Child soldiers? Four words: Caim rhymes with murder
• Due to the situation, everyone in Don't Starve could qualify.
• In Dwarf Fortress, every now and then one of your dwarfs may snap and start killing anything and everything in sight. The usual cause for this is their happiness falling too low, although there are others. Often from having seen/being attacked by another dwarf that had this happen to them.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Sheogorath, the Daedric Price of Madness, oddly enough plays with this trope. For someone who ends all his conversations with "Visit again or I'll pluck out your eyes!", he is surprisingly nonviolent. Even if you attack him, he doesn't attack back directly, he just scolds you and teleports you into the sky, causing you to fall to your death. (Or possibly leaves you where you are, and hurls the planet at you. He's used a Colony Drop before in the Backstory after all...) Just don't make him too happy or talk to him while he's contemplating having Brain Pie for lunch. Furthermore, he's actually not technically in control of "Axe Crazy" only but Madness as a whole. Mehrunes Dagon and or maybe Boethiah might be more "Axe Crazy" since they're both a lot more violent and associated with violence. Dagon in particular likes to sent you on a mission to kill people whom he dislikes, if he's not trying to smash you himself.
  • In the series' backstory, Emperor Pelagius the Mad certainly lived up to his nickname. He wasn't just insane, he was said to be homicidally insane. When his madness became too publicly apparent, he was removed from the throne and placed in an asylum. Towards the end of his life, he was known to strip naked and attack/bite visitors. Sheogorath's quest in Skyrim actually has you posthumously cure Pelagius of whatever madness ailed him.
  • Also from the backstory, Pelinal Whitestrake, the legendary hero of mankind/racist berserker. Said to be a Shezarrine, Pelinal came to St. Alessia to serve as her divine champion in the war against the Ayleids. Pelinal would fly into fits of Unstoppable Rage mostly directed at the Ayleids, during which he would be stained with their blood and leave so much carnage in his wake that Kyne, one of the Divines, would have to send in her rain to cleanse Ayleid forts and village before they could be used by Alessia's forces. During one particularly infamous fit of rage, Pelinal damaged the very lands themselves, nearly causing the Divines to abandon the mortal world in disgust.
  • Morrowind:
    • The infamous Therana is a Really 700 Years Old wizard whose life-extending necromancy doesn't seem to have worked as well on her mind as the rest of her fellow Telvanni. She is at all times incomprehensibly senile, which wouldn't be so bad if not for her habit of turning murderously violent on a whim.
    • In the Tribunal expansion, Tribunal deity Almalexia proves herself to be this. While she appears to be fairly stable initially, the one-on-one confrontation with her at the end of the expansion reveals just how far gone she really is. And the ensuing battle shows just how dangerous she is.
  • Glarthir from Oblivion. He believes that three of the other NPCs are conspiring against him and sets you to tail them. Not a single one of them actually is — but if you tell him this, he'll assume that they've turned you as well and whip out an axe to take you out before you get him. If you lie, he'll ask you to kill whomever you fingered, or do it himself if you refuse.
• Nikolai Diavolo from Everything or Nothing. Though he never shows this trait within the game, M reveals that even the KGB tried to kill him. To make matters worse, his mentor was the very ax-crazy Max Zorin.

• EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: Crown and Fool are only heroes by virtue of being leased to fight for the good guys. They are a pair of completely sadistic Monster Clowns who only participate for the opportunity to enact more violence, and don't even discriminate if a friendly unit gets caught in the area of effect of their attacks. The heroes are even given a whistle that will pacify them on the non-zero chance that they decide to turn on the team.

F-L

• The Fallout series, owing to its post-apocalyptic setting, features quite a few nutcase out to make the Wasteland even worse of a place to live in:
  • Frank Horrigan from Fallout 2 is a pretty stand-out example. Serving as a killing machine to the main antagonist group of the game, the Enclave, there's always bound to be violence when he's featured in a scene. From his killing of a family to his outright genocide against the Deathclaws at Vault 13, Horrigan is so gleefully brutal that even his fellow Enclave soldiers can hardly stomach his rampages, and a whole squad's worth of them will even help the Player Character fight him. Frank is also unique amongst endgame villains of the series in that he cannot be convinced to stand down through words and will fight the player and any potential allies to the death.
  • Stanislas Braun from Fallout 3 has crafted entire virtual realities for him and his fellow vault dwellers to inhabit. Too bad for them that Braun uses said virtual realities to torment them in various ways, all the way to murder, which he can undo through his control over the simulation. Braun spent two centuries repeatedly toying with his test subjects, describing some of their most gruesome deaths with glee in his logs and only getting bored with the actual locations themselves.
• Far Cry 3: A great many people, which the advertising for the game heavily emphasized:
  • Buck is a brutal sadist who enjoys torture, rape, and murder.
  • Hoyt Volker. The Don meets Ax-Crazy extraordinaire: He's a deranged, homicidal sadist who commits mass murder on a regular basis.

• When we first meet little Illyasviel von Einzbern from Fate/stay night, it's incredibly obvious that one, she's not quite all there, and two, she wants to hurt people (which given she is the Master of Berserker, one of the most powerful Servants of the Holy Grail War, she is more than capable of doing). Especially in the Fate route, Illya has no qualms about enslaving or killing Shirou gruesomely, and the Bad Ends involving her get horrifying. Much of this comes from her abandonment issues regarding her father Kiritsugu, and the Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven's Feel routes show a far more sympathetic side to little Illya.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Kefka from Final Fantasy VI. This is a man who reduced the planet to a burned-out shell because he could, and then randomly took out the remaining pockets of civilization with a Wave-Motion Gun whenever he got bored. That's during his encounter with the Warring Triad. Beforehand, he was, while relatively normal, a man who was prone to breaking into fits of hysterical laughter when doing atrocious crimes, brainwashed Terra and ordered her to torch fifty of his own soldiers alive, attempted to burn Figaro, poisoned Doma (and in that particular case, he also mused maniacally about his joy about listening to "music" revolving around hundreds of people screaming in unison), brutalized various Espers in a Magitek research facility while maniacally declaring himself to be a god, and massacred various Espers at Thamasa as well as burning Thamasa to the ground. His backstory reveals that he was the first Magitek Knight, but the process was imperfect, and he became insane after the process, which is heavily implied to involve brain surgery, meaning that the Empire broke his brain.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, there's Garuda, the Primal of Wind, who is completely fucking nuts. Of the previous two Primals faced in the story, Ifrit wanted everyone to bow before him, while Titan merely wished to protect his "children". Garuda, on the other hand, wants to kill everyone on the planet except for her own worshipers, the Ixal, and absorb all of the world's aether to become the one almighty goddess. To drive the point home, she is constantly cackling insanely.
• In the Fire Emblem series:
  • Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade:
    • Jerme, the Black Fang assassin nicknamed Death Kite, fits this one like a glove. He says to Lyn: "You! Woman! You have beautiful skin. If I sliced you into lovely red ribbons with this, would the pieces be as soft and delicate as silk?"
    • Karel is an extremely bloodthirsty human being who quickly establishes what kind of man he is when he joins up with Eliwood's group purely so his blade can feast on the Black Fang and to keep Eliwood and/or Lyn alive so they can challenge him. Although twenty years later in Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, he has mellowed out quite considerably.
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening: Gangrel truly lives up to his epithet, the "Mad King of Plegia". He's prone to fits of insane laughter and has a strong appetite for bloodshed, to the extent that all of the atrocities he committed were simply to start a war with Ylisse. After the Heroic Suicide of Emmeryn, the current Exalt of Ylisse, his subjects realize what a lunatic he is and desert him en masse.
  • Fire Emblem Fates:
    • In a non-villainous example, Peri takes a huge liking towards murdering people with little provocation.
    • One of the villains, Hans, a criminal who is also one of Garon's subordinates, plays this trope straighter. He literally yells with joy as he cuts people down. Bonus points for using an axe.
    • The Conquest route has Takumi, who starts the game out fairly sane, if cynical. However, over the course of the game, a combination of you betraying him, his lingering self-esteem issues, and a heap of Demonic Posession slowly chip away at his sanity. Getting thrown off the Great Wall of Suzanoh is the last straw, and when you see him for the next and last time, he's a maniac who is completely obsessed with killing you and razing Nohr to the ground, and all you can do for him is put him down like a rabid dog.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
    • Dimitri starts off burying this side of him deep down inside, but unless you choose the Crimson Flower route, the Wham Episode that is Chapter 11 and the five-year timeskip turn him into a man completely obsessed with killing Edelgard and perfectly willing to brutally slaughter anyone who gets in his way. On the Azure Moon route, he gets better; not so much on Verdant Wind or Silver Snow, where his newfound recklessness gets him killed. On Crimson Flower, he's much more composed, but has blinded himself to Rhea's increasing vindictiveness and insanity.
    • Rhea/Seiros becomes this on the Crimson Flower route. After Byleth sides with Edelgard in Chapter 11, she wants nothing more than to kill Byleth and gleefully screams about how she wants to rip their heart out. By the end of the game, she is willing to burn all of Fhirdiad to the ground in order to exact her revenge (despite condemning many innocents to death in the process).
• Forever Home:
  • General Barclyss is a psychotic nihilist with a penchant for bombarding defenseless villages and has the goal of destroying all life on the planet. While he tries to keep up a stoic demeanor during his atrocities, he's also easily provoked by setbacks to the point of slashing away at any living thing nearby (or non-living, as shown by Palisade Prison's hallways). By the end of the game, he no longer hides his unstable nature, as shown by his insane ranting and raving about the meaning of life.
  • Barclyss's second-in-command, General Kail, is so addicted to killing that he treats any period of time when he's not killing as equivalent to holding his bladder. When Barclyss gives him permission to kill volunteers for their army, Kail remarks that it's been far too long since he last did anything like that. This is especially noticeable when he states that he can't hold back on firing the Aquadome's cannon at Heyama a second time, despite Barclyss being knocked unconscious and unable to give him orders.

• God of War has Kratos, who slaughters his way through the gods and monsters of Greek/Norse mythology.
• The Grand Theft Auto series is a Crapsack World full of violent and deranged criminals:
  • Catalina. In III, she already shoots two of her apparent love interests, but it goes even further in San Andreas: She has graves dug by her house, she sexually abuses CJ (and still thinks she loves him), she threatens to kill/castrate him, and she takes glee in killing any cops or civilians who get in her way.
  • T-Bone from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. He is brutally sadistic and impulsive when he gets really angry. In "The Introduction" video, he gives a brutal beating to another gang member, possibly to the point of killing him, and at one point threatens to rape and kill CJ's family as a "joke".
  • Tommy Vercetti from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is aggressive and easily angered, and has no problem killing his victims with chainsaws (it's not for nothing that he was nicknamed "The Butcher of Hardwood"). On one occasion, he was sent by the leader of the bikers to wreak havoc in the city.
  • Toni Cipriani from Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. He literally dismembered a man with an ax, only to then take his remains to a butcher's shop. Also, said remains were the owner's.
  • Grand Theft Auto IV:
    • All is not well in Niko Bellic's head. This is probably the result of PTSD and grief. He has also a deep talent for carnage and has always fought like a raging berserker. What else would you call someone who massacres dozens of gangsters for a few dollars, all while he curses and screams, and commits dozens of acts of vigilantism for the same reason?
      Niko: [after killing two random gangsters] AAAAAAAAAAARRGH MOTHERFUCKERS!!!
    • Ray Bulgarin. He's extremely impulsive, violent, aggressive, and paranoid, to the point of shooting his own sister unprovoked, possibly killing her. Later, he beheads the cook who stole his diamonds and presents the disembodied head as a death threat to Luis.

• Grand Theft Auto V:
  • Trevor Philips is, to say the least, completely fucking insane. The trailer alone shows him brutalizing random people and committing wanton destruction for kicks, but that merely scratches the surface: He's completely unpredictable, extremely violent, and disturbingly easy to piss off; he's a meth addict and an alcoholic; and he is heavily implied to occasionally eat people.
  • Steve Haines, a showboating (literally — he has his own TV show) FIB agent who's just a little too eager to bring the protagonists in.
  • Peter Dreyfuss, a murderous film director who was behind the disappearance of a starlet named Leonora Johnson in the '70s, and The Altruists, a cult comprised of former baby boomers who take in "lost souls" to "purify" them.
  • Michael DeSanta himself. He's just very good at hiding it. Split Personality and anger issues aside, he sounds pretty psychotic during random killings.
    Michael: [during random killings] AIN'T THE AMERICAN DREAM GRAND!

• Halo:
  • The Prophet of Truth, who in Halo 3 rants and raves and comes close to his goal of activating the seven rings that will kill all life in the Milky Way. While his portrayal in the novels and Halo 2 is more that of a cunning and sane manipulator, he was apparently driven to madness after the events of 2 when 343 Guilty Spark revealed to him the full truth about the Halo Array's purpose (though he already had his doubts to begin with).
  • Ripa 'Moramee, the Arbiter from Halo Wars, is an even clearer example; he's loyal to Regret, but otherwise cares only about killing things.
• Daniella the maid from Haunting Ground. She is a homunculus created to be the "perfect woman" by her master. However, she cannot feel pain or pleasure, which drives her to scream at her reflection because she feels that she is not "complete". She becomes even crazier and more hateful towards Fiona, who can feel what Daniella cannot. Daniella comes to a logical conclusion — she must obtain the vital essence known as Azoth, which Fiona possesses, in order to become complete. She plans on tearing the Azoth right out of Fiona and pursues her relentlessly throughout part of the game. She is prone to fits of maniacal laughter (her head often spasms violently when she does so) and will shriek at random. She also cries blood and licks a glass shard to complete the effect.
  
  Supplementary material overlaps this with Break the Cutie/Broken Bird — Daniella is actually a human, but was kidnapped by her master as a child and subsequently drugged and tortured to the point where she lost both her memories and the ability to feel pain or passion. In addition to this, a lifetime of monotonous maid tasks in a castle with only three other occupants (at least one of whom is shown to abuse her), her own infertility, and her belief that she's some kind of android drive her mad through her own numbed existence. Looking at her backstory, it's pretty evident that her jealousy towards Fiona is just what pushes her over the edge.
• Lt. Carter Blake from Heavy Rain is a Rabid Cop who seems unfamiliar with the concept of restraint when performing his duties.
• Kilgor from Heroes of Might and Magic III is Ax-Crazy even by the standards of the Barbarians. The bloodshed and destruction wrought during his campaign to become Krewlod's new king left Krewlod in a state of near ruin and starvation. His narration during the "Festival of Life" campaign and the thoughts of other characters depict him as a madman who relishes slaughter. His madness ushers in the end of Enroth when he acquires the Sword of Frost and wages war on the rest of the world. Gauldoth Half-dead from Heroes of Might and Magic IV muses that the Reckoning (triggered by the Sword of Frost and Armageddon's Blade clashing) arguably did just as much good as evil, since in addition to destroying Enroth, it also ended Kilgor's life. In Gauldoth's opinion, Kilgor was so awful that losing the planet was an acceptable price for ending him. The Immortal Hero Tarnum blames himself for Kilgor's rise to power since his own brutal stint as the Barbarian King set a bad example for Krewlod to follow. Because of him, the people of Krewlod considered Ax Craziness a positive trait.
• Hiveswap:
  • Amisia Erdehn. Her bio states that “cutting heads is harder than you'd think”, and she makes her own paint (which is made of troll blood, for the record). She’s an indigoblood, so this doesn’t come as a surprise.
  • Ardata Carmia. She described as “bloodthirsty on main”, and definitely looks the part. According to Friendsim, she keeps other trolls in cages and films them as some kind of entertainment. Also, she decorates her hive with troll horns. In Act 2, you can get a Game Over by accepting her invitation into her train cabin, though it's unknown exactly what she does to you in there.
  • Konyyl Okimaw. Graphic violence is apparently her passion. One path of her Friendsim route shows her killing trolls effortlessly, getting blood all over the place as she does so.
  • Marvus Xoloto. Implied by the fact that he's a “midsummer nightmare”, and the fact that he’s a Purple-blood.
• Jacket from Hotline Miami has become this by the time he reaches the final level. However, he appears to have stabilized himself by the time the second game rolls around, as shown during his criminal trial, but it's still unknown what's happening inside of his head.
• Hungry Lamu: Lamu sees his world as sunshine and rainbows when he is actually gruesomely maiming and killing everything in his path. In the children's book found in his cave, it gives insight on his mental instability such as the phrase "they are fruit" written all over a page which indicts that he's trying to cope and reassure himself that he isn't doing anything wrong.
• Jade Empire's Black Whirlwind is a hot-headed hulking brute who carries twin axes and has killed innocent noblewomen, burned down temples, and more, most if not all while drunk, but he's on your side.
• Captain Hayashi from Jet Set Radio Future will attempt to murder you for your petty crimes, sending in all the tanks and using an experimental Spider Tank.
• In Justice League Heroes: The Flash, Zoom (Wally West's Reverse-Flash) floods a city just to get the chance to fight The Flash. It isn't minor flooding, either. It's a literal Sunken City.
• Kindergarten:
  • The janitor can and will beat or stab children to death with his mop Mr. Sweepy for terrible crimes like going into his closet, correcting his spelling, or just annoying him for too long. In Kindergarten 2, his "code of honor" requires that he kill the janitor at the new school the characters transferred to and take his mop.
  • Nugget is normally just a Cloudcuckoolander who is, in his own words, "relatively harmless" and who doesn't display any more Troubling Unchildlike Behavior than any other student at the Dysfunction Junction of a kindergarten where the games take place. However, he does have a brief foray into this trope in the secret ending of Kindergarten 2: He uses the fifty Monstermon cards to turn half of the game's cast into dust à la Avengers: Infinity War for no apparent reason other than to show the protagonist "the power of Nugget". When the process is over, Nugget yells that he didn't want half, he wanted them all, and he snaps his fingers again. This causes the other half of the cast, bar Nugget himself and the protagonist, to get blown to bits with thunderbolts. Only then is he satisfied.
• Several major villains and anti-villains in Kingdom Hearts:
  • Larxene shows this trait throughout her life as a nobody. She often mocks and ridicules allies as well as enemies for a fake feeling of enjoyment, and seemingly enjoys inflicting physical as well as emotional pain on others, including Sora, Namine, Roxas, and even Elsa.
  • Axel displays much of this trait. Like Larxene, he pretends to enjoy hurting others and also flashes a wide grin at such moments. He carries out a series of betrayals throughout the series and kills several of his allies ruthlessly for his own motives and sometimes just for his personal enjoyment.
  • Roxas shows this trait after realizing the truth of his existence, attacking both of best friends ruthlessly and killing one while injuring the other in the process. He also recklessly destroys the central computer of Virtual Twilight town and keeps attacking DiZ's hologram in spite of knowing that he can't attack DiZ for real. He even attacks his own somebody, Sora.

• From the Kirby games:
  • Marx from Kirby Super Star and Ultra. He's perfectly fine with leaving Kirby out to die in the middle of space after stealing his wish and have Galactic Nova go to ram into Popstar so he can rule it, potentially killing millions if it did ram onto the planet's surface. He gets even more insane when he becomes Marx Soul in the remake's True Arena. There's also Galacta Knight, an all-powerful warrior who was sealed away for fear of his great power, and is willing to attacky anything and anyone on sight. Just as Parallel Nightmare or Star Dream and you'll see a clear sign that Galacta Knight is downright destructive.
  • And on a literal note, Masked Dedede in Kirby: Triple Deluxe, where he grabs a large poleaxe from the background and starts swinging with it at Kirby. But we can't blame him, as King Dedede was hypnotized by Taranza at the climax. Shadow Dedede from Dededetour! is even more psychopathic, even attacking Dedede on sight the moment he emerges from the Dimension Mirror. Though this could be because the Japanese, Chinese and Korean descriptions imply that he's been possessed by an alternate version of Dark Matter (i.e. Dark Mind, though it's unknown if he really is related to Dark Matter).
  • And if you thought Marx wasn't insane enough, there's also Hyness from Kirby Star Allies. He starts off quite calm when you first meet him, but almost immediately he starts screaming "NO" at a rapid-fire rate and goes into a unimaginably fast Motive Rant of why he wants to unleash Void Termina to destroy the galaxy. Not only that, but he also seems to wear a hood at all times. Why? It's because he hates having people look at his true face, so when you knock it off in his second phase, his mind snaps completely, he sucks the life out of the Three Mage Sisters just to replenish his health, and begins violently beating the crap out of Kirby and his friends with their lifeless bodies. That's not even mentioning him going Drunk on the Dark Side in "Heroes in Another Dimension" as Corrupt Hyness. The 4.0.0 update thankfully deconstructs this by revealing that he wasn't always a Sinister Minister and used to be generally caring to the Three Mage Sisters enough to save them from death before centuries of banishment made him Go Mad from the Isolation and turned him into a complete psycho, and the fact that the good ending of Heroes in Another Dimension sees him being affected by a Friend Heart which causes him to finally turn good.
  • From Kirby and the Forgotten Land:
    • The fifth boss, Sillydillo, gives off vibes of this. Sure, it's meant to look silly as its name would suggest, but he is anything but. His long Maniac Tongue, erratic body movements, and ever-constant Slasher Smile make him feel more deranged than goofy. It also helps that he even tricked Kirby into his lair by using a false Elfilin doll.
    • Forgo Dedede. Wearing his special boar mask corrupts his mind and drives him insane, clouding his mind after spending most of the game already Brainwashed and Crazy. Once the second phase begins, he finally loses it and reverts to a bloodthirsty wild beast, the mask's influence finally in complete control. Thankfully, he gets better and finally returns to normal after getting a good beatdown from Kirby.
    • Leongar. Just before his fight, he threatens to feast on Kirby's hide if he dares to interfere with the Beast Pack's plans to reunite Elfilin with Fecto Forgo. It's best seen in the second phase, where he becomes possessed and regresses into a wild beast violently chomping at Kirby while running on all fours. That said, just like Dedede, it's just because he's brainwashed. When he's finally freed from Fecto Forgo's control in the post-game, he's completely sane.
    • Last but certainly not least, Fecto Forgo. Once Kirby beats Leongar, they finally lose their patience and break out of the Eternal Capsule, assimilate just about every member of the Beast Pack that's currently in Lab Discovera, transforms into a massive chimera form, and gives chase after Kirby and Elfilin. Not only that, but they're also the most persistent villain the series has seen yet, chasing Kirby through Lab Discovera and then trying to Colony Drop Planet Popstar onto the New World after Kirby frees Elfilin, clearly not caring about how many lives will be lost in the process. The fact that the brainwashed Dedede and Leongar also act like deranged monsters in their second phases could even imply that their corrupting influence also MindRapes them, destroying their memories and turning them into destructive animals.
  • The Master Crown turns out to be one in Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe. It may look a legendary artifact that grants its wearer immense power to control matter and space, but this crown does more than that; the crown's description in the Magolor Epilogue reveals that it slowly corrupts its wearer's soul with darkness, eventually turning them into soulless husks for it to control and eventually destroy many worlds. From what we see with Magolor when he puts on the crown, his intended endgame was to simply become ruler of the entire galaxy. The crown went one step further and corrupted him into a creepy One-Winged Angel form whose sole mission is to destroy the galaxy.

• Knights of the Old Republic:
  • HK-47 is a sadistic killing machine who enjoys nothing more than the slaughter of anything and everything around him. Fortunately, he's on your side.
  • Darth Malak, the main villain, is also pretty Ax-Crazy. During the course of the game, he orders the complete orbital bombardment of a planet even though simply sending more competent people after Bastila would have been more effective. Pre-game, he also destroyed one of the party's home-planets this way, just so he could test one of his officers.
  • If possible, Darth Malak's apprentice needs even less of a reason to kill people, including his own men. In one of his first scenes, he chokes a Sith officer to death for no discernible reason other than he wants to kill someone. At least Malak had the (tenuous) reason of being desperate to take out a dangerous opponent when he bombarded the surface of a planet while his troops were still on it.

• There's a slightly worrying number of characters exhibiting these traits in League of Legends, ranging from demonic swords to two different Mad Bombers to artistically inclined serial killers to murderous wolf-men, but one of the craziest has to be Kled. A tiny, ornery Yordle who serves as a sort of mascot to Noxian soldiers, Kled's philosophy of life is pretty simple: Kill everyone who trespasses on his land. Also, the entire world and possibly some other stuff too is "his land". Luckily for Kled, he really enjoys killing people, plus the voices in his head keep suggesting it, plus there's good eatin' for either him or his pet lizard on some of those enemy champions, so he is absolutely fine with it.
  Kled: MY BRAIN IS FULLA WEASELS!
• The Legend of Zelda series has a few Ax-Crazies:
  • Majora from Majora's Mask. Unlike most of the other villains in the franchise, its main motivation for killing/tormenting/etc. its victims is for sheer fun, and it tries to take it to its logical extreme by crashing the Moon into Termina.
  • Zant from Twilight Princess, as shown by him killing the queen of the Zoras, enslaving the Twili against their will, and his unnerving confrontation with Link and Midna at Lake Hylia, where he tries to kill the latter. By the end of the game, the craziness fully manifests itself as he's reduced to a screaming, maniacal wreck.
  • Ghirahim from Skyward Sword. He has unabashed bloodlust, first promising to beat Link within an inch of his life, then burn him alive, and then finally torture him until he's deafened by his own screams. Makes perfect sense when you find out that he's actually a Living Weapon.

M-R

• From The Mark of Kri we have Tati. This deserves special mention because her older brother Rau is the one with the ax, but he's remarkably calm and level headed. And he never speaks in anything except battle cries. Unless Tati turns to The Dark Side, in which case he will utter her name once before Tati and the forces of darkness slaughter him. Tati, on the other hand, is very vocal and has moments of exceeding maliciousness. The way she slaughters single enemies with her knives looks more painful than anything Rau does with his ax, and considering the body count Rau racks up with it, that's saying something.
• Mary Skelter:
  • Any Blood Maidens that fall into Blood Skelter start qualifying for this and then some on the spot. It doesn't matter how they are normally: once they fall into the state, they immediately become raving berserkers that can't even communicate with others outside of Laughing Mad and the occasional pained screaming. Yes, that includes what are normally the absolute nicest ones, so poor Sleeping Beauty doesn't escape this possibility at all. Hell, as Mary Skelter 2 reveals, even resident Nice Guy Jack isn't immune to falling into this trope, because guess what? He has his own pseudo-Blood Skelter known as "Ripper Jack" (yes, the Jack the Ripper parallel is for a damn good reason), which causes him to go from illegally nice Non-Action Guy status to beating down on both enemies and allies with an extremely unnerving Slasher Smile decorating his face. Even if we only see the smile on his Marchen mimic.
  • Also in Mary Skelter 2, we have the Mysterious Nightmare, a monster that is only capable of thinking of killing everything in sight... with the exception of Jack.

• MechWarrior:
  • In the first game, you can get pilots to help you in your group, each coming with a picture and a quote along with their stats before you hire them. One of them is Killer, wearing a ski mask, with the quote "I want to burn villages and eat dead, burnt bodies, kill, kill, kill!" The quote is from the 1969 movie Alice's Restaurant. Arlo Guthrie's character acts like he's crazy in order to get out of military service. But despite his best efforts, he seems to be sane enough for them.
  • Killer gets an homage in MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries in the form of Jake "Killer" Ives, a cheerful psychopath who is also a cheap, effective pilot, noted in his hiring profile to be a sadist bar none, with Humongous Mecha as his tool of choice for hurting other people.
• Mega Man:
  • Mega Man Zero:
    • Omega is the mechanical embodiment of this trope. His sole purpose is simply to kill. His bloodthirsty nature rivals even a Khorne Berserker. He may actually be Zero's Superpowered Evil Side and/or Evil Counterpart inhabiting a separate body. Worse than that, he's exactly what Dr. Wily had intended the real Zero to be. In fact, Zero is indeed Ax Crazy, before his Heel–Face Turn.
    • Omega's own creator, Dr. Weil, also qualifies. Destroying a whole neighborhood just to capture the Dark Elf? Check. Making humans' lives completely miserable, with the choice of either dying or living under his rule? Check. Setting a Kill Sat to destroy a human encampment? Check. Plus, going completely nuts after the Kill Sat is set and fired against himself, initiating a Colony Drop with him inside the satellite, believing himself to survive the crash... And before all that, the fact that Weil's schemes in the Elf Wars caused The End of the World as We Know It and claimed the lives of 60% of all humans, and 90% of all Reploids. He's such an incredibly dangerous person to have around that even after his bodily death, his sheer loathing and insanity leached into the surrounding wreckage, giving inanimate material the ability to feel hatred and desire complete obliteration of all sentient life on the planet. Even so, killed and diffused, he's still so thoroughly evil that mere proximity to fragments of this wreckage can drive a person to insanity, which eventually becomes a major plot point in the sequel series Mega Man ZX.
  • Vile from Mega Man X. An accident regarding his brain led to him developing a disturbing relish in not only terminating Mavericks but also causing as much collateral damage as he can while destroying the maverick in question. He also has a sociopathic hatred of X, and he revolts against authority namely to cause destruction.
• Half the freaking cast of Metal Gear:
  • Psycho Mantis from the original Metal Gear Solid. He joined Liquid's coup just to kill as many people as possible, and he's easily the most depraved member of Liquid's FOXHOUND unit.
  • Fatman in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. He views the explosions his bombs cause as artistic displays.
  • Colonel Volgin of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Highlights of Volgin's psychotic dickery include nuking his own country, trying to destabilise the Cold War, and randomly torturing and killing his own minions simply because he can. When Snake's eye gets shot out, he practically orgasms at the sight of it.
  • The Beauty and the Beast Unit from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is an Amazon Brigade full of Ax-Crazy women driven insane by horrific war-time atrocities. They also have Powered Armor, so that's cool too.
  • Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance:
    • Sundowner is a war-loving murderous sociopath who uses scissor swords.
    • Mistral butchered the murderers of her parents and arranged for Khamsin's death simply because she found him annoying.
    • Raiden was always somewhat Ax-Crazy ever since he was a child soldier, but only after a Breaking Speech by Monsoon does his darker side resurface.
• Minecraft:
  • Zoglins can and will attack any mob on sight, with the only exceptions being creepers, ghasts, and other zoglins. It will also attack armour stands, despite them being inanimate objects.
  • Vindicators will attack almost anything (aside from other illagers and ghasts) unprovoked if given the name "Johnny". Not even creepers are spared the axe.
• In Mogeko Castle, several people could qualify for this:
  • The Mogekos are desperate to have sex with Yonaka, against her consent, and are willing to go to extreme lengths to do so, with one Mogeko being willing to blow up the entire castle and find her corpse and bang that.
  • Moge-ko not only lusts after high school girls like the rest of the Mogekos, but torture as well, with all the Mogekos on her floor ending up as wrecks terrified in the knowledge that if they misbehave, they will get killed, and could even get killed for no reason if Moge-ko felt like it.
• Mortal Kombat has a few characters known for being lunatics. Not counting brainwashed victims and near-mindless beasts, one of the ones that stand out most is Skarlet. Never mind the fact that what she does to her opponent is violent even by the standards of this game (sort of justified, as her powers are supposedly derived from absorbing the blood of others), she seems so incredibly unstable that Shao Kahn has to keep her in chains when he doesn't need her to fight or kill someone. (And despite that, she still shows Undying Loyalty to him; of course, she is one of his evil creations from the Flesh Pits, like Mileena, who is also incredibly loyal.)

• Myst: Achenar turns out to be like this, though you have to piece together that this is how he is from your explorations of the various Ages: he has numerous weapons and instruments of torture and execution in his rooms, plus when you speak to him in the Blue Book, he's Laughing Mad. Put it all together, and you get this trope!
• If you want an example of a nutcase in any racing game ever, Need for Speed: Most Wanted introduces Blacklist member Kira (Kamikaze or "Kaze") Nakazato, whose driving style is straight up aggressive and borderline near suicidal and who isn't afraid to dent her car as long as she can take out the competition. Especially YOU.
• Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors has Clover in the "Axe" ending chopping up Santa, Seven, June, and Junpei, over her brother's death. The sequel invokes this again by making it look as if Clover killed Luna in a rage. Subverted, though, as it was an accident.
• Nintendo Wars: Penny from Advance Wars: Days of Ruin vacillates between being an Ophelia and being Ax-Crazy, mainly depending on the wishes of her stuffed Mr. Bear.
  Penny: Hee hee! Penny likes you... but Mr. Bear HATES YOU!
  Will: Why are you helping me?
  Penny: ...Because Mr. Bear told me to.
• Many of the bosses in No More Heroes, and more so in its sequel. Special mention goes to Bad Girl, who bats blindfolded gimps at you and beats you with a burning baseball bat; the insane superhero Destroyman; the pig-tail wearing Yandere Kimmy Howell; the damned soul of Matt Helms; and Jasper Batt Jr. after taking some Psycho Serum. In fact, most of the remaining assassins come off as Retired Monsters who got Bored with Insanity.
• Harvey from Octopath Traveler II. Especially in Osvald V. Vanstein’s final chapter. When charging up power to use his source of the One True Magic, he has a murderously insane expression on his face. His willingness to work with a cult that wants to end the entire world just for the chance to one-up Osvald is another giveaway that he is not right in the head.
• OFF:
  • Japhet was driven from perhaps the nicest guardian to a lunatic whose policy became "worship me or die" after a couple of years of thanklessness.
  • Any Elsen that's been deprived of their sugar for enough time, who will assault even the spectres if they dare be in the same room.
• Kurodōji from Onmyōji (2016), who laughs nonstop as he kills. All while being a little boy.
• Hard to say who's the biggest example of this trope in Outlast... No, wait, no it's not. It's Eddie Gluskin, by several lengths. Even before he was committed to Mount Massive Asylum, Gluskin was a misogynistic Serial Killer who was obsessed with finding the perfect wife and mutilated several women in his attempts to create one. Being Mind Raped in one of the Asylum's experiments made him even worse. He turns his, umm, antics on the male inmates of the prison (and eventually the protagonist) and wants them to bear his children, and even has a solution to the biological incompatibilities involved.
• The pyromaniac Tatsuya Sudou in Persona 2. A schizophrenic, psychotic Serial Killer with his own Room Full of Crazy.
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice: Typically in Ace Attorney, the murderers in each case are not examples of this trope, as they usually only murder once or twice at most^note Even Dahlia, who had planned to kill up to six people, was not blatantly out for blood. It was their way of covering for other crimes, and her final attempt was to spite Mia. and tend to have motives for their crimes (even if they are petty or selfish). Even when Professional Killers with high body counts are involved, they remain professional and only kill when necessary or when ordered to do so. This game's Big Bad, Queen Ga'ran Sigatar Khura'in, is the most openly bloodthirsty culprit in the franchise. In addition to being an insane megalomaniac, she seems to revel in having executions, specifically beheadings. She also shows no qualms about calling for the genocide of defense attorneys in the country of Khura'in. While this person is able to hide this under their polite and serene regal exterior, the gloves are off during the final case with the extent of their madness put on full display. Not only does she act more hostile as a prosecutor and openly threaten to have Phoenix and Apollo beheaded on the defense bench, she even rewrites rules mid-trial to make it easier for them to slip up and do something that will allow her to call for their executions quicker once they point the finger at her.
• Planescape: Torment:
  • Ignus, a fire mage who nearly burned down the city of Sigil before being stopped, can join your party.
  • Ravel Puzzlewell, who almost destroyed the city of Sigil before the Lady intervened, is connected with your character.
  • The Xaosects/Chaosmen, represented mainly by the insane Starved Dogs Barking thugs, prowl The Hive (though you can speak to one, Barking-Wilder, and turn him briefly sane).
  • Acaste, the Ghoul Queen, hungers for flesh, though that's pretty standard procedure for a ghoul.

• GLaDOS from Portal is less ax crazy than she is coldly and calculatedly crazy, but it ends up having the same net effect on the people she murders. Supplemental material for Portal 2 indicates that at first, the researchers were only able to turn her on for a few fractions of a picosecond before she tried to kill everyone. So calculated murder is actually an improvement.
  "It was a morality core they installed after I flooded the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin, to make me stop flooding the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin."

• The Big Bad Elizabeth Greene from [PROTOTYPE] is so Ax-Crazy that she forces Alex Mercer (who is quite violent in his own right) into an alliance with Blackwatch in order to bring her down. The fact that her mind was fried by Carnival II some time ago might have something to do with this.
• The Wii version of Punch-Out!! has a few:
  • Aran Ryan. Most of the other characters emit grunts of pain or anger when you've landed a massive combo on them. Him? Deranged laughter. In between rounds, he shouts to Mac, "Keep hitting me! I love it!!" Then, when he gets back in the ring, he punches himself several times, then makes an insane smile at the camera. There's taking a hit and then there's getting your jollies from it. His fighting style involves him running around the ring and attacking from the side, as well as jumping off the wires and trying to punch. This guy was perfectly normal in his first appearance.
    Aran: Your wimpy little punches won't even faze me.
  • Bald Bull gives a similar impression, both in that before matches he'll beat himself over the head for no apparent reason, and in that the way in which he rises from a knockdown in Title Defense mode is downright terrifying.
• The Resident Evil franchise has quite a few of these:
  • Brian Irons, introduced in Resident Evil 2 as the Chief of the Raccoon City Police Department, is a murderously psychotic individual. He hunts down and kills his fellow RPD officers following the T-virus outbreak, has a history of both raping and murdering young women dating back to his college days, accepts bribes from the Umbrella Corporation in exchange for turning a blind eye to their unethical experiments, and is last seen preparing to taxidermy a human corpse before his gruesome death at the hands of G. The 2019 remake adds another layer to his depravity — he is revealed to have murdered an entire orphanage of children on Umbrella's orders. Granted, they were thought to be infected by the T-virus, but this was because they were used by the company as human guinea pigs, with the full knowledge and financial support of Chief Irons.
  • Alfred and Alexia Ashford from Resident Evil – Code: Veronica. Exploring Rockfort Island and reading the files that were left behind by former inmates and employees paints an unflattering picture of Alfred as a deeply unstable, sadistic lunatic who dabbles extensively in torture and human experimentation. Then you meet him in person and it only gets worse from there. As it turns out, he also has a split personality that takes the form of his sister Alexia, who is cryogenically frozen in Umbrella's Antarctic facility. He loves her and has devoted his entire life to the service of her, in a way that carries some decidedly... dark undertones. Alexia turns out to be even more of a crazed megalomaniac than her twin brother, and every bit as hammy.
  • Apart from Zoe, the Baker family from Resident Evil 7: Biohazard are introduced as the very embodiment of this trope. They pursue Ethan around their property in a murderous rage, attacking him on sight for no discernible reason, and have been in the habit of abducting and killing people for years. It turns out that they weren't always like this; their insanity is due to the E-001 bioweapon (more commonly known as "Eveline", who was given the form of a little girl) taking control over their minds. (Eveline herself technically also qualifies, but as she is, in fact, a bioweapon, this is probably by design.) There is one exception — their son Lucas, an accomplished inventor since childhood, was a deranged psychopath long before Eveline arrived. As a young boy, he locked a bully in the attic and allowed him to starve to death. His shtick is constructing elaborate Saw-like traps for Baker family captives to endure. It's later revealed that he was cured of Eveline's mind control by her creators, The Connections, and has been spying on his family for them ever since. They even appointed him as Lead Researcher of their Dulvey lab in 2017, a position that he would severely abuse by subjecting the lab's test subjects (and perhaps even its scientists) to the same treatment as the aforementioned Baker family captives.

S-Z

• Saints Row:
  • The Boss. Regardless of whether they’re indiscriminately destroying everything and everyone in their path or going out of their way to minimise collateral damage to the civilian populace, The Boss is extremely cruel, sadistic and brutal to anyone who crosses them. It’s telling that the only other person who comes close to matching their bloodlust is Johnny Gat.
  • Johnny Gat is the only other Saint whose bloodlust even compares to that of The Boss. in Saints Row 2.
  • In Saints Row, Angelo Lopez's brother dies at the hands of the Saints. He furiously drives into a strip club where Playa, Dex and Manuel were meeting, and starts shooting at everyone in sight.
  • The Sons of Samedi in Saints Row 2 are this in general. Many of the gang's Mooks are all too eager to engage in battle. There's a reason Shaundi warns the Boss about them in "Have Dust, Will Travel". Mr. Sunshine in particular carried out violence on a whim. His way of getting the attention of Veteran Child at his record store is to hack one of the customers to death with a machete to the back.
  • Professor Genki and Jenny Jaros and Saints Row: The Third also enjoy their fair share of killing.
• Both the game and manga of Sands of Destruction has the heroine, Morte, who is more than happy to blow up a city.
• Akechi Mitsuhide from Sengoku Basara takes being a Combat Sadomasochist to new heights, often creating slaughter for his own enjoyment while giggling and swaying. However, his is a more coldly calculating kind of insanity.
• Senran Kagura:
  • Yomi's tendency to pretty much go ballistic on anyone who happens to be a wealthy individual and her obsession with bean sprouts ascends levels of violent and unnerving.
    Ikaruga: Wait! You said you had to kill me to complete your mission! What is the meaning of this?
    Yomi: Those who sneer at bean sprouts will someday die by bean sprouts. That is the meaning of this.
  • Ryōna is a Combat Sadomasochist, with emphasis on masochist. She'll likely ask random people to perform harmful acts on her just for her satisfaction. What happens if you don't? Let's just say that it won't end well for you.
  • Ryōbi is an absolute sadist that gets a lot of joy out of beating down her opponents.
• Shadowverse gave this to Luna. After reuniting with illusions of her parents, Luna repeatedly encounters and kills an illusion of the robber who took their lives, and slowly begins deriving joy from it.
• Silent Hill: Walter Sullivan in Silent Hill 4. When you're the ghost of a Serial Killer who's murdered around 20 people before the game even starts, it comes with the territory.

• In Soul Nomad & the World Eaters, the Omnicidal Maniac Gig is a good example of this.

• Captain Martin Walker in Spec Ops: The Line starts out as a run-of-the-mill Action Genre Hero Guy, but slowly turns extremely violent as the game progresses. His execution moves turn into outright Cold-Blooded Torture, and the player has the option to gun down a civilian camp for lynching John Lugo, your squadmate.
• The titular character of Spookys Jumpscare Mansion, despite her usual Jerkass behavior, has quite the deranged side. From sending dozens of people (including her own employees) to be slaughtered by her Specimens, to having a wicked Slasher Smile after killing Santa.
• Though decidedly one of the less maniacal cases of insanity, it is heavily implied that the Ghosts in the StarCraft universe would've liquidated the universe if it weren't for the inhabiting implants in their brains.
  "Whenever I see a world untouched by war, a world of innocence, a world of lush forests and clear rivers... I really just wanna nuke the crap out of it!"
• Street Fighter:
  • Street Fighter IV's Juri is probably the nuttiest character in the bowl that is Street Fighter. Psychotic with a heavy dose of Sex Is Violence, Juri is quite the unchained animal when left to her own devices.
  • There's also Vega, initially from Street Fighter II, who's a little more hinged than Juri in his day-to-day conduct, but the fact that he's a Narcissist to the point of murdering people for either being ugly or touching/insulting his face probably says a lot about his frame of mind.
• The crown king of all Ax-Crazy RPG villains is Luca Blight from Suikoden II, hands down. Nothing is safe from his wrath... not even small children. In fact, Luca rewrites the book on badass, as it eventually takes as many as eighteen of your party members, several volleys of arrows (each one shown capable of immediately killing one of his soldiers), and after all this, a duel to the death with the main character to bring him down in a suitably epic Climax Boss battle.
• Super Paper Mario has Dimentio. It's not obvious at first, but about three-quarters of the way through the game he starts killing characters left and right, all the while cracking jokes and delivering lines like "It won't be so bad, I promise", in addition to being The Starscream. He's also referred to as being psychotic at least once in the game.
• Archibald Grims from Super Robot Wars, an Evil Brit terrorist-for-hire.

• Sword of Paladin:
  • The dialogue box describes Red Rose as a woman with a crazy look in her eyes. She reveals that she's the necromancer behind all the local ship sinkings, and she claims to derive sexual pleasure from killing people at sea. The Eagle Pirates found her too dangerous to keep in their ranks, despite her previous friendship with the captain. She becomes less crazy in Chapter 2 after losing most of her Extra Gem powers, which implies that the majority of her insanity was caused by her Extra Gem.
  • Anyone possessed by the will of Ragnarek seeks to destroy all of civilization, due to Ragnarek's spite against Cecilia Charlemagne. Augustus spent most of his life under Rangarek's influence and is very sadistic and bloodthirsty by the time Alex reunites with him.
• Sword of the Stars: Just being willing to hurt another sentient being makes you one to the Liir, largely because their potent psychic abilities means they feel the pain of things they kill. Their military, the "Black Swimmers", consider themselves insane and willingly separate themselves from civilian Liir lest their madness spread to the rest of their species. It is customary to hold a funeral for any Liir who joins the Black Swimmers. The Suul'Ka, their crazed elders, definitely qualify.
• There are many examples in the Tales Series:
  • Barbatos Goetia of Tales of Destiny 2 committed numerous atrocities to prove that he was the strongest warrior of all, which eventually caused him to be written out of history. Even after his resurrection, he become so obsessed with trying to prove himself that he repeatedly attempted to kill actual heroes in Stahn and Rutee just to get at their son Kyle.
  • The main reason Jade Curtiss from Tales of the Abyss banned replicating living creatures was that when he attempted to revive his mentor whom he accidentally killed through it, the resulting clone was an ultra-powerful Optional Boss with a sociopathic personality. No wonder he's a bit apprehensive about using it again.
  • Tales of Vesperia:
    • Zagi, who, at about 3/4 through the game, seems to have no reason for wanting to kill Yuri other than that he wants to kill Yuri. His Ax-Crazy status is lampshaded by his one eye that's smaller than the other, possibly because he's so insane that he can't be bothered to hold them both open. In one of the boss battles against him, he casts Poison on himself! Most battles consist of him spouting random crap about wanting to kill Yuri.
    • Judith also qualifies, especially if you're listening very carefully to her in-battle dialogue. She giggles when ripping apart enemies and will send enemies off with an almost evil-sounding, whispered "goodbye". She's shown to be disappointed by both the 100 and 200 Man Melees (even fellow Blood Knight Yuri was satisfied by the 200 Man Melee) and frequently voices boredom if she's either not allowed to fight a lot or if battles are too short/too easy. Even Yuri's scared of her, because he fully believes that she'll allow a monster to eat her just to rip it open from the inside out. She's not quite level with Zagi (that is, she's not Insane Equals Violent), but she definitely plays this trope. People will note that Judy's not all there in the head, including your party members. She tells the others that bloodshed excites her in a skit and she loves that blood is spilled when she inflicts pain on others. She doesn't, however, think of herself as this trope (as she's pretty hurt then annoyed when asked twice by two different people if the 200 Man Melee wasn't violent enough for her) and she has problems fighting members of your party when forced to.
  • Agria from Tales of Xillia. Her looks, posture, and frequent laughter make it readily apparent that she's got more than a few screws loose.

• Several of the characters from Team Fortress 2:
  • The Scout considers hurting people to be his purpose in life.
  • The Soldier, after being refused entry by the army during early WWII, took a ship to Europe and fought "the Nazis" until 1947.
  • The Heavy really likes fighting, and sometimes takes advice from inanimate objects ("What's that, sandvich? Kill them all? Good idea!").
  • The Pyro is a literally Ax-Crazy Psychopathic Manchild who sees the world as a Sugar Bowl full of giant lollipops and infantile cherubs. When s/he's killing people with a flamethrower, from his/her point of view s/he's just blowing bubbles and rainbows at them.
  • The ax-wielding Horseless Headless Horsemann from the Scream Fortress update attempts to hunt down and behead every player he encounters.

• Tekken: Bryan Fury is an unhinged, violent, psychopathic manaic who likes to cause chaos and rampages wherever he goes. He even has a victory pose where he sits on top of his already defeated opponent and starts beating the living crap out of them. He does that to every playable character, man, woman, young, old, and even if they are human or not. Basically, if you have a face, he will destroy it with his fists, with audible sounds of bones being crunched as his opponent's arms and legs twitched from the beatdown. In addition, Bryan is a cyborg, and he will survive through gunshots and explosions. Unless if Yoshimitsu exacts his revenge, Bryan will still continue his rampage and time will tell when it will be stopped.
• Touhou Project:
  • Yuuka Kazami is this in the PC-98 games. Genocide is just a game to her. It gets dialed back quite a bit for Phantasmagoria of Flower View, but she is still able to worry some characters, including Cirno of all of them. And there's very little that worries that ice fairy even slightly.
  • In the fangame Koumajou Densetsu, Flandre Scarlet is portrayed this way, with a pretty twisted sense of "playing".

• In Town of Salem, most of the neutral killing roles are psychotic. The Serial Killer is described as simply wanting everyone to die, the Arsonist wants to live to see everyone burn, and The Juggernaut is a brute who grows more powerful with every kill. The semi-official lore paints the first two as Faux Affably Evil.
• While many characters in the Trails Series could qualify, the biggest example is Shirley Orlando, a Jaeger and one of the most violent characters in the entire series. She's surprisingly friendly and cheerful... until she gets a severe case of bloodlust. She's so violent, in fact, that she gets scouted as an Enforcer of Ouroboros and accepts, and her weapon is a massive sword that is also a chainsaw and a flamethrower. Was it mentioned she's only 14?
• The cast of Twisted Metal Black is made up of delusional priests, hillbilly psychos, and doll-faced murderers. The sanest characters in the whole thing are Calypso, Agent Stone, and John Doe. The last two are genuinely good and sane people who are in it for just reasons and were institutionalized for severe PTSD and amnesia-related conditions. Still, the fact that the Big Bad is saner than most of the cast is somewhat... disturbing.

• Uncharted:
  • Uncharted: Drake's Fortune:
    • The Descendants are basically violent, feral zombies who kill and consume anyone who sets foot on their island. We have the El Dorado virus to thank for that.
    • Subverted by Eddy Raja in the same game. He fires a shotgun through Nate's car window, accusing Nate of setting him up, and rants about the island being cursed, but he has genuine reason to think that he's being cheated out of his share of the treasure. And he's correct about the island being cursed — the above-mentioned Descendants are the ones cursing it.
  • We're first introduced to Zoran Lazarevic, the Big Bad of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, when he finds one of his soldiers stealing small trinkets from their camp, and his response is to stab the poor sucker to death, toss his body into the swamp, and loudly scream about being "surrounded by TRAITORS! AND FOOLS!" Add to that an admiration of history's worst tyrants, including Hitler himself, and Lazarevic is not the picture of perfect mental clarity.
  • Talbot, the Evil Brit from Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, ends up becoming this after his employer, Katherine Marlowe, dies right in front of him. He tackles Nate from out of nowhere with a knife, kicking and swiping at him, and when Sully joins the fight, he tries to beat the old man's head to a pulp with a boulder.
  • Rafe Adler, the Big Bad of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, is implied to not be all that sane, as shown at the start of the game when he stabs a corrupt prison warden to death, and later on when he warns Sully that if he tries bidding on the local MacGuffin at a criminal auction, he'll leave the auction house "in a goddamn body bag". As his rivalry with the Drake brothers continues, he becomes increasingly more deranged, until he finally snaps and decides to force Nate into a Duel to the Death when they're both locked in the hold of a pirate ship which is disturbingly close to exploding and consigning them both to a fiery death.
• Undertale:
  • The Fallen Child, according to some people. The character is so obscenely crazy that they will try to attack empty space. Repeatedly. A complete and utter Omnicidal Maniac and one of the most evil and psychotic characters ever presented in video game history, with no love or compassion for other living things. Fittingly, as the character is an abstract incarnation of the player's desire for power and progress even if it means killing absolutely everyone in their way. However, this is only one interpretation of their personality. Other people prefer to portray them in a much more sympathetic light.
  • You. Yes, you. The person staring at the screen pressing the buttons. Not Frisk, not the Fallen Child, nobody else. Just you. It is very possible for the entire Underground to fear you as a psychotic murderer who only wants to kill every living being. And the game is a master at making you feel very, very bad about it.

• Warcraft:
  • The Burning Blade clan in Warcraft II and World of Warcraft deserve a mention, as a clan of Ax Crazies that were held in check by a large group of ogre enforcers. The Horde "was not willing to employ them except in the most extreme cases, for fear that they might turn on other clans or even each other".
  • Warcraft III has the Alliance rifleman (well, rifledwarf) revealed as this if you click on one often enough.
    "Guns don't kill people, I do! [cackles insanely]"

• Will You Snail? features Squid, an unstable, megalomaniacal AI with a god complex that enjoys torturing humans and watching them suffer and die. In fact, he uses his ability to simulate universes for the purpose of simulating conscious beings undergoing an endless cycle of suffering because he gets a kick out of it.
• Wolfenstein:
  • Wolfenstein: The New Order:
    • Frau Engel as well. Considering that she forces B.J at gunpoint to play a "race purity" game in the first game and then passes it all off as a little joke, it's apparent that she's not really well upstairs. Come The New Colossus and she's even more unhinged, as she chops Caroline's head off and desecrates her dead body with childish glee.
    • Downplayed with B.J Blazkowicz. While much of it depends on your playstyle, it's made clear that B.J is this — he's a bit too eager to go the extra mile in killing Nazis. The fact that he can and will dual wield virtually every weapon in-game, he interrogated a nazi with a chainsaw, and he tends to stab people at the worst possible moment in cutscenes just proves it further.
  • Adolf Hitler himself has become a 71-year-old Dark Lord on Life Support by the events of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, and his senility has taken a serious toll on his already addled mind. He's become a paranoid lunatic seemingly barely aware of reality, babbling about his mother one minute and remorselessly murdering the actors for his latest propaganda film the next.
• Xenogears has Id, also known as the Demon of Elru. Whenever he pops up, he goes around killing everything in sight, committing genocide, crashing a "space station" (killing all the people living inside), or just behaving like a "normal" serial killer and murdering people one by one. In reality, Id is actually Fei's Split Personality. The guy has a lot of issues.
• Albedo from the Xenosaga series. The particularly disturbing "Ma-Peche" scene gives testament to this, especially when he tears his own head off to prove a point about how he can not die. In the Japanese version, he cuts it off, but the edited scene in the English release actually manages to be more disturbing than the original.
• Zombies Ate My Neighbors has both Chainsaw Maniacs and traditional ax-wielding Evil Dolls. The sounds of a chainsaw revving offscreen coupled with insane children's laughter serve to keep you awake at night.

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