Heroic BSOD / Anime & Manga

Sometimes the pilots crash even harder than the mechas.

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Pokémon

• Pokémon: The Series:
  • In Friends to the End, after losing the Indigo Conference because his Charizard fell asleep, despite showing good sportsmanship and congratulating Ritchie amidst the tears, Ash lies in bed, depressed, until Misty attempts to cheer him up, but they get into a fight instead. Ash ends up getting out of his funk after listening to Ritchie talk about taking a loss as a learning experience.
  • In Odd Pokémon Out!, Ash's Grovyle is shocked when it finds out that its love interest, a cute and motherly Meganium, is already in a relationship with its rival. It only worsens when it evolves into a Sceptile and loses its ability to use its moves because of a broken heart, which continues through the next episode as well. However, in Cutting the Ties That Bind!, Sceptile regains the use of its moves in order to save Ash from danger and rescue Pikachu from Team Rocket.
  • Dawn's self-confidence is shattered after losing in the appeals round twice in Dawn's Early Night! and Team Shocker!. Although Zoey is able to help her recognize what she did wrong, Dawn never fully recovers until the Wallace Cup, which she ends up winning, fully restoring her confidence.
  • In Uncrushing Defeat!, after Paul defeated him 6-2 in the previous episode, Ash is crushed by his harsh loss and feels bad that his Pokémon were seriously injured. Thankfully, Ash's Pokémon and Dawn manage to snap him out of his depression.
  • In Evolution By Fire!, Ash's Tepig is upset about his past with Shamus, and is hesitant to battle his former Trainer in a double battle. Tepig is left even more heartbroken after Shamus tells him and his friends that he abandoned him on purpose, causing him to realize that Shamus never cared about him. After seeing Snivy take an attack for him and hearing Ash's words of encouragement, Tepig finds his resolve and evolves into Pignite, allowing him to defeat his former Trainer all by himself.
  • In All Hail The Ice Battlefield!, after being badly beaten by Wulfric and taking his words of him not having enough trust in his bond with Greninja to heart, Ash leaves to go to the Winding Woods to reflect on his defeat alone. In the next episode, Serena goes to look for Ash out of concern and tries to cheer him up, but he ends up getting frustrated with her instead. Serena lets Ash's words get to her and angrily throws snowballs at him, wanting him to start acting like himself again. Meanwhile, Ash's Greninja has been sitting up on a tree in the Winding Woods out of shame, feeling that it let its Trainer and teammates down. However, after remembering what Ash said before he left, Greninja shakes it off and decides to find its Trainer. Once they reunite, Ash and Greninja are ultimately able to work out their issues and perfect the Ash-Greninja form. Ash and Serena are also able to reconcile after recognizing that they were too harsh to each other.
  • In Coming Apart at the Dreams!, Alain is devastated when Lysandre tells him that he's been using his Mega Evolution battles to take over the world. Also, due to his actions, Alain believes that he lost his friendship with Mairin and Ash. However, Alain snaps out of this when Ash not only talks some sense into him but also assures him that they're still friends despite everything he did, which get him to realized that Mairin never held his harsh words against him and still considers him the same way as he does. Wanting to set things right with those around him, especially Mairin and Ash, Alain decides to fix his mistakes and stop Team Flare's plans.
  • In Mission: Total Recall!, Lillie becomes depressed that her progress in getting over her fear of touching Pokémon was regressed, being unable to even touch Snowy. However, through Ash's help, Lillie not only snaps out of her depression but also realizes that she can't give up on getting over her fear of touching Pokémon, deciding to make it a reality by finding answers behind it, which Nebby is pleased to do for her. After remembering her past and letting go of her fear for good, Lillie happily embraces her Pokémon friends and thanks Ash for not giving up on her.
  • In Making Battles in the Sand!, after suffering his first loss in the World Coronation Series to Bea in Solitary and Menacing!, Ash goes through a losing streak, resulting in him being bumped back down to Normal Class. Ash even lacks the confidence to help Goh against a Flygon once he accidentally called for Pikachu's Thunderbolt against the part Ground-type. Goh's out of the box battle strategy gets Ash in a better mood once he's reminded that's what he would've done in the same situation.
• Pokémon Adventures:
  • Ruby ended up in one after his refusal to help save Hoenn provoked an outburst from Sapphire, and venting his frustration on his Feebas Mimi provokes an even worse outburst from Wallace. It took a blind child noting how he could help Hoenn to snap him out of it.
  • Crystal 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 Get a Hold of Yourself, Woman! from her mother and a trip back to her old training ground before she completely finished rebooting.
  • Silver practically passes out after he finds out Giovanni is his father.
  • Pearl is notably downhearted when he fails to protect Azelf, the mythical Pokemon who represents willpower, can't stop the Galactic bomb, and his own Pokemon were wounded in the effort. He apologizes to his Pokemon that his weakness has caused them to suffer, and trudges around Pastoria City, sometimes with his facial expression obscured by shadow. Crasher Wake has to remind him (with a Croagunk photo board no less) that Pearl originally set out on his journal to bring laughter to others and that it is okay to fail once in a while, provided you get back on and keep going, without losing sight of your current goal or your other motivating factors.
  • White is hit hard after Gigi, her star Tepig actress, willingly decides to side with N, leaving White to fall out of the Ferris Wheel alone. She is left sprawled on the ground, her eyes blank and full of tears.
  • Because of N's words shaken Black's idea, and his Munna who as his Pokemon of nine years left him at the time leaving him fainted (afterwards prove that it is looking for ways to help Black). He once abandoned his dream.
  • X secludes himself away in depression after his perceived failure to prevent Korrina's Key Stone from being stolen. This even caused him to vomit.

• In 3×3 Eyes, when Yakumo finds out that Pai has been kidnapped and his adoptive parent figure and former crush have been turned into soulless husks, he has a complete breakdown, to the point that his technically-enemy Wu Gui does give him a Cooldown Hug.
• 7 Seeds has all seven chosen members of Team Summer A experience one, mostly during or after the Final Test. We get two double-pages of their post-Final Test faces, ranging from murderous to exhausted to flat-out traumatized. Ango's even causes half of his hair to turn white and seems to last the longest and affect him the most, even following him into the future at times, having him wander around aimlessly, looking for Shigeru or hallucinating when something reminds him of Shigeru or the cave where he died.
• Ah! My Goddess plays this for laughs. Whenever something happens that makes Belldandy jealous, she blanks out, her eyes go wide, and she stares off into the distance. She does this because jealousy is so unfamiliar to her that she can't handle it. Her jealousy also sometimes manifests itself paranormally — nearby glass shatters, the power goes out, pipes burst, and there's sometimes an explosion. Often, this will put a stop to whatever was making Belldandy jealous so she can just snap out of it.
• Aim for the Ace!:
  • Hiromi Oka suffers a massive one that lasts for a few days when her coach and love interest Jin Munakata dies from his illness. At that time, she and her team are in America for a tournament when that happened but her teammates doesn't tell her that Munakata kicked it because they don't want her to lose. It was only when Hiromi and the team returns to Japan shortly after the tournament that she learns about the whole thing and she reads his diary which contains the entry on the day he died. She plunges into a near-catatonic state and almost crosses the Despair Event Horizon, and it takes her a while in-story to get better.
  • Takayuki Todou himself also has one after Munakata's aforementioned death while he's away in the USA. He later loses his match in the tournament because of the shock.
• In Angel Sanctuary, Rosiel seems to have one of these when he kills Katan. He turns even more insane than he already was and breaks down completely.
• While Asteroid in Love is a Schoolgirl Series in the same ethos of its fellow works serialized in Manga Time Kirara, its emphasis on Coming of Age Story means this actually appears more often than one would expect.
  • Episode 7 has four examples of this, although one of them is Played for Laughs.
    • Mai is in a days-long shock after she was rather unexpectedly named the president at the sixth episode.
    • While Played for Laughs, Moe is in a shocked stupor for days owing her wares only get the second place in School Festival's best food competition, losing to the Manga Research Club.
    • Ao, after learning from her mother they may have to leave the town. She sat in the bath for three hours after that, appreantly only thinking about Mira during the period, that she gets sick.
    • Mari is clearly shocked because she can't enter the university she wants by recommendation. As Ino, Mira and Ao noticed, she is walking wobbly and dejected in the following morning.
  • During the following episode, after Mira hears from Ao about her family moving away, she gets depressed about how she didn't notice, and thinks of herself as "a failure of a friend," before Mikage flicks her in the forehead and snaps her out of it, saying Mira should be contributing ideas of how to stay close to Ao.
  • In the thirty-fourth chapter / tenth episode, both Mira and Ao get it together as they found one of them is accepted in the Shining Star Challenge — an astronomical summer camp heavily associated with their joint Goal in Life of finding an asteroid together — while the other doesn't. Neither Mai (in the manga) or the Newspaper Club (in the anime) can help them, and, like last time, it takes Mikage, who has Graduate from the Story, to yell them out of depression.
• In Attack on Titan, Armin goes through one after seeing Eren being eaten by a Titan after he had just saved him from being eaten by said Titan. After briefly interacting with Connie during the initial shock when he blanked out, he gets worse after he sees Hannah trying to revive Franz, who is beyond saving. When Mikasa eventually finds Armin, he is huddled up on a roof not responding to anything even considering killing himself due to the guilt. It takes both Connie and Mikasa to bring him out of it.
  • Jean goes through this briefly as he witnesses his comrade Sasha dying by hands of Gabi as he is unable to process what happened due to happening very suddenly.
• In Azumanga Daioh, Chiyo-Chan is deeply traumatized by Yukari’s driving skills. She gains a Thousand-Yard Stare when recounted her experience, immediately hops into Nyamo’s van when given the option and, when Yukari tries to be the driver of a new van for their third trip, immediately pushes her away from it.
• Baki the Grappler gets one when his mother beats him and chews him out for not being as strong as his father. He's so bummed afterwards that he doesn't even defend himself when three punks start roughing him up. Fortunately, Hanayama comes along and snaps him out of it.
• In the Bastard!! (1988) 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 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.
• Oga from Beelzebub experiences a huge one after Hilda lets herself get captured by the Jabberwock and his Dragon to save Oga and Baby Beel. Considering this was primarily a comedy driven manga until almost this very chapter, the readers faces mirror Oga's quite well.
• Berserk:
  • During the Great Eclipse Guts briefly experiences a Heroic BSOD, but quickly converts it into unyielding, determined rage against Apostlekind. Casca, on the other hand, 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. It only goes to show how strong Guts's willpower actually is.
  • Zigzagged when Guts finishes his assassination on Julius, where he had to kill a kid who very much reminded him of... him. He's very close, but then the arrival of a pair of guards force him back to the present.... And then it returns after he gets away from the guards in the sewers and stumbles his way back to tavern where the rest of the Hawks were.
  • And Griffith had one when Guts left the Hawks and defeated him, which would soon lead to worse things to come for him.
  • Guts is in the full throes of his absolute worst one yet following watching Casca, who he had spent the good part of the manga helping to get better after the Eclipse drove her insane, get taken away by Griffith, who did the most to put her in that state to begin with, in Elfhelm after not being able to lay so much as a scratch on him with the Dragonslayer.
• Shingo from Bio-Meat: Nectar has not one, but three of these. First is when he's thirteen and leads a group of BM onto a room full of survivors and kills everyone but a 6-year-old girl, then a minor one when he fails to keep the BM from escaping into Takachiho, which was hardly his fault anyway, and another one after he fails to keep his more than a little messed-up father from committing suicide. It's even better that he's not technically considered to be the Big Hero.
• Black Butler:
  • While Ciel's intentions for the circus children back at the workhouse might not be described as "heroic" so much as "self-serving with a side of philanthropy", Ciel's reaction in Chapter 36 upon realizing that the entire workhouse was empty and abandoned, and had been for what looked like years, meaning the circus children had fought— and died — in vain can be aptly described as a BSOD. A very, very frightening one.
  • Ciel has one in Chapter 41, after finding Sebastian's body. Whether it was genuine or just a very dramatic act remains to be seen, though.
  • By the end of the chapter, it turns out it was a very convincing act, as Sebastian was faking his death.
• Yomi in Black★Rock Shooter after Kagari talks about how she no longer needs Yomi's support now that she's independent.
• Bleach:
  • Ichigo Kurosaki has a brief one after his friends are almost killed by Yammy 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, even bringing him to Orihime's presence so he can talk to her about it.
  • Orihime barely manages to get out of an epic one that hit her in full force after she and Ishida witness Ichigo, the first person she has loved since her brother died, being nearly killed (or actually killed, depending on your interpretation) by Ulquiorra...only to witness Ichigo turn into that.
  • In the fourth movie, Ichigo suffers another massive BSoD after Kokuto kills not only several of his friends, but also his little sister Yuzu. And then taunts him with the little girl's lifeless body. And then Orihime attempts to heal/revive Yuzu, but not even her powers can bring her back.
  • The Everything But the Rain flashback arc is the long awaited Meet Cute story for Isshin and Masaki. The twist is that it's also a devastating and completely unexpected Heroic BSOD for another (Ryuuken). Having worked hard to do right by Arranged Marriage fiancee Masaki for the sake of the future of the quincies, when she's irreversibly tainted forever by Aizen's experimental hollow, the only person who can save her life and soul is Isshin, not him. His decision to let Isshin save Masaki dooms his ability to protect the quincies forever. He's so shaken by this he leaves into the Grey Rain of Depression fully intending to walk away from his life and his family. Only a You Are Not Alone speech by Kanae Katagiri finally convinces him to return. A few years later, an event on the 17th June kills both Masaki and Kanae in a way neither Isshin nor Ryuuken could do a thing about, and Ryuuken's stayed in the rain ever since.
• A significant portion of the main cast of Blood+ experience Heroic BSODs following Diva's mid-series crossing of the Moral Event Horizon ( 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 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.
• From the same author, there's Bokurano's deconstruction of the Humongous Mecha genre, and as such it also features more than one of these.
  • When Masaru "Kodama" Kodaka realises that he accidentally killed his father in his battle, he blanks out and starts with a Madness Mantra: "There's no way my dad could've died... there's no way my dad could've died..."
  • Aiko "Anko" Tokosumi has another in the anime when the kids find out that Youko Machi is The Mole, screaming and slapping her around repeatedly, and then letting out a Big "NO!" as Koyemshi punishes her by making her the next Pilot. Made worse by her dad Akira being involved in a scandal when caught cheating on her mom; Mrs. Tokosumi has another one, going Lady Drunk at the whole situation. However, Anko recovers in the nick of time and goes all Plucky Girl, winning her battle and then dying in peace.
  • Jun Ushiro has another in the manga, during his battle. He almost cracks because of the pressure on him and his situation as a forced Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds and throws up over his clothes. After putting on a Custom Uniform, though, he gets somewhat better and finishes his match, passing away afterwards.
• Chrono suffers from this several times in Chrono Crusade, although the worst is probably after the disastrous battle at the carnival mid-way through the series. In the manga he goes so far as to go into an Angst Coma over it.
• CLANNAD:
  • Kotomi Ichinose has a Heroic BSOD when she thinks that her friend Ryou was involved in the bus accident at the intersection. Justified in that she lost her parents in a plane crash, and the memories come back when this happens.
  • Ryou's sister Kyou has a BSOD when the epic Ship Sinking took place. Apparently, she had promised herself that she wouldn't cry, but when Tomoya's unconscious actions tell the rest of his harem whom he's picked, she, to say the least, does not take it well.
  • Then there's Tomoya himself in After Story. After Nagisa dies, he gives up for about five years during the BSOD, ignoring his newly born daughter Ushio in the process. He gets better. And then worse. And better again.
  • Don't forget Nagisa's BSOD near the end of the first season, when she found out about her parents's past and what they gave up to raise her.
• Happens quite a few times in Claymore. Clare goes through one during her two final battles, after having almost all of her commerades killed brutally — Fully [Or almost fully] awakening as a result. Jeanne awakes after being mentally and physically tortured by Riful. And, of course, Priscilla goes through such, after realizing she's about to lose to a Claymore who rebelled against the organization.
• Code Geass:
  • For being such a Magnificent Bastard otherwise, Lelouch Lamperouge/vi Britannia goes into one of these nearly every other episode. Considering the consequences some of his Idiot Ball moments have had, some Heroic BSOD is rather called for. Not to mention the fact that the show's universe is pretty much designed to screw him.
    • A good example of him breaking down like this is when he discovers the identity of the Lancelot's pilot. Lelouch was in position to terminate him at the time, but ordered a retreat when he was torn about what to do, as the pilot was his childhood friend, Suzaku Kururugi. After the battle, he is laughing in a fit of insanity due to the fact that he now knows his friend is his enemy.
    • His reaction to the aftermath of the Special Administrative Zone Massacre is a much bigger one. Once he gets back to somewhere private, he ends up sitting down and crying about the fact that he accidentally made his second-favorite sister, Euphemia, attempt to commit genocide. Especially since he ultimately had to shoot her dead to stop her rampage, and then turned the incident to his political advantage.
    • They get worse as the show goes on. In R2, he gets one after another; he almost quits being Zero after he fails to rescue his sister Nunnally (and hearing how Nunna sounds rejects Zero and his methods), his #1 Ace Pilot Kallen is captured by Britannia's forces in the Chinese Federation, his potential Ashford sweetheart Shirley Fenette is shot dead by his adopted brother Rolo, and then his contract partner C.C. loses her memory.
    • But the biggest one has to be when Nunnally apparently dies in the destruction of Tokyo, seemingly being caught in the explosion of a F.L.E.I.J.A. that leaves a massive crater in the city. Needless to say, his screaming at his subordinates to find Nunnally immediately definitely comes as him having flown fully off the hook, as it seems unfailingly sure that Nunnally is gone. He is inconsolable afterwards, and takes his anger out on Rolo for trying to replace Nunnally in his life, having been fully aware that Rolo wanted to kill her.
    • Finally, his own Black Knights betray him because they were convinced by Schneizel that he never intended to help them liberate Japan, and that he brainwashed them all with Geass, something they'd never been told about until now. And this happens in the same episode that he flips out over Nunnally's supposed death. This is the final straw for the already broken Lelouch; he shooes Kallen, who had just come back to his side and was trying to make a case for him, away, convincing the Black Knights that he used them all just because he's finally been Driven to Suicide. He survives this only because Rolo sacrifices himself to save him, and it allows Lelouch to get himself together. But he remains suicidal even afterwards, and despite coming out of his BSOD, he has crossed so far over the Despair Event Horizon that his final plan in the series involves becoming the most hated man on Earth, then orchestrating his own assassination after causing the whole world to unite against him.
  • Nina Einstein gets this too, as she is the one responsible for building said F.L.E.I.J.A., and only then does she fully realize its massive destructive power. Which, ironically, is what brings Nina back to sanity and lets her have a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Suzaku Kururugi suffers one when the Geass command on him causes him to "nuke" Tokyo with the F.L.E.I.J.A., making him responsible for the millions killed. His response is to stand in the crater for hours, then finally break down in crazed laughter. He gets better... sort-of.
    • He has an earlier one in Episode 11 when C.C. awakens his memory of him killing his father, as well as the other horrific pictures we see when C.C. does her thing. Suzaku goes completely berserk and the Britannian forces had to wait for his Lancelot's Energy Filler to die out before approaching and recovering him. At the end of the episode, we see Lloyd, Cecile and Euphemia looking into his cockpit to see him trembling in fear with wide eyes, completely paralyzed.
    • This is revisited in Episode 16 when Mao gives him a Breaking Speech about how he's a wanna-be hero hoping to be punished for killing his father, driving Suzaku into a screaming and crying fit while Mao mocks him... which was the biggest mistake Mao could've made, as a pissed off Lelouch proceeded to render him mute via Geass.
• Cross Ange: Ange went through several Break the Cutie deals throughout the show, but her biggest blue screen takes place in Episode 22, after Momoka Oginome and Tusk both seemingly give their lives to save her from Embryo. Having returned to Tusk's old residence, Ange is so broken by the loss of the two people she cared for most that she even puts a gun underneath her chin and attempts to end her own life. But she keeps recalling her happy memories with Tusk, and how he pressed her to live on for his sake, and she immediately devolves into tears. She spends most of that episode in a depression, admitting that she can't find the drive to go on without her two most cherished friends.
  • Thankfully, she reboots when none other than Tusk himself arrives by her side alive and well, and she's so elated to see him (and also completely in disbelief as she was sure she watched him blow up) that she gives him a Slap-Slap-Kiss and follows it up by sharing her body with him for the first time. Ange is even moved to happy laughter when it turns out that Momoka is also alive, and she recovers completely.
• In A Cruel God Reigns, Jeremy has several brief episodes of this when he is recounting each time Greg raped him to Ian.
• In Cyborg 009, Francoise (003) suffers one of these when 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 he lands into an Alternate Universe 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.
  
  He had another when he almost almost went mad from the isolation after getting locked into a permanent Super-Speed mode for what feels as at least a week for him. (For the others, it's little more than a minute instead.)
• In Dai-Guard, Ibuki shuts down when she learns that 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 10-Minute Retirement.
• Chiko in The Daughter of Twenty Faces predictably suffers this after Twenty-Faces himself is seemingly killed. Given that she's 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.
• Akari suffers one near the beginning of Day Break Illusion after her cousin is possessed by a Daemonia and Akari accidentally kills her when her magical girl powers awaken. Sephiro Fiore tried to defy this by altering her memories, and she doesn't react well when she does remember the truth and she tries to run away from the organization. Eventually she comes to accept what happened and her destiny of granting mercy kills to Daemonia-possessed humans.
• Deadman Wonderland:
  • Ganta after Nagi's death and being in isolation after the battle with Genkaku; he can no longer taste things and has ceased to see the point of going on (he gets better.)
  • Another example would be Nagi after Genkaku caused him to remember the heroic BSOD Nagi went on earlier after his wife was killed.
• In Dear Brother, several characters find themselves at the receiving end:
  • The lead Nanako Misonoo has a huge one that lasts for at very least two days when her love interest Rei dies, after she falls from a bridge and gets fatally hit by a train while trying to catch a falling bouquet of flowers... on her way to their first date. She had several others in the course of the story, but each time she ultimately put herself back to her feet thanks to The Power of Friendship; this one, however, is so powerful that she almost crosses the Despair Event Horizon. Though she does get better in the end.
  • Also, Fukiko suffers another one almost at the same time, when she and her brother Takeshi are told by the police about Rei's death.
  • In the anime, Mariko Shinobu has four in, oh, around a week. First, when she finds her father Hikawa with his girlfriend in a restaurant, during an outing with Nanako and Tomoko. Second, when she comes back home and her mother Hisako tries to calm her down, only for Mariko to tell her what happened and call her out on how she always hides her feelings in regards to her cheating husband. (Which causes poor Hisako a BSOD of her own, as Mariko locks herself in her room to cry.) This is followed by another after she attacks Aya in class with a boxcutter for mocking her parents's divorce in public. And the final one happens some days after the attack, when she realizes that for all of her hate towards Aya, they're actually not too different. (In the manga, only the second and the third one happen.)
  • Takehiko Henmi, Nanako's "Oniisama" aka her Big Brother Mentor, suffers one of his own in the anime when he learns that his girlfriend Kaoru might have a relapse on her breast cancer, which all but states that she will die in less than four years. He recovers relatively quickly, however.
  • In the past, Professor Misonoo also suffered a pretty bad one, drinking himself into a stupor for several days after his marriage ends in an horrible note and his ex-wife not only leaves him, but takes their son away with her — which, considering Japanese laws on divorce, means that he'll likely never see said son again. And the kid? He is then-10-year-old Takehiko.
• Death Note: L has one of these and falls off his chair when he hears about "Shinigami." And another one after he decides that 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.
• Devilman: Twice in the Amon manga. After Miki's death, Akira is so devastated that his consciousness shuts down and Amon, the demon with whom he had merged, took control of his body. The second time happens in the third and last part of the manga (which takes place before the first part we discussed earlier, kind of) where Akira's fear of not being the one in control of his demon body had increased to the point that he even started doubting the existence of Devilmen, wondering if they were actually any different from normal demons. At one point, Akira and three of his friends rescue two Devilmen kids, however, it turns out that those two kids weren't Devilmen but demons when they attacked and seemingly killed Manjirou. Akira's doubts and fear only increase and when the emo bad guy appears and claims Akira is just a demon, he completely shuts down.
• Digimon:
  • Digimon Adventure:
    • Taichi has one. After having been convinced that he cannot die in the Digital World, his carelessness gets Sora captured. He is then told by Koushirou that he CAN die in the Digital World, and when confronted by a dangerous wall he had carelessly passed through earlier, he BSOD's.
    • Koushirou himself suffered a huge one upon accidentally learning that he's an adoptive child. He got better of that, but lots of insecurities remain hidden for a long time, and only halfway through the series he fully can get free of them.
  • Digimon Tamers:
    • Takato suffers a relatively short, but very intense and Shinji-like one after transforming his digital pet into a ravenous monster and watching it lose to Beelzebumon, though he was pretty much out of it from the moment Guilmon went monster and his digivice shattered.
    • Jeri has one in the same episode after her partner Digimon, Leomon, 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. She only manages to sort-of react when Takato brings Guilmon back, they merge into Gallantmon, and curb-stomp Leomon's killer Beelzemon; as they're about to kill him, she steps in between and begs them to spare him so no one else will die. Unfortunately, her BSOD continues, even managing to get the attention of the D-Reaper which then uses said BSOD to power itself and Mind Rape her into staying in said BSOD, only snapping out of it three episodes before the finale thanks to Beelzemon and Calumon.
  • And then there's Ryo Akiyama, in the Japan-only WonderSwan games he stars in - in D-1 Tamers, the DigiDestined manipulate him via a tournament to get him to train hard enough to defeat Moon-Millenniumon. When they do tell him the truth, it's a bit late to apologize — he closes himself off from everyone else, his blue screen lasting into the next game.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Dragon Ball Z:
    • Vegeta gets one of these in Broly – The Legendary Super Saiyan. 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.
    • The violent rampage variant of this happens when several of the characters become Super Saiyans, particularly Goku's transformation while fighting Frieza, Gohan while fighting Cell, and Trunks in the special about his past.
    • Future Trunks has a short lived one telling Perfect Cell to kill him after realizing he cannot defeat the villain as an Ultra Super Saiyan.
    • Piccolo gets a minor one in the anime version of the Buu saga, when Gotenks' reckless fight with Buu blows Kami's lookout to hell and back. He stands there holding a chunk of the floor, gaping at it and rambling until circumstances force him to... y'know, dodge. Piccolo also has a brief one when he first meets Cell. When Cell manages to absorb a human through his tail, Piccolo was staring in shock and horror, and reacts with an even more horrified expression when Cell addresses him by his name, continuously remaining frozen in place as Cell powers up. He gets better, though.
    • 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 sacrifices himself to try to kill Cell, which Gohan also blames himself for.
  • In Dragon Ball Super, Gohan suffers a major one when Piccolo sacrifices himself to save him from Frieza during the Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' reimagining. Gohan's so lost from guilt that, when they need a beacon of power so Goku can Instant Transmission himself and Vegeta to the battlefield that he burns up just about all of it, not caring if he died.
    • Earlier than that, it's Krillin who suffers one when Frieza shows up, suffering from PTSD from his death during the Namek Saga. He's scared stiff when Frieza's men attack, only attacking automatically and only unlocks when Piccolo points out that he's stronger than them.
• In D4 Princess, the main character gets one when one of her opponents is killed in an accident during battle and doesn't snap out of it until near the end of the series. It didn't help that the rest of her school didn't seem to care that someone had died.
• Elfen Lied: Kouta, the male lead, suffers amnesia and spends an entire year in an Angst Coma after 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 life.
• In Et Cetera, Mingchao has one when it's revealed that Mr. Gothic, the terror behind the whole Syndicate and the man whom the group has been waiting so long to destroy, is her father and her last living relative. This is followed by a slight Freak Out. Baskerville also gets one during a flashback when he comes home to find his little sister dead.
• Eureka Seven:
  • Upon realising he has been killing humans all this while without knowing and being frequently isolated from the Gekkostate crew mates and captain, Renton pulls a Screw This, I'm Outta Here in Episode 21 which starts a chain of soul searching journey for him until he returns in Episode 26.
  • In the movie, Eureka does not fully understand Renton's feelings for her and the lengths he would go to protect her (even rebuking him for it) until she sees him get shot by Hap while pummeling him for assaulting her. She then spends a brief period sulking in the dark outside Renton's hospital room blaming herself for being so inconsiderate, and later ultimately realizes how far she herself will go to save his life.
• Eyeshield 21:
  • Kurita lost his will to fight after Gaou breaks Hiruma's arm, sending him out of the game for a quarter and a halftime. He even loses the ability to understand Komusubi, signifying that he was no longer a strong man. It takes Sena and Komusubi risking their lives going against Gaou to snap him out of it.
  • Komusubi at one point felt his lack of height had become a liability especially since the Posideon players and their cheerleaders are exceptionally taller than him. It takes some talk from Sena and the Ha-Ha Brothers (literally) kicking some sense to him to get him back on track.
  • Monta got one when he realized he would be going against Honjou Taka, the son of his lifetime idol.
• In Fairy Tail:
  • Gildarts does this to Natsu (the local Determinator and Idiot Hero) in the S-Class Trial arc by putting the fear in him. That's right, what dozens of obscenely powerful villains, near-death experiences, and assorted demons could not do in 200+ chapters, he did it in the span of five panels and he did this simply by getting serious. That how badass Gildarts is. It should be pointed that this is a more benign example than usual, for he does it to help Natsu grow as a wizard.
  • Natsu later goes through this again when he sees Igneel killed by Acnologia right in front of him, breaking down in despair for one of the first few times in the series.
  • Sting has one in the Grand Magic Games arc when seeing how Fairy Tail's members refuse to compromise themselves regardless of if they're in any state to beat him or not. This display enflames his guilt, shame and disgust with himself at having compromised his pride and morals in cooperating with with Minerva's ploys up to this point, having let his comrades fight without him in what he feels was abandoning his duty to them as a guild mate. This in turn ultimately leads to his surrendering the fight and thus the victory to them.
  • Juvia suffers an extremely severe one in the finale chapters of the Grand Magic Games arc after Gray is shot dead right in front of her by the dragon-spawn. Making it even worse is the fact it happened because she was daydreaming about him in the middle of a war-zone, getting him punched full of holes because he had to push her out of the way of the attack while she was fantasizing. If it weren't for Ultear sacrificing herself to hit the Reset Button and reverse everyone's deaths to give everyone a second chance, it's very likely Juvia would have just sat there waiting for the dragon-spawn to get it over with.
  • Natsu and Gray both suffer one in the final arc of the series when, after getting overtaken by their respective demonic powers and becoming near-mindless berserkers trying to kill each-other, they get stunned back to sanity at the sight of Erza crying over their senseless actions. This, coupled with Juvia and Lucy revealing they're Not Quite Dead after all, thankfully snaps both of them out of their demon-states and makes them realize what it was they'd nearly done to each-other as a result of letting anger and despair send their powers out-of-control.
• Food Wars!: Erina has an epic, life-flashing-before-your-eyes version when she realises Soma is Jouichiro's son and pupil, meaning she has spent the better part of a year insulting and belittling her biggest idol's person, family lineage, cooking style and recipes by proxy.
• Fresh Pretty Cure!:
  • Setsuna goes through a depression after Chiffon/Infinity gets kidnapped, and in Episode 45 she expresses her fear of becoming Eas again. One can guess she's relieved when, during the scene where the Cures reveal their identities, she becomes Cure Passion anyway.
  • Love suffers one in The Movie when she finds out her doll Usapyon is a part of the movie's Big Bad ToyMajin, making her think that she had the same resentment as the rest of the toys within him. Miki has to slap Love to get her back in the game.
• Fruits Basket:
  • In the anime, Tohru has one after seeing Kyo's true form and getting verbally tormented by Akito, and staggers about in the rain and mud with a blank stare on her face. She later snaps out of it.
  • The former BSOD happens also in the manga, along with an epic one after Kyo coldly rejects her Anguished Declaration of Love because he doesn't think he deserves Tohru's love after not having been able to save her mother Kyoko. She again gets better.
  • And Tohru also has another in the manga, when Kureno explains who Akito ACTUALLY is. After that, the poor girl stands on her own in the snow for quite a while until her friends fetch her.
  • Kana Sohma gets one after Hatori asks Akito's permission to marry Kana. Akito flies into a rage because the relationship existed without his knowing and attacks Hatori (in the anime he throws a vase) This ends with Hatori being nearly blind in his left eye. If that wasn't enough, Akito is shown as being dragged from the room screaming that it was all Kana's fault. Eventually her BSOD devolves till she almost gets some Sanity Slippage due to Akito convincing her that Hatori's injury was her fault. Realising that if left unchecked Kana would lose all hope and reason, Hatori delivers some Laser-Guided Amnesia forcing her to forget everything about their relationship, including the attack. Hatori knew he would have to lose her, but he just wanted her to be happy again.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • Alex Louis Armstrong, known best for being the Plucky Comic Relief, has a complete nervous breakdown during the Ishval massacre, clutching a dead Ishvallan child while crying, and is forced to go home.
  • Barry suggests to Al (just for shits and giggles) that he may actually just be a construct built by Ed. Poor Al got depressed until Winry went to town on him with her wrench, complete with angry tears.
  • Ed occasionally gets this too. After the failed attempt to bring back their mother, 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, after Lust told her that she just killed Mustang, which was a lie, of course, but neither of them knew that until Mustang made his dramatic reappearance.
  • Greed gets an anti-heroic variation after he unknowingly kills the last of his former henchmen, which, along with Ling's accusations on killing a friend, trigger his old memories to come back, ultimately also resulting in a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Al goes into one when Ed and Ling are eaten by Gluttony. They all get better.
  • Mustang gets a short-lived one when Bradley plays the Love Is a Weakness card and transfers Hawkeye to his own immediate command. She's essentially a hostage for Mustang's good behavior — Bradley practically says as much, noting that "I know exactly who to use as your weak point."
  • This is spoofed in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) when Second Lieutenant Jean Havoc, after getting soundly rejected by an attractive woman, 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 on his blank face.
  • There is a real one in the 2003 series for Roy Mustang, caused by his participation in the Ishval massacre (specifically his orders to kill Winry's parents) as shown in a flashback. It was so bad that he was a few seconds away from eating the barrel of his own gun right then and there, and had to be snapped out of it by Dr. Marcoh.
• Sousuke spends a significant portion of Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid in the throes of a Heroic BSOD 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 it goes wrong...
• In Fushigi Yuugi, Tamahome goes into the violent rampage variety of BSOD when he comes home to find his entire family — including his younger siblings ranging in age from five to 12-years-old — have been gruesomely murdered. He also suffered a more comedic one after Miaka returned to our world, slowly falling into apathy and Cloud Cuckoo Lander behavior.
  Nuriko: Tama-chan. You're eating a dish.
• Future Diary:
  • Yuno Gasai does this when she realizes that, due to the rules of the Future Diary game, she will eventually have to kill Yukiteru, the boy she's been working together with and is hopelessly in love with.
  • Yuki suffers a pretty nasty one complete with Paranoia Fuel in Chapter 50.
• Future GPX Cyber Formula:
  • Hayato goes through this more than once, but especially the one in the TV series when he learned that his father, the person who created Asurada's system, is killed by his former boss. His BSOD over this event is a major factor in him using Asurada GSX's boost in a very dangerous spot at the qualifying round of the fourth race, causing Asurada to crash into the trees, tearing up the car whole. The driver's cockpit, however, remained intact, he came out unharmed and recovers after that.
  • In ZERO, Hayato has another one after the accident involving the Zero Zone in which he and Randoll are severely injured which results in them missing the rest of the racing season. He still is shaken by the accident even after he returns to racing and has occasional nightmares about it; it takes him a while to recover from that.
• Gantz. It's only the longest, most shellshock / ordinary reactions to extraordinary circumstances / stresstesting ordinary Japanese-themed gritty allegory around. Highlights (though nearly every character goes through it):
  • Katou — played straight, completely freezes on his several first occasions.
  • Kurono — Heroic Safe Mode. Reverts to an unusually clear-headed, rational albeit calculated risk-prone creature of instinct, with leadership abilities and knack for daring victories that his normal self's depression and self-doubt normally keep locked away in his past.
  • Izumi — Breaks, turning into a Fallen Hero, murderously hellbent on returning his forgotten Gantzer status. To his credit, he survives said Heroic BSOD outside the game, as an average human with no equipment, no warning about aliens, and just a vague suspicion based on shreds of memories hinting that he was once an aliem fighter who somehow left the cycle.
• In Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet Ledo suffers one of these after learning that the Hideauze he's been killing all his life are in fact humans, albeit genetically-altered ones, which is made worse by the fact that literally minutes before the revelation, he went and ruthlessly slaughtered thousands of Hideauze babies! And all in the name of "protecting humanity". Chamber later talks him out of it.
• The Major from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex has a BSOD at least twice over the course of the anime series. In the first, she's shellshocked after encountering a traumatic memory in Kuze's cyberbrain. Later, she adopts this expression after 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?
• For a generally upbeat series like Gintama, anything close to a BSOD is usually over pretty quickly. However there are four notable occasions.
  • Kagura has one in Yoshiwara in Flames arc, when she witnesses Shinpachi almost gets killed by Abuto. She reverts to base Yato instincts and goes on a murderous rampage until Shinpachi calls her back to consciousness. After waking up, Kagura weeps and laments that she is still a violent monster and hasn't changed at all.
  • During Courtesan of a Nation arc when Oboro paralizes Gintoki just when everything starts going bad, and all of Gintoki's friends are outnumbered and about to be killed. He literally can't move a single muscle in order to help, and can only sit there with blood pouring out of his mouth while Oboro's poison slowly kills him. The look on his face is pretty heart breaking◊. Thankfully, the Shinsengumi, the Mimawarigumi, and the freaking Shogun show up to save the day.
  • During Four Devas arc, when Otose is seemingly killed, this sends Gintoki into an unthinking rage, resulting in his loss. He then loses all hope, pushes everyone away and plans to die fighting alone, claiming he's sick of seeing others dying. His friends talk him out of it afterwards and he wins the rematch with a clear mind.
  • In the Farewell Shinsengumi arc, Utsuro removes his mask to reveal Shouyo's face. Hit with a large wave of PTSD, Gintoki is stunned in place and almost gets beheaded. Thankfully Kagura stops the blade and snaps him back to reality, but Gintoki never fully recovers until the end of the series, when he finally finds closure with Shouyou and truly moves on from his past.
• Lyria goes through one in Granblue Fantasy after Pommern's speech, shutting off her body out of her belief that she'll be responsible for them all dying. She ends up in a comatose, but get's over her BSOD once Gran reaches to her in her mind, with the help of Yggdrasil.
• This occurs in Grave of the Fireflies to the main character Seita before he dies, though it is no wonder due to him losing his entire family and everything that he ever cared for in a horrifically tragic manner.
• Gravion Zwei has three people suffering Heroic BSOD in a relatively close time together:
  • Leele after finding out that Sandman is her father (no thanks to Touga), right after finding out her real name 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 being called out by Eiji), made worse by Eina's Heroic Sacrifice 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 Tyke-Bomb 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 his brother's coming with Zeravire, finally fell into it. He got reprimanded by Raven or to be exact his lover Ayaka and quickly got back to his composure.
• Being an Affectionate Parody of the aforementioned Aim for the Ace!, GunBuster has Kazumi go into one when she realizes that, as she and Noriko fight off the aliens, her Love Interest "Coach" Ohta is dying (and thanks to Time Dilation, dead). Noriko has to snap her out of it pretty quickly, telling her to keep fighting for him. Then, they combine their Buster Machines into the titular mech and lay waste to the aliens. Interestingly? "Coach" didn't actually die, living on for a few months afterwards.
• The Gundam series has plenty of Heroic BSOD moments:
  • Kamille Bidan suffers a massive one at the end of Zeta Gundam, after being on the receiving end of a Mind Rape by Scirocco. He starts babbling like a child and then shortly falls into near-catatonia. It takes him most of Gundam ZZ to recover from this.
  • Gundam SEED:
    • 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.
    • Poor Kira goes through PLENTY of these. The first is after Yzak vaporizes a shuttle that intercepted their battle. Kira's so far out of it that the Archangel must change course to save him from burning up and it allows his Yandere girlfriend Flay to manipulate him.
    • Another one is after Flay is launched out in a lifepod during the Battle of Mendal. Kira tries to save her, only to get blasted away and Flay taken by the Dominion crew. When he comes to, he spazzes out when he hallucinates Flay instead of seeing Lacus. The boy has problems.
  • SEED Destiny:
    • 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 Villainous Breakdown) for... well, no discernable reason. By the end of the Final Battle he is literally hallucinating and this close to landing a lethal blow on his own ally/girlfriend before Athrun forcibly stops him.
      
      It makes sense if you think about. Unlike Kira and Athrun who had Lacus to heal their emotional pain and essentially enlighten them, Shinn's mentors simply encouraged his self destructive ways and guilt tripped him into siding with them. By the end he was pretty much totally emotionally destroyed by the war, the people he'd lost, the alienation after Athrun and Meyrin's defection, the fact that the war was no longer black and white and he was fighting a guy he knew deep down not to be evil, and supporting a guy with a space laser that wanted to blow up an entire country of innocent people, and well.... he broke.
  • Gundam 00:
    • Tieria Erde suffers a (literal?) Heroic BSOD after his partner and close friend Lockon Stratos is killed. And before that, he had one when VEDA was hijacked and crashed, making him completely lose their connection.
    • In the second season, poor Louise Halevy has several of those in different degrees, as a side effect of her medical treatment.
    • Not to mention Saji Crossroad, who had his BSOD moment when he realises he's responsible for the death of all the Katharon members.
    • In S2 ep 20 Lyle Dylandy has his own BSOD after his girlfriend Anew Returner is killed right in front of him by no other than Setsuna. The poor dude ends up beating the latter, and when said dude the punishment without saying anything since he REALLY didn't want to do it but had no other option, he collapses in tears.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn: Banagher Links has one in Episode 4 after killing Gilboa Sant, a Neo-Zeon pilot who sheltered him, and crashing the Garencieres into the desert by grabbing it during re-entry. He gets over it by having a good cry shortly afterwards, only for him to have another one after he fails to talk Loni down from her rampage at Torrington.
  • Gundam X:
    • At the end of the second episode, Tiffa Addil has a memorable one (screaming and collapsing included), after Garrod fires the Satellite Cannon with her help and she senses the deaths of many people under its powers.
    • Garrod has one of his own when Carris defeats him throughly and captures Tiffa, which leads him to realise that having a kickass mech isn't enough to be a hero.
  • G Gundam:
    • Rain suffers a pretty big one (bordering on Despair Event Horizon crossing) when she finds out that her father basically destroyed the Kasshu family and used her and the last surviving/conscious member of that family (whom she just happened to be in love with) in his schemes.
    • Domon himself goes through a couple when Rain leaves him as the result of her BSOD and is transformed into the core life unit of the Devil Gundam.
    • Out of the other Shuffle Aliance members, only Argo Gulskii did NOT go through an BSOD after being forcibly infected with DG Cells and ending up Brainwashed and Crazy. The other three showed their mental and emotional damage in different ways: Chibodee drank himself into a stupor twice in a row, George acted snippy and rude to others while mentally reviving a tragedy from his past, and Sai Saici acted nonchalant at first but heavily hallucinated that Argo was the Devil Gundam when they were face to face, which reduced him into a screaming wreck.
  • Gundam Build Fighters Try:
    • Yuuma Kousoka suffered one when Saga Adou ravaged his Gundam Airmaster Gunpla and mocked his skills. It was enough to put him on a 10-Minute Retirement. He suffers a second one when his second battle against Saga damages his Lightning Gundam that he runs off in a panic when the fight's over, only recovering when he's confronted by Meijin Kawaguchi III.
  • Gundam Build Divers Re:RISE:
    • The BUILD DiVERS have a collective one when they realize Eldora is a real planet and their failure to stop Alus's Kill Sat not only got actual people killed, but had real-world consequences on Earth.
• .hack//SIGN:
  • Tsukasa suffers one after Morganna tortures him. 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.
  • In .hack//ROOTS, Haseo has a breakdown, then goes on a rage-driven warpath, throughout the last third of the series after Tri-Edge/Azure Kite puts Shino into a coma.
• 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. 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!
• In HeartCatch Pretty Cure!, Yuri suffers two of them. The first happens before the beginning after suffering a major loss during a Curb-Stomp Battle by Cure Dark, leaving her powerless and partnerless. She gets a second, minor one near the end when she finds out that Professor Saabaku, the man who created Dark Pretty Cure, was her missing father.
• In Hirogaru Sky! Pretty Cure, Sora suffers one when she finds out that her hero, Captain Shalala, has been turned into a Ranborg and Battamonda puts her through a Sadistic Choice. The only reason the BSOD is so bad is that Sora has a difficult time remembering that You Are Not Alone and despite Ageha already planning an idea on how they could save her, she automatically rejects it and her dream of being a hero.
• In High School D×D, the whole Occult Research Club gets one of these when Issei dies at the end of Volume 11. Akeno ends up specially affected by it.
  • Issei himself has suffered this several volumes after getting killed by his first girlfriend.
• Higurashi: When They Cry Kai:
  • 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.
  • Rika gets a more tangible and obvious Heroic BSOD moment during Minagoroshi-hen. When Satoko's Evil Uncle 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.
  • Satoko also suffers through a brief state of BSOD at the end of Yakusamashi-hen, in which she witnesses Rika's horrific murder and later the annihilation of her entire village. She gets better, only to be murdered herself shortly after.
• In Holyland, Yuu suffers one of these after Shin gets beaten up because of him. This does not end well for the bad guys.
• Hunter × Hunter:
  • Gon experienced this in Chapters 304 and 305 when he realized that Kite was truly dead because Pitou could not revive him. He essentially went through a complete mental breakdown, with two voices in his head alternatively blaming himself for Kite's death or blaming Pitou. Unfortunately for Pitou, he eventually settles for the latter.
  • On the same subject, he experienced a lesser one earlier when confronting Pitou finally for Revenge and having steeled himself for the opportunity, only to witness Pitou healing Komugi. This drives him to unsteady Berserker Tears, only barely restraining himself by a hair's breadth as the situation completely violated all of his logic and preparations about how it's "not fair" that Pitou can murder someone he knows and just heal someone else like they aren't the monster he wants to kill so badly.
• In Ie Ga Moete Jinsei Dou Demo Yoku Natta Kara, the protagonist Harold Smith goes through them repeatedly. In chapter 1, he goes home to his dream home that he worked over 10 years for, starting at age 15, and becoming a blacksmith apprentice at age 10, thanks to becoming an orphan, only to see it completely engulfed in flames, no idea why and no explanation is ever provided. He no longer sees any meaning in life and withdraws all his funds from the bank, 150k, intending to go out in a blaze of glory, until a barker from a slave auction calls out to him and badgers him to attend. He snaps out of his bsod when he lucks out and buys Atie, the dark elf slave, at the very same 150k he's got on him, when she would normally sell at 1.6 billion. He goes back into a bsod when he fails to rescue a 10-year-old boy from a crime syndicate and then learns that the boy's own father died while he was undertaking the attempt, giving him a huge case of Survivor's Guilt, until Atie snaps him out of it, part-way, with some nice Sex for Solace.
• Endou, of all people, gets one in the anime adaptation of Inazuma Eleven after Kazemaru leaves the team during the second season due to his inability to catch up with Endou and the seemingly unbeatable evil alien teams showing up whenever they think they defeated Aliea Academy. Endou, who has been previously optimistic that they could defeat them through getting stronger, blames himself for his departure because he's the one who pushed his teammates to become stronger. He spends most of Episode 46 on the rooftop in a Troubled Fetal Position and doesn't move, not even when it's raining and refuses to touch a soccer ball or eat. However, Tachimukai's determination to complete Majin The Hand snaps him out of this state.
• Takumi in Initial D goes into one after his Trueno's engine breaks down in mid-race.
  • He gets a minor one when a mysterious driver, later revealed as his own father, in a Subaru Impreza matches his improved Trueno and beats him on his home course. He gets better quickly, though.
• Ino-Head Gargoyle: Saejima has one with Blank White Eyes when Rin reveals his true intentions and Shizuka decides she still loves him.
• Inuyasha:
  • Just as Sesshoumaru's finally getting used to the idea that Tessaiga was meant for Inuyasha and Tenseiga was meant for him, he learns the truth: Tenseiga is merely a cast-off piece of Tessaiga, separated from Tessaiga so that Sesshoumaru could master the Meidou Zangetsuha technique and then transfer it back to Tessaiga, meaning that the attack form he earned due to his compassion for Kagura's death isn't his to keep — it's destined for Inuyasha's use. Sesshoumaru takes the news badly and goes to Toutousai for confirmation where he concludes it's proof he was the outcast son and that his father meant for Inuyasha to kill him to get it back. Even Inuyasha and his friends think Inuyasha's father was being far too cruel. Sesshoumaru shuts down so completely over this knowledge that he leaves his group and Naraku takes advantage of this. Inuyasha's group have to save them instead and stay with them until Sesshoumaru finally decides to return. When he does it's to confront the situation with Inuyasha once and for all in a Die or Fly test that not only resolves the issue of the swords but also helps start Sesshoumaru on the road to recovery from his Heroic BSOD.
  • Kagome has some of her own, and the worst of them is the one that comes when she represses her feelings after Kikyou's "death" in the Shichinintai arc and tells Inuyasha to go see if she's alive or not... and after he leaves, the Baby comes and subjects her to a very cruel Breaking Speech about the Love Triangle as a whole. It's so bad that she comes this close to the Despair Event Horizon and the Baby uses that to near pull her into a Face–Heel Turn.
  • Sango has several of these, in different levels of intensity, every time she has to face her little brother Kohaku, who either is amnesiac or Brainwashed and Crazy whenever she and the others bump into him. She goes into a particularly bad one towards the end of The Final Act when she finds out the horrible way Miroku is going to die.
• Irresponsible Captain Tylor: You wouldn't think happy-go-lucky Tylor would be the type to suffer from one, but the death of his mentor, Admiral Hanner, hits him hard. He practically sleepwalks through (and right out of) a medal ceremony in his honor, and is later found atop a flagpole by his crew. He reboots, and decides to leave the UPSF, though this doesn't stick.
• I Want to Eat Your Pancreas: The protagonist undergoes this after Sakura is murdered. He refuses to leave the house for days and only musters to courage to visit Sakura's family home days after the funeral.
• Polnareff went through this three times during the 50 days of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders: The first time was when he encocuntered J.Geil, the man who raped and murdered his little sister, which sent him into a murderous rage and almost got shot,resulting in Avdol almost dying in his place. The second time was when he made a wish to revive his sister and Avdol, which spectacularly backfired as they were turned into cannibalistic dirt corpses who tried to kill him. He felt so guilty that he almost let them have it, believing that was his punishment for failing them. The third time was when Avdol sacrificed himself to save him from Cream, which pushed him to fall in despair yet once again, thinking why wouldn't Avdol just let him die already. The guy can't catch a break.
• Freesia in the second season of Jubei-chan engages in psychological warfare on Jiyu; 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 Power of Love to get everyone back.
• ...Junai no Seinen, Kaoru has a panic attack the first time Daigo leaves him, and then again when Daigo shows up at Ian's farewell party with a date.
• Jyu-Oh-Sei's Thor and Third both go through these; Thor after discovering that he is a bioengineered organism creating from the DNA of past Beast Kings, and Third after learning that Earth, which he has dreamed of seeing for his entire life, was destroyed over 130 years ago. Third does not recover.
• In Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, the titular protagonist suffers one after she finally kisses Shirogane, and later realizes the ramifications of it. Her IQ shrinks to near zero and she turns into a chibi version of herself, albeit only in the eyes of the reader.
• Mai Kawasumi from Kanon has her Heroic BSOD when Sayuri is attacked by the demons that she had been fighting. Said demons are actually manifestations of her own denial of her healing powers.
• In Kitchen Princess, Najika loses her sense of taste after Sora dies after a truck hits him as he's crossing the street, holding vanilla beans he meant to give to Najika. She later loses the competition that he was bringing the ingredient to her for.
• Kirby in Kirby: Right Back at Ya! had quite a BSOD in the one-year anniversary episode. He wakes up and goes off to play with everyone only to discover that nobody wants to play with him. When he goes to see Tokkori about it, Tokkori just laughs and says to him that "nobody likes him". Kirby suddenly breaks down at that and then packs up some of his things and runs away from home to Kabu Canyon. Feeling lonely and guilty for thinking everybody hated him, Kirby actually cries. It isn't until Meta Knight and Tokkori remind him that everyone was really worried about him and waiting for him to come back home that Kirby boots back up. And to top it all off, he didn't know that everybody was actually preparing his first anniversary party and that they really love him very much.
• In the second part of the OVA adaptation of the H game Ko-ko-ro..., Souji Kuonji suffers this towards the end after recalling the night his parents were murdered by his older sister, Kasumi, and how he killed her in self-defense after she tried to kill him, too. His Heroic BSOD is so deep that it verges on Heroic RRoD; he becomes catatonic and completely unresponsive, putting him at the mercy of his younger sister, Asuka, who is delighted that Souji is apparently now all hers to do with as she wishes. After ascertaining that Souji is so out of it that he won't even eat when she tries to feed him, Asuka fantasizes about raping Souji's unresponsive body on top of a church altar, seemingly a Call-Back to a sequence in the original game where she fantasizes that she and Souji do actually get married and consummate their unholy union right there in the church.
• This happened in the backstory for Tsukasa in Kuroneko Guardian. She was raped by a burglar which caused her to stop speaking and responding to people for some time. Even after recovering she's still The Stoic.
• Kuroko's Basketball has this happen fairly frequently.
  • Kuroko gets this twice. First time (in series order, not chronologically) is after he and Serin get absolutely slaughtered by Aomine and Touou. It takes him several talking-to's from Hyuuga, Kiyoshi, and Kagami in order to break out of it. The second, more powerful one, is when he completely shatters during the flashback arc, after Teikou's third National Championship victory. No, that is not an understatement by any means. It almost makes him quit basketball, his greatest passion, altogether.
  • Ogiwara gets a BSOD at the same time as Kuroko hits his at the National Championship.
  • A more minor example, but Sakurai gets one during the second Touou vs. Serin match. After losing the three-point shootout to Hyuuga and getting rattled to the point that his form becomes a mess, he gets so desperate to stop Serin that he hits Hyuuga for a defensive foul while Hyuuga's shooting another three-pointer, giving him three free-throws. Afterwards, he stares at his feet in complete horror, looking like he wants to cry, and can barely function. Aomine snaps him out of it by virtue of his overwhelming comeback once he enters the Zone.
  • Kiyoshi snaps after being crushed by Murasakibara, who defeats every trick he can possibly use and drives him to exhaustion so badly that he can't even stand on his own (thanks in part to his previously injured leg), then mockingly throws his words about basketball being fun back into his face. All he can say is "Sorry, Kuroko... please win..." after he gets subbed out. It doesn't last long, but it's absolutely heartbreaking, given that even having his leg crippled in the first place didn't keep him from smiling and laughing for the sake of his team. Thankfully, he has a dedicated team who he can rely on, and he manages to bring himself out of it and force his way back on the court to secure Serin's victory.
  • Hyuuga cracks under the pressure in the finals against Rakuzan, when Mibuchi gets him to foul him for the third time, and promptly racks up his fourth foul by arguing with the ref. Afterwards, he's reduced to a sobbing, self-loathing mess on the bench. Kiyoshi snaps him out of it by stealing his catchphrase, while Koganei gives him the key to figuring out the trick Mibuchi's shots. Riko finishes it by literally slapping some courage back into him.
• Last Exile:
  • Dio goes into one of these after the ship he's on (the Silvana) is captured by his evil sister Delphine and he believes his friend and companion Luciola has betrayed him. He only snaps out of it right before his Rite of the Covenant. And then it gets worse. He gets better, though. Sort of.
  • Tatiana also has a minor one after she freezes up during a mission with Claus and allows her vanship to crash, shaking her perception of herself as a perfectionist pilot.
• Loveless: In the manga, Soubi has a complete and utter Heroic BSOD when he not only discovers that his previous Sacrifice, who had staged his own death, was well and truly alive, but was ordered by said Sacrifice to destroy the windows of the compound he is trapped in so that he can make his escape. (Keep in mind the Sacrifice is a serious bad guy and would routinely torture the sh* t out of Soubi, who was rather powerless to defend himself, given his status as the Fighter unit.) Following the escape, Soubi breaks down to the obvious horror of those who care about him, especially Ritsuka. Soubi says over and over in a quiet voice, "I don't want to," meaning he didn't want to help the Sacrifice escape, but had no choice.
• Madlax: the title character completely lost the will to live after 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' Mind Screw of an Earn Your Happy Ending.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Fate got one in the first season after she discovers she is a clone, followed by a tirade from her mother, Precia, that ends with her stating how much she has despised Fate ever since she was born. The mind of poor, Love Martyr Fate simply couldn't take it and temporarily shut down in despair.
  • She almost had another in StrikerS when Jail Scaglietti subjects her to a cruel Breaking Speech about how she is raising Caro and Erio, which in Jail's opinion makes her just as evil as Precia, as he claims that she influenced them to love her unconditionally and do anything she wants because she is afraid of being abandoned. She's luckier this time, though, since Erio and Caro go all "Shut Up, Hannibal!" on Jail and reassure Fate that they love her and chose their own paths, which gives her enough Heroic Resolve to defeat Jail.
  • Also in StrikerS, Nanoha has a brief one when her daughter is kidnapped. At first she continues to carry out her duties through sheer willpower, but when she finishes and no longer has anything to distract her, she breaks down crying in Fate's arms. Of course, being Nanoha, she ultimately doesn't let her emotions keep her down, and channels them into rescuing Vivio and kicking the crap out of her enemies.
  • Again in StrikerS, Subaru initially flies into a bout of Unstoppable Rage at the sight of her older sister being kidnapped. But when all those responsible escape and she can't direct her anger at anyone anymore, the adrenaline wears off and she falls to her knees in tears.
• In March Comes in Like a Lion, after recalling the sight of his sister's corpse from Momo's injuries, Rei enters a state of depression for a couple of days and regresses into isolating himself, even from the Kawamotos.
• Mekakucity Actors: Since Cerebus Syndrome kicked in during Episode 7, this has happened quite frequently:
  • Shintaro is heavily implied to have suffered a two-year long one between Ayano's suicide and the events of Episode 1.
  • Ene has one when Kano breaks the news of Haruka's death to her in the most blunt and cruel manner possible.
  • Hibiya suffers one when he remembers what happened inside the Heat Haze world at the end of Episode 4. He literally falls over in a catatonic state, and takes several hours to recover.
  • At the end of Episode 8, Shintaro enters one when he learns that Ayano is connected to the Mekakushi Dan, and simultaneously manifests his eye power.
• 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.
• Tenma and Nina go through a large number of these in Monster. Nina's goes as far as to verge on suicide, but Tenma thankfully saves her.
• Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation:
  • Nanahoshi breaks down after the summoning circle she spent two years developing completely failed, throwing a fit before going mostly catatonic. She comes out of her funk when shown a new method of creating magic circles which allows her to overcome the original problem.
  • Rudeus experiences one after Paul's death, refusing to eat or leave his room and responding with "oh" when talked to. Roxy eventually snaps him out of it.
• In My Hero Academia, Izuku is so shaken after All Might tells him that he can't become a hero that he stands there, frozen in shock for several minutes. Much later, in chapter 367, he experiences several pages' worth of this upon witnessing the destruction of the battlefield.
• Half the HiME throughout My-HiME suffer this as their loved ones are eliminated one by one in the "HiMElander" arc (almost the only reason the other half didn't go into Heroic BSOD is because they died. The only ones not BSOD'ing are Yukino and Nao, and even then they don't look good: Yukino is even more of a Shrinking Violet 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 the story about her mother escaping from the First District lab to save her was a lie, and that Saeko was actually going to hand her over to Searrs to continue her research. Another few traumatic episodes later, it takes a pep talk with Mai to snap her out of her funk. It also happens to her in the manga, when it becomes evident that Yuuichi has chosen Mai over her... which is also roughly the point where Saeko herself steps in and takes over the school.
• My-Otome:
  • After the events of the Mood Whiplash Wham Episode near the midpoint of the series, Arika is virtually catatonic.
  • Shizuru has one in the Picture Drama "Shizuru Viola Memoirs", when Natsuki rather forcefully rejects her offer to make her one of her room attendants because she thinks of Natsuki as just another Fangirl. It takes Haruka coming up with a plan to make having Natsuki as a room attendant the stakes of the welcoming duel between them, as well as Natsuki retracting her decision and accepting after talking to Mai, to get Shizuru back to normal.
• Naruto:
  • Sasuke starts to hyperventilate and even blacks out when Tobi tells him the truth about Itachi. After he wakes up, his eyes stay pretty dead and vacant for the rest of the episode. Justified, considering he just killed his only remaining family, and the one person, besides Naruto, who sacrificed the most for him. Things go downhill from there.
  • The very first time Naruto got one was his worst one ever, when Hinata is seemingly killed by Pain right in front of him. Naruto instantly goes from nothing to six-tails, grows two more tails, and then nearly releases the Nine-Tails.
  • Sakura gets one in Chapters 458-459 when Sai tells her that both she and Sasuke cause Naruto a lot of pain. It fills her with so much guilt and shame that, in Chapter 469, she attempts her infamous fake love confession to get him to stop chasing Sasuke for her...only for Naruto to easily see right through her, call her out for lying, reject her outright by telling her that he hates people who lie to themselves, and break his promise to her◊ by explicitly telling her, "There's no promise between us anymore."
  • In Chapter 474, Sai tells Naruto that the rest of Konoha plans to kill Sasuke in order to prevent another war. Even Sakura has joined in on the plan, and Naruto knows that she still loves Sasuke. In Naruto's mind, we see an image of Team 7 being shattered as a result, and later on in Chapter 476, he hyperventilates and passes out for a few hours.
  • Choji goes through one when he and his teammates have to fight their deceased sensei Asuma, who's been brought back via Edo Tensei. He shuts down, is unable to bring himself to fight, and is only snapped out of it when Ino enters his mind and gives him a pep talk while using his body to fight, and Choza protects him from a fire attack, before reminding him of his status as a future Akimichi clan head. Luckily for everyone involved, their words hit home and he does eventually snap out of it.
  • The Start of Darkness for Kabuto features one when, during a battle, he wounds a woman who had been like his mother and is unable to recognize him.
  • Kakashi gets one in Chapter 600, demonstrating that he is Not So Stoic during his fight alongside Guy and Naruto against Tobi, when the latter first starts dropping hints and then revealing that he is in fact Obito Uchiha, Kakashi's old teammate whom he thought dead. Kakashi even becomes paralyzed with his thoughts until Naruto and Guy snap him out of it.
  • Obito got one when he saw Kakashi stab his Love Interest Rin.
  • Naruto gets his third one in Chapters 614-615, when Neji dies to protect him and Hinata, and Obito takes the opportunity to deliver a Breaking Speech about death and the pointlessness of ideals. It requires Hinata slapping some sense into him to snap him out of it.
  • Naruto gets his fourth one in the Canon movie The Last. Right after he confesses his love to Hinata, she "rejects" him and "accepts" Toneri's marriage proposal in order to save Hanabi. Thinking it was a real rejection, Naruto falls unconscious for three days, spends a whole day and night curled up in a Troubled Fetal Position, and comes very close to giving up on everything, until Sakura snaps him out of it by telling him that Hinata Hinata has only ever loved him, similar to how she herself has only ever loved Sasuke, and that will never change.
  • Played for Laughs in Chapter 286, when Yamato tells Naruto a "funny story" about the time Jiraiya once peeped on Tsunade, and how she beat him to an inch of his life for it. It scared Naruto so badly that, in the anime, he was reduced to a coma in the middle of the hot springs as he had a repeated nightmare of getting beaten to death by all of the women he knew.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • When the title character is confronted by the true form of Graf Herrman, he goes into an Unstoppable Rage 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 more comedic one when a series of stressful events is followed by Nodoka confessing her love for him.
  • Yue has a dramatic one when she finally accepts that she does, in fact, love Negi; believing that she's betrayed her best friend (the aforementioned Nodoka) by developing feelings for Negi herself when she's supposed to be supporting Nodoka's relationship with him. Nodoka, of course, doesn't look at it that way and has to slap Yue out of it. The breakdown is even more pronounced due to Yue mostly being an Emotionless Girl up to that point. She later subverts it, as it looks like she will go into another when her classmate from the magic academy Emily is erased from existence in her arms, but once her other friends Colette and Beatrice are under attack she reacts and joins them in the fight.
  • Negi has an epic one in the Gecko Ending of the anime, after 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.
  • In the manga, Asuna has a massive one after Fate undoes her Laser-Guided Amnesia, becoming essentially catatonic for a week before recovering. And even then, for a while, we don't know how 'recovered' she is. It's not as much as she acts towards Anya. Although subverted in that all except for the last few minutes of that was not shown on screen.
  • Negi has yet another one of these when he starts realizing just how many of his students like him that way. Notably, while he BSOD'd at being informed that there were two more besides the one he knew about, there were several haremettes that the person cluing him in had left out. And his most profound one was when the reveal exactly why and who was behind his home town getting Petrified so enraged Nodoka's Mind Reading book turns black with thoughts of "Kill them" and "Do Not Forgive" which requires Nodoka and Kazumi holding him in place plus a Get A Hold Of Yourself Man from Chisame to slap him out of it.
  • Chisame, for all her Only Sane Man traits, is BSOD'ing quite hard as Rakan, whom she had an Intergenerational Friendship with, loses his fight with Fate and is deleted of existence as a result. The poor girl is pretty much sobbing and telling him "How Dare You Die on Me!" as this takes place.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion:
  • Asuka after being Mind Raped. She spent most of time full of anger and grief, thinking that nobody loved her and nobody would care for her now that she had been humilliated, and after losing her connection to Eva (that meant that she was now worthless to Nerv and would be replaced and discarded), she ran away and tried to commit suicide. She got found in time to save her life, but she fell in a coma.
  • Shinji during most of End of Evangelion after being forced to kill Kaworu, one of the only people who actually understood him. And it is made even worse after he masturbates over the naked breasts of a comatose Asuka, as he deeply regrets it afterwards. He spends the entire first half of the story barely able to walk and completely unable to speak, and occasionally curls up into a ball when he hears about more imminent danger. Misato tries to convince him to fight, and he partially snaps out of his BSOD and goes to find Unit 01.... only to find that it is sealed in bakelite. He goes back to stay curled up and whimpering in a rincon until he listens to Asuka's dying screams, and he goes out to fight... only to see the MP-Evas munching the bloodied remains of Unit 02. Shinji realizes that he is too late and Asuka has been chopped into pieces and devoured because he has spent too much time feeling sorry for himself. Needless to say, that was the last straw for his sanity.
  • Shinji sometimes displays another, much more unnerving version of this trope in a form of a berserk rage when he gets pushed past what his rational mind can handle.
  • Let's not forget Misato, who suffered one as a 14-year-old girl after her father sacrificed his life to save her during the Impact. It was so bad that she spent at least two years as a traumatized Cute Mute.
• Ojamajo Doremi:
  • A slow build over the course of five specific episodes leads to the main character of, Doremi Harukaze, going into this in the series finale. Her best friends for the past four years are either moving or going to different schools, 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.
  • Hana had one when she found out her loud speaking exposed a secret clubhouse.
  • Momoko had one after Aiko called her out after she let Hana get sick.
  • Hazuki had one when she was deciding on where to go after graduating elementary school and whether Doremi would like the decision or not.
  • Aiko has one herself which causes her to nearly use forbidden magic to force her parents back together.
  • Pop has one when she finds she can become a Witch before Doremi and finally subvert Can't Catch Up...and when she finds out she won't be together with Doremi anymore had she done so on the spot.
  • All seven of them have one at the same time when they find that becoming full-fledged Witches would mean saying goodbye to everything they knew as human girls.
• One Piece:
  • Luffy gets three of these, all under similar circumstances. The first is in the sixth movie when he thinks his crew is dead after witnessing them being absorbed into a life force draining plant. The second happens later in the manga when Bartholomew Kuma vanishes his crew one by one before his eyes. In both cases, he gets better after realizing that they are still alive. The third case occurs at the end of the Marineford arc when his brother Ace dies in his arms after protecting him from Akainu. This case is by far the worst of them all and this time Luffy was already pushed his body past his limits and doesn't have the benefit of realizing that they're alive (as he's "dead for reals").
    
    The sixth movie probably pulls it off the best. The latter two he really just freaked out, no matter how heart-wrenching it may be. In the movie, he loses any will to fight, or even do anything at all, which is a far more serious reaction.
    
    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 an Admiral, the admiral's top subordinate (whom 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 Bartholemew Kuma shows up, and utterly 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 Freak Outs possible when a hero of this caliber realizes he's failed completely, and never stood a chance.
    
    The way he acts after waking up after Ace's death and realizing that it actually happened is even worse, with him attacking everything in sight in order to try to dispel the memories of Ace's death. It's pointed out that the emotional strain of such a tragedy, fighting so hard to save Ace, only for Ace to die saving him would easily break a normal person.
    Ivankov: And to think that that same elder brother died in front of his very eyes, so that he would be saved… What God or Buddha would permit that…?! That’s something that could easily crumble one, nay, two minds!!!
  • The following chapters tell the story of Luffy, Ace, and their surrogate brother Sabo and how they came become the men they were, with Ace's promise that they would survive, and Luffy's vow to get stronger and become the Pirate King. By the end, everything that has happened has caused Luffy's dream to come crashing down on him. For a series about chasing your dreams, this is heartbreaking.
  • While his status as a hero is questionable, Squad seems to go into one after realizing how thoroughly the Marines had manipulated him into stabbing Whitebeard.
  • For an example much less depressing and Played for Laughs, we have the scene after Enies Lobby, where the entire crew get new bounties. It's Nami, Sanji and Chopper who get this, and for different reasons. Nami has hers because she was now wanted, Sanji gets his because the poster looked nothing like him, and Chopper gets his because his bounty was 50 Berries. Naturally, the later two each get a Running Gag out of this.
• Tamaki of Ouran High School Host Club has a pretty epic one during one of Casanova... Bossa Nova... er, Kasanoda's visits to the music room, when he realizes he actually isn't Haruhi's "father" (and realizes the strange implications that being her father would carry). Played entirely for laughs.
• PandoraHearts:
  • Happens to both Alice and Oz during the Cheshire arc. The former's BSOD is triggered by her own lost memory fragments trying to Mind Rape her and the latter's by witnessing Alice die in a memory from one hundred years ago.
  • Oz had one after his father rejected him when he was a child and has another upon realizing that he is the B-rabbit and that Jack has been lying to him all this time. Suffice to say, they took their toll.
• Chief Ikari from Paranoia Agent, after being fired for his and Maniwa's mishandling of the Shonen Bat case, effectively has one of these, retreating into a Lotus-Eater Machine based on how he would ideally like the world to be. Maniwa himself went somewhat batty, but this being a Satoshi Kon work, he was actually closer to the truth as a result. He doesn't snap out of it until the death of his wife, as her soul is able to visit him in there just long enough to make him come to his senses.
• Peacemaker Kurogane: Quite a lot of characters have several, with Tetsunosuke being the most frequent victim. Also, Suzu after he finds his master Yoshida dead.
• Mashiro goes through one after Rita's speech in Episode 10 of The Pet Girl of Sakurasou. She didn't know Rita hates her because of her talents.
• The Story of Pollyanna, Girl of Love: Pollyanna becomes quite depressed after her accident in Episode 20 leaves her unable to walk again. Her change in behavior is so serious that she refuses to eat and she has a hard time finding anything to be happy about.
• In Pretty Sammy, Misao has this after finding out that she is Dark Magical Girl Pixy Misa. She got better, really. How? Sammy telling her that even if she stays as Misa forever, she still loves her.
• The Prince of Tennis:
  • Kaidou Kaoru has a really hilarious one when Inui tells him that they're going on a date just as Kaidou's phone runs out of battery. Inui actually meant that he believed Momoshiro and An are going out, but he couldn't say it for the above mentioned reason.
  • Sakuno has another comedic one when she believes that Ryoma dislikes like her cooking. He actually likes it, but back then he was distracted and said his "mada mada dane" ("you still have to work on") Catchphrase... referring to something else.
  • A more serious BSOD happens to Ryoma when he loses badly to Sanada in the anime.
• In Princess Tutu Fakir suffers a brief one after Ahiru digs up the suppressed memories of his parents' violent deaths — that were the fault of his powers.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
  • Sayaka and especially Madoka fall in this state in Episode 3, when all of a sudden their senpai and friend Mami is horrifyingly eaten alive in front of them, which goes on to show them that being a Magical Girl Warrior isn't as pretty as it seems.
  • Later, Homura suffers a brief but tearful one when Madoka almost makes the dreaded contract with Kyuubey. After shooting Kyuubey to stop him, she breaks down crying.
  • Sayaka not only suffers one when she starts angsting and realising what being a Puella Magi truly means (isolation, becoming a Lich, etc.)... but she actually goes further and becomes a witch.
  • In Episode 10, We find in one timeline that Mami utterly breaks down, kills Kyouko, and would have killed Madoka, Homura, and herself upon finding out that Puella Magi eventually become witches.
  • In a broader sense, becoming a Witch is an extreme and irreversible example of this. While it functions as a Face–Heel Turn, the victim doesn't deliberately become a villain. Instead, they fall so far down into their despair that they become delusional and frankly psychotic. It's essentially a supernatural version of the Despair Event Horizon.
  • The most extreme non-fatal example of this occurs in the penultimate episode. When the title character ends up on the receiving end of a particularly nasty attempt to Break Them by Talking from Kyubey, she almost completely shuts down. She gets better, and the rant from fluffy Mephistopheles actually helps her to subvert his plans, but it's still one of the hardest scenes in the series to watch.
• This happens with Ayato in RahXephon during Episode 19 after realizing that the Dolem he destroyed was directly connected to his friend, Hiroko Asahina, killing her in the process. What's especially brutal is that he realizes this after reading her Dying Declaration of Love and goodbye... which were written in city lights.
• The titular character in Ranma ½ all but shuts down when he believes Akane has died. He snaps back to form when he finds out she hasn't, not yet, but is in desperate danger anyway.
• Read or Die:
  • Yomiko Readman suffers a Heroic BSOD late in the manga when she relives the events that led to her lover Donnie's death, and learns that she was the one who was 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 BSODs when Joker reveals that them becoming sisters, their powers, and all of their memories from before their joining were all planned.
• In Re:CREATORS, Magane, using one of her usual tricks, starts to mess with Sota by pointing out the fact that he might be lying to his friends and himself, and even points out the possibility that he might have killed his only friend. Before breaking down, and fortunately, Kiyojuri arrives in time to save him and facing Magane in the process. Meteora ends up having to calm Sota.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena:
  • Touga defeats Utena, causing Rose Bride Anthy to be engaged to him. Utena ends up wearing a girl's uniform and behaving like a mix of a Proper Lady and Empty Shell afterwards, until she's called out by Wakaba and recovers her strength. Wakaba ends up being the one to snap Utena out of it and seek a rematch with Touga.
  • Touga's sister Nanami gets one of these later on in the series after she finds out exactly how much Anthy and her brother Akio 'love' each other.
• In RideBack, Rin undergoes a monstrous BSOD (even her friends can't help her out of it) when her friend Suzuri gets killed because the government thinks it's her, and that she's a terrorist.
• Robotech:
  • 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 a helpless amnesiac girl (whom he then names after his dead fiancé. Yeah...^note To be fair, considering she's a cloned human/invid hybrid created from the remains of his dead fiancé and dropped in his path explicitly so he'd stop and find her, this actually makes sense in a creepy kind of way. She does however get her own name later, Ariel, before gaining phenomenal cosmic powers as she isn't just a cloned human/invid hybrid, but also the daughter of the Invid Regis and an Invid Princess.).
  • The basic trope is also played straight in the original Genesis Climber MOSPEADA, where Stick remains in a shocked state after finding those soldiers completely annihilated, waking only to save Aisha^note Unlike her Robotech counterpart Ariel, Aisha is neither named after Stick's dead fiancee nor a clone of her.
• Rurouni Kenshin:
  • After Enishi defeats Kenshin, he fakes Kaoru's death very 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 Yakiho almost being killed to return.
  • And it happens to Enishi as well when Kenshin finally defeats him. He eventually regains enough strength of mind to escape from captivity but as Kenshin notes in his current state he's simply incapable of hurting anyone.
  • Kaoru also has one of these after Kenshin leaves for Kyoto. Megumi has to talk her out of it.
  • Same happens to Misao, when Okina asks Kenshin to kill Aoshi for his own good. She recovers when Kenshin says he won't do it.
• Subaru in the 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 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.
• Sailor Moon:
  • Usagi hits this pretty hard in the first season. The first time is when she's slammed with a rapid fire set of information — that annoying Mamoru's her love interest Tuxedo Kamen, she's the long-lost Moon Princess Princess Serenity, they got the Silver Crystal and... oh, yeah, the Dark Kingdom has Mamoru, who, last she saw, was dying. She starts crying that she doesn't want to do this anymore and just be a normal girl, even willing to just go ahead and fork over the Crystal before a desperate Rei has to slap some sense into her. She does it again in the finale as the girls drop like flies, ultimately leading to her wishing that she could be a normal girl after finishing off Beryl.
  • At the start of the second season, Usagi having been forced against her will to become Sailor Moon again and the trauma of what happened at the end of the first season (see above) affects her to the point she starts to lose her powers. It is only after accepting that she'll never be normal again and that she wants to protect everyone that she both gets them back and upgraded to boot.
  • Haruka also goes into one in the middle of Season S when she watches Michiru almost dies to try and save her. She then tells not to go off without her and takes her own life (though that was more or less part of her mission). They get better thanks to Usagi.
  • Usagi has another one at the final arc of Stars. She watches her best friends and guardians die in one fell swoop, Rei dying in her arms. While she's still reeling from that, she looks up and sees that her love, Mamoru, had his Star Seed removed a long time ago, and she had no idea that he'd been attacked and dead all season long. To say that she's having a rough day is putting it mildly. And that's not even the end of her bad day.
• Towards the end of Satou Kashi no Dangan wa Uchinukenai, several characters fall into this:
  • Nagisa's mental state begin to plummet as she properly realizes how horrible her best friend Mokuzu's home life is. The peaks take place when her mother explains what she knows about Mokuzu's disabilities; when she wanders into Mokuzu's Big Fancy House, runs into her abusive dad and sees lots of evidence that point at him having killed her, and especially when she sees Mokuzu's dismembered remains.
  • Nagisa's brother Tomohiko is implied to have become a hikikomori as a part of one of these after their father's death. He also suffers one when he is the one who actually finds Mokuzu's dead body, and fails to keep Nagisa from seeing it; as the two report what they saw to the police, he's crying almost as much as Nagisa is.
  • Nagisa and Mokuzu's teacher is seen in a similar state when he finds out about all of the above, verbally and mentally beating himself up for not directly confronting Mokuzu about her abusive father in time.
• School Days:
  • Sekai has one after Makoto kisses Kotonoha in front of her.
  • Kotonoha very likely has a permanent one after she is raped by Makoto's friend Taisuke and then dumped by Makoto. Kotonoha did recover when Makoto hugged her and apologized. Only to permanently go Yandere once she finds him dead.
  • Nanami has a brief one when everyone in the school sees the tape featuring her and her boyfriend having sex during the school festival. The poor girl, usually the Only Sane Woman, is reduced to a sobbing wreck on the floor.
  • Yuuki has one in the Cross Days manga, when he finds out that Kotonoha, whom he has a crush on, is in a relationship with both Sekai and Makoto. Deciding that everything he's done up to that point is futile, such as cross-dressing in an attempt to show Kotonoha just what a sleazy guy Makoto is, only for said girl to call him cruel and disgusting for lying to and manipulating her, Yuuki mindlessly wanders to the train station and prepares to throw himself on the tracks. Thankfully, Roka arrives just in time to stop him.
• Happens to Kazuma in S Cryed after the death of 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 Ryuhou comes out to stop him. By this point, however, Kazuma had beaten up Scheris and Ryuho's search for him had resulted in Kanami witnessing her and Kazuma's house getting ripped apart, so both of them were pretty pissed, and the restultant fight shakes up the entire Lost Ground. Then they both went into amnesia and BSODs. Kazuma had to be kickstarted with help from Asuka and later Cougar while Ryuho's blackout results in a Heel Realization as he forgets his grudges just long enough to relearn a softer sense of justice.
• In Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi, Yanase shuts down not only because Chiaki rejected him a second time again without giving him a reason why he would choose Hatori over him, but also when Hatori breaks into his place and proceeds to beat the crap out of him. Chiaki prevents anything worse from happening then, but the episode leaves him in that state. And this is supposed to be a shonen ai romantic comedy with some drama but not this episode.
• Sentou Yousei Yukikaze:
  • Rei suffers this when his beloved aircraft is destroyed. Somewhat justified that he is a loner, and somewhat a 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 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 Mercy Kill. As a result, Rei doesn't trust the new aircraft, even if it contains his old AI. Better not think about this too much...
  • The titular AI itself goes through a Heroic BSOD as it feels that Rei doesn't trust it, and needs its reassurance before it can work properly in its new mainframe.
• Seraph of the End: When Yuu is ordered to not go after Guren who has been captured by the vampires and because the enemies are sending backup he gets a blank stare and slumps against a wall to the floor with Hidden Eyes.
• Serial Experiments Lain:
  • A similar situation happens in halfway through the series. 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 Mika's mind slipping into the Wired and getting lost forever. Or even better with that 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 Alice after Lain wipes Alice's humiliation from the memories of everyone they know and then talks to and gruesomely kills 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. What a friend, though — Lain proceeded to rip reality a new one to fix Alice and give her a normal life.
• Sgt. Frog:
  • A far less serious version of this is Dororo from, 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 Corner of Woe, 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 enter Dororo's mind to fix things. Ironically, Keroro can sometimes go through something similar when all the pent-up 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. Cue Giroro's intervention (though it only made Keroro feel worse).
  • New character Pururu gets something like this as well, shutting down as she quietly babbles to herself, whenever anyone calls her Obasan. 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...
• Since Shadow Star is an unapologetic deconstruction of the Mon genre, lead character Shiina Tamai is rather prone to this trope. The first time it happens is after a painful Shoot the Dog scenario, in which her crazed friend Hiroko is killed by Shiina's mon Hoshimaru right in front of her. Several volumes later, she learns at the worst possible time that Hoshimaru isn't actually hers, but instead belongs to her ally Takeo. Finally, witnessing the Heroic Sacrifice of her beloved father Shunji leaves her in such a terrible state that her friend Akira — a Shrinking Violet — has to slap her out of it.
• In Shangri-La, Kuniko has one when Momoko gets captured. It gets much, much worse shortly after this, when she discovers that everyone she left behind in the detention center has been pointlessly slaughtered, partly because of her recent escape.
• Kouji Kabuto from Shin Mazinger experiences one of these when he realizes that by fighting in his Humongous Mecha, he has accidentally killed dozens of civilians.
  • In the original Mazinger Z series, Kouji's girlfriend and partner Sayaka Yumi has a HUGE one when her Humongous Mecha, Aphrodite A, is destroyed. It's so bad that the poor girl almost kills herself by drowning, as she believes that Aphrodite is calling her from a nearby lake.
  • Poor Sayaka got another way earlier, in Episode 7. A mob — enraged at having their hometown leveld by two battling Humongous Mecha — threw stones to her father, landing him in the hospital, and almost broke in the Institute. She was so upset and distraught she considered quitting of battling.
  • And in the original manga, Kouji has another in an early chapter after being forced to kill an Iron Mask. He remained kneeled and shaking.
  • In Great Mazinger, Tetsuya Tsurugi has one after realizing his adoptive father pulled an Heroic Sacrifice to save his life and it would not have happened if he had set his jealousy of Kouji aside and not refuse to help him when he was in danger. After the inicial My God, What Have I Done? his reactions varied: in the anime he went into a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and after, as he laid down on a hospital bed, he rambled about how it was all his fault; in one of the manga storylines he self-detonated Great Mazinger and himself to blow all commanders of Mykene army up.
  • UFO Robo Grendizer: When a Vegan spy reveals to Duke that the Saucer Beasts he's been fighting are powered by the minds of his home planet's slain people (including his own little brother), poor Duke flips out completely (and very understandably). Luckily, Kouji and Dr. Umon snap him out of it sometime afterwards.
• Kaede in SHUFFLE! has one after her mother dies and another after Rin starts dating Asa.
• Slayers:
  • Lina Inverse of undergoes this briefly at the end of Season 2. In her defense, 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. No win situation, much? Of course, one could argue that what happened after she did cast the spell was, in fact, the ultimate Heroic BSOD, as the Lord Of Nightmares completely takes over Lina, pretty much killing her. She nearly had another one a few episodes earlier, when she was attacked by the zombified citizens of Sylphiel's Doomed Hometown, reanimated as puppets by the aforementioned dark lord. In self-defense, she stabbed a little girl who was attacking her with a knife; upon realizing it, poor Lina nearly lost it and started screaming in horror ("I... I killed a child? It was a little girl! It can't be, it can't be, IT CAN'T BE!") — until Sylphiel gave her a Cooldown Hug and reminded her that the child, and all the people attacking her, were already dead.
  • And in the original series, Sylphiel had two pretty serious BSODs. One, when her aforementioned hometown was destroyed, and another when she wasn't sure if her powers were enough to save a critically injured Lina, who had taken a huge energy blast for her.
• Soul Eater:
  • Maka goes into a brief one (during the remedial lesson in the graveyard that introduces Sid the Zombie and Dr. Franken Stein after finding out from Shinigami-sama that 1) she's been collecting a grand total of zero souls and 2) she will be expelled if she fails to pass the remedial lesson. It takes a full four panels (and for Sid to pop out of the ground, hoisting her into the air and holding her by her ankle) to snap her out of it.
  • Played for laughs 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.
  • Played more seriously when Maka enters the Envy Chapter in the Book of Eibon, and is reduced to tears upon acknowledging sides of herself that she hates.
• In the two-part finale of Sonic X, Tails suffers a severe emotional breakdown, complete with Empty Eyes after his love interest Cosmo requests for him to kill her with the Sonic Driver in order to defeat the Metarex for good. This culminates in him verbally lashing out in a sobbing rage at Dr. Eggman, Cosmo herself, and even his best friend, Sonic.
• The early premise of Steins;Gate 0 focuses on protagonist Okabe dealing with the aftermath of him accidentally stabbing his lover Kurisu to death while trying to save her. The incident left him broken mentally to the point that he has to take depression pills to sustain his sanity, & unwilling to ever attempt time traveling again for some time.
• In Strawberry 100%, Satsuki has one when she 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.
• Ako Shirabe/Cure Muse of Suite Pretty Cure ♪ got it an Heroic BSOD so bad because her not wanting to fight her brainwashed father that it resulted to the silent Masked Cure Muse personality she uses for quite some time.
• Sword Art Online:
  • When Asuna is killed in front of Kirito. Kirito shuts down almost completely, staggering forwards towards his enemy taking a few halfhearted swings, having lost all will to keep fighting. He gets better relatively quickly, though.
  • Kirito also gets a brief Heroic BSOD in his Near-Death Experience in the second-to-last episode of Season 1, when Sugou/Oberon sexually assaults Asuna after paralyzing Kirito, thinking he couldn't be able to save her, and basically gives up (in his words "facing reality"). If Kayaba Akihiko's spirit didn't appear to snap him out of it and give him Heroic Second Wind, Kirito would've crossed the Despair Event Horizon.
  • In Sword Art Online II, Kirito gets approached in Gun Gale Online by a player who has a Laughing Coffin tattoo, which triggers memories he had repressed of killing a couple of Black Coffin members back in SAO. He briefly shuts down, but he's in the middle of a tournament so he has to move. In his next several fights he charges straight at his opponent without much apparent thought.
  • Kirito suffered an extreme one after the death of Eugeo. To put it simply, he was left unable to speak, unable to express emotions, and basically unable to do anything for 90% of the War of Underworld season. External factors are in play here, as the Soul Translator full-dive machine that he was using experienced a power surge while he was already on the verge of a BSOD. This completely fried the "self-image" portion of his Fluctlight; Kirito literally can't comprehend himself until it's repaired by connecting him with several other peoples' images of him.

• Usagi in Tail of the Moon after the destruction of her home and the presumed death of her husband.
• In the Tales of Symphonia OVA, Lloyd experiences one after failing to stop Colette from sacrificing her soul to save the world. He drops his swords and falls to his knees, just crying and screaming her name. He quickly snaps out of it, but it is still pretty heartbreaking, considering how optimistic he normally is.
• While Aya of Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note isn't good at handling pressure, her Valentine's card to Sunahara — a Love Confession in all but fact — being posted in the open in the part of The Valentine Knows animated as Episode 15 just sent her to Troubled Fetal Position.
• Blade/Takaya/D-Boy in Tekkaman Blade starts suffering hallucinations and nightmares that cause him to be unable to fight after his corrupted sibling Saber/Shinya/Evil causes him to overstay his Hour of Power and suffer a Face–Heel Turn. 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 Teknosuits and he gets arrested. He is left an utter wreck until Aki/Star slaps and shouts some sense into him.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann's Simon goes into a big one of these after Kamina dies. However, when Simon reboots, he reboots...complete with several levels in badass.
• Barnaby from Tiger & Bunny experiences one in Episodes 18-19 upon discovering that Jake Martinez was not his parents' murderer, and not only are his memories of the incident (which he relied upon heavily during his investigation into the killer's identity) faulty, but everything he believed in and worked for during the past twenty years might be a hoax.
• When the true identity of Deep Blue is revealed, poor Ichigo of Tokyo Mew Mew is shocked into a loss of common sense, attacking her teammates and then refusing to fight, until Minto slaps her back to sanity. We wouldn't blame her; after all, it was her boyfriend and ex Mysterious Protector, Masaya.
• Joe Yabuki from the classic boxing manga Tomorrow's Joe suffers a huge one when his best rival, Tooru Riikishi, dies of internal injuries right after their match is over. It's actually so bad that for several months he cannot bring himself to punch his other rivals on the face, since that's what caused Riikishi his fatal Heroic RRoD.
• Trigun:
  • Vash the Stampede is induced (forced by Legato through mind control) to fire the super-weapon built into his arm, causing a catastrophic explosion that incinerates an entire city and burns a massive crater into one of the planet's moons. The next episode has him disappear, where other characters discover he has assumed a new identity as a simple farmer.
  • Vash suffers a second Heroic BSOD when, for the first time in his life, Vash was forced to shatter his long-held pacifism and kill someone (Legato) to save the life of his friends Milly and Meryl. He spends the entirety of the next episode in an emotional, nearly catatonic breakdown.
  • In the manga, not only does Vash have these two breakdowns, but it's also revealed that he had another during his childhood that wound up later shaping his current day ideals. When Vash and Knives discovered they had a sister named Tesla, the two seek her out in hopes of having another person who understands them. However, they discover that due to the fact that she was the first sentient Plant discovered, the humans experimented on her and eventually dissected her, and the two only discover her horribly mutilated remains. While this leads Knives to have his anti-human Villainous Breakdown, Vash on the other hand falls into a state of shock, horrified at humanity's cruelty, and comes out of it only to try and kill himself with a scalpel. Rem, who has also been looking after the two in part because of her horror at what happened to Tesla, winds up preventing him from doing so and gets cut herself, and in doing so is able to snap Vash enough back to his senses. After this she winds up truly imparting to Vash why cherishing life is so important.
• In Trinity Blood, Abel spends the day/episode in one of these when Noelle dies. There are also a few scenes throughout the series where Abel will come to a screeching halt, usually when he loses control of himself due to the Crusnik Nanomachines and Esther sees him during this time and has a subsequent freak out. The last of these scenes has an... undesirable outcome.
• In Tsukigasa, Azuma has one for months after cutting off Kuroe's arm while under the influence, and is Driven to Suicide at one point.
• Marin suffers one in the latter half of Umi Monogatari, and is rendered unable to use her powers as a result.
• Umineko: When They Cry:
  • Battler goes through such a bad episode of Heroic BSOD upon the revelation that his Missing Mom Asumu is not, in fact, his real mother that he doesn't just stop functioning temporarily — he erases his (meta) physical presence. Don't worry, he gets better.
  • Followed by Beatrice's similar, epic BSOD in EP 5. Do worry, she doesn't get better. In EP 6, she actually does get better.
  • Episode 7 has his sister Ange suffer a just as epic one, after learning that her beloved mother Kyrie didn't give a shit about her, and that her much-hated aunt Eva preferred to let the girl hate her forever rather than have her find out such a terrible truth.
  • Episode 4 begins with Renove reporting that Battler is in this state after the events of the previous episode. However by the time we see him Beelzebub has managed to bully him out of it, also causing Beatrice to needlessly embarrass herself with a failed dramatic entrance.
• Joe himself experiences this in the Viewtiful Joe anime adaption after finding out that Captain Blue is the Big Bad. It takes Blue Jr. and people Joe met through Movie Land to get him out of it.
• Wandering Son:
  • Takatsuki seizes up and curls up on the ground when the gym teacher yells at him to wear a bra. The class thinks it's funny, but being a female-to-male transsexual, he takes it badly. He gets over it, and does some shopping.
  • The male-to-female transsexual Nitori had one of these after she went to school in a Sailor Fuku and got hit with a Double Standard compared to the other girls, making her a laughing stock. She got over it eventually.
  • Chiba had these constantly in middle school.
• Satsuki suffers one in World Break: Aria of Curse for a Holy Swordsman after suffering a humiliating loss against Isurugi in a practice match.
• X/1999:
  • Kamui Shirou does this after a REALLY rough day in which his childhood best friend turns murderously insane, impales Kamui on assorted objects, molests him, and forces him to watch as he kills his other childhood best friend, who happens to be his own little sister. Team mystic Subaru Sumeragi, who once went through an Heroic BSOD himself after his Love Interest Seishirou revealed himself to be a Serial Killer, claimed that he never cared for him and then killed Subaru's beloved older sister, is called upon to go psychic-spelunking through Kamui's head to find his reboot button. Which he manages to do.
  • Later, when Yuzuriha fails to answer Satsuki's Armor-Piercing Question and her spirit companion Inuki gets killed as a result, she goes through another one. She recovers more or less soon.
• In Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches, Yamada goes into a heroic BSoD when Takuma tells him that Shiraishi has left Suzaku High and wished to be forgotten by everyone — he freezes in a kneeling position on the ground and seemingly doesn't register what Takuma says.
• Few in Your Lie in April:
  • Kousei had one two years before the series began when his mother died and it left him very depressed.
  • It happens again at the end of Episode 20 when he and Watari come to visit Kaori and her health takes a turn for the worst. He stays in a depressed state for a whole week, especially after he visits Kaori after that event and realizes that she's getting worse and worse.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Yugi 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 Batman Gambit 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 Knight Templar of an "other self" and made him realize just how dangerous it could be. 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: "I lost a card game! I no longer have a reason to live!" One of these duels, however, makes it worse: not only was he fighting to rescue his kidnapped brother Mokuba, who had practically turned into an Empty Shell after his soul is stolen by Pegasus, but he got his own soul stolen as well when he lost badly against his rival. He also almost had one when he arrived to ancient Egypt and witnessed the tragedy that surrounded the creation of his Blue Eyes White Dragon.
  • Atem/The Pharaoh has his turn in the Doma arc when he gives in to his inner darkness, plays the Seal of Orichalcos, and loses Yugi's soul.
  • Shizuka has a brief one in the Noah arc when Honda loses and is thrown aside, meaning he's either dead or will end up as a Soul Jar. She recovers in time to turn the tables and save herself and Otogi.
• Judai Yuki in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX goes into this state after realizing all the suffering Yubel caused his friends — including forcing a Heroic Sacrifice out of his new Ho Yay 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 Superpowered Evil Side — the Supreme King — 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 until literally the very last episode. Otherwise throughout 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.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds:
  • Yusei Fudo gets his turn after his almost-lethal duel with Kalin, his former best friend/Big Brother Mentor who has come Back from the Dead as a Dark Signer out to kill Yusei in revenge for supposedly betraying him and causing his arrest and death. The Power of Friendship, Aki as A Friend in Need, some lecturing from his Apron Matron Martha, and a Get A Hold Of Yourself Man beatdown from Jack combine to snap him out of it.
  • Jack had his own period of depression and guilt brought on by losing his title to Yusei and realizing the full impact of everything he'd done, all the lies he'd lived by and betraying his friends to get to the top. Carly helps to snap him out of it, and he later pleads Love Redeems in response to the Big Bad's Breaking Lecture during the Final Battle.
• Yuma Tsukumo has multiple over the course of Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL:
  • After his near-loss to Kaito, almost losing Astral in the process. Astral suffers from one as well.
  • When Yuma loses his catchphrase, kattobingu/feeling the flow, falling into depression and becoming too afraid to duel.
  • During Yuma's duel with Misael, he breaks down to the point where he can't continue the duel and Kaito has to take over.
    • It was actually a Heroic RRoD that he suffered, due to the hostile environment he was in. The BSOD came afterwards as a result.
• YuYu Hakusho:
  • Yusuke has one when Suzaku makes him believe that Keiko and Botan have been murdered by a Brainwashed and Crazy mob.
  • Yusuke again during the Dark Tournament finals, when Toguro pretends to kill Kuwabara in order to bring Yusuke's Power Level to his own level and make him a Worthy Opponent. Interestingly though, at this point his Battle Aura becomes the polar opposite of Toguro's own Battle Aura which killed well over a quarter of the stadium's spectators.
  • And right before that, as Yusuke is getting the tar beaten out of him by Younger Toguro, Keiko, unable to bear seeing her not-quite-boyfriend go through such unimaginable agony, snaps and becomes completely catatonic for one-and-a-half episodes.
  • After Toguro kills Genkai, Yusuke falls into a huge funk for the following episode. Part of the reason is he blames himself for her death, as just prior to this she had transferred her power to him. Yusuke felt that if she hadn't done so, then maybe she could have survived against Toguro. Koenma is later able to get his fighting spirit back with a pep talk.

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