Heroic BSOD / Live-Action Films

aka: Film

No, the movie screen hasn't turned blue - just the hero's mind.

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• Jackie Robinson gets one in 42 after enduring a barrage of racial epithets from Philadelphia Phillies' coach Ben Chapman.
• In (500) Days of Summer, the main plot of the film is to see how Tom Hansen is handling his breakup with Summer Finn, and looking back to see what he did wrong. He... doesn't take it well.
• Gomez enters one after he loses his fortune and is evicted from his home in the first Addams Family movie. Thing snaps him out of it just before the climax with a three word message: MORTICIA IN DANGER.
• Adrift (2018): After seeing a ship pass them by then vanish, Tami, Lost at Sea for several days now, falls into one as she realizes she's hallucinating.
• After most of the Marines are killed in the nest in Aliens Private Hudson suffers a breakdown and transforms from loud mouthed joker to a nervous wreck. Later in the movie, he snaps out of it after Ripley orders him to pull himself together, causing him to regain his fight, and hold off the attacking aliens to buy his team time to escape at the cost of his own life
• The Amazing Spider-Man Series:
  • The Amazing Spider-Man subverts this. While Uncle Ben's death could have plunged Peter into a swill of misery, he instead channels it into rage and becomes a reckless and vengeful vigilante with his powers but lacks the "Comes Great Responsibility" part of being Spider-Man.
  • Peter Parker hangs up the suit for five months after watching Gwen die because of his attempt to save her in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. He visits her grave regularly and sulks until he gets the courage to watch her graduation speech and find his Heroic Resolve anew.
• Annie (2014) when she is revealed to be unable to read. Also when she thinks Stacks hired the fake parents to make himself look good.
• April Showers: Jason suffers one in a grocery shop, hallucinating a staring crowd holding copies of the magazine cover with the picture of him carrying the dead girl out of the school.
• Assassin's Creed (2016): Aguilar has a brief funk when Maria dies during their final mission.
• In Back to the Future Part II, Marty has a huge one in 1985-A when he finds his father's grave.
• Doc goes into one in Back to the Future Part III after he tries to tell Clara he is from the future and she doesn't believe him and slams the door in his face.
• Balibo: Roger and José are emotionally destroyed when they discover the village they stayed in the previous night has been slaughtered to the last man by the TNI.
• In Batman (1989), Bruce goes through one when he sees Jack Napier is still alive, standing still in shock as Jack, now The Joker, and his men gun down a group of mobsters, neither attempting to stop them nor even seeming to be aware of the bullets flying around him. He doesn't even notice when he gets winged by one of the bullets.
• In Batman: The Movie, Batman suffers something of one when he discovers that Catwoman was Miss Kitka, the Russian reporter he met and fell in love with. When Robin goes to offer his sympathies, Batman recovers and stops him before he ends up revealing who they were.
• Not sure if he counts as a hero, especially considering the events immediately following this scene, but Philip Seymour Hoffman's character has an epic one in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead after his wife leaves him and reveals she's been sleeping with his brother. He calmly and systematically dismantles their apartment, pouring their decorative marbles over the coffee table and tearing up his entire bedroom. And then shit really hits the fan.
• In Beyond the Lights, Noni is in the midst of a MAJOR one when we first see her as an adult. The hyper-sexualized image forced upon her by her record label and her mother's micromanagement of her life and career have left her feeling, in her own words, as though she is suffocating in the middle of the street and no one can see her dying. She is so distraught that, after spending the Billboard Awards mostly expressionless and just going through the motions, she decides to end it all by jumping off her hotel balcony. Fortunately, Officer Kaz Nicol, her bodyguard for the night, stops her — thus launching the plot of the film.
• Oskari in Big Game has a brief moment of breakdown when he finds out that his father's "good hunting place" contains a refrigerator with a head of an already-shot deer, meaning that a father of a "Well Done, Son" Guy doesn't believe that he can do it well.
• Nicole Kidman's character in Birth has a BSOD while at the opera. The camera locks on her face for a full three minutes while she shuts down. The result is fairly haunting.
• Jasmine in Blue Jasmine, that is if you actually consider her a hero of any sort...
• Towards the end of Boogie Nights, there's an extended shot of Dirk just staring into space. Somewhat of a subversion, as this is more due to his cocaine addiction, and all the shit that's going on around him.
• In Braveheart, William Wallace has one of these when he finds out that Robert the Bruce was working with Edward Longshanks. It is enough to where he lies down to almost get captured by a band of English soldiers before the Bruce lets him go. At the same time, when Robert the Bruce realizes the horror on Wallace's face, he looks as if he is about to succumb to one as well.
• In Captain Phillips, based on the Maersk Alabama hijacking, the eponymous captain is rescued by the U.S. Navy after they dispatch the hijackers holding him hostage, but has to be treated for shock since he just narrowly avoided death at his captors' hands. The poor guy is in tears and can barely even talk.
• Cemetery Man. Learning the rest of the world doesn't exist for you because you're not real could do that to anyone.
• The plot of Charlie St. Cloud has the title character suffer one of these after his little brother was killed in a car accident.
• Chinatown ends with this both for the protagonist J.J. Gittes and the viewer.
• Eddie Felton gets one in The Color of Money after he himself is hustled by Amos, who smoothly pretends to be a lucky amateur and suckers Eddie into a series of double-or-nothing games.
• The German film The Colony (2016), features a scene where the male protagonist searches the underground tunnels of the cult compound for a means to escape. He bursts into tears when he stumbles into the chamber that contains the metal bed-frame he was chained to and the generator used to electrocute him.
• Cradle of Fear: When Inspector Neilson learns that his son has been murdered, he knocks out Da Chief, takes a gun he is not supposed to have, and goes to Fenham Asylum intending to murder Kemper.
• Creepshow has a rare literal example. The screen actually turns blue behind the hero.
• Both Thomas and Guy-Manuel in Daft Punk's Electroma. Thomas self-destructs, and later on, Guy tries to blow himself up, but cannot reach his self-destruction panel, so he starts himself on fire using a glass shard from his broken helmet and the sun.
• The Dark Crystal: Jen has a breakdown when Kira gets killed as saving the Shard from the Skeksis. He heals the Crystal, but Kira is dead. She comes back, but still... not to mention everything going crazy in the castle that makes one wonder if Jen actually succeeded.
• In The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent. Pretty much all the scenes in the hospital after he finds out what happened are just him on his bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. Of course, you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain...
• Das Boot features one Heroic BSOD in Johann, the U-96's engineer, while they're being depth-charged for the second time. He attempts to abandon the submarine (impossible since it's underwater), having to be restrained.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • Then there was Man of Steel wherein Supes okay, contrary to what people say, they DO call him "Superman," but in any case, he snaps Zod's neck and screams in emotional anguish.
  • In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Clark, already struggling with self-doubt, goes through one after Lex blows up a Senate hearing that Superman is attending, using a bomb hidden in a lead-lined wheelchair so Clark can't see it, killing and injuring hundreds of people that Clark is unable to save. It takes a Dead Person Conversation with the ghost of Jonathan Kent to snap him out of it.
    • Later in the film, Batman has one when he's about to kill Clark, only for Clark to plead for the life of Martha. While Clark is talking about his own mother, the fact that it's also the name of Bruce's mother (and indeed, Thomas Wayne's last word) triggers Bruce's PTSD and he freezes, just demanding to know why Clark is saying that name. Learning from Lois Lane that Clark is talking about his own mother, and that Clark has only been fighting him because Lex is holding her hostage, snaps Bruce both out of his BSOD and Unstoppable Rage, making him realise how far he's fallen, and he agrees to save Martha while Clark confronts Lex.
  • In Wonder Woman, after Diana kills General Ludendorff, she's horrified that the chemical attack is still being prepared. When Steve tells her he's going to try and sabotage the bomber carrying the gas bombs, she demands to know why the war is still going on (since she thought she killed Ares, the god of war), only for Steve to say that humanity is way too complex, and a war can't end with the death of a single leader. As she's going through her breakdown the real Ares shows up, and after she refuses his deal to help humanity wipe each other out so that they can take it over again, she beats him, and the war ends soon after.
  • In SHAZAM!, after Billy tracks down his birth mother, he runs out the foster home and goes to meet her. When he tries to hug her, she pushes him back, and goes on to tell that happened years before was because her parents kicked her out for getting pregnant so young and her husband, likely a kid like her, ran out soon after. At the fair, she got him a compass because that's the only thing she could get and after she lost him she saw that the two police officers that were tending to him made her realize that if she could barely take care of herself, she couldn't take care of her young son, and decided he was better off in foster care. He gives her back the comapss, and after he decides to go back to the foster home, he gets a call that Dr. Sivana has taken the other foster kids hostage, once Billy gets his composure back, he goes to go save them.
• In The Deer Hunter, there's Nicky.
• The character Sarah has one of these about two thirds of the way through The Descent and doesn't come back for the rest of the movie. On the upside, her BSOD is very hardcore, and in all likelyhood it saved her life in the American version with the revised ending.
• In District 9, Christopher is purely interested originally in getting himself, his son and maybe a few others the hell off Earth. However, when he and Wikus raid MNU's lab, he enters this state realizing the horrifically evil things being done to his people. Once he snaps out of it, he is now dedicated to return to both free his people and help Wikus.
• In Dogma, as explained by The Metatron, this is the reason for the unexplained gap in Jesus's life from the time he was twelve, until his thirties. When told he was the son of God, and was doomed to be betrayed by the very people he was trying to help, it triggered a two decades long BSOD. This was told to Bethany when she started her own BSOD after Rufus tells her that she's a descendant of Jesus and that's why she's targeted.
• In Dragonheart noble knight Bowen blames young Eion turning into a murderous tyrant on the boy having half of a dragon's heart. Bowen then proceeds to hunt dragons until he and the last one (Draco, the very one Bowen was hunting for) form an alliance. In a fight, Eion makes it clear that he never believed in the Old Code and was just using Bowen and Bowen is stunned to realize the boy was always going to be a monster and he hunted a species to extinction for no reason.
• Barney Ross from The Expendables suffers this in the third movie after Caesar is wounded and hospitalized by Conrad Stonebanks, forcing him to temporary disband the team.
• The Evil Dead (1981): Ash completely freezes up when Shelly becomes a deadite, even when Scotty is screaming at him to kill her, he just stands and stares in absolute horror.
  Scotty: Hit her! Hit her! HIT IT!
• Sean has a brief one after Han is killed in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Neela has to physically drag him away.
• Faust: Love of the Damned: John Jaspers loses his demonic superhero form and goes into catatonia when he sees his love interest under the mind control of the villain.
• In Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Cameron seems to have one of these when he sees that the valet took his father's car — his most prized possession — for a joyride. He screams at the top of his lungs for the whole city to hear, then lapses into his BSOD. Ferris and his girlfriend Sloane try desperately to revive him, which culminates with the two of them in a hot tub, and Cameron on a folding chair at the end of a diving board. He falls (or jumps) in, and Ferris "rescues" him, reviving him from his cataplexy in the process. He reveals that he wasn't really catatonic the whole time. Sloane then asks if he saw her get changed, which he replies to with a grin.
• The Fifth Element: Leeloo descends into despair as she sees humans' inhumanity to their fellow humans, almost losing it completely when Diva is killed, and then decides to read up on the "WAR" section of the dictionary. This becomes an important plot point almost immediately afterward, as she initially refuses to save the universe if war and violence are all it has to offer.
• The Fugitive opens with Richard in shock after finding his wife horrifically murdered. Near the end of the film, he has a second, subtler one on realizing who's responsible for her death.
• Katherine, the protagonist's love interest in Fury (1936), has one after seeing an angry mob burn her fiance alive. He gets better. Afterwards she's unable to speak, and has a post-traumatic freakout whenever she sees fire (including people lighting their cigarettes).
• Ghostbusters (1984) gives us another lovely quote after the team has viewed the transformation of Gozer into the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
  Peter: Ray has gone bye-bye, Egon. What have you got left?
  Egon: Sorry, Venkman. I'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.
• Godzilla:
  • In the original film, Daisuke Serizawa has one after realizing the full weight that rests on his shoulders. One must wonder how Akihiko Hirata felt when playing the guy.
    • In the American version, Steve Martin also appears to have a more subtle one while watching Godzilla destroy Tokyo. "Nothing can save the city now," indeed.
  • Godzilla: Final Wars: Ozaki goes through a brief one after Kazama commits a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): Serizawa seemingly slips into one when Godzilla is seemingly killed. He's scarcely seen directly helping out or contributing much to discussions, save to (justifiably) inform the Monarch-military meeting at Castle Bravo that Godzilla was indeed the Earth's sole line of defence against Ghidorah, until Mothra arrives and Monarch discover that Godzilla is still alive. Madison hits this during the Final Battle with the Titans' battle raging around and threatening to crush or vapourize her, driving her to on unthinking instinct flee to her family's old house in Boston in search of safety.
• In Greedy, Danny McTeague gets a very bad, but brief, BSOD after getting a gutter ball that ruins his chances of getting into the finals of a bowling tournament.
• In a Retcon to the ending of his series, Heisei Rider vs. Showa Rider: Kamen Rider Taisen feat. Super Sentai revealed that Takumi Inui, Kamen Rider Faiz, had been in one since the death of Masato Kusaka, Kamen Rider Kaixa.^note In the original, Kusaka died without anyone knowing.
• Both Hellboy movies.
  • Hellboy experiences one in the first film after Professor Broom dies.
  • And again in the second one where Liz "breaks up" with him (she actually just left to contemplate being pregnant but it seemed that way to Red). This comes not long after he learns how much the public fears and hates him, and he's so distraught that he stops filing his horns down, and picks fights with superiors.
• Howl (2015): Ged apparently goes into one when Jenny turns into a werewolf. He's only able to punch Adrian out when the latter almost takes the werewolf down, but can't do anything to defend himself or others from Jenny. It gets him killed.
• In The Howling, Karen White suffers one her first time back on TV after being attacked by Eddie Quist.
• The Hurt Locker, in following an Army EOD team in Iraq, gives us an escalating scale of BSODs through all the main characters:
  • James is basically a walking BSOD through the entire film, with some moments shoving him deeper in than others. Arguably, he only manages his reboot at the end of the film when he realizes he genuinely enjoys his ridiculously dangerous job despite his wife and son waiting for him at home, and re-enlists to go back.
  • Sandborn is pretty stable, but he eventually swerves right into a BSOD when being around James gets him thinking that if he dies, there isn't anyone in the world who would care except his parents. They don't count.
  • Eldridge goes through several traumatic experiences starting from the very first scene, to the point where he has a counselour popping up around him every now and then. Eldridge actually tells him, sincerely, that he appreciates his efforts and that he feels better having someone to talk to. Then the counselour is killed, and Eldridge is indirectly responsible. Then he's shot. He has precious little sanity left by his last scene.
• The Hunger Games: Katniss after Rue's death.
• The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1:
  • Katniss suffers several of these.
    • In what's left of District 12, because of the sheer number of casualties. 9,085 of District 12's 10,000 residents don't make it out.
    • After Snow leaves hundreds of white roses following the Capitol's unsuccessful raid on District 13.
    • When Peeta attacks and nearly kills her.
    • And before that last one, she completely breaks down when President Snow delivers a Wham Line at the end of their video conversation about being fully aware of District 13's rescue operation of the victors and effectively cuts off their communication with the rescue unit. Understandably, she has every reason to believe that she's lost both Peeta and Gale (who was part of that unit), even though it ends up not being the case.
  • Finnick also suffers from one that's bad enough to leave him in a depressive state for a good chunk of the film (although it's elaborated on less than it was in the book). It mostly stems from a combination of the Capitol having taken Annie, his one true love, captive, and guilt for not going back to save Johanna and Peeta at the end of the Quarter Quell.
• Robert Neville (played by Will Smith) goes into one in I Am Legend after being forced to kill his vampire-infected dog, who had been his only companion for the three years that had elapsed since the beginning of the vampire apocalypse, in self defense. The following shot of Neville sitting in his car after burying the dog's body and blankly staring at the now empty passenger seat really drives home the point. His depression gets to the point that he attempts suicide by vampire. He gets snapped out of it after being saved by a pair of other human survivors.
• Independence Day:
  • President Whitmore undergoes one while on Air Force One, reflecting on his failure to respond to the devastating first wave.
  "We could have evacuated the cities hours ago. That's the advantage of being a fighter pilot. In the Gulf War, we knew what we had to do. It's just...not simple anymore. A lot of people died today. How many didn't have to?"
  • Hiller also has one shortly after arriving in Area 51. After Withmore leaves the control room to see the alien Hiller captured, Hiller tells General Gray that he wants to be transfered back to El Toro as soon as possible, only for Gray to tell him that El Toro was destroyed. It hits Hiller hard because, not only was the base his home away from home, but he told his girlfriend, Jazmine, to go there with Dylan, his stepson.
  • While not quite as severe as other examples, David hits rock bottom when the military launches a nuke against the aliens, against his wishes, and fails. He gets drunk and makes a mess of the place until his father is able to calm him down and inadvertently provide an idea on how to defeat the aliens.
• Into the Storm (2009) has two for our protagonist. Churchill starts having one when the sheer loss of life the war caused starts to get him, and a second one after he loses the election near the end of the movie, he spends the rest of the movie with an empty gaze.
• In Jason's Lyric, the main protagonist, Jason, blames himself for accidentally killing his father that he keeps protecting his troubled brother, Joshua (despite he is aware to have always been taken for granted), at the expense of his happiness with Lyric, out of fear of losing another family member. Later, when Lyric convinces him that it wasn't his fault as well as earning his mom's blessing (for his wish to be with Lyric), he could eventually come to terms that he chooses to be with her and leaves Joshua for good.
• In The Last Laugh, the hero is in this state pretty much continually after getting demoted. The actor, Emil Jannings, is Chewing the Scenery pretty hard in those minutes.
• In The Last Temptation of Christ, Jesus has been rescued from the Cross by his guardian angel (in the form of a little girl). He has married Mary Magdalene, and is raising a family. He has his BSOD when his former disciples reveal his ever-present guardian angel as Satan, having sabotaged his dying for the sins of the world. Fortunately, It Was All Just A Dream or Satan's tempting fantasy.
• In Lawrence of Arabia, the title character has a few of these, most notably, after he's unable to save Daud from quicksand while on his way back to Cairo to report that he took Aquba from the Turkish. The other notable moment, which is after he's captured and beaten by Turkish soldiers, however, is more of a Despair Event Horizon for Lawrence.
• The Lethal Weapon films. Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson), primarily.
• In Little Women's The Film of the Book (more exactly, the classic one of the 40's), Beth has a huge one when she and Amy sneak into the Christmas Party and overhear the Gossipy Hens speculating about Marmee's "plans" of marrying either Meg or Jo off to Laurie. This is parallel to the book scene where Meg is the one who has such an experience and keeps herself cool for a bit, then breaks down crying when she's alone.
• The Lord of the Rings
  • Frodo has one at the near end of The Fellowship of the Ring. Frodo just stares with the Thousand-Yard Stare on the river from the shore while holding the Ring in the open palm of his hand, obiviously traumatized by Gandalf's death, Boromir's corruption, and the Uruk-Hais' sudden attack, and thinking back when he told Gandalf that he wished that nothing of the events would have ever happened. He snaps out of it when he remembers Gandalf's answer and decides to continue to Mordor.
  • Théoden also experience one after watching the Uruk-Hai blast a hole into Helm's Deep with Saruman's gunpowder in The Two Towers.
• Odone in Lorenzo's Oil researches his son's condition, going through page after page of horrific case histories — bizarre, hyperactive behavior, progressive withdrawal, mutism, unsteady gait, paresis, dementia, dysphagia, quadriplegia, seizures, spastic, until only a few words appear and are seared into his soul: — blind, deaf, mute, coma, death. His tragic cries echo through the stairwell, as if his heart is being ripped out of him, as if he himself is dying. Stunning performance by Nick Nolte.
• In Madame Curie, based on the story of Real Life scientist Marie Curie, she goes into one after her husband and research partner Pierre is killed after being run over by a horsecart on the street. Greer Garson based her performance on Eve Curie's description of her mother's behavior; she seemed almost robotic for a time.
• In Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa has one after the group finds the Many Mothers, and she learns that the Green Place has become a barren swamp.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Iron Man 2 Tony goes into one big time, due to him suffering a slow death due to Palladium contamination. It culminates into him throwing a party, completely drunk, while in his Iron Man armor.
  • Thor: Thor goes into one when he discovers that he can no longer lift Mjölnir. Also Loki visiting him and lying to him that their father had died because of what Thor did and that he was banished from Asgard forever. On the plus side, it sparks his Character Development.
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier: Once the mask is knocked off the Winter Soldier's face and Cap sees that it's his old friend Bucky, Cap is frozen in place. He doesn't even put up a fight when the STRIKE team arrests him.
  • Avengers: Infinity War: Several occur:
    • When Star-Lord hears Thanos say that he killed Gamora, his BSOD causes him to start beating him with his gun even knowing it might wake him from his trance, which it does, foiling the Avengers' plan to take the Infinity Gauntlet from him.
    • Cap has it happen again at the end of this film, when Bucky, Sam, T'Challa, and Wanda disintegrate in front of him. To put it in his own terms: "Oh, god."
    • Tony has another one, too. When Peter disintegrates in Tony's arms, just moments after telling him how sorry he is and begging for Tony to save him, Tony can do nothing but grab futilely for his ashes. Made worse by the fact that Dr. Strange, Drax, Mantis, and Star Lord all disintegrate around him, too, leaving him alone with Nebula on Titan — Tony is basically living his greatest fear. In the moments after everyone vanishes, Tony just sits there on his knees, practically catatonic.
    • Following on from this, Avengers: Endgame suggests that pretty much everyone responds this way to the Snap, one way or another. Thor definitely does, and spends the next five years in a booze-y mess, refusing to do anything other than eat, drink, and play Fortnite. Captain America insists everyone has to move on, but it's never shown if he's actually managed to do anything in all that time, while Black Widow tries to keep busy, to no avail.
• By the end of the second installment of The Matrix film trilogy, Neo averts a BSOD at the revelation that there have been previous Ones and that the Prophecy was just another Machine control. But when Morpheus hears a part of this news ( combined with his hovercraft being destroyed moments later), he doubts himself, becoming nearly ineffective throughout the last movie of the trilogy, regaining his faith when the Machines stop their relentless attack on Zion at the last minute, indicating that Neo was intervening elsewhere.
• Rusty Dennis has one at the end of Mask, when she realizes that Rocky isn't just sleeping. She wanders into the kitchen in shock and proceeds to smash things in her grief.

• Metallica: Through the Never has roadie Trip sent to deliver gas to a truck carrying a duffel bag. When Trip finally finds the truck, he finds the driver sitting in the driver's seat, staring at nothing. He doesn't react when Trip bangs on the windows. Trip grabs the duffel bag to deliver it himself.
• An early cinematic example occurs in Metropolis when Freder collapses and has a four-minute apocalyptic vision after he (apparently) discovers (Robot) Maria is in league with his father, Joh.
• When Atreyu meets the Rock Biter in The Neverending Story, The Nothing has already claimed much of Fantasia, including the Teeny Weeny and the Night Hob, whom the Rock Biter befriended at the beginning of the movie. Even though he knew fighting The Nothing was beyond his ability, the Rock Biter is crushed that he couldn't help them.
  Rock Biter: They look like big, good, strong hands, don't they? I always thought that's what they were.
• In Next of Kin (1982), Linda suffers one while taking shelter in a nearby roadside café after killing the Big Bad and fleeing the old retirement home. She copes by building a little wall out of sugar cubes.
• Night of the Living Dead (1968): Barbra has one after seeing her brother killed by a zombie, then being chased across the countryside by said zombie. She recovers almost the whole film later, when her brother leads the mob of zombies that kill her.
• Not Okay: After two random guys shoot firecrackers at a rally, Rowan (a school shooting survivor) has a PTSD attack and is sent to the hospital.
• Ditto the Korean thriller Oldboy (2003), where the main character BSODs hardcore (AND dumps core, and probably files a cosmic bug report) when he finds out he's been manipulated into sleeping with his own daughter as karmic payback for talking too much about a schoolmate who got his own sister pregnant.
• Pacific Rim: "Chasing the rabbit", as it is called, where a pilot gets distracted by a memory and loses focus with reality. Mako almost vaporizes the entire facility when she gets attached to a traumatic childhood memory.
• In The Passion of the Christ an emotionally exhausted Mary embraces Jesus after he has been taken down from the cross ... and is too spent to do anything but give the thousand yard stare.
• Pirates of the Caribbean:
  • Barbossa (arguably this rather than a Villainous Breakdown, given his brief stint as a "hero") has one in the third movie, after his plan to save the pirates by releasing Calypso fails miserably. Upon seeing the maelstrom that the Pearl is forced to weather, he just stands on the deck staring at it, before Elizabeth snaps him out of it by reminding that he's needed at the helm.
  • Jack also gets one when just as he prepares to stab the heart, Davy Jones fatally wounds Will
  • Norrington in the second movie is in grips of one, because he lost his ship in pursuit of Jack Sparrow.
• Pitch Black. When Riddick tries to make Fry leave Imam and Jack behind on the dead planet or he'll leave all of them she calls him out on his manipulation, but breaks down into an unresponsive, crying mess in front of Riddick when she realizes he's dead serious, torn between trying to save herself or die trying to save the others.
• In Predator, the character Mac suffers one after seeing Blain get killed by the Predator (and actually seeing the Predator for the first time). Only Dutch can reboot him by yelling "Sergeant!".
• In the Bollywood movie Pukar, the main character, Jai, goes through this after having been wrongfully accused of treason and facing court martial. Made all the worse that his girlfriend has left him and his family has been shamed. Ironic, that the only one listening is the person who put him in that predicament (though she never thought it would go so far) and her father. He gets better.
• Rambo has one at the end of First Blood when he recounts his traumatic experiences in Vietnam to Col. Trautman.
• In Ran, Hidetora has one for most of the film after he sees his sons fighting over his domain after he retired.
• Shilo has a fairly extensive one by the end of Repo! The Genetic Opera.
• In Return to Oz, Dorothy manages to endure a lot, including the destruction of virtually everything she ever loved about Oz, but with a lot of hastily-revised plans and some helpful friends, she remains stable. However, when the Nome King transforms the Scarecrow into an ornament and abandons her in a chamber deep inside his palace, Dorothy finally bursts into tears. After a Pet the Dog moment from the Nome King and then a Kick the Dog moment, she falls into a period of despair which she finally recovers when she beats the Nome King at his own game.
• Rocky III has Rocky fall into one after both his humiliating defeat to Clubber Lang as well as Mickey's subsequent fatal heart attack, causing him to completely lose his fighting spirit for a good portion of the film until Adrian is able to rouse him out of it.
• Saving Private Ryan:
  • Upham gets one, being only able to walk among the carnage. The Germans realize his condition and never shoot him, even though he has loads of bullets around his neck. He gets over the BSOD only after The Cavalry arrives.
  • Captain Miller has one upon arriving on the beaches of Normandy. What's even more interesting is you get to see it through his eyes as it happens.
• Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List breaks down towards the end of the film after thinking that even if he had saved the lives of about 1,100 Jews, he might have been able to save more had he used his money wisely.
• In Shaun of the Dead Shaun suffers from this after beating a zombie to a bloody pulp with his best friend Ed. Ed seems completely oblivious to this while eating a Cornetto
• In the Korean action movie Shiri, the main character has a bit of a BSOD when he discovers his girlfriend is in fact a North Korean assassin.
• James Bond has one in Skyfall after he's declared dead after being shot and falling off a bridge during a mission. He debauches himself most thoroughly, but he's clearly depressed.
  • In Spectre, when Franz Oberhauser/Ernst Stavro Blofeld tells Bond that he's taken Madeleine Swann hostage and left her somewhere in the building which is elaborately rigged with explosives. Blofeld then gives James two options: either die in the explosion while risking his life to save Swann, or to save himself but leave Swann to die and live with the pain and guilt of not saving her for the rest of his life. Bond takes the first option.
• Sleepy Hollow (1999) used it twice, first when Ichabod first sees the "monster" ("It was a headless horseman. But it was a headless horseman. No, you must believe me. It was a horseman, a dead one. Headless.") and then at the finale: the Horseman brings Lady Van Tassel with him to the underworld, her hand is stuck at the roots of the "tree portal". The hand closes. Ichabod promptly faints.
• In Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot is so horrified at what he and the Hebrews have become in their time in Sodom, culminating in his murder of Astaroth for seducing his daughters, that when he tells Queen Bera that if a murderer were brought before him in his capacity as a judge, he would have them jailed to await trial, he offers no resistance when she acts on his suggestion and instead robotically follows his jailers to a cell to be clapped in irons.
• In SpaceCamp, Katherine (played by Lea Thompson) has one of these after finding the manual override switch. Katherine didn't know whether to pull the switch so they could save their camp counselor Andie (played by Kate Capshaw), or not pull it and allow mission control to bring them back to Earth on auto-pilot (they were low on oxygen). It eventually takes Kevin (Tate Donovan) who previously "didn't ask to be responsible" to do just that and pull the switch to rescue Andie.
• In Stage Door, Terry suffers one right before she goes on stage opening night when she finds out Kaye killed herself because she wanted Terry's part. However, because The Show Must Go On, she pulls herself together enough to give a great performance.
• Star Trek
  • Kirk, Scotty and Janice Rand suffer one in Star Trek: The Motion Picture after witnessing the blood-curdling screams of two victims of a transporter accident. Kirk can only utter out a "My God" while Rand turns away, obviously shaken.
    • The line "Enterprise, what we got back didn't live long... fortunately.", delivered in a voice numb with shock, indicates that the transporter operator at the other end was also suffering one.
  • In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Kirk's BSOD over Spock's death somewhat continues into the third movie, wherein he snaps out of it and starts to kick Klingon ass and take names.
  • Kirk has one in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock after David is killed. You know Kirk is out of it when he missed his own chair.
  • He has a very brief one in after the assassination of the Klingon chancellor in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Having apparently fired on the chancellor's ship, the Klingon battlecruiser recovers, rights itself, and prepares to retaliate on the unshielded Enterprise with photon torpedoes. Kirk just stares slack-jawed at the viewscreen for a full ten seconds — likely he's trying to process the fact that Enterprise seems to have just fired the first shots of an interstellar war.
  • Star Trek: Generations. Done as only Patrick Stewart can deliver. After receiving word of his brother and nephew's deaths, he keeps a stiff upper lip for much of the movie, but in the immediate aftermath is very curt with his senior staff and delegates to Riker many of the duties regarding the observatory rescue operation he would normally handle himself. A typical Red Shirt might not notice anything wrong with Picard other than maybe he's having a bad day (which is both true and a massive understatement), but Riker and the others gather some inkling that something is very wrong. It eventually gets even worse when Soran says something that calls back to the event of their deaths ("Time is the fire in which we burn.")
  • Star Trek Into Darkness. Kirk suffers two of them, first when Christopher Pike strips Kirk of his command of the Enterprise and second when Harrison kills Pike during the attack on Starfleet Headquarters, causing him to break down into tears.
• Star Wars:
  • The Empire Strikes Back, Luke suffers a BSOD after Darth Vader's notorious reveal. Which brings us to...
  • In Revenge of the Sith, Obi-Wan Kenobi slowly falls into one as he and Yoda see the full extent of the massacre in the Jedi Temple. He's tipped over the edge when he sees a hologram proving that Anakin is responsible but, being stoic and determined, manages to keep going and fight the man he's loved as a brother. He finally lets his emotions come out after he's defeated Vader and, although he keeps going, it's clear from that point onwards that he's tipped over the Despair Event Horizon. Even nineteen years later, it's clear that he hasn't fully recovered.
  • Yoda has a mild one as well, when he senses the deaths of almost all of his fellow Jedi during the Jedi Purge (as strong in the Force as he is, he no doubt sensed Anakin's fall to the Dark Side as well). He drops his gimer stick cane, falls to his knees and clutches his heart. Really, it's enough to give the VIEWER a Heroic BSOD!
  • Before causing (or at least helping to cause) the two above noted examples, Anakin falls into one of his own in Attack of the Clones after his mother Dies Wide Open in his arms. He is practically catatonic — for about five seconds. Then he flies into a rage and proceeds to commit genocide against the tribe who killed Shmi (including the completely innocent WOMEN AND CHILDREN!).
  • Between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, Luke suffers a huge one after his nephew, Kylo Ren, destroyed his new Jedi Order after he turned to the Dark Side of the Force and wiped out all of his other students. Blaming himself over what happened, Luke soon went into hiding on the planet Ach-To, totally severing contact with his friends and relatives.
• In Stranger Than Fiction, when Karen Eiffel learns that the subject of her latest book, Harold Crick, is a real person that she's going to kill via her writing, she becomes horrified at what she was about to do, and the fact that she may have inadvertently killed other real people with previous books. Later, when she does type out her planned death for Harold, she has a complete breakdown.
• In St. Vincent (2014), when Vincent gets home from the hospital, his answering machine is filled with messages from the facility where his wife was being cared for. He can figure out the subtext of the messages and breaks down.
• In Superman: The Movie, our hero finds... oh wait... anyway, he finds Lois dead, carries her body to the ground, shakes his head, and screams to the heavens!!! He snaps out of it to reverse time by reversing the Earth's rotation to save her life.
• Sarah Connor Blue Screens in Terminator 2: Judgment Day upon seeing a Terminator very much identical to the one that persistently tried to kill her in the previous film. Complete with slow motion, deer in the headlights look, and catatonia, which contrasts nicely with her put-on catatonia earlier in the day after she's shown photos of the Terminator walking around a shopping mall. She couldn't even fight back the orderlies who are subduing her — the same orderlies who were getting their asses kicked by her a few minutes ago. She has another later in the film when she looks into Miles Dyson's terrified face and can't bring herself to kill him. She realizes then that she's become a Terminator.
• In James Cameron's Titanic (1997), Captain Edward Smith has a mental breakdown following the ship striking the iceberg and has to be strongly encouraged by one of his officers to give the order to abandon ship. This scene is historically accurate as the real-life Captain Smith actually did suffer a mental breakdown and was only briefly brought out of his stupor by his first officer shouting at him and asking if they should start putting women and children into the lifeboats.
• Maverick in Top Gun likely takes the cake for having a BSOD in the middle of a two vs six aerial dogfight. After flying into an enemy fighter's jet wash, he is reminded of his friend's death after which he mentally shuts down for a few seconds. However, being that aerial combat is a fast, furious affair that requires quick reflexes and a pilot's full attention, it is miraculous that our protagonist wasn't instantly blown out of the sky.
• Toy Soldiers: After Joey is killed by Cali's soldiers while trying to free his friends, Billy sinks in deep depression, almost missing their chance that they planned so hard for.
• Sam from the Transformers Film Series suffers one in the second film when Optimus dies. And again in the third film when he sees the Autobots' ship destroyed by Starscream and believes the Autobots are dead. Also, various bystanders are shown to be standing speechless or sitting dejectedly after Chicago's invasion by the Decepticons and even Epps and NEST soldiers give up and declare the fight over. They fortunately snap out of it when Optimus and the rest of the Autobots come back.
• Done pretty well for a comedy in Tropic Thunder, when extreme method actor Kirk Lazarus is called out for his methods, used because he's afraid of what's deep inside, by a rather insane Tugg Speedman (who's suffered his own BSOD after accidentally killing a panda, then supposedly "found a family"). It takes the Only Sane Man, resident geek, and Promoted Fanboy (of sorts) Kevin to shake Kirk out of it...and, well, he attempted to do so with Speedman.
• Su in True Legend suffers a catastrophic crash midway through the movie as his wife dies shortly before being rescued. Long story short, he doesn't pull out of it, thus becoming the mythic Beggar Su.
• United 93's entire cast (besides the passengers aboard the titular flight) suffers one after United 175 smashes into the South Tower.
• John "Scottie" Ferguson gets one of these in Vertigo that lasts long enough for him to be put in a mental hospital after the woman he loves is killed. She comes back later.
• Pink has one in The Wall, when he finds out about his wife's affair. This is subsequently represented by a very freudian animated sequence, accompanied by the song "What Shall We Do Now?"
• At the end of Warrior King, Tony Jaa has a pretty epic Heroic BSOD when he sees the skeleton of his father's elephant (which he has been trailing all film) behind the throne of the big bad and collapses to the ground, getting kicked in the head repeatedly while he reboots, before unleashing the mother of all Unstoppable Rages on every last motherfucker in the room.
• Both Wellington and Napoleon are in BSOD mode pretty hard after the titular battle in Waterloo. Wellington has won the battle but at tremendous cost to his army, and only after having seen most of his aides and officers killed. Napoleon meanwhile is broken by his loss, and the knowledge that dismal exile is the only possible fate for him now.
• Willy Wonka near the end of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. After watching the whole tour slowly wittle away one by one, he's left with only Charlie. However, he already knows that he drank Fizzie-Lifting Drinks earlier, and that also disqualifies him from inheriting his factory. Wonka is completely dejected as he checks his mail, not believing any child would be fit to succeed him, and he even says the day was a waste of time.
• X-Men: Days of Future Past:
  • What Xavier has been in since the end of X-Men: First Class. A lot has happened in the Time Skip between the two movies, resulting in the deaths of most of the characters from First Class who don't appear here. It's also stated that Charles lost many of his students and teachers to conscription and the Vietnam War, effectively closing down his newly budding school.
  • Wolverine also has one when he sees Stryker, and his is more like a PTSD flashback.
• Youth (2017): Xiaoping's experiences from the war leave her catatonic for a long time, not talking or responding.

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