Laughing Mad / Video Games

• Alan Wake's American Nightmare has Poets of the Fall's "The Happy Song," the Villain Song of Serial Killer Mr. Scratch, wherein an Ax-Crazy singer punctuates his open admissions that he's "a psycho" with husky chuckles or shrieky laughter depending on whether his Evil Gloating takes the form of a mock-conspiratorial whisper or an enthusiastic scream.
• Adele from Arc Rise Fantasia took finding out that she was an Unlucky Childhood Friend very badly.
• Baten Kaitos Origins: The Stinger shows an insane and thoroughly broken Geldoblame limping back Alfard where the remaining senators name him emperor as they all believe that he the only person left fit to rule. It culminates with Geldoblame demanding that Georg is brought to him and ends with new emperor of Alfard laughing hysterically as the events of the first game are set in motion.
• BlazBlue showcases Jin Kisaragi's slow descent into madness, and once he finally finds Ragna the Bloodedge, he completely snaps and starts speaking to him in a rather disturbing manner. Then there's Arakune, who ends as many as half of his dialogues with raving Voice of the Legion laughter. Nu-13 doesn't seem like the laughing type, but has been known to cackle admirably on occasion. And then there's Terumi...goddamn. All in all, the BlazBlue world could probably do with sedatives in the water supply.
• Common in Borderlands 2. Goliath enemies who've had their helmets shot off will butcher their teammates while laughing uproariously, while playable Psycho Krieg, who has grave difficulty interacting with the world in non-buzz-axe ways, has quite the selection of deranged laughter himself.
• Breath of Fire IV's Fou-lu starts laughing after realising that Mami was used to fuel the Hex Cannon, which is what ultimately breaks him and makes him decide to kill all those bastard humans.
• In Cave Story's Bonus Dungeon, the boss Ballos states that when his magic went wild and he killed everyone in the kingdom, he could only stand where he was and laugh.
• In City of Heroes, one of the Enemy Chatter for the Freakshow is simply a manic laugh, which was demonstrated by one Freak in the original trailer.
• Ripper Roo from Crash Bandicoot. Experiments by Dr. Cortex turned him into a raving, laughing, straitjacket-wearing lunatic. All of his dialogue consists of insane laughter, with subtitles to translate. He also has a tendency to play with explosives, despite this usually resulting in his defeat.
• In one Cthulhu Mythos based MUD the status of your Sanity Meter is represented by various adjectives, with the adjective varying depending upon how high or low it is. Well, except for when your sanity hits rock bottom. At that point, the adjective is replaced by "HAHAHAHAHA!!!", with each "HA" being a different color.
• In Cyberpunk 2077, one of the endgame perks of the Technical tree is "Edgerunner", marked with a picture of David Martinez. Aside from allowing you to exceed your maximum cyberware capacity at the cost of health it also allows you to enter a temporary berserk state, during which V starts cackling maniacally.
• The Jester class in Darkest Dungeon will go from The Hyena to this trope if he undergoes an affliction, as he clearly goes off his rocker by laughing constantly and/or being interrupted with sobbing.
• Jedah Dohma maniacally laughs as he watches the apocalypse in his ending in Capcom Fighting Evolution… unwittingly distracting him from Dante having arrived to kill him.
• Dawn of War: Chaos Space Marines and Imperial Guard Psykers are inclined towards fits of raucous laughter audible to enemies as the Warp seeps in and out of their brain. The psykers, by the way, are with the good guys.
• Adam the Clown in Dead Rising laughs all the way through his monologue when he recalls his audience being eaten by zombies.
  • After bring defeated, he laughs and falls. Onto his still running chainsaws. The laughter doesn't stop until he's dead...
    • And it doesn't just get weaker and weaker. It gets deeper and slower.
  • Brent "Slappy" Ernst of Dead Rising 2 also engages in this during his boss fight, such as when performing a fire spin and/or shouting things like "I'm a little teapot!"
• Pokey Minch seemingly loses his mind in the final battle of EarthBound (1994), blithely releasing the lock on Giygas (purportedly his 'boss'). This renders Giygas unable to stem the tide of his power, which threatens to consume the entire universe. Pokey addresses the player to admit he's afraid. And laughs.
  • In the direct sequel Mother 3, the team confronts a decrepit version of Pokey, who has sent his robotic minion to bring forth the Dark Dragon. Until this point, it's unclear whether or not he has any idea what the Dark Dragon — a godlike being that fulfills the heart's desire of whoever summons it — will do if that summoner literally has no heart. Turns out, Pokey has gradually come to the same conclusion:
    "If the dragon wakes up, it might end up destroying everything and extinguishing all life. Even so ............ahaha aha ahahahahahaha!!"
• The first sign that Alex's hold on reality in Eternal Darkness may be none too steady is the way her sobs when she first sees her grandfather's dead body are shot through with thin veins of laughter.
  • Maximillian Roivas hits this trope for brief intervals in his monster autopsy narrations, as well.
• If Ryuji Yamazaki is feeling jovial, you know the walls are about to be painted red.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Kefka Palazzo from Final Fantasy VI is the partial Trope Namer, as his final boss music is titled "Dancing Mad". Kefka was driven insane from being the first person to be infused with magic. He's now an omnicidal Straw Nihilist laughing all the way. To take this up a step, he actually does laugh quite a bit — and his laugh has its own sound clip.
  • In Final Fantasy VII, one of the first signs that Sephiroth went mad upon learning about his supposedly being the last Ancient is chuckling dementedly as Cloud/Zack entered the lab he was researching inside.
  • Kuja in Final Fantasy IX went Laughing Mad as soon as he learns from Garland's disembodied spirit that he'll die soon.
  • Lampshaded two times in Final Fantasy X, first when Tidus and Yuna talk about the importance of being happy and burst onto a cheery, loud laughter with no apparent reason. When they turn around they see all others staring them with a weird look on their faces. When questioned, Wakka quietly says: "We thought that you lost your minds." Done second time in Thunder Planes, where Rikku - who's deathly afraid of thunder — keep laughing nervously as they walk, prompting Tidus to comment on it: "Heh heh, heh. You're giving me the creeps!"
• In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, if Byleth chose the Blue Lions, when Dimitri discovers the Flame Emperor's true identity, he's reduced to cackling with an unhinged expression on his face. Then he goes killing everyone in the room while trying to rip Edelgard's head off.
  • He can deliver another one after becoming a ruthless killer after the 5 year timeskip. His reaction to Byleth saying they couldn't watch him torture an enemy general, and instead gave him a Mercy Kill, is to laugh manically about it.
• Garfield: Caught in the Act: The final level of the game, Season Finale, has Garfield face off against The Glitch, who already has a noticeable cackle. As the fight goes on and The Glitch gets hit by his own beams, he begins to cackle more and more. On his final hit, he's cackling as much as he rains down shots on Garfield.
• Father Grigori, the Zombie-slaughtering Badass Preacher of Half-Life 2 often breaks down into short bursts of maniacal laughter due to him being driven to insanity after the citizens of Ravenholm have become zombies.
• Daniella from Haunting Ground. She does this in cutscenes in a very creepy manner and at a certain stage of insanity while chasing you.
  • Fiona too, in the worst ending.
• The trademark sound of the Heaven Smiles in Killer7. They introduce themselves with a little chuckle, and when they attack, they erupt into one of the most psychotic cackles ever recorded. Even when they die, they go nuts with laughter. They also happen to share this trait with their creator, Kun Lan.
• The King of Fighters: Iori Yagami's trademark win pose is to hold his head while laughing uproariously. Considering his Orochi heritage can mess with his sanity, this definitely qualifies.
• Kirby:
  • In Kirby Super Star, Marx is constantly laughing as an obvious sign that he's jumped off the deep end. In the original Super Star, it's a small giggle, while in Ultra, it's a stream of chuckles. The far more unstable Marx Soul in the remake's True Arena amps this up with insane, distorted cackling.
  • Drawcia in Kirby: Canvas Curse spends most of the time making creepy, high-pitched laughs. In her Soul form, she constantly shifts between unstable laughing and loud screeches.
  • Soul of Sectonia in Kirby: Triple Deluxe. Her Noblewoman's Laugh turns into crazed, high-pitched giggling after she goes through an intense Villainous Breakdown. Paintra also does this, sharing the same creepy, high-pitched laugh used by Drawcia.
  • President Haltmann in Kirby: Planet Robobot usually lets out a loud, hearty laugh whenever a phase transition occurs in his fight. He also laughs constantly whenever using some of his attacks in the third and fourth phases.
  • Hyness from Kirby Star Allies is easily the most insane villain in the series to date and stresses that fact with about half of his battle noises being crazed laughter and giggles, the other half being incoherent screeching and snorting.
  • Parallel Nightmare of Super Kirby Clash constantly laughs during his fights as part of his Smug Snake personality. He even continues this in his Revenge form, though it's more of like a sign that he's lost it rather than him still toying with Team Kirby.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: Ganondorf laughs in complete madness when he sees King Daphnes touch the Triforce before he could and wish for Hyrule to be washed away. Permanently.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Zant after breaking down over the course of the battle against him.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Master Kogha at the end of the fight against him. Maybe not as good an example since he’s harder to take seriously, unlike Ganondorf and Zant, but still.
• Mega Man:
  • Dr. Weil from the Mega Man Zero series qualifies, especially when taking into account the relevation of his survival from Ragnarok's attack and his reaction after Zero defeated him the first time.
  • Serpent from Mega Man ZX qualifies, considering his reaction to being absorbed by Model W's core.
    • Prometheus gets a pretty good one in Advent after he kills the Albert decoy.
    • Siarnaq has this in the original Japanese release. It was changed to match the rest of his Creepy Monotone in the English dub.
  • Zero from the Mega Man X series (while he was still an Irregular, a.k.a. "Maverick" in the international releases) also had bouts of the trope in the Japanese release, made especially apparent when he was beating Sigma to a pulp when the latter was at his mercy. Downplayed to inconsistent Narm levels in the English dub.
• Metal Gear:
  • Done with Laughing Octopus in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Since she was mind raped and turned into a psychopathic killer as a teenage girl, she never stopped laughing, even though her memories were constantly torturing her. She laughs throughout the entire boss fight and falls down laughing when she is fatally shot, making her a quite creepy encounter and not funny at all. At one very brief moment of relative clarity before dying she even says "No, nothing is funny. I shouldn't be laughing."
  • Also in Guns of the Patriots, Ed of Meryl's Rat Patrol 1 group, after the SOP system was locked down due to it refusing Liquid's DNA, went Laughing Mad.
  • Raiden goes through this in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance after embracing his Jack the Ripper persona prior to his battle with Monsoon. To see the previously calm and collected Raiden gleefully chop apart three enemy cyborgs after turning off his pain inhibitors is nothing short of chilling.
• Neverwinter Nights 2:
  • Ribsmasher, a batshit insane monk in Storm of Zehir.^note He made a couple brief appearances in the original campaign but turned into an Ascended Extra in the second expansion. In literally every line he has, large chunks of scenery get chewed, and they all involve raucous laughter and/or smashing ribs.
  • The Manic Psychotic voiceset does this a lot as well. Including when he dies, which takes the usually hilariously hammy voicing into creepy territory.
• Iggy Koopa, one of the Koopalings, is depicted as Laughing Mad in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Given that the (English) post defeat narrative on Iggy in Super Mario World described him as "demented," this shouldn't come as a surprise.
• In OMORI, Sweetheart goes into shock after being rejected twice by Hero, before suddenly giving her trademark "OHOHOHOHOHOHO~!". Her overwhelming narcissism leads her to conclude that Hero must be jealous of her.
• In Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, this occurs in the Ruby remake Omega Ruby. Maxie goes from being calm to going insane due to having acquired the Red Orb he needs to put Groudon under his control. He first beats Archie, and after you beat Maxie, he refuses to back down and uses the Red Orb against Tabitha's pleas to not do it. After Groudon awakens and approaches Sootopolis City, Maxie hysterically laughs, even proudly informing his grunts his plan is complete...only to realize that Groudon is not obeying Maxie's commands, which forces Maxie to join Archie's plan to stop Groudon's attempt to destroy the Pokemon world with its Drought.
• Pokémon Legends: Arceus: In the post-game quest, Volo suddenly lets out a belt of laughter as he and the player are examining some old ruins on Mt. Coronet. He claims it's just him being overcome with emotion. It's not.
• Wheatley from Portal 2 has a fit of this when he's attached to GLaDOS's chassis. The programming of the mainframe drives him mad with power, which causes him to become awfully sadistic. His bout of laughter also classifies as Evil Laugh, and marks his Face–Heel Turn.
• Kubikiri Basara from the Samurai Shodown series. His post-mortem insanity has him hunting down Minazuki Zankuro and giggling all the way.
• Revya from Soul Nomad & the World Eaters gets a pretty good laugh in the bad ending of the Demon Path.
• In String Tyrant Pygmalie does this in her first dialogue with the player. It's another hint that she's not all there.
• In Suikoden II, the main villain, Luca Blight is known to often punctuate his horrific actions with a horse like psycho and Evil Laugh. However, when he is finally near death, he lets out a speal of insane laughter filling up more than 3 dialogue boxes that can't be classified as anything but this.
• In Super Paper Mario, a Sammer Guy, appropriately named Laughing X-Naut, laughs a long, loud laugh as the Void in his dimension fully matures, destroying his entire universe. He laughs all the way until his inevitable annihilation.
  • Dimentio also has this personality, being a deranged, evil jester who casually jokes as he tries to kill the heroes and eventually hatches his own plot to destroy the world.
• Super Smash Bros.: While Master Hand has a calm Evil Laugh before he fights the player, Crazy Hand lets out a mad cackle.
• Zagi, from Tales of Vesperia. About 50% of his dialogue is maniacal laughter, 25% is about how much he wants to "carve Yuri's name into his blood", and the remaining 25% is utter nonsense.
• In Telepath Tactics, Climax Boss Archos does this as part of his Last Words.
• Paprika from Them's Fightin' Herds is so happy and insane, she can't even properly speak, so half of her "dialouge" is her cheerfully laughing like a lunatic.
• In the anarch and independent endings of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Sebastian LaCroix gets down with the best of them when he realizes that the MacGuffin he just opened is not so much a 'gateway to infinite power' as a 'gateway to horrible burning pain' and he's been played for an Unwitting Pawn.
• Lezard Valeth from Valkyrie Profile should not be forgotten. When he lost all his apparent sanity at the end of the game, he's really scary. His break mode is epic, too.
• Squid, the antagonist from Will You Snail?, is an unstable AI that will sometimes dip into outright deranged laughter.
  Squid: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! Sorry, I just felt like laughing all of a sudden.
• Albedo in Xenosaga. His first freak-out, back in the past, involves him interfacing with U-DO and laughing like a maniac. Considering he looks about nine years old at the time, this is profoundly disturbing.
  • Or that he's laughing while ripping himself apart.

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