Woah, calm down, dude.
"Arrrrrrgggg! You’re making! Me! BEAT! UP! GRASS!"
— Rocket, Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Sometimes characters get angry enough to start abusing things, and if they're hopping mad, start jumping on it. This is a subtrope to Percussive Therapy, where the character is trying to vent their frustrations by destroying something, only punching and kicking aren't enough. Assuming the character talks while they stomp, see Punctuated! For! Emphasis!.
The item and the frustrations are sometimes linked, sometimes not. Compare Enmity with an Object when the character hates a particular item.
Compare: Shoot the Television, That Satisfying "Crunch!", Ring-Ring-CRUNCH!, Appliance Defenestration, Angry Item Tapping, and A Glass in the Hand.
Examples:
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Advertising
- One of the adverts in the advertising campaign Never Say No To Panda, the panda, angry that a potential customer has refused to buy Panda Cheese, pushes over the customer's full shopping trolley, kicks and then jumps on the items.
- In a commercial for Snickers Cruncher, a sidewalk vendor was selling small wind-up dolls that said annoying phrases like "I think your sister's pretty" and "Not if you were the last man on Earth". People could buy one for a dollar and stomp on it to relieve frustrations.
Anime & Manga
- In episode 2 of Nyaruko: Crawling with Love!, before entering a smuggler's hideout, Nyarko offers Mahiro a little black box which she claims contains an engagement ring. Mahiro takes the box, looks at it for a second, then throws it to the ground and starts stomping, to Nyarko's (comedic) shock. She quickly retrieves the box and says it actually contains a protective charm to keep him safe while they're in enemy territory; Mahiro chastises her, saying she should have said that in the first place.
- A furious Okuyasu stamps the bejesus out of Red Hot Chili Pepper in Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Diamond Is Unbreakable after the latter taunts him about his slowness (in more ways than one) only to discover that despite its name, The Hand is still more than capable of dishing out pain with its rapid-fire stomping, and that despite his notorious dimness and impulsive nature, Okuyasu still has flashes of brilliance.
"I may have missed, but I still scraped through space-time so I could instantly transfer. Did you forget? I've got you now, you little shit!"
- In one episode of the Little Lulu anime, Tubby does this with a bouquet of flowers that Lulu gave him earlier, once the others discovered the bouquet.
- Played for either angst and tragedy in Tekkaman Blade. Blade just defeated Evil and it is revealed that Evil (and by extension the other Radam Tekkamen) was being infected by a Radam parasite all along to make him murderous and evil. Shinya died as himself afterwards, and in extreme frustration that the bug was the cause of his brother's madness and that he could've saved his family without killing them, Takaya angrily stomps on the bug dead.
- In Sword Art Online, when Kirito initially discovers that the Holy Stone of Returning Souls only works within ten seconds, this is his reaction.
- Parodied in GTO: The Early Years. When Itou realizes her friends invited a prettier girl than her to the party, she stomps on a "stomping pad" in frustration.
- In Cross Ange, after crash-landing on an island following her Para-mail failing, Ange checks the engine only to find it clogged with a bunch of underwear. She finds a bra that she recognizes as Hilda's, realizing she was the one who sabotaged her and furiously begins stomping it.
Asian Animation
- Boonie Bears: In the first episode of Season 4, Logger Vick gets frustrated after being unable to cut down a cherry blossom tree with his chainsaw, and he angrily stomps the chainsaw to the point that its blade becomes deformed.
- Happy Heroes: In Season 4 episode 35, Lightbulb Jr. gets fed up with Smart S. and stomps on a poster of him.
- In the Motu Patlu episode "Future Camera", John the Don angrily grabs the future-predicting camera from Motu and stomps on it a few times when he and the others realize that the treasure that the camera showed in Ghasitaram's possession is actually fake jewelry that Ghasitaram lets people rent.
- In episode 21 of Nana Moon, Mr. Satellite gets angry at his magic handheld mirror for calling him "handsome" (which causes Satellite to transform into a less appealing Chinese chess piece form) and throws it into the distance. The mirror conks Les on the head, and Les angrily stomps on the mirror for hurting her until it asks that she stop doing so and points out it meant no harm.
- In Pleasant Goat Fun Class: The Earth Carnival episode 26, Wolffy tries to go outside into the haze while wearing a face mask. When that does nothing to make the haze less harmful, Wolffy gets frustrated and stomps the mask on the ground.
Comic Books
- De Mesmaeker once did it to a phone in a burst of rage after unsuccessfully trying to call the Dupuis office for hours, due to Gaston Lagaffe blocking the line with his antics.
- Smurfette in The Smurfs comic book story "The Reporter Smurf" stomps her blue dress to death when Reporter catches wind of the dress she planned to surprise her fellow Smurfs with from outside Tailor's shop and leaks the information to the press.
Comic Strips
- One early Sunday Peanuts comic has Lucy joining Charlie Brown and Schroeder in a game of marbles. Problems start to arise when she has trouble using the shooter. She gets so frustrated with it, that in a fit of rage, she some how manages to stomp all the marbles flat!
Fan Works
- Tales of the Undiscovered Swords: Konotegashiwa does this twice, first on the pile of Shokudaikiri's fish-and-cream pasta he flips to the floor after Shokudaikiri shuts down his Straw Vegetarian speech and later on a bag of gummies he's using to lure Hōchō into joining his vegan cause after Yagen points out the gummies contain gelatin.
Films — Live-Action
- In Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Rocket resorts to this when Groot and Drax guilt-trip him into fetching Peter and Gamora to stand up to Ronan one more time. At that point, he was ready to give up and run to the other end of the universe.
- A more calculated and cathartic version appears in Office Space. After the main characters quit Initech, they steal the constantly malfunctioning office printer, take it out to a field and beat it to death while the Geto Boys "Still" plays in the background.
- In Out of Time, Denzel Washington's character does this to his cell phone in order not to speak with his Jerkass boss. He even spouts a variation of the "Can you hear me now?" line while doing it.
- In Parenthood, when Gary trashes his deadbeat father's office, he makes a point of stomping on a picture of him with his new wife and kids.
- Wild in the Streets: After a young girl calls 24-year-old Max "old," he takes out his anger by stomping on a crawdad.
- Electra Glide in Blue: After one man is knocked off his motorcycle during a Chase Scene, he angrily stomps on it.
- Most Likely to Murder (2018): When Sheriff Perkins finally gets his hands on his wife's Home Porn Movie from high school, he plays it on his TV and is so horrified by what he sees that he flings the TV to the ground, stomps on it, then rips the tape from the cassette.
- Moonshot: Sophie Stomped at Walt Phone for sneaking aboard the Spacecraft and to avoid getting caught.
- In The Air Up There, Nyaga throws his baseball cap down and stomps on it when he's displeased with how the basketball game is going.
- In The Bar 2017: Elena Stomped at Nacho's Hard Drive Containing his work to let the others stop Fighting against him for accusing him for Murdered.
Literature
- In Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Buddy Jr. stomps his Erector set flat. Granted, an Erector set is a really sucky gift for a kid with only one arm. For those that do not know what Erector is, it's a construction set that comprises metal strips and plates with holes in them, that one fastens together using nuts and bolts, as well as gears, pulleys, and axles—in short, something that almost certainly requires two hands to play with.
- The Mummy Monster Game: In book 1, after losing the chariot race for the second arm of Osiris, the pharaoh Rameses throws his crown on the ground and stomps on it.
- In the Underdogs novel Tooth and Nail, Ewan throws a cardboard box out of anger and stomps on it when it doesn't go as far as he wanted.
Live-Action TV
- In an episode of Are You Being Served?, when Mr. Grainger thought he was about to be fired, he wrote everything he wanted to say about the staff in his letter of resignation. On learning it wasn't the case, he read out the paper anyway, to their general amusement... but decided he was far too harsh towards Mr. Humphries. Mr. Humphries grabbed the letter, read it silently, and then tore it to shreds and jumped on the shreds, crying profusely.
- In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy gets stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop, gets annoyed by Giles' Glasses Pull Character Tic, and stomps his glasses underfoot.
- A Running Gag on El Chavo del ocho, with Don Ramon stomping on his hat whenever he's angry, usually after Doña Florinda slaps him, etc.
- When Don Ramon started selling Doña Florinda's churros, he wears an apron and a chef hat that Florinda made. When Chavo makes him lose a costumer that was going to buy lots of churros, he gets angry and stomps the chef hat. Florinda slaps him for that and he almost does it again out of habit, but notices what he's about to do and decides it's better not.
- Doctor Who:
- "Rosa": Although she's hardly agitated, the Doctor destroys the villain's vortex manipulator by ripping it off his wrist and stomping on it.
- "Kerblam!": The villain, Charlie, destroys the remote control he was using to hack the Kerblam! system this way.
- "Spyfall": Ryan and Graham destroy their and Yaz's phones this way upon realizing that the tech mogul villain has made them fugitives by framing them for a crime, and can track them through their devices.
- Horatio Hornblower: When Hornblower and his men are in Spanish prison, the Duchess of Wharfedale brings them some fresh fruit from Don Massaredo's garden. Styles tries to take one, but Midshipman Hunter gets furious, and scurvy or no scurvy, he says he prefers British beef and British beer, and he crushes the basket underfoot and throws the battered fruit into an oubliette.
- Mako Mermaids: An H₂O Adventure: Nixie returns to Rita's grotto to find the entrance frozen over, which she solves by smashing a hole through the ice with her tail. She then dries off to turn human and walks into the grotto proper, where Sirena and Lyla have made it snow indoors, and turns back into a mermaid. Realizing she has to crawl her through a sheet of snow and all the way up the stairs before she can get legs again, Nixie expresses her frustration by slapping her tail against the ground.
- Odd Squad: In "Zero Effect", Olive and Otto storm into a newly-opened cupcake shop owned by a man named Glenn, who has been unintentionally hogging zeroes for a sign to promote his "one million billion trillion" flavors of cupcakes. Otto begins tearing down the sign while Olive goes to town stomping on it in order to release all the zeroes. However, Olive goes overboard with the stomping, and when Otto tells her to stop, she refuses to listen, gives a hearty yell of rage and does a full-body slam onto the sign before ripping it to pieces, at which point Otto doesn't even bother to try again and decides to snack on some cupcakes.
- Red Dwarf: Rimmer gets a device which lets him hop to alternate timelines, and he tries to find a better place to live. After numerous unsatisfying/humiliating/deadly attempts, he finally ends up back home, and stomps on the device.
- In That '70s Show, due to the raging hormones brought on by her menopause, Kitty takes this tactic to handling an uncooperative television clicker.
Roleplay
- In Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues, the final exams at Rogers High are interrupted by a bomb threat. Jacob goes up to the roof and discovers that said threat is a fake put on by Daigo's gang. Angry at them for the deception, especially because a student ended up seriously hurt as a result of it, Jacob takes one of the fake bomb clocks and stomps on it to release his frustrations.
Video Games
- The Japanese Mega Drive game Battle Mania has a hidden intro
involving a character jumping up and down on a Super Famicom.
- Inverted in Dead Space 2, wherein stomping on the bodies of the necromorphs is often one of the best ways to dismember them, but you can keep on stomping at the chunks, and stomping, and Isaac will start cursing a blue streak, implying that the continued violence is more catharsis than practicality.
- In the first Donkey Kong Country, Diddy stomps on his hat whenever he loses a bonus game or if the platform in Tanked Up Trouble runs out of gas. Amusingly enough, if you move him close enough to the edge of a platform before it happens, he throws it down a pit and jumps after it. He also does this at least once in the TV series.
- Final Fantasy Tactics has a character take their hat off and stomp it. What makes this notable is the game is fully sprite based, and every frame of the animation is used exclusively for this event, as opposed to Going Through the Motions.
- Most of the way through Chapter 3 of Mother 3, the dancer monkey Salsa crushes the remote that his corrupt master had been priorly using to shock him.
- In Puyo Puyo 2, Panotty's losing animation depicts him angrily stomping on his flute.
- In The Sims 4, an angry Sim has the option to kick over a trash can and stomp on the spilled trash.
- At the end of Sonic the Hedgehog for the Sega Genesis, Eggman is shown stomping on the word "End".note
- In the versus mode of Star Fox: Assault: If Wolf O'Donnell loses, he will angrily throw his blaster onto the ground, grind it with his foot, and look the other way.
Web Animation
- Homestar Runner: In the Strong Bad Email "different town", during Strong Bad's song he sings about how "Homestar just couldn't hack it", and Homestar is shown shouting "I quit!" as he rips the star off his own shirt and stomps on it.
- The Most Popular Girls in School: In Episode 77, Mackenzie does this to Justin's hat when said hat gets them disqualified from the men's swimsuit competition. Luckily for him, he always carries a spare one around with him.
- FPS Doug from Pure Pwnage does this towards the end of the Boom, Headshot! video after getting headshotted himself.
- The girls of hololive have a variation: since they're livestreaming, instead of stomping they'll slap their desks to show annoyance. This is usually accompanied by the chatroom declaring "Desk-kun -10 Hit Points" or something else along those lines, to the point where this has become one of hololive's countless memes. Towa Tokoyami in particular has figured out that she can "summon" her overseas fanbase by doing so, and Amelia Watson of the EN branch is noted for abusing her desk especially violently.
Webcomics
- MegaTokyo, early in its run, featured a random comic of Piro and Largo's avatar counterparts in an FPS-type game. Largo corners Piroko and boasts about killing her, only to freeze in place (and allow Piroko a free headshot). The last panel has Piro mocking Largo and his use of a battery-munching wireless keyboard while Largo is stomping on the keyboard (complete with keys flying around while the device itself is unseen) while shouting, "DIE! DIE! DIE!"
- In Tales of the Questor, a kit stomps all over his hat. He's agitated because his hat is on fire.
Western Animation
- At the end of the Adventures of the Gummi Bears episode "Music Hath Charms", the Gummis all begin stomping on the magic bagpipes that Igthorn used to control everyone in Dunwyn.
- In the Animaniacs episode "Hurray For Slappy", Slappy Squirrel tears up and stomps on a newspaper that called her a former star. "Aunt Slappy gets just a liiiiiiiiitle bitter."
- Batman: The Animated Series: In "Read My Lips", after Scarface produces the Incredibly Obvious Bug that Batman has planted on the Ventriloquist's suit, he throws it on the ground and start jumping on it. Justified and subverted because Scarface is a Ventriloquist's dummy and this is one of the obvious ways to show emotions, like angry, but the Ventriloquist has to kneel to the ground to help Scarface.
- After Bugs Bunny has his way with Elmer Fudd in "Wabbit Twouble," Elmer stomps on the Jellostone Park sign ("A westful wetweat. Bawoney!!")... with a park ranger nearby.
- At the end of the Camp Lazlo episode "Racing Slicks", Edward stomps on his first place trophy when he finds out that the other trophies are much larger than his.
- A bumper for CB Bears has this happen with a bag of arrows (all of which hit the tree that doesn't have the bull's-eye on it).
- Dexter in Dexter's Laboratory in the episode "The Continuum of Cartoon Fools" does this to one of the transportation remote controls that Dee Dee got a hand on after using it to enter Dexter's lab. When he uses the spare one to transport back to his lab, he stomps on that one as well.
- In the Donkey Kong Country, Diddy Kong has done the hat stomp he does in the games. In "Buried Treasure", Klump calls K.Rool by phone. After their conversation is finished, K.Rool tells Krusha to "Take care of that". The scene ends with a shadowed shot of Krusha stomping down on the phone.
- Amos Slade throws his hat to the ground and starts stomping on it in The Fox and the Hound.
- Terrence in Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends does this to a flower to demonstrate to his new imaginary friend Red the meaning of "smashing" to destroy Bloo. When Red ends up showing affection for the flowers Bloo gave him, Terrence, outraged of Red's failure to cooperate, snatches the bouquet of flowers out of Red's hands and stomp on them to the ground.
- Futurama: The moon farmer in "The Series Has Landed" did this with his space helmet after the protagonists escape. While in space. He starts choking and has to put it back on.
- In a House of Mouse episode, Mickey, Donald and Goofy go to the phone company, and end up tearing an uncooperative intercom off the wall and stomping on it.
Intercom: If you really want to smash me, stomp harder.
- Kaeloo:
- In Episode 82, when Pretty gets fed up with Kaeloo, Stumpy and Quack Quack, she throws her smartphone on the ground and stomps on it repeatedly. Somehow, it doesn't break.
- In Episode 113, Stumpy loses a video game. He throws his console on the floor and stomps on it as though it was the console's fault he lost.
- Coop from Megas XLR doesn't like the DMV. He really doesn't like it.
- Mr. Bogus:
- The claymation short shown after the second act of the episode "Et Tu, Brattus?" had Bogus start stomping on a ringing wristwatch in order to stop it from ringing so loudly.
- Near the end of the episode "Bookstore Bogus", after Brattus lures a fierce dinosaur made entirely out of rocks out of an art book, he tears the page that the dinosaur is on, crumbles it up, then throws it on the ground as he and Bogus both start stomping on it. Then, they both use the stomped-up remains of the page for football practice afterwards.
- In the animated version of The Perishers, Wellington had two really epic examples, once of the "dog cart" he had built for Boot to pull only for boot to "misunderstand" repeatedly, and once of an axle and single wheel that Marlon brought round with "I had an accident with my buggy, can you fix it?" Both times Wellington's response was "AAAAAAGH! I've had enough of you and this thing...thing... thing...THING!" (stomp stomp stomp).
- In The Smurfs (1981) episode "Happy Unhappiness Day To You", Gargamel gets fed up with his happiness detector leading him everywhere but to the Smurfs, who were having a day of happiness fasting, that he stomps the crap out of it and tosses it into his muck pond by the story's end.
- In the Sonic Boom episode "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Worse-er," the failure of one of his traps to catch Sonic (and the condescending pat he gets afterwards) causes Tails to snap his binoculars and angrily stomp on the pieces. In the next scene, they're taped back together.
- SpongeBob SquarePants:
- In the episode "Employee of the Month", Squidward gets so angry at SpongeBob that he snatches his Krusty Krab hat and stomps on it. Turns out SpongeBob is Crazy-Prepared and always carries a lead brick under his hat for just such an occasion.
- Invoked in "Squid on Strike", where Squidward tells SpongeBob to stomp on his hat in defiance to the Krusty Krab. SpongeBob tries to do it, but the hat seems to be stuck to his hand. Squidward does it and is promptly ticketed by a policeman for littering.
- In "Good Neighbors", Squidward does this to the fezzes that SpongeBob and Patrick wear when they start the Secret Royal Order of the Good Neighbor Lodge, saying they don't deserve to wear them since they've done nothing but bother him when he just wanted to relax.
- In "The Paper", Squidward tosses a piece of paper on the ground near SpongeBob's house, and SpongeBob decides to keep the paper, doing many amazing things with it. When Squidward sees just how much fun SpongeBob has with the paper, he trades everything he owns to SpongeBob for it. Once he finally has the paper, Squidward can't do any of the amazing things SpongeBob did with it, so he tosses it on the ground and stomps on it.
"Wait! More impressions! A guy throwing a piece of paper on the ground! A guy stomping on the piece of paper!"
- In an episode of The Tick, when the villainous Human Ton attempts to eat the Tick's head, his puppet companion Handy starts to brag to the viewers about how he's still able to talk. This ends abruptly when Arthur yanks him off Human Ton's hand. Human Ton then stops to look for Handy and is horrified to see Arthur viciously stomping him on the ground.
- Tom and Jerry: In "Mouse Trouble", Tom gets fed up with his "How to Catch a Mouse" book after one too many failures, and tears it to shreds before jumping up and down on the remains.
- Wile E. Coyote does this sometimes either because he was trying to get one of his gadgets to work, or because said gadgets failed on him...
