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Welcome to the Big Apple!
"Well, there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade."
Since the 19th century, the boroughs of New York City, or the No Communities Were Harmed versions, have been characterized as having some of the toughest, angriest people you ever met. Perhaps it was all the immigrants clashing against each other. Perhaps it was all the gangs that sprouted in the poorer neighborhoods. Whatever the reason, anyone from The Big Rotten Apple is someone you don't want to mess with.
The type of character can vary, often a Badass with a Hair-Trigger Temper. Will sometimes be part of The Mafia.
Compare Violent Glaswegian and Southies. ( Place your bets now!) Contrast Minnesota Nice.
The Trope Namer is the Brooklyn-accented Joey Wheeler from Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, who repeatedly shouted "Brooklyn Rage!" during one episode ( and only that episode) as a way of expressing his anger and to force a new catchphrase. (His pathetic attempt at a Forced Meme was Lampshaded later in the episode... and then ironically became an actual meme to the point where Joey's 4Kids voice actor cites it as his favourite Joey line despite not actually being said in the original show, watch him say it here )
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Baccano!, a lot of the action takes place in the Big Applesauce, and a large chunk of the characters come from there. And they all can kick your ass.
- Parodied here on Firo with the Brooklyn Rage song from
- Also parodied here in the third episode of Baccano! Teh Abridged Series!.
- Liz and Patti from Soul Eater are from Brooklyn. Living Weapons and criminals, before they chose a very inappropriate target and their lives took a turn for the better.
- One Piece: The 4Kids version of Sanji.
- Although she never shows the accent, Revy from Black Lagoon is from New York (it's implied she's from Harlem).
Comic Books
- The Captain from Nextwave was a random drunken thug from Brooklyn until Sufficiently Advanced Aliens decided he was The Chosen One and gave him superpowers. He's your hero!
- Comic Book legend Jack Kirby (who himself exemplified this trope in real life) created a lot of characters in this mold, including Benjamin J. Grimm, Dan "Terrible" Turpin, who in Superman The Animated Series responds to Darkseid's planet-wide Breaking Speech by insulting Darkseid to his face and proceeding to free Superman.
- Also "Brooklyn" of the Boy Commandos, later retconned as being a young Dan Turpin.
- The phenomenon apparently crosses species barriers, because Dex-Starr the Red Lantern is from Brooklyn. He's a cat.
- The Avengers have the villain Taskmaster and he even speaks in a Brooklyn accent.
- Captain America is from Brooklyn. He doesn't seem to have the "rage" (usually) because he's very disciplined. However, he definitely has the determination and adamant refusal to back down from fighting the bad guys that comes with this trope.
- In G.I. Joe, Cobra Alley Vipers, urban commandos, are confident in their ability to quickly take over any city without incident. Except maybe parts of New York.
- The Punisher. While some men might seek vengeance on those who killed their family, Frank Castle doesn't settle that low. He wants to kill every criminal. Every single one.
Film
- Tommy De Vito from Goodfellas, which takes place in Queens.
- Sonny Corleone in The Godfather.
- My Cousin Vinny: Vinny is mocked by some local guys, and then they do it at the wrong time.
- For some historical roots to this trope, Scorsese's Gangs of New York explores the violent gang culture of lower-class mid 19th century New York. Ok, that sounds like a documentary: also has visceral brawls, sex scenes and Daniel Day-Lewis being scary as all get out.
- Spot Conlon from Newsies. He's the one in charge of every newspaper boy in Brooklyn, so you could almost call it Justified. Almost.
- The Warriors takes this Up to Eleven, with street gangs everywhere.
- John McClane of Die Hard is from New York, so even when he's not there, he's a tough mother*bang*. And from the third film, "shove a lightning bolt up your ass!" Zeus.
- The entire plot of Ghostbusters 2 is about an evil spirit channeling New Yorkers' negative emotions, rage obviously being one of them. Futhermore, the Mayor claims that: "Being miserable and treating other people like dirt is every New Yorker's God-given right." The film then plays on this trope when the Ghostbusters manage to weaponize New Yorker goodwill and patriotism by turning Lady Liberty into a Humongous Mecha.
- Buggin' Out from Do the Right Thing.
- Knockaround Guys gives us Taylor Reese, played by Vin Diesel. Witness his "World of Cardboard" Speech before beating the everliving shit out of the toughest man in a small Midwest town:
"500 fights. That's the number I figured when I was a kid. 500 street fights and you could consider yourself a legitimate tough guy. You need them for experience. To develop leather skin. So I got started. Of course along the way you stop thinking about being tough and all that. It stops being the point. You get past the silliness of it all. But then, after, you realize that's what you are. You learn a lot of things on the way to 500. None more important than this." [headbutt]
- The Centipede in the movie version of James And The Giant Peach announces to the enemies "Don't mess with me— I'm from Brooklyn!" (And he is very tough.)
- Lampshaded in Leningrad Cowboys Go America.
"I wonder when the violence starts. You always get murdered when you come to New York. I've seen it on television."
- The Blaxploitation classic Shaft focuses on a New York private eye who initiates a one-man battle against Da Mob in Harlem. The remake dials it Up to Eleven by casting Samuel L. Motherfu(shut your mouth!) Jackson as the detective.
- The wiseguy Irish private in Saving Private Ryan is from Brooklyn.
- Bruce Willis's character, Korben Dallas, who helps save the world in The Fifth Element, is a Brooklyn cab-driver in the 23rd century.
- In The French Connection, the French heroin ring is running all smooth and flawless, until a couple of NYPD narcs decide to wreck their shit.
- In Crocodile Dundee, the female leads assures her editor that she's tough enough to handle the Australian Outback because she's a New Yorker. It's subverted in that she's pretty helpless without Mick, while in comparison, Mick is a lot tougher than the local New York riff-raff.
- In the Spiderman films, there are scenes of simple New Yorkers standing up to the supervillains when Spiderman is in trouble. This has a lot of subtext, especially in the first film, regarding the 9/11 attacks, showing New Yorkers as resilient and sticking together.
Civilian: You mess wid' one of us, you mess wid' all of us! *continues tossing trash at the Green Goblin*
- Bruce Willis (again) as Hudson Hawk. Let's see: accent, check; wise-ass, especially in the wrong situation, check; good in a fist fight, check; good in a GUN fight, check; simply won't stay down (without a goodly sized tranq dart in the neck anyway), check; just wants to be done with all this crazy crap and have a damn cup of cappucino, double-check.
- Sergeant Siegle in the 1955 film Conquest of Space, produced by George Pal.
- In Spike Lee/Denzel Washington film Inside Man, a young boy is one of many hostages in a bank robbery. When the detectives talk to him afterward and ask if the multiple robbers waving AK-47s scared him, the boy responds that he wasn't scared, he's from Brooklyn.
- Saturday Night Fever, with Tony's friends from the Bay Ridge area versus "The Barracudas," from a primarily Puerto Rican neighborhood.
- Both the Sharks and the Jets from West Side Story.
Literature
- In the novel The Fall of a Nation by Thomas Dixon (author of The Klansman, aka The Birth of a Nation), the combined European armies (save neutral Britain) invade America. New York City turns out to be somewhat more difficult to take than anticipated, not just because the NYPD fights to the last man, but all the immigrant neighborhoods are adamantly opposed to the invaders. They left Europe for a reason.
- In Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the last book: "You don't mess with New Yorkers."
- In Harry Harrison's The Technicolor Time Machine, Tex and Dallas, two very heavily stereotyped Italian-American (despite their names) assistants of the main hero the director, are your typical New Yorkers (again, despite their names) and generally on par with the angriest Horny Vikings available — when they aren't proverbial Italian momma's boys, that is.
Live Action TV
- Oscar the Grouch is probably the closest anyone on Sesame Street comes to this. Other than that, one could assume that this is the most peaceful neighborhood in all of Brooklyn.
- Referenced in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 short in which an angel and a devil argue over a bread delivery guy. Said deliveryman tells of his wayward days of being a bad deliveryman, where it is riffed "I had a Brooklyn accent and a different poissenality!"
- The Teutels of American Chopper.
- In Star Trek: Enterprise, when Archer finds himself in an alternate past wherein the Nazis have invaded the East Coast of the United States, he finds that several Mafia members have joined forces with the locals in...Brooklyn (no, really) to fend them off.
- Makes sense when you think about it. The Mafia is basically a pre-made Resistance organization, and they hated the Nazis historically.
- Given that the 8th season of Twenty Four is set in New York, its to be expected. Most notably Brain Hastings and few dodgey police officers.
- Also to be expected from time to time on CSI NY which is set in New York. As far as main characters,Danny Messer can fit this at times. He's settled a little since becoming a family man, but he still has his short temper and liability to explode from time to time. He tries to restrain it at work, but not always successfully. And he'll take it Up to Eleven if you go after Lindsay and Lucy.Stella fell into it from time to time as well, and so did Aiden Burn. Another character who comes to mind is Sonny Sassone, who was a villain in two episodes.
- On Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Robert Goren, who is from Brooklyn (as is his actor), generally averts this trope. When he plays the bad cop, however, he turns his Brooklyn accent Up to Eleven, just to play into it.
- Many different characters on Boardwalk Empire, particularly Al Capone.
- Heroes: Sylar. Although his home is based in Queens, his clock shop where his Start of Darkness began is located in Brooklyn. Chandra and Mohinder's apartment is also located in Brooklyn and is the location of Peter and Sylar's first real altercation.
- Bones: Cam sometimes claims to have seen everything there is to see during her time as a New York coroner.
- Mocked in Charlie Brooker's 2012 Wipe, where Doug Stanhope says that New Yorkers spectacularly failed to live up to their "hard" reputation after Hurricane Sandy.
Newspaper Comics
- One Dilbert strip involved the regular cast talking about a new employee—they're terrified of him because he's from New York. They all scatter upon hearing that he's walking their way. The final panel is the New Yorker, standing alone, saying "Well, I suppose I could hunt them down and kill them one by one."
- In the anniversary edition, Scott Adams explained that people from Los Angeles fear New Yorkers.
Professional Wrestling
Stand-Up Comedy
- Chris Rock says it best: "Everybody goes around telling me to be scared of Al Qaeda. I ain't scared of Al Qaeda. I'm from Brooklyn, I don't give a f*ck about Al Qaeda."
Video Games
Web Original
- New Yorker Nostalgia Chick is really rather scary when angry, as even her friends attest to.
- The Trope Namer Joey from Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series. He's not really much of an example, since he's neither very violent nor badass or from Brooklyn but rather Japan. In fact, his friends tell him straight out not to make "Brooklyn rage!" a Catch Phrase.
- This became Hilarious in Hindsight when Joey's English dub voice actor, Wayne Grayson, stated at convention appearances that "Brooklyn Rage" is his favorite quote from the show.
Western Animation
Real Life
- Meet Anthony Weiner, former Democratic Congressman from New York City, Brooklyn born and raised. Just look at this. Long story short, New Yorker = Large Ham + Brooklyn Rage, or at least that is Weiner's formula.
- Monica Keena, the cute and tiny blonde chick from Undeclared and Freddy vs. Jason, originally from Brooklyn, once almost got into a fist-fight with an L.A. stripper over a piece of birthday cake.
- Inverted with this bawling Giants fan, played straight by everyone else, from the girl that stands behind him signaling that he's a pussy, to the girl arguing with him to calm down and accept it, and especially with his friend that pops in during the last ten seconds.
- Al Capone, meet Brooklyn Rage. Brooklyn Rage, meet Al Capone. I think this is the start of a very scary friendship...
- Larry Merchant, longtime sportswriter and boxing analyst. In 2011 at age 80 he did a postfight interview with Floyd Mayweather about the controversial ending to a Mayweather fight where Mayweather twice sucker punched an opponent. Mayweather began cursing at Merchant and basically calling him a Know-Nothing Know-It-All, while Merchant merely responded by growling "I wish I was 50 years younger and I'd kick your ass."
- Thankfully and touchingly averted in the immediate aftermath of September 11th, 2001. People helped one another. Also thankfully averted in the notorious blackout of '03. Many pessimists predicted rampant looting (as had actually happened in 1977, when New York was a truly Wretched Hive. Virtually none took place and people volunteered to help direct traffic without letting the resulting power go to their heads.
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