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" That's what moms are like - if you mess with their babies, they're gonna bite you back."
Bears usually won't attack humans - but get between a mother bear and her cub, and she'll tear straight through you. Apparently, the same rules applies to human parents. Threaten their husband/wife, child, boyfriend/girlfriend, cat, etc., and you are in for a world of hurt. Never harm someone's loved one - whatever the goal, it's not worth the consequences. Losing their loved one may cause a drastic Start Of Darkness into villainy or Anti Hero-dom... anything if it will get their revenge. And not just on their own enemy but on anyone who would inflict this same pain on others. Of course, it's not always dark—sometimes, righteous awesomeness ensues, and the hero reclaims their child/whatever with a tearful embrace.
Oftentimes, when a previously perceived meek mother goes into this mode, it's her Crowning Moment Of Awesome. And Heaven help you if an Action Mom invokes this trope.
Men who exhibit Mama Bear tendencies are referred to as "Papa Wolves" rather then "Papa Bears"- Disney aside, male bears are notoriously poor parents in the animal kingdom, in fact, infantcide among bears is the main reason why mama bears are so protective in the first place, whereas male (and female) wolves will react to their offspring being threatened in a very similar manner to mother bears. Due to the Double Standard, there are some differences however.
While Mama Bear moments are usually treated as awesome, they're also... well, scary. Even the children Mama Bear is protecting are often scared by it. Sometimes this is even highlighted by the children starting to cry after the moment is over and the danger gone- which of course turns Mama Bear back into the Apron Matron. Papa Wolf incidents on the other hand receive standing ovation from the kids, and comments like: "You were so cool Dad!"
When invoked by a woman, this trope is occasionally criticized as sexist against both genders, this trope is also known as the Uterus of Justice, because it often seems that only a child in danger can turn a woman into a Bad Ass (other than being scorned, and revealing fury like which hell hath none), and only a woman (and never a man, the dick) can care enough about a child to be driven all the way from mild-mannered to Bad Ass just by seeing them threatened.
Sometimes overlaps with Apron Matron. Provides both simple and believable way to switch someone between " Bad Ass" and more "cute" modes without compromising character as either. After all, if Its Personal...
If an older sibling is the one who takes up the role, s/he is a Knight Templar Big Brother. For a teacher who behaves like a Mama Bear if their students are threatened, see Badass Teacher. May be a Knight Templar Parent.
Related to Beware The Nice Ones. See also the non-human counterpart, Monster Is A Mommy.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- In Mahou Sensei Negima, Chizuru slaps the hell out of a high-ranking Demon when he breaks into their house and attacks Kotaro, whom she has pretty much decided to adopt. Although it wasn't really all that effective in the end, the fact that she managed to stop his attack cold is rather impressive for one who is supposed to be an Ordinary High School Student...
- Once they get to the Magic World, there's a literal Mama Bear. As in a bear-woman that the characters call "Mama". And she will wreck you if you abuse the slave girls (Ako, Natsume and Akira) she's watching over.
- The villains of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS make the mistake of letting their Mac Guffin Girl, a little tyke named Vivio, get adopted by the heroines and then stealing her back. One of these is the same lady who has the Fan Nickname of "The White Devil" by fans for beating the crap out of the people she likes. The other is a Dark Magical Girl who is no less dangerous, if a bit less confrontational. They... don't take it well. The resulting Shock and Awe has at least one cyborg screaming at one of them that she isn't human (especially ironic as Nanoha is one of the very few mages in this series who, in fact, is).
- Very cruelly subverted in (of all series) Dragonball Z. Goku's wife ChiChi is odd in that she's both taken a level in badass and suffered re-Chickification after her marriage, so she has her limits, but then again, she has her limits. Her childhood friend and later husband has been dead for seven years, she's been led to believe that her older son has followed, and ChiChi is absolutely out of her mind with grief. While her father Ox Satan is able to hold her back the first time she tries to attack him, eventually she does walk right up to Majin Buu, slaps him and demands he bring Gohan back. Buu stares at her, turns her into an egg, and promptly steps on her. Worst of all, her seven-year-old son was watching the entire time.
- In an episode just before the Trunks saga, ChiChi hires a private tutor for Gohan by the name of Mr. Shu, unaware that he's a cruel Sadist Teacher who repeatedly Kicks The Dog by calling Goku worthless as a father and even makes the poor kid bleed. Then she finds out. It does not end well for Shu.
- Having not seen the episode in question, one must imagine that he must have used some sort of nuclear warhead to manage that, even that early in Gohan's life.
- Actually, he just uses a whip.
- And Gohan sat there and took it...why? Oh well, at least Chichi got to be awesome.
- Gohan is pretty much the model of discipline... most of the time. Besides, he'd probably barely feel it.
- He took it until the tutor made the mistake of insulting Gohan's dad. Gohan's reaction was still retrained, but if Chi-Chi hadn't interfered, Gohan Berserk Button might have just gotten pushed a little too far. That's also what sets off Chi-Chi.
- An episode of Futari Wa Pretty Cure gave Honoka's grandmother a chance to be Grandma Bear. Pretty impressive feat for an non-superpowered elderly woman.
- Well, the fact that she shares the voice of Nozawa Masako, the voice actress of Super-Saiyajin Son Goku pretty much guarantees that she would be awesome to begin with, even when not in Mama Bear mode.
- From Hell Teacher Nube, aside of the Teacher Wolf male lead Meisuke Nueno aka Nube... A more traditional Mama Bear example is his co-worker and Ritsuko Takahashi, whose Crowning Moment Of Awesome involved fighting a demon alone to protect a student of hers. Only Ritsuko had NO powers (unlike Nube), knew she wouldn't be able to win the fight... and fought anyway, until Nube came to her aid. And let's not forget Minako-sensei, Nube's Sexy Mentor, who actually chose an Heroic Sacrifice followed by a Fate Worse Than Death than leaving Nube alone when he needed her.
- Although she was always an Action Girl, Yoko Littner never seemed to actually get angry at an enemy... until, some time after she took up a job as a school teacher, two mech-driving beastmen make the very dumb decision to pillage her school and threaten her students. Cue the Lock And Load Montage, followed by the biggest asswhooping of the century.
- In, Iczer-One, when the title character and her partner Nagisa are getting their butts kicked in a mecha battle against Iczer-Two, Sayoko, the little girl whom Nagisa met and decided to protect in the previous episode, tries to encourage them. Iczer-Two, in annoyance, responds by stepping on Sayoko with her mecha. Nagisa's resulting fury gives her mecha a massive power up, and she and Iczer-One proceed to wipe the floor with their opponents. Afterward, it turns out Sayoko was protected by the bracelet Iczer-One gave Nagisa (who in turn gave it to her), and thus survived.
- Ran went Mama Bear on a suspect who tried to eliminate Conan as a witness. Since she knows martial arts, the result was quite painful.
- Mrs. Ketchum of Pokemon would be a more prominent example if Pallet Town was focused on more often. The one time in which her home was threatened, though, she proved to be a formidable force, scaring off Team Rocket and getting a Mr. Mime (her current housekeeping Pokemon) to boot.
- Also, we can't forget the pivotal role she had in one of the Pokemon movies. Delia Ketchum may have not taken physical action, but she was a key player in helping the emotionally fragile Molly, who had the legendary pokemon Entei's leash, come back to her senses, which would be vital into the damage control later.
- Teresa of the Faint Smile in Claymore, after adopting Clare, breaks the taboo against killing humans after bandits raid the town where she left the little Clare, and refuses to accept the organisation's punishment in order to stay with her.
- Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. Clone/Mother Sakura. Big Damn Heroes with her Papa Wolf husband.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion. With all the freudian subtext, there was bound to be a Mama Bear somewhere. That hideous unstoppable rage that Eva-01 goes into whenever Shinji is in trouble? That's actually Yui Ikari(Shinji's Mom) being "really" pissed off.
- One Piece gives us Bellmere, who when given the choice to buy her life or those of her daughters, offered hers in Heroic Sacrifice to ensure Nami and Nojiko weren't killed by Arlong.
- Most recently we have Portgas D. Rouge, the mother of Ace. To escape detection by Marines searching for children being born at that time in an attempt to find Ace, Rouge withheld giving birth and bore her baby in her womb for twenty months before finally having her child. The act ultimately killed her, but allowed Ace to grow up in relative safety.
- Eh? No Full Metal Alchemist? Izumi barging in to save Ed and Al by taking on a homunculous was a textbook example of this trope. Add to that her introduction, "I am a housewife!" and, well...
- This troper liked the Dub version of the line: "Who are you?" "I'm...PISSED OFF!!!"
- And then there's Misae Nohara from Crayon Shin-chan. Poor Shinnosuke, poor Hiroshi!
- Umineko No Naku Koro Ni does this in its first three arcs. In episode 1, Natsuhi banishes the two remaining servants, the family doctor, and her niece Maria because she suspects them of being a murderer and wants to protect her daughter Jessica. This does not end well. She also fights the Golden Witch Beatrice in a duel, although you might call that a subversion. Desire to protect daughter and gun not equal ability to defeat 1000-year-old sadistic witch. The trope name itself is referenced during the proceedings.
- Armitage III, Dual Matrix. The entire movie is Armitage having one giant Mama Bear moment (And Ross makes an impressive Papa Wolf to back her up). To really drive home just how far Armitage goes with this: she gets hammered up and down by various 'bots and things unto being torn apart multiple times, her daughter discovers her mother is a robot by seeing her metal skeleton through a cut-wide-open shoulder and reacts with the prejudicial horror any child in that universe would feel, jerking away from Armitage and hiding behind Ross after Armitage has been badly injured by two clones of her with razor blades on murder-skates. Armitage swallows her tears, turns and goes to fight the clones again, knowing it's a fight she almost certainly can't win. At the end of the film, one of the clones is holding Armitage's daughter by the throat. Armitage, beaten and weary unto near unconsciousness, staggers up behind the thing and manages to grip its shoulder, and utters a line that pretty much exemplifies this trope.
"Let...Let go of my daughter, you bitch!"
- Woe betide anyone who hurts someone Usagi Tsukino aka Sailormoon cares for. Whether it's her boyfriend, her Kid From The Future, her fellow Senshi or her muggle friends/family. Specially in the case of manga!Moon, who is quite more ruthless in her defense of her loved ones.
- Also, Makoto Kino/Sailor Jupiter. Her title of Senshi of Protection isn't just for shit and giggles, you know.
- A pretty twisted version happens in Black Lagoon. For the love of any deity you believe in, do not harm any of Balalaika's subordinates. If you do, she will hunt you down.
- Some may see that as twisted. Others may see that as what proves she's human. Those men are all she has anymore, so she protects them fiercely.
Comic Books
Film
Literature
- An extreme example is found in Toni Morrison's Beloved, where Sethe, the main character kills one of her children in order to protect it from having to go back into slavery.
- Cordelia Vorkosigan, in Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan novels, is an off-worlder who is mostly bored by the Byzantine politics of her husband's home planet Barrayar. Until a civil war puts her baby (in a high-tech incubator) in danger. Then she single-handedly defeats a usurping ruler and ends the war. And brings back the usurper's head in a shopping bag to make her point clear.
- Hilariously, seventeen years later Cordelia's teenaged son Miles (the same as the baby threatened earlier) stops another impending civil war simply by reminding Count Vorhalas that if he persists in his course of action, he will eventually have to explain himself to Miles' mother. Count Vorhalas immediately backs down.
- This troper read that novel first, and completely failed to get the subtext back then. It was a scene that really could only be understood with the previous story, since in The Warrior's Apprentice Cordelia has only a few lines.
- Barrayar was written several years after The Warrior's Apprentice.
- Princess Kareen in the same series makes a very credible attempt to kill her unwanted lover when she realizes the man is a threat to the life of her five-year-old son, Gregor. She fails, but not for lack of trying.
- This happens in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; when resident Dark Action Girl Bellatrix Lestrange nearly kills Cute Bruiser Ginny Weasley, who was fighting her along with Hermione Granger and Luna Lovegood, Ginny's housewife mother Molly goes ballistic, fights Bellatrix directly and kills her in a matter of seconds. "NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!" has quickly become the most-quoted line from the book.
- This is actually the reason Harry survived his first encounter with Voldemort- his mother was given the chance to flee but chose to protect Harry with her life, which granted Harry magical protection. Later, Harry protects all of Hogwarts from him the same way, except he got better.
- Magrat in the Discworld novel Carpe Jugulum who disposed of Countess Magpyr in a cold-hearted Mama Bear Showdown by siphoning the vampire into a jar of lemons (a Discworld vampire weakness) and throwing the jar into the river below and then proceeded to threaten the rest of them with a teddy bear. While she had a Beware The Nice Ones moment in every book prior to her daughter's birth, it was always a one-off thing triggered by a Berserk Button. In CJ, though, her determination to protect baby Esme makes her possibly the most in-control of the witches (at least in Granny Weatherwax's absence). As Agnes thinks, mothers aren't wet, they're only slightly damp.
- Sergeant Jackrum in Monstruous Regiment. And, yes, I do mean Mama Bear.
- The trope name's especially appropriate when you consider that Jackrum is masquerading as a big fat hairy old man. And if you don't get the link between 'hairy fat man' and 'bear', I suggest five minutes on google with the safesearch off.
- Nita Callahan's mother in The Wizard's Dilemma turns into one of these when faced with the prospect of the Devil-equivalent taking Nita's soul. Her line is "She is still my daughter, and she does not have my permission!"
- Also, in High Wizardry, Dairine Callahan becomes the "mother" to a race of sentient silicon lifeforms, and a threat to them (as well as Nita and Kit) prompts her to tell the Devil-equivalent, "Touch them and you're dead meat." Shortly after, when a powerful ally appears to help out, the ally's gender turns out to be female, surprising the protagonists, and leading to the quote at the start of the article.
- In Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Miss Pross, although she is technically not Lucie Manette's mother, loves Lucie like a daughter. In order to protect Lucie and those she cares about (but mostly Lucie) she ends up killing Madame Defarge in a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
- A rarely discussed, but still notable, example would be Mara Jade Skywalker, from the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Probably most notable in Sacrifice, where her worry for her son (Ben) convinces her to go hunt and attempt to kill the two Sith Lords whom she thinks are plotting to kill him. One of them, ironically (and the later target), was Mara's own nephew, Jacen Solo. She's partially right in that respect, in that Jacen is still struggling with this choice, and this leads to a VERY nasty brawl where Mara very nearly succeeds in killing Jacen, only to be stabbed by a fatal poison dart in a reversal of the Deus Ex Machina.
- World War Z has a woman who goes into a blind rage when a zombie tries to get her daughter. Her children told her later that she had ripped its head off with her bare hands.
- In John C Wright's Chronicles of Chaos, while Echidna is never exactly safe, it is the death of her son Grendel that inspires her to come and slaughter every human being she finds. Only by revealing that someone else killed him do the children escape. And then she goes and takes on Mars himself because he did it.
- In Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, Mother Wolf, whose very first scene involves standing down Shere Khan the tiger over Mowgli's life, and who is named "the Demon" for a very good reason.
- There's also the poem The Female of the Species which basically spells out this whole trope (in less than half the space).
- Having found the man she believed to have kidnapped her son, Ce'nedra in The Belgariad went psycho in his direction. She had to be restrained.
- No matter the supposed heroics of the main cast, the prisoners' escape from Pax Tharkas in the first Dragonlance novel (Dragons of Autumn Twilight) would have ended in utter disaster if a certain old, insane, and technically evil dragoness hadn't come through for 'her' (adopted) children in the end and taken on the other (younger and stronger) dragon present all by herself.
- In Unfinished Tales Christopher Tolkien describes a Worthy Opponent version of this trope. In the wars between Gondor and the Wainriders, a revolt is arranged among some of the Wainriders slaves while the men are away on campaign:
"But most of them perished in the attempt; for they were ill-armed, and the enemy had not left their homes undefended: their youths and old men were aided by the younger women, who in that people were also trained in arms and fought fiercely in defence of their homes and their children."
- How about the Badger mothers in Redwall?
- Redwall, Constance is calm and peaceful...then Cluny threatens Redwall and she lifts A GIANT TABLE AND THREATENS TO CRUSH HIM WITH IT!
- Marlfox, Cregga; the former Badger Lord of Salamandastron; now blind and seemingly peaceful...she tears through half of the Marlfoxes' troops to get the Dibbuns (kids) to safety.
- Bellmaker, Mellus, very old; gives her life to protect the Dibbuns from Captain Slipp.
- Though not as extreme as many examples on this page, the mothers of the titular Animorphs show this trope in spades towards the end of the series. Some examples:
- Cassie's mother puts her body between her daughter and Ax, whom she thinks is dangerous, mutated wild animal, as soon as she spots the blue alien approaching her front porch.
- Rachel's mother grabs a spice rack and faces down what she believes is a full grown male grizzly bear (who is actually Rachel morphed, but she doesn't know that), to prevent the bear from going into the living room where her younger daughters are playing.
- Tobias' mother takes a Dracon beam to the back that was meant for her son, which isn't even close to the most impressive thing she's ever done.
- And of course, Eva, Marco's mother, repeatedly denies opportunities to free herself from the torment of being Visser One's slave (which at one point had her pushed off a cliff and then tortured) in order to help prevent an all out war that would very likely claim the lives of her husband and son. Obviously, badassery is genetic in the Animorphs universe.
- Inverted in E.E. Smith's Children of the Lens, in which the heroine's daughter wreaks havoc with the mind of an enemy agent in order to force that agent's co-operation with her mother.
- Kris Longknife is not a mother per se, but when she was little her younger brother was kidnapped and died horribly before he could be rescued. As a result, kidnappers are her Berserk Button. Heaven help you if you make off with someone she cares about—she will hunt you down and stab you in the jugular.
Live Action TV
- Firefly: River toward the later episodes and the movie: "My turn" "no power in the verse can stop me".
- After her daughter attempts to hide the fact that she's being bullied on Hangin with Mr. Cooper, the genteel Southern woman Geneva, who to that point had never displayed any show of anger above a stern look, bursts through the doors of the school and screams "WHOOOOO'S BEEN MESSIN' WITH MY BABEEEEEEH???" She then threatens to "RAAAAAAAIIIIN on [the bully] like a GEORGIA THUNDERSTORM!!!!!"
- When Reese is the victim of a cruel prank by the popular girls in an episode of Malcolm In The Middle, Lois strikes back (which is in fact the title of the episode) with overly elaborate and exotic forms of revenge (such as filling up one girl's motorcycle helmet with bubblegum and putting a fraudulent charge for an expensive hotel room for a sexual getaway on another girl's credit card).
- Heroes has straight and subverted examples:
- The X Files final season had an episode where someone tries to kill Scully's newborn son, only to be shot three times in the stomach by Scully. The following scene has her refusing to give the man any treatment until he tells the reason why he's out to kill her son.
- Athena in the revised Battlestar Galactica goes murderous on Natalie, a Six model Athena believes wants to kidnap her daughter. To quote a reviewer
"Ordinary moms don't play when it comes to the safety of their children, let alone trained warrior alien robot moms."
- Athena goes into animalist rage whenever Hera is threatened, most notably when she rams her head repeatedly against the cell window on hearing that Roslin and Adama intend to abort her child.
- Jurassic Fight Club had an episode in which a Nanotyrannus tries to take out a pair of young Tyrannosaurs. He succeeds in killing one, but the mother arrives and kills him, ripping apart the corpse to keep any other predators away.
- Also notable was the episode in which a male Majungotholus attempted to kill a baby to entice the mother to mate. While the male succeeds, the female breaks his neck, preventing him from moving as she eats him alive.
- Buffy's mom Joyce, who goes after Spike with an axe when he threatens Buffy.
- Buffy herself, who goes nuts at the Knights of Byzantium, who want Dawn dead.
- It's a Summers thing. See Dawn's response to Spike in season 7.
I know I can't take you in a fight, even with a chip in your head. But if you hurt my sister, touch her at all? You're going to wake up on fire.
Spike, later, to Buffy: When did your sister get unbelievably scary?
- Desperate Housewives plays this straight twice.
- In the second season, despite all of the emotional and mental distress her daughter Danielle put her through, Bree goes full-out Mama Bear when Danielle is revealed to be on the run with a murderer - one of the new neighbors and her boyfriend no less!
- In a recent episode, Susan punishes Gaby's daughter, Juanita, for pushing and bullying her own son, MJ. Gaby, for all of her insecurities over Juanita's weight, gets fiercely protective of her daughter and starts calling MJ a little girl, to put it nicely. Cue the Mama Bear catfight.
- Janet Frasier gets this way when her adopted daughter Cassandra is undergoing a mutation courtesy if Nirrti, going so far as to threaten the Goa'uld at gunpoint to fix Cassandra.
- Nirrti was still unwilling to help at first, even with the gun to her head. Then Hammond informed her that Frasier was Cassandra's mother. Nirrti got a lot more cooperative after that.
- Brought up in an episode of CSI, when the team is discussing a recent case where a man was killed on a plane by the passengers when he went berserk and tried to open the plane door.
Nick: Do you think you could ever take a life in that situation?
Catherine: *answering instantly* I could.
Sarah: *shocked* You didn't even stop to think about it!
Catherine: When it comes to the life of my child, I go all the way.
- Then there's the episode where Catherine's ex is murdered and Catherine has to fish Lindsay out of a car that's rapidly filling with water in a flood channel. When a suspect (her ex's main squeeze) starts referring to Lindsay as a "little brat" and reveals she left her in the car, Catherine storms in and nearly takes her head off.
- Not to mention that one episode where she came home to find a suspect in the driveway talking with her mother and daughter. She very calmly tells her mother to take her daughter inside, then she punches the guy in the face and pulls a gun on him. "You came to my house." = don't ever mess with Catherine's kid.
- In the Star Trek The Next Generation episode "The Dauphin", the shapeshifting guardian of a young girl destined to rule a planet (who is later revealed to be of the same species) takes this to absolutely insane levels of paranoia, up to and including ordering Dr. Pulaski to kill a patient with a mildly infectious disease because it just might possibly effect her surrogate daughter, who was not even allowed outside her quarters anyway.
- The female protagonist in Jekyll is asked when she first knew she could kill someone. She replies that it was after her children were born. The answer is the key to the nature of Mr Hyde in that he is a ruthless psychopath created not by the dark side of humanity, but by pure love.
- Teyla in Stargate Atlantis. When Big Bad Michael threatens to kidnap her infant son for use in his experiments, Teyla responds by shoving him off the top a very, very tall tower.
- On Charmed, when a young boy she had grown attached to was screaming in pain, Piper put every effort she could into her power of explosion and managed to break through an impenetrable fence. An act which caused her sister to reply "I think we just saw a mother lift a car off her child".
- After auntie Paige's failed attempt to locate newborn Wyatt's would-be kidnapper nearly got her killed, Mama Bear Piper burst into the demon Black Market, shouted "WHICH ONE OF YOU DIRTBAGS PUT A BOUNTY ON MY BABY!!" and proceeded to blow the place up.
- Before doing that, when the guard demanded to know who she was, her answer before blowing him up defined the very essence of this trope.
Piper "I'm the mother!"
- In an episode of NCIS, a mother lays a royal smackdown on her "sister" (actually one of the kidnappers) the minute she find out that her daughter is safe. Bonus points in that the trope is actually Lampshaded by Ducky in the same episode.
- In another episode, Mike Franks' daughter in law shoots down two mercenaries trying to kidnap her daughter with a .22 caliber hunting rifle. Franks remarks that out of six shots, she hit with five and even refers to her as a mama bear.
- Mary Winchester's ghost. That poltergeist in "Home" never stood a chance when it tried to kill her boys. Also a Crowning Moment Of Awesome.
- How have we come this far and not witnessed one mention of the name Sarah Connor?
- Do not mess with Janeway's crew. Especially not when Janeway has the newest, most powerful technology of the Federation at her disposal and absolutely no issues with using it.
- Denise Huxtable Kendall mistakenly believed her mother-in-law couldn't stand her. Believing herself unable to please the woman left Denise a crying wreck. Luckily for everyone involved, Claire was wise enough to verify Mrs. Kendall's actual opinion of Denise before unleashing a Mama Bear fury (turns out hubby Martin's mother couldn't stand Martin's frequent rushes to judgement in matrimonial situations). For not listening to his mother, Martin was... less lucky.
- Aaron Hotchner of [[Criminal Minds]]. His status as Team Mom has been a running joke among fans since the first season, lampshaded when Morgan asks JJ, "Where are Mom and Dad?" ("Hotch and Rossi are still at the conference.") And we all know who Mom is.
- Michael Westen's mom seems like any regular kind, gentle elderly woman. However, threaten her sons and she will make you regret it.
- Do not screw around with any of the Dolls. They're not her blood children, but Adelle DeWitt responds to the harming of a Doll with enough cold brutality to make anyone wince.
Mythology
Tabletop Games
- Unknown Armies has the Mother archetype. High-level Avatars of the Mother get huge bonuses in combat when they're either defending a child, or pregnant. The phrase "mama bear" even shows up in the rulebook description of their second Avatar channel.
- Munchkin invokes this with the "Mommy" card. When someone is in combat with a weaker monster or one that's been turned into a Baby, you can play this card to summon the monster's mother, who is ten levels higher. And woe is you if the Baby+Mommy combo is applied on a Lv. 20 Plutonium Dragon...
- In Dungeons And Dragons, the Grey Render◊ is a huge monstrosity with a penchant for "adopting" small creatures of other species, to whom it will thereafter bring food and protection. And if you dare so much as look at them funny, it will tear you down like the squishy little piece of meat you are and share your body with its protegés.
Video Games
Webcomics
- Charon McKay from Shadowgirls, especially when she pulls the so-called Slayer of the Elder Gods that was manipulating her daughter out of her mind, with just her bare hands and kicks it in the face. Also Christmas Snow when she stabs the guy who's responsible for turning her daughter into an Elder God Avatar through the heart. And this guy was making fricking scary sea monsters afraid of him!
- Miranda Deegan is one of the most powerful mages in the world most of the time. When her family or students are threatened, however, she is completely unstoppable. The necromancer Rilian once took advantage of this - he betrayed the Deegans' location to his age-old enemy, Helixa, knowing that Miranda would never let her lay a finger on them. He was right; Miranda killed Helixa (with her bare hands), and although it didn't take, she made a point of finishing her off the next time they met.
- Not to mention she took an infernomancer who tormented a friend of her son (the title character) and opened his mind to a world of arcane torture. And then she banished him to approximately the other side of the universe. This infernomancer had just attacked a classrom full of her students (she's the headmistress of the local Hogwarts) and killed three of them, though, so it's still valid.
- The trope is referenced in this Beaver and Steve.
- Von Pinn from Girl Genius. Unusually for Momma Bears, her charges are genuinely and justifiably terrified of her- largely because they understand how prone she is to violence and overkill.
- She is introduced trying to encourage safe behaviour in a young woman whom she is holding off the ground by the neck.
- Also unusual when she reveals that she's supposed to keep Agatha "safe" primarily in the sense of "preventing her from posing a danger to others."
- Castle Heterodyne has also been showing a warped version of Mama Bearness in recent strips. Or maybe Papa Wolfness, I'm not sure which gender a castle can really count as.
- The Order Of The Stick gives this, also (as is common) paired with a Crowning Moment Of Awesome for Kazumi: she kicks ninja ass, while pregnant.
- An example of this and minor aversion of What Measure Is A Non Human occurs later when Vaarsuvius has to deal with the enraged mother of an adolescent black dragon that the party killed.
- Vaarsuvius also counts, making a Deal With The Devil to have the power to save her own children from the dragon. (S)he not only kills the dragon, but reanimates her head and uses a high-level Necromancy spell to KILL EVERYONE IN THE WORLD THAT IS RELATED TO HER IN ANY WAY. According to V, that's nearly a quarter of all black dragons on the planet. This not only includes full grown individuals, but babies. This will ensure that no one in her family will come after V's mate and children again. Unfortunately, now V has pissed off the goddess of evil dragons.
- Darken, another D&D based webcomic, illustrates that even borderline cosmic horrors shouldn't bother the daughter of an ancient dragon.
- Wigu has Romy Tinkle who, while a raging alcoholic in poor shape, was capable of getting the jump on and knocking out a ninja when her family was threatened by bounty hunters.
Web Original
- Tuck's mother in The Saga Of Tuck, when Tuck is in that Convenient Coma, scares everyone except possibly her husband.
- In Whately Academy, during the Halloween invasion, we get at least two or three. Deathlist, a monstrous cyborg of superman-level power and the most horrifying villain in the Whatelyverse, makes the mistake of attacking the school and threatening the children. By the time Dean Carson (aka Lady Astarte) gets through with him, the only thing left of him to escape is his head. Jimmy T, a generally peacable shapeshifter, finds out his house of misfits, Hawthorne, is being raided by troopers looking to take "samples" from the helpless students, turns into fricking GODZILLA and stomps a mudhole in the forces there. Pretty much all over the campus were mother hens ripping bad guys a new one....
Western Animation
- A common fan theory explaining the mysterious disappearance of Ursa (Latin for "female bear") in Avatar The Last Airbender takes the above quote as foreshadowing, positing that Ursa killed Fire Lord Azulon to protect her son Zuko. She did. However this only apparently extends to her son, according to Azula, who states that Ursa saw her as a monster.
- Mrs. Jumbo in Dumbo is branded a "mad elephant" and caged after she goes berserk trying to protect her son from some teasing kids.
- Danny Phantom where at least two episodes have the main character's mother, Maddie Fenton, kicking all sorts of ass towards a group of ghosts to protect her son. One of which involves an Ecto-induced lightsaber.
- Before Family Guy's unfortunate degredation of Meg's character and Lois's Flanderization, the episode where the second quote on this page originates from had Lois go out of her way to stage elaborate revenge against the cool kids for humiliating Meg at a football game.
- She also gets a moment with the Straw Feminist Gloria Ironbox. At first, she just makes some snarky comments about Gloria's extremist opinions, but then the offending strawwoman insults her children. Cue the Cat Fight.
- At the end of the 'Odysee' arc of Gargoyles, we find out that Fox is actually the half-fey daughter of Titania, the Queen of the Fae, but she's been unable to use her magical powers due to being raised amongst humans. Then Titania and Oberon try to steal away her newly born baby, Alexander, and even a united front by the Gargoyles, Cyberbiotics, Xanatos and (in a last-minute effort) Puck, fails to stop them. Then, Fox proceeds to blast Oberon through a wall in her first and last display of her true powers. It may actually have been planned that way by Titania, in an effort to force Fox into displaying her potential by deliberately invoking this trope... Xanatos isn't the only one in the series who can throw a good gambit.
- Also, Demona in the episode 'The Reckoning'. She and Thailog have the Clan at their mercy - until Thailog threatens to kill Angela, at which point Demona first turns on Thailog and then frees Goliath and the rest of the Clan rather than allow her daughter to be killed.
- Teen Titans: In the episode "Hide and Seek," Raven has to escort three very young superpowered kids to a monastery. She resents the job at first, but eventually comes to care for her charges, culminating in the line "Nobody messes with MY kids!"
- Justice League Unlimited has a small example with a nameless woman. A mother and her daughter are trapped in a car that just fell from a suspension bridge. Hawkgirl comes in and rips the roof off with her mace. Rather than wait for rescue, the mother does not hesitate to grab her kid and throw her up to Hawkgirl. Hawkgirl rescues both of them. Even the nameless extras in the DCAU are badass.
- Peggy Hill from King Of The Hill has a tendency to do this. When her niece/adoptive daughter Luanne's real mother, Leanne, returns and starts treating Luanne like crap, being a crappy mom in general, and as the final straw, humiliating her by giving Luanne's boyfriend a lap dance in front of the whole neighborhood, Peggy finally snaps and tears into Leanne in a No Holds Barred Beatdown.
- Also subverted: when Bobby kicks Hank in the groin and then takes advantage of his injury to calmly play a video game, even though he was banned from doing so, while forcing his father to limp around the house after him. When she sees this, Peggy attacks her own son, even giving him a noogie, because "I you show disrespect toward the man I love, you are going to have to deal with Peggy Hill!" Hank then reinforces her demonstration by telling Bobby "I can get her to do that any time, you know."
- Drew Saturday. Mess with her "boys" (her biological son and a cat-gorilla cryptid) and prepare for a world of hurt.
- The Simpsons, Marge gets her own moments every now and then. Like when she was treatig Nelson al nice, and giving him money. Nelson own mother came by and yelled at Marge. Her reply? "Go home Mrs. Mutnz...AND TRY NOT TO HAVE INTERCOURSE ON THE WAY!" The reaction of her family was priceless.
- This is the House Wife who saved her Lisa from an erupting volcano, people. After the "feminist" Intrepid Reporter that Lisa admired pretty much abandoned the little girl to her luck. Don't forget that!
- In the episode "The Great Wife Hope", Marge ends up fighting the guy in charge of a shallow pastiche of Ultimate Fighting. She gets one-punched to the floor, Bart comes to her aid, and when her opponent picks up Bart and threatens to hit him, she growls, "That's... my... SON!" and proceeds to beat the hell out of the guy. Do NOT F with Marge.
Real Life
- Rosie the Riveter. Those Wacky Nazis had better not rile up America's mothers!
- According to an obscure legend, a sailor named Elgin Staples in a ship sunk at Guadalcanal had his live saved by a life belt, inspected, packed and stamped by his own mother.
- Supposedly professional wrestler Kensuke Sasaki actually adopted Katsuhiko Nakajima, who debuted in the business in his teens, to act as this both in physical presence and through the Kensuke Office organization, which is essentially a "brand name" for their family (Kensuke Sasaki and his wife, female legend Akira Hokuto also have two biological sons) and affiliated wrestlers.
- Females Crocodiles are rather passive compare to the males but will go berserk if you are even near their young.
- This troper remembers reading a story by a South African game warden who saw a stray foal zebra cut out by some wild dogs. Mama and a couple of colts turned back and held off all of them for a few minutes. Then the head stallion turned and led the whole herd in a stampede down on the wild dogs. This was an awesome display of Mama Zebras, Papa Zebras, big brother zebras, and big sister zebras.
- This troper and his family has a car accident once. He and his Dad were pretty much unconscious and his Mom had her right arm broken and bleeding, but no one in the hospital knew at the time where his sister was, since she had been sent to a different hospital early due to complications (She almost died). Since no one could give her a straight answer, my mom didn't let anyone attend her arm until someone find her daughter. Mama Bear, indeed.
- This troper formerly had a pet wolf, who was raised with humans since she was newborn. Said wolf had a litter of cubs. Anybody trying to go near her cubs would have to fear for their lives. Then this troper's dumbass cousin tried holding a cub. Bad idea.
- This mother from India.
- A woman named Susanna Eastman/Wood/Swan took up a spit from a fireplace to defend her husband and children from Indian attack in colonial Massachusetts years after her first husband and children were killed by another Indian attack. She killed three of them who broke down her door in a single strike (they were lined up single file). She was never bothered again. My grandmother found this woman in our genealogy. Someone in town wrote a poem about her.
- Kirsty MacColl died pushing her son out of the path of a speedboat.
- Olivia Harrison, wife of George Harrison. When an intruder broke into their home in 1999, George initially went out to confront him in the hopes of diverting attention away from his wife. He was stabbed repeatedly in the process, at which point Olivia came out and beat the hell out of the fifteen-years-younger intruder with a fireplace poker, successfully disabling him.
- Try here for more examples. The Aesop: Don't threaten people's kids, because this is Truth In Television.
This video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNCWcgi0I_s is the personified trope.
Comment from watcher: "You don't mess with no mama protecting her babies! GET THE FUCK OUT! LOL!!!"
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