Follow TV Tropes

Following

Motive Rant

Go To

"Meaningless, huh? WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF MEANINGLESS!? Spend most of your life ruled by another... watch your race dwindle to a handful... and then... tell me what has more meaning than your own strength! I have in me the blood of a Saiyan Prince! He is nothing but a joke! Yet, I've had to watch him surpass me in strength... my destiny thrown to the wayside! He... he's even saved my life as if I were a helpless child. He has stolen my honor. And his debts... must be paid!"
Vegeta (to Supreme Kai Shin after he called Vegeta and Goku's rivalry meaningless), Dragon Ball Z

A standard ingredient of The Summation in any Cop Show, Police Procedural, Law Procedural or Mystery of the Week. After the detective has shown without doubt who the killer is, the killer will launch into a long, self-righteous (or remorseful) monologue explaining why exactly they did what they did. This both serves as confession and allows the writers to explain how this solution to the mystery makes sense, even if it's often a "He called my mother a bad name, he deserved to die!" kind of sense. It's often the only way to make the perp's feelings obey the Rule of Perception, since they must be hidden until the crime is solved.

This is a good place for a We Are Everywhere moment.

The detective will often then give them a Kirk Summation in response, followed by whatever phrase they use to indicate that they're being arrested. If the detective is feeling nasty he'll throw in "The Reason You Suck" Speech.

It doesn't matter if the character's a timid librarian, a jolly bartender, a butch farmhand, what-have-you, when they are revealed to be the killer they all suddenly snap into the same cookie-cutter personality type: bitter, twisted loony.

In real life, many people confess to crimes and will happily talk about what they did even though all they should say is "I want to see my lawyer".

Also in real life, a criminal that's cornered tends to do things like socking the other guy in the face and running away. This rarely happens in television, despite the detective being so often the only other person in the room with the criminal, and when it does, they are almost always caught after.

This trope doesn't necessarily have to be applied in the interrogation room. It could be given by the killer when he thinks that he's got the Final Girl at his mercy, a bit of Evil Gloating Just Between You and Me, or when he's explaining his motivations to an accomplice. All that matters is that the killer explains just why he's committing his crime in the first place.

This trope can overlap with New Era Speech if the villain's goals are particularly visionary.

This trope is the intended result of The Perry Mason Method. It's often part of a Villainous Breakdown. The Hero might respond by saying Shut Up, Hannibal!, replying with a Kirk Summation, being Disappointed by the Motive, or shutting the villain up with a bullet.

See also Heroism Motive Speech for the heroic version of the trope.


Examples

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Attack on Titan:
    • Eren gives an extended version of this when breaking the Walls to release the Titans inside to destroy the world. He specifically states the future of his home, Paradis is at risk as long as the rest of the world is thriving, and they certainly won't stop unless the Eldians all over the world are dead. To prevent that from ever happening, Eren declares that he will kill all of the world till none of the life outside his island stay alive, no matter their allegiances.
    • Later in the series, during a flashback, Eren explains his true motives to Ramzi, due to the child not understanding his language, and says that he realized deep down that the Rumbling is going to happen because he wished for it and wanted a world with humanity gone. During his last conversation with Armin in the final chapter, he reiterates this stance and says that he would have committed to the Rumbling even if he couldn't see the future.
  • In the penultimate episode of Black★★Rock Shooter: Dawn Fall, after Artemis explains her true plan to wipe out humanity, the Colonel asks, "Why would you do such a thing?!" Artemis is so aghast that humanity hasn't been been able to follow her warped chain of logic that she proceeds to explain it in excruciating detail, even asking the Colonel to record it so the rest of humanity can hear it.
  • In Chapter 385 of Bleach, Tousen finally cracks and explains his motives for betraying Soul Society and joining Aizen. By the way, the "cracks" part is appropriate; his Hollow mask cracks open right when his rant begins. It's all lies, though.
    Tosen: What is justice!!? Is it forgiving my beloved friend's murderer!? That is surely good! It is a beautiful thing! Undeniably so! But is what is good the same as what is just!? No!!! Living peaceably without avenging the dead... THAT IS EVIL!!!!
  • Every episode of Case Closed ends with one in which the culprit explains why he or she did it. Sometimes countered by a motive rant from another person that completely destroys their motives and breaks the culprit completely.
  • In A Certain Scientific Railgun, Miho Jufuku is running around drawing really ugly eyebrows on girls from Tokiwadai middle school. When she's caught, it's discovered that she has matching eyebrows. She explains that her boyfriend left her for a Tokiwadai girl because of them, so she decided to use a stungun to knock out and draw ugly eyebrows on every Tokiwadai girl she can find.
    Saten: Uh...what?
    Mikoto: Yeah, you lost me somewhere in the middle there.
  • At the end of the first season of Darker than Black, a leader of The Syndicate gives one of these to Kirihara. Then he finds out she was recording the whole thing and kinda loses it.
  • Death Note: Light has one in the last chapter about how the world needs Kira and if they stop him, the world will only go back to the rotten way it was, and Near is only chasing him for his own ego. Both are correct: when Light stopped being Kira for a while midway through his battle with L, the crime rate shot up past pre-Kira levels overnight, proving it was only fear of Kira keeping it down.
  • As stated in the quote at the top of the page, Vegeta had a huge axe to grind with Goku, and after goading Goku by killing 200 innocent people and threatening to kill even more, Goku accepted Vegeta's request for one more battle, which eventually led to the most epic and intensely fought rematch in all of Dragon Ball Z. The battle also led to the resurrection of a five-million-year-old demon, who would later wreak absolute havoc throughout the universe. Of course, both of them already knew that was a potential consequence of them fighting each other.
  • Food Wars!: In the final bout of the Regiment de cuisine, Azami Nakiri refuses to admit defeat when his daughter Erina makes a dish that surpasses his expectations (using ideas she got from Soma that her father considered "vulgar trash"), and during his subsequent Villainous Breakdown goes on a tirade about how the culinary world is cruel and causes chefs with passion to burn out like his admired Joichiro Saiba-senpai, and that Tootsuki and the culinary world need to live under his rules so chefs can be happy. Soma replies that he's not one to decide what makes people happy, and that Joichiro had long moved past his breakdown and found happiness again.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Kaitou Saint Tail has a tendency to make her "victims" go into Motive Rants when she escapes with their already stolen goods.
  • Naruto: During the Chunin Exam finals, a beaten up Naruto refuses to back down from the fight, even after Neji tells him he has Nothing Personal against him. Naruto replies that for him it's very personal for the No-Holds-Barred Beatdown he delivered on Hinata in the preliminaries, so Neji proceeds to tell him the story of the Hyuuga Affair and how it ended up in the death of his father, as he blames the Main Hyuga House for it, but especially Hinata and her father Hiashi. While Naruto is sympathetic to what Neji went through, he replies that it still doesn't excuse what he did to Hinata, because it wasn't her fault, and he has no business talking about You Can't Fight Fate when he himself hasn't accepted his own fate.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion:
    • Happens once in Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0: when Shinji almost trashes NERV HQ, Gendo explains why he's such a bastard: he believes that he can only achieve his desires if he's willing to sacrifice everything and use his own strength.
    • Gendo gets a good one at the end of the manga. Notable because he does it after he saves Shinji from the soldiers instead of Misato like in the anime, and because he explains in a straightforward, non-symbolism-laden manner exactly how he feels towards Shinji: he doesn't love him, he doesn't like him. He is jealous of Shinji because Yui loved him as well. This is different from his in-anime justification, which is that he didn't think he'd make a good dad and thought that Shinji would hate him, a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, but he never gets the opportunity to make the rant there.
  • Sword Art Online:
    • When Kirito and Asuna finally catch up to the Big Bad, Akihiko Kayaba, explains the purpose behind Aincrad and the death game played there. He had a dream of a floating castle and wanted to make it a reality.
    • In the "Murder Case in the Area" arc, Kirito and Asuna eventually find the culprit behind Griselda's murder and learn their motive for the crime. Grimlock was disturbed by how confident and assertive Griselda (his wife in real life, as well as in the game) was becoming and wanted to kill her while she was still the woman he remembered. Both of them are utterly disgusted by this.
    • In the "Phantom Bullet" arc, after Kirito defeats Death Gun in the Bullet of Bullets tournament, Shino "Sinon" Asada's friend Kyouji "Spiegel" Shinkawa visits her in her apartment, and reveals that he was one of the three people involved in "Death Gun." The rant is somewhat longer in the light novel version, but in both the light novel and the anime, Kyouji reveals that his real life was a mess, so he sought out Gun Gale Online as a form of escapism, only to get tricked into making bad decisions about his character, thereby making it impossible for him to become the strongest. He also reveals the depth of his obsession with Shino and desire to do a Murder-Suicide with her.

    Arts 
  • The Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa challenged museum patrons to solve a homicide of a young woman in its "Autopsy of a Murder" forensic science exhibit. If you correctly determine who the killer is and what evidence proves it, you'll get to see the killer's Motive Rant. It turns out the killer was the young woman's literature professor, who had plagiarized a novel written by a friend of the young woman's family and used the resulting success to build his academic career. When the young woman found out about it, she threatened to expose him, which would have ruined his career. She wouldn't stop hounding the professor, and he eventually became so desperate that he killed her to try and keep her quiet.

    Audio Plays 
  • The Big Finish audio play Davros has a spectacular Motive Rant for the title character. Starts out as a menacing whisper, but at the end, well...
    Davros: When I press this switch, I will die. The poison in that projectile injector will kill in a moment. It is a perfect, efficient, killing machine. It will be painless they say. They tell me they know the pain I am in, as if they could! And that just by pressing this switch I will end that suffering forever.
    They say I should be the one to do it, but they are weak. They can not bring themselves to look at me, let alone kill me! They hesitate, they fear me! Even when I'm like this, and they have their perfect, pure, strong bodies, they fear me! And well they should! I am no longer like them, I am above them! I have the ultimate power, the power of life and death! This... body, this... is my dominion. Mine to command, no one else's! I can sense them out there in the corridor, cowering. Not daring to speak. They are the frail ones. They are the crippled. They are the ones without choice.
    They! Will! Die! They will lose this war and they will die! I could join them in defeat and death, but if I survive! If I survive, something stronger will emerge. A new race, the supreme power in the universe! I will not press this switch, I will not cower, I will not die! I! will! not! die! THIS! IS! NOT! THE! END! THIS! IS! ONLY!
    (dramatic pause)
    THE BEGINNING!

    Comic Books 
  • Batman: In issue #650, Jason Todd was furious that Batman thought his Roaring Rampage of Revenge was all about Batman not saving him.
    Jason: Is that what you think this is about? You letting me die?! I don't know what clouds your judgment worse: your guilt or your antiquated sense of morality. Bruce, I forgive you for not saving me. But why, on God's Earth..." (kicks open a door, revealing the Joker.) "...IS HE STILL ALIVE?!?"
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In the "Family Reunion" arc of the Angel & Faith comic book, when Angel calls Willow out on wanting to involve Connor in her plans to restore magic, she loses it, bitch-slaps him, and calls him out on his ways before breaking down about how Earth is becoming a Crapsack World without magic:
    Willow: "Don't you dare. Don't you dare try to say I'm like you! This is all your fault! Thinking you can fix things! Running blindly down any road that might lead to redemption! And you're doing it again! Never worrying about the consequences until it's too late! You're ruined everything, Angel!!" [Beat] "Can't you see what we're missing? How empty the world is? There hasn't been a decent song, movie, or book, since we lost the Seed! Suicide rates are spiking! All over the world people are losing hope! It's just starting! It only gets worse from here! The world's dying and nobody will admit it! I need to save it. There's nothing more important. Why doesn't anyone understand...?"
  • Daredevil: Mysterio has quite a speech about his motives in the finale of the Guardian Devil storyline, and implies that there's more still about just how he became a "monster" who would do all these things. Matt, in keeping with acting utterly unimpressed in this issue, spends most of that same time "rambling about how clever" he is isolating the "hum" of his suit's main battery.
  • Satan's Hollow: In the climax, Jacob gives a rather prolongued rant to Sandra to explain why he's performing the satanic ritual and the specific sacrifices that it involves.
  • Sin City features rants by almost every antagonist before they meet their fates.
  • The Transformers: Drift Empire of Stone: Hellbat launches into a particularly dark one when Ratchet and Drift stumble onto his plot to use the stone army for his own purposes.
    "How long have you lived? A million years? More? What are we? We can alter our bodies...overcome, adapt. We hardly age, or get sick...I've watched races die. I've watched civilizations, cultures, whole worlds die. And here I am, still living. Eternal. What do we do? What is the point of us? We don't reproduce, we don't create. What are we? Millions of years and what have we done? Kill. Our own kind...others...That is what we are, that is why we're here. Machines of war, of death. These hands...I have killed countless beings with these hands. All those lives I've taken. I remember every single one of them. Centuries of killing as though it was yesterday."
  • Watchmen has one of the best Motive Rants of all time, where the surprise villain, Adrian Veidt, reveals his incredibly elaborate plan while ignoring three separate people trying to kill him in mid-sentence, and not only did he actually pull off his scheme thirty-five minutes before the heroes even arrived, he also convinces a couple of the heroes that since he's already pulled it off, they have to go along with it for the greater good.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Wonder Woman (2006): Alkyone gives Diana a rant about why she is, in her own warped view, Necessarily Evil:
      I did this to save our people, Diana! I have made terrible choices. I never wanted to be queen. I just wanted...I just wanted things to never change. Your beautiful mother, and my Circle to watch over her until the end of time!
    • The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016): Zeus goes on a rant in which he makes it clear he wants to massacre millions and then force the survivors to worship him and perform human sacrifices to him at swordpoint in order to regain his old strength that fully cements him as a self obsessed villain and confirms that Diana's wariness of him is not unfounded.

    Fan Works 
  • Accidental Successor: After Toshinori learns that his friend and former sidekick Sir Nighteye is a Control Freak who is trying to dictate every aspect of Toshinori's life and legacy, Nighteye launches into one of these wherein he attempts to gaslight Toshinori into believing he's the one at fault, ranting about how Toshinori is actually incapable of managing his own life without outside assistance.
    Sir Nighteye: You can't see it, you're too close to it, but you've always struggled when it comes to anything outside of heroics. The stress of being All Might, of never truly having a life outside of that identity, it wears on you. Your social skills are almost nonexistent. You have little common sense, almost no domestic skills, and an inability to do any basic paperwork. Basically anything outside of fighting villains you have no real world expertise. You need me to take care of those things for you.
  • Always Visible: When Galbraith catches Baselard red-handed, he decides there's nothing wrong with preaching to the criminal. Guess what? The doctor escapes!
  • In All Mixed Up!, Mariana Mag gives one to Otto that also doubles as her Backstory, where she tells him what caused her Face–Heel Turn and who exactly is in the wrong.
  • The Bolt Chronicles: In "The Murder Mystery," Bolt takes credit for killing The Director. He both angrily explains why he did it, and reveals that he conspired with the other animals present to do so, complete with a Sideshow Bob style Evil Laugh.
    Bolt: It was me. I did it. James made my life hell — cooping me up in that tiny trailer for five long years to satisfy his warped method acting vision. He kept me from living life the way I should have. Five long, miserable years it was, too. [laughs manically] But I couldn't have done it alone. I had help, and plenty of it. I knew none of the other animals on set liked him, either. Diedrich, Junior, Puffy Cat, even Rhino and Mittens — we were all in on it.
  • Burning Bridges, Building Confidence: After getting akumatized into Rena Rage, Alya snaps when asked if she was a fan of the previous Fox Heroine, revealing that she was Rena Rouge, and is pissed off that HER Miraculous was given to Vexxin. This doesn't do her any favors; as Ladybug bluntly informs her afterwards, she just outed her former Secret Identity to Hawkmoth, so even if she did still trust her after how selfishly she acted, it still wouldn't be safe to give her any Miraculouses.
  • Captains Crash: When Spitfire chews Launchpad out on crashing deliberately, Launchpad goes onto one of these, explaining that half the people who attend airshows do so because they're hoping to see a crash — so, he puts on a show, then crashes deliberately, and he brings the audience coming back for more.
  • Catarina Claes MUST DIE!: Once Henrietta is exposed as the one who assault Catarina, she insists that she did so in order to stop Catarina from bullying and abusing Maria and Keith. Both of her supposed victims protest that her accusations simply aren't true; Catarina hadn't done anything of the sort to either of them, being a genuinely Nice Girl. Overhearing one of the bewildered students question her sanity, Henrietta then starts ranting about how she was trying to kill Catarina to prevent her from marrying Geordo and triggering a Bad Future.
  • Child of the Storm:
    • Dumbledore, while not evil, gives a surprisingly dark one. He lays out how his fellow wizards frustrate him and how he could still become a dark lord that would put Voldemort to shame, before stating the reason he remains headmaster and nothing more is because of this temptation.
      In the view of the Wizarding peoples of the world, the three most significant discoveries are the invention of the Wand, the creation of the Philosopher's Stone, and the discovery of the Twelve Uses of Dragon's Blood. One man had a hand in two of those. In the muggle world, you could name a dozen discoveries, all of similar significance and not one name would need to appear twice. The once noble calling of the Alchemist and the Research Wizard has been cast aside. The greatest minds are limited to little more than exploration of old principles, and that in their spare time. The only researchers and innovators that remain in Britain are those at the Department of Mysteries, and their discoveries are suppressed or used for the sole benefit of the Ministry and the current elite. There is no sharing of information and no desire to use the information for the betterment of wizarding kind, let alone mankind at large. The situation is much the same around the world... I could easily have decided that I, who was born with so much power, should therefore take more, because I was born to greatness. Voldemort would have been nothing compared to me. I could easily have used my influence over the students to form an army, or, far more insidious, a group of followers, dancing on my strings like puppets. Horace Slughorn would have been an amateur by comparison. I could have done far more with my offices as Supreme Mugwump and Chief Warlock than I have done, becoming effective ruler of every wanded wizard on the planet.
    • Harry, of all people, gives a rather dark one in chapter 61, when he's talking about his disgust for the world's prejudices and pointless cruelties, and how he could potentially use his powers to forcibly change things. It's cut short, and he's horrified afterwards, when an Armor-Piercing Question from Diana makes him realize that he'd be no different from the people he hates. If anything, the whole thing just serves as support for the fears of characters who believe that Harry has the potential to become the next Magneto.
  • CONSEQUENCES: Lila gets one in MAX-IMUM EFFECT when she attempts to turn Max into her Homework Slave, as she reveals her true nature to him and that she's been working to destroy Marinette's reputation.
    Max: But why? Why? Marinette is the nicest person in the world!
    Lila: Ugh, I know. And that sickens me! Everyone's always going on about how sweet she is, how kind, how helpful, how utterly selfless! Please. She tried to tell me that we could be friends if I didn't lie, that all I had to do was be honest. As if! Why be honest and have friends, when I could lie and have loyal servants? All of you bent over backwards to help me when I merely hinted that I knew celebrities, or that I was too weak because of my charity work! Why would I give that up? But Marinette wouldn't stay out of my way, so she had to go. Now you have the same choice; fall in line and do what I say, or stand in my way and see your life crumble. What's it going to be?
  • The Echo Remains, But The Song Is Not The Same: After kidnapping Hinata, Iyana reveals to her that he wants revenge upon the Hyuuga for how they thwarted Kumogakure's last attempt to secure the Byakugan for themselves... as well as revenge on the Raikage, who denied any knowledge of the scheme and expelled the surviving conspirators.
  • Erased Potential: Rave and Asahi both get one, explaining that they're targeting Eraserhead because they blame him for their little sister Atsuko getting killed during a Hostage Situation. However, Izuku exploits the latter's ranting by attacking him before he can finish.
  • Adrien gets one in Hold on 'til May when he berates Chloé for the part she played in making Marinette transfer to another school. In the process, he reveals himself to be a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who doesn't actually care about any of their classmates beyond what he can get out of them.
    Adrien: Shut up, Chloé! You know nothing! You know nothing about what I'm trying to do here! I spent all these years trying to back you up for saying everything that we both wanted to say, and this is how you repay me?! I spent years building up my sunshine persona to get these people to like me, and you just continue to stomp them into the ground! As if they're not useful to us, to me? You only have Sabrina at your beck and call! If I asked him to, seriously asked him to, Nino would go after my father in an instant! And Alya would write an article so scathing that he'd have to disappear completely! And Marinette! She as giving me gifts and food and attention all the time, and you and Lila just couldn't keep your mouths shut! Lila I get, she's poor and needy and went for the first threat to her image. You? I thought you knew better! I thought you could see Marinette as the gift that she was, but you bullied her relentlessly and now she's gone!
    Chloé: You're not actually friends with them?
    Adrien: (laughs) Of course I'm not! Why would I actually be friends with those people? They're useful, obviously, they get me out of the house and help me avoid my father, but I couldn't care less who helps me with that. Marinette, on the other hand, actually has use, and she liked these people, so if I can get them to convince her to come back, or if I can get her to return myself, everything will be perfect again.
    Chloé: You're insane.
    Adrien: And you're not thinking of all the good this will do! If Marinette comes back, she can pull the class back together again easily! Then she'll be able to plan all our picnics and outings, I bet she'll even invite you if you actually tried to act nice. My life will go back to being fun and peaceful! I can finally have the high school experience I've always dreamed about!
  • Mastermind: Strategist for Hire: In the final chapter, Izuku delivers one after having been incarcerated in Tartarus:
    Izuku: I just wanted people to see me for who I was and give me a fair chance, was that too much to ask? Villains don't care too much if you've got a great quirk as long as you've got the skills to back it up. You want to know why I became a villain? It's because it was the villains who gave me the chance to shine while the heroes were too busy making sure I knew my place.
    Nedzu: I'm sure not everyone was so bad. Surely there must have been someone willing to give you a chance.
    Izuku: You'd think so, wouldn't you. But no. My best friend became my bully and even after he told me to jump off a roof, he was welcomed into UA with open arms. I was abused by my peers for years while the teachers watched, so it should come as no surprise that I bear more scars from my childhood than I do from my villainy. I didn't want to become a villain at first, you know, but the world didn't really care about what I wanted. If you think I'm lying, why don’t you look up the stats on Quirkless unemployment. The world doesn't give kids like me a chance. ... I was just a little kid who dreamed about being a hero. My life was hell. Bullied at school, beaten down at every turn for the crime of dreaming too big. All Might was the only thing keeping me going most days. The symbol of peace. What a joke, but even his existence gave me hope that things would get better. He used to say in interviews that anyone could be a hero, which meant that my dream wasn't so impossible after all. It all came crashing down when I actually met him though. He saved me from a villain, just like he was supposed to do. But then, then I asked him if I could be a hero. He didn't even care about what other skills I had to offer. Just said it was too dangerous for a Quirkless kid. Your system, Detective, creates people like me. You put people into these little cages based on their quirk. You did it to me. You did it to Shouto. You did it to Hawks. So what else are we supposed to do when this is the only way for us to be free?
  • In both versions of The Night Unfurls, Vault lays bare his ambitions of a Sex Empire in the form of a rant, heated words on how the Seven Shields are useless, and that the Black Dogs will start a new world order where every man lives like kings.
  • In O Mother, Where Art Thou?, Diesel 10 delivers one during his final confrontation with David and Emily:
    Diesel 10: You cannot understand me! None of them do! Not even the fellow diesels who helped in my plights fully appreciated my potential! The Fat Controller never cared for his diesels. You steamies got everything and we diesels got NOTHING! Deny it all you want, but the Fat Controller never showed any respect to me! Even when he agreed to rebuild the Dieselworks, it was all a shield for him to hide behind, trying to make the diesels trust him for no reason! An engine of my strength, magnitude and range of power and he always shunned me, turned his back on me! The entire Island of Sodor turned a cold, shallow heart to me! All the way up to when Sailor John fell for the last time. NEVER did I lose my beloved rooftop friend Pinchy for good! Ever since my banishment, I've been brooding and festering in hatred as the Mainland's constant victim and target. But then when I saw and heard you two...my chance came again after too long, and on this night, I hereby lay pure vengeance upon Emily the Stirling Single and David Rider, son of Lawrence Rider! Two allies who hold together...until the end...just like Thomas and Gordon...
  • At the end of the Sabrina Gaiden sidestory, Pokémon Reset Bloodlines. Unusually, this one was given out of joy rather than anger or frustration, since the character's motivation, as she explains, was to get someone to be brave enough to try and stand up to her.
  • In the Magical Girl Crossover Shattered Skies: The Morning Lights, Joker delivers this one to Sakura:
    Joker: Have you ever lost everything? ... Don't mistake me, I don't mean just the people or places or things you care about, but also your purpose... the reason you exist, what you were created for. Imagine knowing, with utter certainty, what you were meant to do with your life, and having that snatched away from you. And dying horribly in the process, but that's another matter. That happened to me, mademoiselle. My purpose wasn't merely taken away, it was betrayed... betrayed by the very being that gave me birth. And it happened because of your kind, you and others like you. You made me lose everything. Can you imagine that? ... Oh, wait. Never mind, you don't have to imagine. You're about to live through it. You and everyone, everywhere, everywhen else.
  • Sleeper Hit AU: During the confrontation on Dagobah Beach, Bakugou reveals why he bullied Midoriya so much, and that he feels absolutely no remorse for his actions because he's too pissed off that Izuku preservered instead of breaking down and giving up on his dreams.
    Bakugou: Of course I didn't break him! That's what's so infuriating! No matter how many times I burned him, he always kept on going like nothing happened, following me around, dragging me down, he just wouldn't break!
    Yaoyorozu: And you wanted to see him break?
    Bakugou: Of f***ing course I did! Because if he didn't break, if I'm weaker than Deku, then what does that make me?! Ever since Kamino, people have been looking down on me, pitying me, blaming me... I have to be the strongest! And after all I've been through, Deku still came out on top!
  • In Chapter 27 of Hey Arnold! fanfiction Touchy-Feely Sister, Arnold gets caught stealing money from Phil's safe, and when Phil calls him out on this, Arnold yells back at him, arguing that he had earned the right to steal money after everything he had done to help the people of Hillwood. Granted, this is some kind of a Dark Fic and the somewhat OOC Arnold was corrupted into doing bad things by Lulu. He gets better at the end.
    Arnold: Help me? HELP ME?! What do I need help with? EVERY TIME I TRY TO HAVE A NORMAL LIFE, IT'S ALWAYS THE SAME THING! (mocking Oskar) "Oh Arnold, I have marital problems, solve them for me, please?" (mocking Ernie) "Yo, Arnold, help me with my problems because I'm short and insecure and always scream a lot." (mocking Hyunh) "Arnold, I need help with my restaurant because if I don't, I'll get fired." (mocking Gertrude) "Oh, Kimba or Senator or whatever, I'm an old lady with split personalities that I'm not even sure which of them is real!" (mocking Phil) "Hey, Shortman, never eat raspberries because I tell a lot of stories about the problems you have, while ignoring the fact I have my own problems, and I'll just leave you to fix them!" (mocking Sid) "I'm Sid, and I always get paranoid about everything. (mocking Harold) "I'm Harold, I'm not so much a bully as I am an insensitive pussy!" (mocking Rhonda) "Oh my goodness, I'm Rhonda, and if I don't have anything that flaunts my wealth, I AM RUINED!" (mocking Helga) "I'm Helga, I'm a BIG FREAKING BRAT who NEVER KNOWS WHEN TO STOP PESTERING THE FOOTBALL HEAD WITH WHAT I LIKE TO DO BEST!" Every time people say this, I always have an intention to help, and you know what, maybe I want to help MYSELF once in a while! Did you not think of that?
  • Two Letters: Much of the letter Marinette wrote to Luka before passing on the Ladybug Earrings to another and renouncing her Guardianship, along with all of the related memories, is spent explaining to him all of the reasons why she's decided to do so. Later, it's revealed that the other letter she wrote to her future, amnesiac self is filled with her self-justifications as well, reassuring her future self that she deserves to focus purely upon her own happiness after having all of Paris take her efforts for granted for so long.
  • In Ultimate Spider-Woman: Change With The Light, Spider-Woman's Arch-Enemy Jack O' Lantern gives a few of these explaining his motivations for his bloody crime spree. Notably, he starts to get sick of it and voices his irritation at constantly having to explain his motives.

    Films — Animated 
  • Frozen (2013): Near the end, the Big Bad reveals their plan with one of these. Prince Hans denies Anna the True Love's Kiss that would save her and proceeds to explain his plan to marry into Arendelle's throne by entering a romance with her and staging an accident for Elsa.
    Hans: Oh, Anna. If only there was someone out there who loved you.
    Anna: What? Y-You said you did.
    Hans: As thirteenth in line in my own kingdom, I didn't stand a chance. I knew I'd have to marry into the throne somewhere.
  • The Iron Giant: While Hogarth is (reluctantly) giving him a tour of the town, Kent Mansley initially starts out calm, but breaks out into one of these when the topic of the Giant comes up in an ice cream parlor. He points out that they don't know who built the Giant, nor what it's capable of, so he views it as a threat.
  • The Last Unicorn: King Haggard (who is voiced by the legendary Christopher Lee) explains to Lady Amalthea, a unicorn transformed into a human, why he has captured all the other unicorns.
    I like to watch them. They fill me with joy. The first time I felt it I thought I was going to die. I said to the Red Bull I must have them, I must have all of them, all there are! For nothing makes me happy but their shining and their grace. So the Red Bull caught them. Each time I see the unicorns, my unicorns, it is like that morning in the woods and I am truly young, in spite of myself!
  • Megamind: Hal gives one after Megamind blows down the wall to his apartment and discovers everything Hal's stolen with his powers.
    Megamind: No, no, no, no! You're a hero!
    Hal: Being a hero is for losers! It's work, work, work twenty-four/seven and for what? I only took the gig to get the girl and it turns out Roxanne doesn't want anything to do with me!
    Megamind: Roxanne Richie?
    Hal: Yeah, Roxanne Richie! I saw her having dinner and making googly eyes to some intellectual dweeb!
    Megamind: Oh...
    Hal: Who needs all that noise?
  • Toy Story 2:
    Jessie: Prospector, this isn't fair!
    Stinky Pete: FAIR!? I'll tell you what's not fair: spending a lifetime on a dime-store shelf, watching every other toy be sold! Well, now my waiting has finally paid off, and no hand-me-down cowboy doll is gonna mess it up for me now!
    • Lotso tops Stinky Pete in the next film with an even shorter (and more brutal) Motive Rant:
      Lotso: We're all just trash, waiting to be THROWN AWAY!! That's all a toy is!!

    Films — Live-Action 
  • A fabulous comedic one by Debbie Jellinsky in Addams Family Values, with the twists that she prepared a slideshow to accompany it and that the Addams family are completely sympathetic to her psychotic rant the whole time, chiming in with understanding comments as though everything she's saying is totally reasonable.
    Debbie: So I killed. So I maimed. So I destroyed one innocent life after another. Aren't I a human being? Don't I yearn, and ache, and shop? Don't I deserve love...and jewelry?
  • Jimmy Stewart gave a melodramatic but effective example of this in After the Thin Man, in which he plays a painfully bland "nice guy" for 90% of the film, only for us to watch his character flip out in a fantastic performance in the final denouement.
  • Apocalypse Now, Kurtz's monologue suggests he suffered a breakdown after Vietcong guerrillas came into a native village and hacked off the left arms of South Vietnamese children who had been inoculated against polio by Kurtz's special forces. This epitomized everything that was going wrong (in Kurtz's point of view) with the American war effort: over-reliance on science; cultural ignorance; blundering efforts at "humanitarianism" to win over the Vietnamese, which has the exact opposite effect. Nothing short of total destruction will work.
  • At the end of Bad Girls from Valley High, Tiffany is hooked on a life support machine and Danielle is barely alive. At that moment, Mrs. Witt (the old woman who Danielle was meant to be caring for) shows up and reveals that she was Charity's grandmother. Also, while she had been briefly unable to speak due to a stroke, she had very good hearing and sight and overheard Danielle bragging about Charity's murder. Witt then reveals she poisoned the chocolate box (knowing that the girls would eat it) with an aging chemical (thanks to her late roommate's husband that worked with biological warfare technology).
  • In Big Game, Hazar gives Moore one aboard Air Force One, explaining what he's about to do with him and punctuating it with a Wham Line.
  • The following conversation between Detective Conklin and the elder Yakuza boss Sugai in Black Rain is a very effective example of a subdued rant.
    Sugai: Sato. He might as well be an American. His kind only cares about money.
    Conklin: Oh yeah, what are you in it for? Love?
    Sugai: I was ten years old when the B-29 came. My family lived underground for three days. When we came up, the city was gone. Then the heat brought rain. Black rain. You made the rain BLACK. You shoved your values down our throats until we forgot who we were. You created Sato and the thousands like him. I'm paying you back.
  • There's a cut one of these in an alternate ending to The 'Burbs.
    Dr. Klopek: You were not quite right about the suburbs. Here all you have to do is take one step out of line. You paint your house the wrong shade of pink, you buy the wrong kind of car, you make one or two human sacrifices...Then when you walk down the street, everybody says "Oh, there goes the weirdo!"
    Ray: Why did you come here?
    Dr. Klopek: I came as you did. For the quiet! For the privacy! The good life! The convenient shopping with always plenty of ample free parking! But everywhere I always met all this suspicion and distrust!
    Hans: It's true. In L.A. no one ever said anything!
  • Parodied in the 1947 comedy Copacabana. Lionel Q. Deveraux (Groucho Marx) is on trial for murdering his partner's non-existent stage persona. He breaks down on the stand "I didn't do it, I tell you! I didn't do it and what's more, I'm glad I didn't do it! And if I had it all to not do over again, I wouldn't do it again!"
  • The Dark Side of the Moon (1990): When confronting the final survivor, the Devil reveals and gloats about his plan to destroy Heaven by denying it any souls. Despite having killed thousands of people without giving them any reason. He's mostly doing it out of pride (duh), but the person he's talking to also happens to be the only member of the crew who actually believes that he exists.
  • Edgar Friendly of Demolition Man, played by Denis Leary:
    Edgar: You see, according to Cocteau's plan, I'm the enemy, 'cause I like to think; I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I'm the kind of guy who likes to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecued ribs with the side order of gravy fries?" I WANT high cholesterol. I wanna eat bacon and butter and BUCKETS of cheese, okay? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in the non-smoking section. I want to run through the streets naked with green Jell-o all over my body reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly might feel the need to, okay, pal? I've SEEN the future. Do you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiener". You live up top, you live Cocteau's way: what he wants, when he wants, how he wants. Your other choice? Come down here, maybe starve to death.
  • Dog Soldiers:
    • Megan enters one when she's tricked the soldiers into unwittingly destroying their last possible means of escape from the werewolves, revealing what happened to her and how she ended up being forcibly adopted into the werewolf pack long before the start of the film, making it clear that she does ''not' like being part of the werewolves' "fucked-up family", and confirming that she sincerely thought at the night's start that she could finally escape her captors with the soldiers' aid but now she's given up hope.
    • Downplayed by Captain Ryan. When pressed and all but interrogated by Cooper and Sarge for an explanation, Ryan explains what he and his team were doing in the glen trying to catch a werewolf,and where the squad themselves came into their plan, though it takes a lot of talking and a physical death-threat from Cooper to push each section of Ryan's explanation along.
  • A Few Good Men has a truly epic one as the climax of the whole film. It builds up as the defense attorney, Lt. Kaffee, needles Col. Jessup with clever lines and pokes holes in the cover story he concocted after issuing an (illegal) order that led to an innocent marine's death. Jessup keeps his cool and hand-waves the holes pretty deftly for most of the questioning, up until Kaffee catches him in a contradiction of his own testimony and Jessup launches into the rant when he can't offer an explanation. This example is an interesting variation of the trope where it plays out the motive rant before the actual, literal confession: Jessup goes on and on about the why of it, without actually saying he did it, until he's so worked up that when Kaffee interrupts to ask him point-blank if he issued the illegal order, he blows up and shouts, "YOU'RE GODDAMN RIGHT I DID!"
    • The trope was discussed earlier, when Kaffee assures the rest of the defense team that he can get Jessup to confess on the stand; he knows the Col. wants to tell the truth about what happened because Jessup thinks he was right to do what he did.
  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): After the heroes realize that Emma Russell is willingly working with Alan Jonah and his paramilitary, she contacts them to explain the human Big Bad Wannabes' plan to forcibly awaken all the hibernating Titans and allow them to decimate humanity, and Emma's own motive for doing this.
  • Halloween III: Season of the Witch has a classic one from Conal Cochran, although it's not so much a "rant" as a "calm explanation" of his plan to use rigged Halloween masks to horrifically slaughter children across America.
    I do love a good joke, and this is the best ever. A joke on the children!
  • Averted in the opening scene of Keeping Mum; when the police question her about the bodies, she just calmly admits to it as if murdering them was the obvious solution.
    • Summed up rather nicely in this conversation between Gloria and Grace (the killer):
      Gloria: You can't go around killing people just because you don't like them!
      Grace: That was something my therapist and I could never agree on.
  • In Man of Steel, Zod has two: one where he tells Jor-El how he's going to save Krypton. And the second has him tell Kal-El how he's going to kill every human he finds in revenge for Superman taking his purpose in life.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe: Every Big Bad in the films has his moment, even though some are not listed below.
  • Robert has a minor one in Mystery Team.
  • Nightbreed: During Dr. Decker's torture and questioning of an old shopkeeper, he goes on a whiny rant about his serial-killing activities, explaining that he just hates humanity so utterly that he hacks up whole families to stop humans from creating offspring. He concludes that wiping out the Nightbreed race is the logical extension of his self-given mission to cleanse everything. This scene was apparently added after initial shooting to explain Decker's motives for being so evil more thoroughly, which wasn't all that clear in the original cut.
  • Inverted and exploited in The Peacemaker. IFOR is on the hunt for Dusan Gavrić and the last missing warhead he is carrying. They raid his apartment in Sarajevo but don't find him there — what they do find is a cassette tape that he recorded, clearly meant to be found after committing whatever act he had planned. The tape goes into detail about how his family had been killed in The Yugoslav Wars, the anguish and anger it had caused him and his conclusion that the Western World was to blame for supplying the weapons and had to pay. This, combined with finding out that Gavrić is an alternate for a diplomatic delegation for a UN summit and one of the original delegates had been murdered, leads Dr. Kelly to realize what Gavrić's plan is: detonating the warhead at the United Nation's headquarters in New York.
    Gavrić [on tape]: Who decided for my wife? My child, murdered, huh? For what? For what? For breathing? For smiling? And now, I am left. Who decides for me?...I am a Serb, a Muslim, and a Croat.
  • Rehearsal for Murder:The killer delivers one after being exposed; even hanging a lampshade on it by claiming that if they didn't, there would be no third act.
  • Scream (1996): Discussed Trope. When Sidney prompts the killer for a motive, he derides the whole idea of a Motive Rant, pointing out that the villain tends to be a lot scarier if there's no motive. However, this is immediately double subverted when he gives her one anyway.
  • A Soldier's Story: Sgt. Waters has two very effective ones:
    Waters:Them Nazis ain't all crazy. Whole lot of people just can't seem to fit in to where things seem to be going. Like you, CJ. See, the Black race can't afford you no more. There used to be a time, we'd see someone like you singin', clownin', yassuh-bossin'... and we wouldn't do anything. Folks liked that. You were good. Homey kind of nigger. When they needed somebody to mistreat, call a name or two, they paraded you. Reminded them of the good old days. Not no more. The day of the Geechee is gone, boy. And you're going with it.
  • Spectre has Oberhauser giving one of these during Bond's Cold-Blooded Torture. During this rant, he also takes the time to reintroduce himself as Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
    Oberhauser: You know what happens when a cuckoo hatches inside another bird's nest? [pointing to Bond] Well, this "cuckoo" made me realize my father's life had to end. In a way he's a responsible for the path I took, so thank you, cuckoo!
  • M. Bison in Street Fighter questions why the heroes oppose him, and delivers this in the form of an epic speech to his underlings about his plan to unite the world in peace with an army of Super Soldiers.
  • Thirteen Women:
    Laura: What have I done? What has anyone done to make you so inhuman?
    Ursula: Do I hear the very human, white race asking that question? When I was twelve years old, white sailors—
    Laura: You're insane! You're insane!
    Ursula: Maybe I am! But do you know what it means to be a half-breed, a half-caste in a world ruled by whites? If you're a male, you're a coolie. And if you're a female, you're... Well, the white half of me cried for the courtesy and protection that women like you get. The only way I could free myself was by becoming white. And it was almost in my hands, when you—you and your Kappa society stopped me! I spent six year slaving to get money enough to put me through finishing school, to make the world accept me as white. But you and the others wouldn't let me cross the color line.
  • In Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Sentinel Prime's motivation for siding with the Decepticons is so that he can restore Cybertron to its former glory. But it involves enslaving the human race as slave labor as part of his plan in rebuilding Cybertron, and to feed his own God-complex.
  • Miss Benham gives one at the end before being arrested by the police in Victim (1961).
  • Judge Doom has a hilarious one in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
    "I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off. Off and On. All day, all night. Soon where Toontown once stood will be a string of gas stations. Inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food, tire salons, automobile dealerships, and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful."
  • A rare non-villainous example with Mrs Lintott from The History Boys, addressed to her all-male class and colleagues.
    Mrs Lintott: I'm reluctant at this stage in the game to expose you to new ideas, but having taught you all history on a strictly non-gender-orientated basis I just wonder whether it occurs to any of you how dispiriting this can be? [...] History's not such a frolic for women as it is for men. Why should it be? They never get round the conference table. In 1919, for instance, they just arranged the flowers then gracefully retired. History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
  • X2: X-Men United:
    Xavier: William, you wanted me to cure your son. But mutation is not a disease.
    Stryker: You're lying! You were more frightened of him than I was. You know, just one year after Jason returned from your school, my wife — you see he resented us. He blamed us for his condition. So he would toy with our minds... projecting visions and scenarios into our brains. Well, my wife, in the end... she took a power drill to her left temple in an attempt to bore the images out. My boy, the great illusionist.
  • Wishcraft: The killer, after being revealed, tells Brett at length about why he did the murders and how, while noting apologetically how he's giving a speech.
  • Mission: Impossible III: While Ethan is being held captive by Davian's men, The Mole Musgrave explains why he allied with Davian.
    Ethan: You told him. That's how Davian knew Lindsey was coming. You told him.
    Musgrave: I thought you could get her back. But I wasn't gonna let Brassel of all people undo the work I've done. I took action, Ethan, on behalf of the working families of our country. The Armed Forces, the White House. I'd had enough of Brassel and his sanctimony IMF executive director. He's an affirmative action poster boy. You grab Davian like he wanted, then what? Davian's a weed. You cut him out, two more spring up like him the next day. You arrest him, then what? You use him. Collaborate with him. And it's Christmas.

    Literature 
  • George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four provides one of the most horrifying motive rants ever put to paper, given on behalf of the ruling Party of Oceania:
    "Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy -- everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever."
  • 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo says one to The Professor Aronnax when he tries to convince him not to Kick the Dog, and could be considered the beginning of Nemo's Villainous Breakdown:
    "I am the law, and I am the judge! I am the oppressed, and there is the oppressor! Through him I have lost all that I loved, cherished, and venerated — country, wife, children, father, and mother. I saw all perish! All that I hate is there! Say no more!"
  • Benito Cereno: When the instigator of the slave revolt aboard the ship is eventually found out, he never speaks a word about his motivations or tries to justify his actions.
  • Smerdyakov launches into one of these when he's finally questioned hard enough by one of the characters near the end of The Brothers Karamazov. He's not self-righteous or loony about it. He actually comes off as calm and collected, as if what he did is the most natural thing in the world. Given all the rants and profound conversations we've experienced thus far, he's almost justified.
  • In Cold Snap, the villain is a genocidal Evil Genius powered by four decades of bottled-up resentments. When he's unmasked, he goes into an epic motive rant that last over an hour. The story skips most of it by cutting away to another set of characters, just including enough of the beginning to give an idea of what he's so angry about and coming back for the bit where he starts explaining the details of his evil plan.
  • Discworld:
    • Maskerade: The villain lists all the things they hate about opera after being fatally "stabbed". The final complaint is how long it always takes people to die.
    • The Fifth Elephant: When they discover who the thief of the Scone of Stone is, they learn that the thief is upset with the Low King's liberalness when it came to things like openly female dwarfs because they were jealous; "Why should they be allowed to do this? I can't!"
  • The Fountainhead: Howard Roark gives an epic rant as he explains to the court why he destroyed the Cortlandt Homes project. It goes on for pages and pages. And he says it all incredibly calmly and matter-of-factly.
  • In the second book of the A Fox's Tale series, this is notably averted. When Ember comes face to face with Werner Macht, who is responsible for blowing a hole in the wall of Dreipasse, enabling Lord Drake's forces to seize the town, the person in question refuses to explain their actions. Without saying a word, Werner attacks Ember, who kills them in the ensuing fight.
  • The Girl from the Miracles District: when The Mole on the team is discovered, he rants angrily about his reasons for betraying the group, telling them that he can't bear seeing them help Nikita and treat her like hero even though his father died rescuing her. The rest of the pack is unimpressed.
  • In John C. Wright's The Golden Transcendence, Unmoiqhotep gives a multi-page, firebreathing rant on why he/she felt like destroying society...and is unpleasantly surprised to find that no one cares.
  • Hand of Thrawn: Major Grodin Tierce goes into one of these during his Villainous Breakdown. He's a clone with a little bit of Thrawn's brain.
  • In Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Frollo subjects Esmeralda to a rant about his obsession with her and why she has to love him back. It very much showcases his Villainous Breakdown.
  • Journey to Chaos:
    • A Mage's Power: When Princess Kasile and her party corner Duke Selen Esrah during his coup, she demands an explanation for his actions. He talks about how she is a poor excuse for a future queen because of her arrogance and paranoia. He believes that taking the throne from her is for the good of Ataidar. He also doesn't like how she broke his son's heart and leands so heavily on outlaws for protecting the realm instead of nobles like himself. While all of this is true, he's actually Holding the Floor while waiting for his resserves troops.
    • Looming Shadow: The Crimson Killer explains his justifications for his actions to Eric. He's waiting for Eric's teammates to show up so he can arrange an exchange of Eric for the sword BloodDrinker. He's just killing time.
  • Lord Peter Wimsey series: Annie Wilson at the end of Gaudy Night berates the S.C.R. for what she sees as a betrayal of the feminine ideal (never mind that the S.C.R. are actually for the most part fairly girly — they're bluestockings, not tomboys). She is arguably the only ideologically-motivated villain in the entire series (although revenge also plays a part), and the scene in question is both highly effective and incredibly disturbing and offensive.
    • Mana Mutation Menace: Nulso Xialin, currently possessed by Order, explains why he is invading a village and enslaving its populace while he does so. Ordercrafters are empowered by Law and Stability, so they are supernaturally compelled by their own magic to justify such actions.
  • A Master of Djinn: Abigail explains why she had committed all her misdeeds aftr being discovered as the main imposter, laying things out at length.
  • Isaac Asimov's "The Mule": When the double identity of the Mule is uncovered, he calmly explains to the protagonists why he had become a Galactic Conqueror and proudly points out that, while the conditions of this defeat have bummed him out and denied him the chance to eliminate a powerful potential enemy, he hasn't lost anything and in fact still has the upper hand. Then he just leaves because he has a galaxy to rule and the protagonists are no longer useful.
  • The villain of The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco gets an extended one, in which he explains in detail why he was willing to kill to keep a lost Aristotlean book about laughter hidden.
  • In Blood Oath, the first book in the President's Vampire series, Konrad gives an epic one when asked why he's provided Islamic Jihadists with Unmenschensoldaten to help destroy America.
    Holt: Why?
    Konrad: Why? Oh, it shouldn't be that hard for you to figure out. Revenge. Not just against Cade. This whole arrogant, adolescent country. The one that destroyed my home twice in the last century. That put a military base on the ruins of my family's castle. I want to see someone inflict the same pain on America that they brought to the Reich. I want to see their dream turn to a nightmare, like mine. I want them to wake up screaming. [Helen shakes her head, and Konrad realises she means why he's betrayed and paralyzed her]. Oh, you mean why did I do this to you? That's actually much simpler: I don't like you, Helen.
  • The villain of Rubbernecker is a doctor in a neurological ward who mercy kills patients he sees as hopeless vegetables who will never get better. He goes on a rant about how people can live for decades with severe brain damage that makes their existence a misery, unlike in films where you're either in or out of a coma.
  • In the second Spaceforce (2012) book, Jay gets one of these from Ashlenn's father Corusval when he confronts him with evidence of his treachery. Jay's reply is 'you're right, of course' before he summarily executes him on the spot.
  • In the Star Trek novel Spock's World, the Big Bad gives a calm speech to Spock about how he was responsible for the death of said character's mate and said character "not hav[ing their] desire", and therefore the Big Bad is going to force him into a Sadistic Choice.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Alias has a neat treatment of the trope in the Season 1 episode "The Coming Darkness." Sloane muses to Jack how he's been having a pretty bad week (due in no small part to Sydney's and Jack's efforts), and reminisces at length about a time when he felt "a coming darkness". He mentions that before he and Jack even met, he had a "perfect moment"... and though the CIA hadn't yet betrayed him and the wife he hadn't even met yet had not yet been diagnosed with cancer, he felt what he called a "coming darkness". So, he sums up: whenever things go very badly, he just reminds himself he could see it coming all along. And then he coldly hisses that he wants one of the things vexing him dead before the weekend.
  • And Then There Were None (2015): U.N. Owen delivers one to the final survivor right after she tries to hang herself, explaining his reasons for wanting to kill the other residents and then himself to craft the ultimate mystery, all while his listener is literally hanging by a thread trying to balance her weight on an overturned chair. In the book, he put all of this information in a manifesto Message in a Bottle.
  • Mostly averted in Angel, where most revealed enemies tended to give a one liner before trying to kill him, or not have any idea who he was and just trying to kill him. Nevertheless Connor gave one near the end of Season 4. Somewhat notable for being delivered solely to someone in a Convenient Coma and being a despairing rant rather than a self-righteous justification. Jasmine got a shorter one, shortly before that.
  • Better Call Saul: Jimmy provokes Chuck into one:
    Chuck: I took him into my own firm! What was I thinking? He'll never change. He'll never change! Ever since he was nine, always the same! Couldn't keep his hands out of the cash drawer! "But not our Jimmy! Couldn't be precious Jimmy!" Stealing them blind! And he gets to be a lawyer?! What a sick joke! I should have stopped him when I had the chance! And you, you have to stop him!
  • Defied in an episode of Bones; when the criminal started explaining exactly why he'd turned to cannibalism, Booth interrupts him because he didn't want to hear his "psycho speech". When he tries again, Brennan promptly knocked him unconscious because she didn't want to hear it either.
  • Castle gives one of these for the killer in one episode, identifying his motives well enough that the killer gets caught up in the story and confirms it's exactly how he felt.
  • Criminal Minds doesn't have a huge number of these because episodes often don't show the killer after they've been caught and quite frequently they end up getting killed rather than arrested, but "The Fox" and "Poison" both had pretty chilling ones.
    • Another example is in "Masterpiece", the killer turned himself in to police after kidnapping five people, saying they'll die if not found in a few hours. The team finds where they're being held and leave, except for Rossi, who continues interviewing the killer. At this point, the killer reveals that the location is a trap, and launches into a full-on motive rant, revealing that Rossi had arrested his brother (also a Serial Killer) and he'd wanted revenge. Cue Hotch calling to tell Rossi that the trap was right where he'd said it'd be, and all the victims are fine. Rossi guessed the trap, but intentionally triggered the motive rant to get the killer to admit to his other killings on tape.
    • The killer from "North Mammon" has one about wanting revenge on his former high school friends who went on to have careers and families while he was reduced to working as a school janitor after a football injury cost him any real future.
    • Averted in most episodes, as puzzling out the unsubs' motives is usually how the team catches them, in the first place. Thus, there's no need for the culprit to provide further exposition once they're caught.
    • Played with fairly often (again, since the investigation focuses more on motive than forensics). Several unsubs have had a variation on the rant which amounts to "I can't believe I have to explain this, I did it because I wanted to. Doesn't everyone think like this?"
  • On CSI and its spinoffs, motive rants occur in the interrogation room.
    • Averted in one episode of CSI: Miami. At the very end of the episode, as a serial sniper is being taken away by the police, he asks Horatio "Don't you want to know why I did it?". Horatio simply replies "You're evil, you enjoy death, I hope you enjoy your own."
    • Played straight in one episode where a father who had massacred his wife and kids, with the exception of his infant daughter who had been hidden by her older brother, gave a motive rant about how he felt suffocated and overworked by his family (Its explicitly shown that he's lying, he had a normal family life which was currently going through a rough patch due to the kids catching the flu). As he's led away, Horatio dismisses his rant as him preparing an insanity defense, "I didn't know what I was doing and I definitely didn't know it was wrong".
    • Also averted in an episode of CSI: NY. The killer seemed to have no real connection to the victim, who was a young woman in her early twenties, and he didn't tell them why he did it. Lindsey, who was shaken up because of the fact that she shared the victim's age and home state, visited him in prison just so she could ask him again why he did it. He just asks her "You came here just for that?" and puts the phone down.
  • Doctor Who: The villain of "Kerblam!", Charlie the janitor, gives one after being unmasked, complaining that the 10% organic staff policy doesn't go far enough, and that he wants to discredit Kerblam!'s Job-Stealing Robots for the good of all the unemployed people in the galaxy.
  • The Exorcist: During the penultimate episode, the demon tormenting the Rances finally explains what it really wants.
    Casey: Why do you keep hurting us? What do you even want?
    Pazuzu: The only thing that we've ever wanted: that which is rightfully ours. We were His first creations. Did you know that? We were loyal and perfect in every way. And do you know what God did? God got bored. He got bored with our perfection. So He created Man, mortal and ugly, and... and then He built them a sandbox, and He filled it with tangible and sensual delights. Delights that we could never feel or taste or experience. He created paradise, and he handed it over to a pack of primates rutting in the dirt. Well, this world was meant for us. And we're gonna take it back.
  • Averted at first in the Grand Finale of The Fugitive, where the One-Armed Man, finally captured and interrogated by Lieutenant Gerard, clams up and demands to see his lawyer when Gerard cuts through his alibi. Things go differently when Kimble forces him to confess, but it's less of a rant than a feeble defense.
  • In Game of Thrones, Petyr 'Littlefinger' Baelish gives one for the ages with his "Chaos is a Ladder" rant. Even his fellow Magnificent Bastard, Varys, is highly disturbed by it.
    Petyr Baelish: Do you know what the realm is? It's the thousand blades of Aegon's enemies, a story we agree to tell each other over and over, until we forget that it's a lie.
    Varys: But what do we have left, once we abandon the lie? Chaos? A gaping pit waiting to swallow us all.
    Petyr Baelish: Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some, are given a chance to climb. They refuse, they cling to the realm or the gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.
  • The Hexer: Played for laughs, as compared with the original short story, where the dialogue was a bit more serious. While spending an evening together in an inn, Borch keeps prodding Geralt about witchering. At first he's stoic, but once he's sufficiently drunk, Geralt goes on a passionate tirade about people encroaching into natural habitat of many creatures and how wrong it is and how hard it makes his life as a witcher.
  • iCarly: Missy gives one to Sam, as part of her latching onto the Villain Ball. It ruins the plan because it turns Sam from questioning if Missy even was trying to get rid of her, into sure of it, and decided to bring Freddie in to help her.
  • In the musical It's A Bird, It's A Plane, It's Superman, Dr. Abner Sedgwick explains his motive in song.note 
  • Every Law & Order. SVU really stretched it when a 10-year-old had such a rant explaining his motivation (it was 'cause he saw it on TV, see). Like in Perry Mason, the background music is often the cue.
    • Interestingly used on an episode where a man is on trial for manslaughter; specifically, he a trained psychologist accused of pushing his daughter-in-law to suicide. On the witness stand, he confesses to murder. The problem being that if he's found innocent of manslaughter, he can't be tried for murder for the same crime; double jeopardy. (He's convicted of man 1, and Adam Schiff points out that if he was guilty of murder, he just got himself "one hell of a plea deal.")
    • CI has raised to the level of an art form with the Handwave/Justification that causing Motive Rants is what Goren specializes in.
    • Criminal Intent has also subverted the rant on one occasion when a suspect is driven to confessing, but it turns out that she didn't really do it. It's also been subverted in an episode (where the overbearing nature of her husband causes a woman to kill two of her children in a failed mass-suicide attempt) where Goren successfully caused the husband to break into a motive rant, but it ends up being all for naught because he never really did anything illegal.
  • At the climax of the Leverage: Redemption episode "The Card Game Job", Breanna of Team Leverage is playing a collectible card game with Corrupt Corporate Executive Jim Cordozar, who owns a drug that cures a deadly disease but has been Withholding the Cure to increase his profits. When Cordozar gives a motive rant that expounds on his sociopathic worldview, Breanna responds with a combination of Armor-Piercing Question and Shut Up, Hannibal!.
    Cordozar: That's why you're gonna lose this tournament. You're so worried about being "nice". You want to be a winner in this world? You take, and take, and take, and you don't look back. You don't worry about who gets hurt or who likes you. You have to be willing to be a killer.
    Breanna: Like killing kids who can't afford your drugs?
  • Subverted in Misfits when the villain makes quite a valiant attempt to explain/justify her actions, but Nathan is playing his music over her rant and keeps interrupting her so the audience hears very little of what she's saying. All we know for sure is that her crusade had something to do with being teased at school for being a virgin.
  • At the climax of Money Heist, Villain Protagonist The Professor justifies the heist to Raquel by comparing it to the ECB's Quantitative Easing program. Unusually, this results in her agreeing and pulling a Face–Heel Turn.
  • The killer in Perry Mason almost always does the motive rant on the stand, after which all charges against Perry's client are dismissed. You can tell the exact instant the culprit will stop denying and begin the motive rant based on the music changing. It is so necessary to the formula for the motive rant to occur on the stand that you can identify the killer instantly when Mason reserves the right to recall a witness.
  • Parodied in an episode of Police Squad!!:
    Drebin: Why'd you do it?!
    Butler: I needed the money!
  • Averted in an episode of Psych. After The Summation, the murderer simply said "I have nothing to say. Speak to my lawyer."
    • Played Straight in nearly every other episode though. At one point, Shawn and Gus even Invoke it to stall for time when a serial killer had them dead to rights.
  • Pushing Daisies:
    • Generally, the show didn't do these; because it had a narrator to explain the motives, there was no need for the actual killers to do so.
    • There's a subversion when the killer delivers a crazed speech detailing his motivation — which the protagonists can't hear at all, because they're trapped in soundproof bags.
  • On Seinfeld, Newman has been known to jump into one of these from time to time, be it with mailmen Going Postal ("The mail never stops."), zip codes ("They're meaningless."), or, god forbid, junk mail! ("It takes just as much man-power to deliver it as their precious little greeting cards!")
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
    • Inverted in the episode "Duet"; a Cardassian identified as Gul Darhe'el, commander of Gallitep, one of the most horrific interment camps during the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, rants at length about how he was a loyal Cardassian soldier, and that it was his patriotic duty and privilege to exterminate Bajorans. Toward the end of the episode, Kira discovers that the prisoner is not Gul Darhe'el, but rather a file clerk at Gallitep, who was completely horrified by what his people did to the Bajorans and assumed the late Darhe'el's identity to force his people to own up to what Cardassia did to Bajor. In a Downer Ending, he's stabbed to death by a Bajoran just for being Cardassian after he's released.
    • In "Field of Fire", Dax (Ezri, not Jadzia) is chasing a serial killer who turns out to be a Vulcan. After catching up with him, she asks why he did it. In an aversion, he responds "Because logic demanded it", the Vulcan version of "God made me do it". Although, when you think about it, this is an explanation — kinda.
    • Dukat gives it a shot in "Waltz", although since this is well after his sanity meter ran out, it consists of a hammy display in which he reaches the conclusion that he should have burned Bajor to the ground and stuck the head of every Bajoran man, woman and child on a stake.
  • In the Supergirl (2015) episode "The Darkest Place", the head of Cadmus, Lillian Luthor gives a Motive Rant on why she hates aliens and wants to exile all of them from Earth — she refuses to believe Lex Luthor is a criminal psychopath, instead choosing to believe that Superman twisted the population against him.
  • Parodied in That Mitchell and Webb Look when the detective manipulates a woman into doing "the evil voice" and eventually an entire Motive Rant that ends in her suicide. He says that it's better this way, as he didn't have any other evidence and not all courts accept "the evil voice". He also accidentally provokes someone else into giving one, identical in tone to the first, except about not flushing the toilet instead of murder.
  • The secret Big Bad of Season 2 of Veronica Mars, Cassidy gave a particularly jarring one of these. In the last ten minutes or so he suddenly snapped into a pure Diabolical Mastermind mentality, despite this being completely at odds with his established character and his actual motive. Then, when he finished his speech and things went wrong, he reverted to his original personality. The worst part is that it was just about believable that he would do, well, some of things he did, with his established character, and if he had stayed in character instead of channeling a Bond villain it might not have seemed so unbelievable.
  • At the end of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, after the Russians' long-time mole in British intelligence is exposed:
    "Why? You ask that? Because it was necessary, that's why! Someone had to! We were bluffed, George. You, me, even Control. Those Circus talent spotters, all those years ago. They plucked us when we were golden with hope, told us we were on our way to the Holy Grail, freedom's protectors! [laughing and sobbing] My God, what a question, 'Why?' Do you know what's killing Western Democracy, George? Greed, and constipation... moral, political, ascetic. I hate America very deeply. The economic repression of the masses, institutionalized. Even Lenin couldn't foresee the extent of that. Britain? Oh, dear... no viability whatever in world affairs."

    Music 
  • Downplayed in Bruce Springsteen's song "Nebraska"; right before being executed, Charles Starkweather acknowledges that people want to know why he became a killer, but all he offers as an explanation is, "I guess there's just a meanness in this world." This is artistic license as the real Starkweather didn't say that.

    Newspaper Comics 
  • Parodied in Dilbert when Dilbert and Dogbert end up on jury duty.
    Dogbert: Stop the trial!! Stop the trial!! The defendant is innocent!! I'm the one who killed those people. I did it for love and for money and revenge!! [to Dilbert] Well, not really, but I always wanted to say that.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • This is very common whenever a wrestler undergoes a Face–Heel Turn. The next week after, they will often tell the fans why they did what they did to a face wrestler, whether it's being tired of living under their shadow, because they are sick of the fans and the locker room not giving them respect, or simply because they can.
    • One of the most iconic speeches of this type was delivered by Hulk Hogan at WCW's Bash at the Beach '96 after he betrayed Sting and Randy Savage and revealed himself to be the Outsiders' Third Man, heralding the beginning of the New World Order:
      Hulk Hogan: As far as I'm concerned, all of this crap in the ring represents these fans out here. For two years, brother, for two years, I held my head high. I did everything for the charities, I did everything for the kids, and the reception I got when I came out here... you fans can stick it, brother. Because... if it wasn't for Hulk Hogan, you people wouldn't be here. If it wasn't for Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff would be still selling meat out of a truck in Minneapolis. And if it wasn't for Hulk Hogan, all these Johnny-Come-Lately's that you see out here wrestling wouldn't be here. I was selling out the world, brother, while they were bumming gas to put in the car to get to high school. So the way that it is now, brother, with Hulk Hogan and the New World Organization of Wrestling, brother, me and the new blood by my side... whatcha gonna do when the New World Organization runs wild on you? Whatcha gonna do? What are you gonna do?!

    Theatre 
  • In Chicago, when Roxie Hart is first being interrogated by the police, she confesses that she shot the victim because he was going to leave her and she would happily do it again. This means her Amoral Attorney has some really clever explaining to do in order to get her acquitted of murder.
  • Played Straight in The Merchant of Venice:
    Salarino: Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his flesh: what's that good for?
    Shylock: To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
  • Othello is a complicated one. Iago gives several of these rants, offering multiple conflicting motives, though the most consistent is jealousy at Cassio being promoted ahead of him and racism at Othello and Desdemona's marriage. But he also has a long speech in which he admits that he's a habitual liar and nothing he says can be trusted. And at the end of the play, where Othello demands to know why he manipulated the events of the play into occurring (something most Shakespeare scholars also want to know), Iago gives this response:
    Iago: Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. From this moment forward I never will speak word.
  • Richard III starts with the title character delivering one of these; it basically boils down to "the war is over, and women don't like me because I'm deformed, so I've gotta do something for fun."

    Video Games 
  • The Engineer delivers one in Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. It's on the Quotes page if you want to see it.
  • Assassin's Creed: In all games in the series, once you assassinate a primary mission target, time freezes so you can listen to the victim's Final Words, which are, almost invariably, a long diatribe on why they did what they did and/or why you're a terrible person for killing them. In some cases you get the speech as part of the lead-in to the battle, in which case their Final Words are typically some form of plea for forgiveness or understanding.
  • Big Bad Jon Irenicus of Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn gives an epic one of these when you catch him in the literal Hidden Elf Village in the second-last chapter of the game. It works really well, especially as you can all but hear the "you (censored) idiot" underlacing his words as he verbally tears strips out of the woman he's addressing. Essentially since it's literally all her fault that he is doing this, since she stripped him of his soul for trying this the first time, but let him keep his powers and then booted him out of the village, expecting him to somehow "learn to be a better person" when the side-effects of what she'd done were that he literally forgot how any emotion other than hate felt like.
  • BlazBlue: Yuuki Terumi gives one in an attempt to drive Noel Vermillion off the slippery slope, thus making her regress into Boundary Interface Prime Field Device Mu-12, stating that the world is nothing but lies, everything should die because the only truth out there is despair, and he sure as hell will show them by having Mu-12 destroy Master Unit Amaterasu.
    • Gives another one to Hakumen when he demands to know Terumi's intentions. Doubly notable because Terumi shoots back with both a completely honest motive rant while also completely mocking Hakumen for thinking that he would ever have, or ever even need, a greater motivation beyond simply living out the fact that he's an unrepentant sadist.
      Terumi: C'mon, you know me better than that 'old buddy!' Surely you don't mean to imply I need a reason to destroy and manipulate and kill!? OK, all right, fine! How about this reason? Seems as good as any. I do all the wonderful things I do because I want to see the miserable look on the faces of people like YOU when you're wallowing in despair, dismay, grief, frustration, misery... all sorts of other unpleasant nouns. [...] I guess you could say I'm just bored. At least misery is interesting.
  • In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, just as the Big Bad Shepherd is about to finish Soap off with a revolver, he gives a rant on how he lost 30,000 men because of a nuke and how he desires to show that their sacrifices are not in vain; by starting a World War III.
  • Dawn of War II: Retribution: If there can be a motive rant for the simplest of motives, then the Mad-Mek earns himself a spot here with his final screaming rant while fought on the Tyranid-infested Judgement of Carrion, which he's sick and tired of and wishes to leave as soon as possible.
    The Mad-Mek: Oh, I getz it. You's come ta steal me tellyporta! Well nothin' doin'! It took me better'n a decade ta squeeeeeze da juice outta... dat fing back dere. Should only be anodder decade or so before I get ta zzzap me outta dis BUG. INFESTED. 'ELL'OLE!!!!!!
  • Demon Hunter: The Return of the Wings: Greed's fight in Marlborose is proceeded by several minutes of him monologuing about his plans and his feelings about Gun.
  • Divinity: Original Sin II: Isbeil's ghost delivers a posthumous one if asked why she tried to orchestrate a massacre with deathfog — after dying torturously alongside all her comrades to Lucian's deathfog strike, she's desperate to enact Revenge by Proxy and make his followers suffer like they did.
  • In Dragon Quest VIII, Marcello gives one that doubles as a "Why You ALL Suck" Speech and New Era Speech. Here, he informs everyone gathered there of his intention to use his new position to create a new world order — one where your position is determined solely by your strength and ability, rather than who your family is. He also makes no secret of the fact he considers most commoners to be mere sheep who won't exactly thrive under these conditions...
  • In The Godfather game, "Monk" Malone gives you one as you're hunting him down. Various important mobsters also give short ones if you manage to grab and interrogate them.
  • In Kirby Star Allies, Hyness gives one, but it is delivered so blisteringly fast that while it is indeed lore heavy you can't see most of it. The only line visible without slowing footage down is:
    Hyness: "HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DARK LORD! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!"
  • The Legend of Zelda
    • Ganondorf was just jealous of Hyrule's wind in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. In a variant, though, there's he's not gloating. He's just — nostalgic? bitter? remorseful? detached? Take your pick.
    • In The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, Byrne lets one out when he finally meets Anjean again and she calls him out on his siding with their tribe's enemy, Malladus.
      Byrne: Why would I want to serve the spirits...when I can become as powerful as they are? That was the reason why I came to study with you. But the spirits never answered me. No matter how hard I worked, or how long, they never granted me any more powers. Tell me, Master...when you realize that your wish will never be granted, what do you then? The answer was clear...become even more powerful than the spirits themselves! And the only being more powerful is Malladus!
  • Mass Effect has Saren explain, twice even, exactly why he's working with the Reapers.
    • In the third game, the final confrontation with the Illusive Man involves an extended Motive Rant on his part. Shepard can attempt to convince him of his Motive Decay, or just shout him down.
    • Turians in general have a strong cultural disposition towards honesty, making them very prone to these when directly confronted.
  • Metal Gear:
    • Boss characters, (and many NPCs) from these games have a tendency to do this either just before fighting Snake or with their last breath after having been fatally wounded by him. The Quirky Mini Boss Squad from the third game mostly avoided this, but The Boss (their leader) made up for it in spades.
    • The Beauty and The Beast unit from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots also avoid this, due to its members being completely Ax-Crazy. "Luckily," Drebin is happy to do this on their behalf via Codec every time Snake defeats one of them.
    • The Boss also has a monologue before the final duel with her, in which she explains everything she had given up for her country, and how pointless it had been rendered by the Cold War (although she doesn't rant so much as just get it all off of her chest). Of course, with hindsight, it turns out to have been detailing her motive in terms of remaining loyal to her country, in spite of everything she had lost. And the fact that her death would leave her reviled as a traitor.
    • Subverted in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance as Sam is about to start a monologue of this kind, but then decides you've both heard enough speeches by now and should just get on with the fighting. Though played straighter with several others, including Monsoon and particularly the final boss senator Steven Armstrong, who has two of them: One for his facade, and another that he genuinely believes once he realizes Raiden isn't so different; the latter can be found in the quotes page.
  • Oguma from Metal Slug 3D, a mad scentist with a very soft voice who spends one long cut scene explaining his evil plan.
  • Kieran in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: The Indigo Disk. After coming upon the "Hidden Treasure of Area Zero" in the Area Zero Underdepths, he frantically begins to pull it out of the wall, desperate to use it to defeat the player once and for all, all while ranting about how the player gets everything they want.
    Kieran: Shut it, Sis! (player) has everything I've ever wanted! He's/She's got strong Pokémon! He/She can go anywhere he/she wants, and he/she can be friends with anyone! I loved Ogerpon since forever ago! But even Ogerpon chose him/her over me! Even YOU, Sis! You were being all nasty toward him/her at first, but then boom! You were like best friends in no time! I've got nothing... I worked so hard, and for what?! I STILL lost in the end! This... this is all I have left now!
  • Adachi gets one as the player traverses his dungeon in Persona 4. At the very end, he's given a Kirk Summation by the protagonists and called out for his senseless motives.
  • At the end of Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, Big Bad Gabriel Nowak goes into a long-winded rant to his former teacher, Bishop, about why he chose to turn traitor, facilitate terrorist mass murder in Las Vegas, and steal government information to sell to the highest bidder. It was basically a rant about how he got screwed over for promotion, even though it was his own damn fault. Egotistically gloating about how he was going to destroy everyone Bishop cared about, he failed to realize that while he was ranting, Bishop had his gun drawn. Though Bishop was patient enough to wait for the rant to end, the player soon got a chance to shoot him and end the whole thing.
    • Doesn't help that Gabriel Nowak had displayed a level of professional incompetence that should have barred him from even his parent (pre-Rainbow) unit.
  • Splinter Cell:
    • In the penultimate mission of Chaos Theory, Douglas Shetland gives a pretty impressive rant on what drove him to fund terrorists and try to start World War III. He then tries to pull a "I Surrender, Suckers", and things go downhill...
    • At the end of Conviction, Tom Reed does the same, talking about how the President was going to pull funding from Third Echelon and go soft on terrorism.
  • Take most Super Robot Wars' Big Bads, from Char Aznable to Neue Regisseur. They usually have Motive Rants prepared when they encounter each of your main characers in the last few missions.
  • Elohim doesn't give one to the player directly in The Talos Principle, but you can find him giving one to what he seems to think is empty space. He says he wants you to avoid the tower because, if you reach the top of the tower, the simulation will end, and he wants the simulation to continue for all eternity.
  • Jin Kazama in Tekken 6. "What have the governments, religions, and people of this world accomplished?"

    Visual Novels 
  • It seems like all of the witnesses in the Ace Attorney series do this at least once. Once Phoenix starts to unravel their testimonies, every witness goes nuts and starts raving about their motive and how perfect their plan was (or, if they happen to be very pompous or arrogant, they become very quiet and submissive). This even applies on a lesser scale to the witnesses who don't end up being the murderer, in which case they usually just freak out and tell the truth, rather than lying as they had until then. The most notable example is when Manfred von Karma bashes his head against a wall a good 20 times after being outed as a murderer. In fact, at one point Phoenix notices something is amiss when a witness doesn't go into a Motive Rant.
    • An exception can be found in the first case of Apollo Justice, where Kristoph Gavin admits his crime without any sort of motive being explained. This is of course questioned by everyone else and is eventually revealed at the end of the game.
    • An interesting use of this happens in the second case of Trials and Tribulations. Phoenix gets his target to go into a spiel about why he did it...but it was a ruse. The rant was simply so he could be found guilty of a lesser crime (larceny) and hide his guilt in the much more serious murder that surfaces immediately after. Later in the case he's dragged to the stand during the murder trial and winds up giving the exact same rant after being cracked, only this time it's authentic.
  • This trope is a staple of the Danganronpa series' trials. In fact, if someone has confessed to a murder without making one of these rants, that person is usually lying to protect the real culprit. (Or, as in Nagito's case, their initial rant was a lie but laid the narrative groundwork for a real motive rant they'd make later on, in a different trial.)
  • Subverted with Cecilia in Daughter for Dessert. She makes her distaste for the protagonist known, but stops short of saying what he supposedly did to earn this distaste. She eventually tells Mortelli and Amanda separately and offscreen.
  • In Double Homework, Dennis has a couple of these where he airs his grievances about girls and the guys they normally go for.
  • In Melody, both Bethany and Steve both have mental ones to set them up for their theft of Melody’s guitar.
  • Tsukihime, when it seems Hisui's True Ending has been played out... Shiki confronts Kohaku and she reveals she was the mastermind behind the various events and deaths that occurred. Her motive was revenge, because that's what she thought a normal person would do.

    Webcomics 
  • In El Goonish Shive, during the climax of Abraham's arc, he gives a long winded remorseful speech to Ellen about why he has to kill her because he really doesn't want to go through with it.

    Web Original 
  • The Cry of Mann:
    • Courtney responds to Berry's hateful accusations by monologuing about why she wanted to take down the company, which included feeling ostracized by the Mann family for not being wealthy, and being pushed down by the company itself when she was the one who created the battle machines and turned the tide of the warr, rather than Tank.
    • Vid explains that when the Warr came around, people lost interest in the church — and lost their hope, as well. He worked to bring people back, and got in contact with the "unknown spaces of the universe" — also known as the callers. Despite this, not everyone came back, and those who didn't criticized his church, as it focused on something beyond the Warr and the government. Vid's goal is to break the barriers of reality and live in peace with the other world.
  • Hilariously parodied in Half-Life but the AI is Self-Aware with Benrey ranting about how Gordon coming to work with a dick slip resulted in him not being able to play Heavenly Sword turned him evil. It's completely disconnected from everything that's happening, and the rant eventually descends into nonsensical and contradictory rambling and finally gibberish.
  • After Terrence in KateModern: Precious Blood has been revealed as the murderer by a group of unarmed individuals in the middle of nowhere, he for some reason feels compelled to explain at great length the full extent of his crimes (much worse than the single murder he was accused of) on camera. In his defense, he later admits to having been "a bit off [his] face" at the time.
  • Depraved Bisexual and Mariavel Varella clone Melina Frost does this in Survival of the Fittest version three before attacking Dacey Ashcroft and Herman Johnson. Ironically, Dacey isn't a guy.
    Melina: You know? I never really liked men. Do you know why? It's because they always WANT something. Did you know that? Well, obviously you do. Men constantly WANT. They want to hold you, touch you, kiss you. They want to make you THEIRS. But? I never really liked that you know. That's why, instead of letting them TAKE whatever they want? I decided to WANT and TAKE from them first!

    Web Videos 
  • Critical Role: Exandria Unlimited:
    • In Calamity, Asmodeus, Lord of the Hells, launches into one of these in the final episode, a blistering condemnation of mortals, and Zerxus in particular. He points out that he and all the other gods— Prime Deities and Betrayer Gods alike— are family, and that mortals "did something" to the Prime Deities to make them side with mortals against their brethren and the Primordials.
      Asmodeus: You call yourselves 'our children'. You are not our children. You are... a bad first draft. The first plan was to destroy this and let you all fade. That's not going to be how we do it this time.

    Western Animation 
  • In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "The Clock King", the eponymous villain explains to Mayor Hill that his real motive to kill him is because Hill had ruined his life by making him late.
  • The special Darkwing Duck episode of DuckTales (2017), "Let's Get Dangerous!", ends up bringing out one for F.O.W.L. Director Bradford Buzzard, who had been posing as Scrooge McDuck's chairman of the board for years. Thanks to Taurus Bulba, Buzzard had been captured, only to be freed by the triplets. After narrowly surviving an attack from Bushroot, he immediately rants about how he wants the McDuck family destroyed, as their actions from the last two seasons have created a chaotic state for the world (of course, this is primarily because he wants the world to be stable enough to rob it blind). This ends up being his undoing, as the triples become suspicious enough to learn of his involvement with F.O.W.L.
  • In the Hey Arnold! episode, "Phoebe Breaks a Leg", Phoebe gives one to Arnold when he asks if her faking a broken leg has anything to do with how Helga treats her. Doubles as Suspiciously Specific Denial.
    Arnold: This doesn't have anything to do with Helga, does it?
    Phoebe: Helga?!
    Arnold: Yeah, with how she treats you?
    Phoebe: Of course not! Th-that's completely ridiculous! I mean, just because Helga's been waiting on me hand and foot ever since the bus accident, that was essentially her fault, that doesn't mean that I would falsely prolong my injury in some sort of passive-aggressive attempt to reap the benefits of her guilty conscience and simultaneously give her a taste of her own bossy medicine!
  • Parodied in Kick Buttowski, while telling the class about something amazing he did, he quickly gets questions from the not so convinced teacher and Kendall, only to have the interrupted by Jackie who goes into the "You can't handle the truth" speech... only for everyone to tire of her ("Not this again...") and lower a sound-proof glass dome around her desk.
  • The finale of The Legend of Korra has Kuvira give a short one to Korra when calls out for her tyrannical behavior as ruler of the Earth Empire.
  • In The Powerpuff Girls (1998) when the Smith family next door attack the Girls, they ask why. Marianne Smith explains that it was because they tried to be nice and neighborly to them, and what thanks do the Girls give them? They had ruined her dinner and gotten her husband thrown in jail (he tried to kill the Professor). After the rant, Blossom points out that wasn't a very good reason at all. And it's off to the slammer the Smiths go (again, in the husband's case).
  • In the Season 3 premiere of Rick and Morty, Rick Sanchez goes on an epic one revealing that everything he does is all in the name of getting that Mulan Szechuan Mc Nugget dipping sauce.
    • A much more serious example occurs in the Season 5 finale when Evil Morty reveals what his masterplan is:
    "Do you know what the Central Finite Curve is? They [Ricks] built a wall around infinity. They separated all the infinite universes from all the infinite universes where he's the smartest man in the universe. Every version of us [Mortys] has spent every version of all of our lives in one infinite crib built around an infinite fucking baby. And I'm leaving it. That's what makes me "evil" — being sick of him. If you've ever been sick of him, you've been evil, too.
  • The Rugrats episode "The Trial" has Angelica revealing that she did break Tommy's lamp after failing to pin it on Chuckie, Phil and/or Lil. It's a bit of Laser-Guided Karma as Angelica starts gloating that, even though she confessed, they couldn't do anything because they can't talk... forgetting that she can. And Didi and Betty heard the whole thing.
  • The Simpsons did it. In "Sideshow Bob Roberts", when Lisa insinuates that Bob is too stupid to have rigged an election and claims Bob's Rush Limbaugh look-alike accomplice is the real brains of the operation, Bob flies into a rant about how he (and only he) had the brains to orchestrate everything, parodying the A Few Good Men quote above. He is then promptly taken to jail for "all that stuff [he] did" with unusual expediency for the Springfield police.
  • In the Season 5 finale of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Barriss Offee delivers one about why she betrayed the Republic and bombed the Jedi Temple.
  • In Transformers: Animated, Wasp breaks into one in "Where Is Thy Sting," justifying his revenge on Bumblebee. While Wasp does have every right to be pissed, Bumblebee isn't the one who framed him...
  • In Season 2 Episode 25 of Wakfu, Qilby the Traitor starts ranting after getting the upper hand in his fight with Yugo. He basically reveals himself to be a selfish nihilist who honestly believes he has the right to sacrifice entire worlds to fuel a tour of the cosmos to stave off boredom. He repeats the rant in Episode 26 after losing the Eliacube when Shinonome turns against him, whining about the misery immortality brought him.

    Real Life 
  • While not a criminal, Danish comedian Anders Matthesen wins an award for being a role model, and throws a Motive Rant in the direction of the secretary of education (Bertel Haarder), who accused him of being an Anti-Hero: "Bertel, blow me! I'm not a fucking anti-hero. What are you talking about? Anti-hero, I don't know what the fuck you're thinking? I've always said, which the people who listen to me and have voted for me can confirm, that I believe that you shouldn't do drugs, you shouldn't waste your own time or other people's time, that you don't do violence and that you always do your fucking best, which I think a real role model should be doing."
  • Ted Kaczynski a.k.a the Unabomber infamously wrote a lengthy manifesto explaining that technology is evil and that is why he is killing people involved in technology and engineering.


Top

Starlight Glimmer

Starlight Glimmer traps Twilight and Spike in a giant purple crystal

How well does it match the trope?

4.33 (6 votes)

Example of:

Main / CrystalPrison

Media sources:

Report