Nervous Wreck - Television Tropes & Idioms

She's always like this.

There are some characters who can keep a cool head no matter what. Then at the other end of the scale, there's this person. They'll be the first to panic under pressure, and Heroic BSODs are a common thing for them. Pessimistic by nature, they'll automatically assume the worst and worry even when everything's going right. And when the worst really does happen, they might even reduce to spouting incoherent gibberish.

Often, this character is revealed to have a painful past that left them like this. As such, this is sometimes a trait of a Shrinking Violet or a more emotional Broken Bird. Some versions of this will hide their anxiety (or at least try to) behind a cheerful facade.

Contrast The Stoic, Nerves of Steel.

Examples

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Anime & Manga

Miranda in D.Gray-man.
Jyou Kido from Digimon Adventure, although he mellowed out in Digimon Adventure 02, as he matured.
Crona from Soul Eater, thanks to being raised to become a new Kishin by Medusa. S/he's even quite jittery when s/he's Axe Crazy.
Neon Genesis Evangelion: Poor Shinji Ikari, in the first few episodes. It comes in very handy when he's shanghaied into being a mecha pilot. He spends his first few battles freaking out. While he does get much better after the Futagoyama incident as far as battles go, he never quite stops acting like this in his everyday life... and then, of course, any progress he made is undone as everything goes straight to hell...

Eastern European Animation

The second princess in Son Of The White Horse is one. Of course, she did get married to a dragon who seems to represent the horrors of industrial warfare.

Fan Works

In Dragon Ball Abridged, this happens to Krillin. He cannot shut up when he's scared.

Film

Woody Allen is famous for playing this kind of character.
Panic in Hercules. The series also introduced Neurosis, whom even Panic considers a mess.
Ken the stutterer in A Fish Called Wanda.
In the Star Wars Universe, Nute Gunray (the Trade Federation Viceroy) nearly embodies this trope. Although beings from his species, Neimodians, are usually pessimistics and prone to great stress by nature, Gunray's overly-nervous personnality is well beyond even Neimoidian standards.
Leo Bloom in all adaptations of The Producers.
Felix in the film version of The Odd Couple.
Many, many of the lead roles from French comic actor Louis de Fun�s are this, a good part of his humor consisting on watching how his protagonists are cracking up under pressure. Although De Fun�s had to tone it down after his heart attack in 1974.

Literature

Nettie in Needful Things is always tense and jumpy due to the abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband. Keeton also gradually becomes this as paranoia sets in.
The Bursar from the Discworld books. He starts off fine in Eric and becomes only slightly twitchy in Moving Pictures. However the events of that book, and the following one Reaper Man leave him a paranoid, twitching, nervous mess, who has to be medicated into hallucinating he is sane (attempts to cure of his nervous state proved impossible).
In The Dresden Files, Molly Carpenter becomes this in Ghost Story, following Harry's apparent death in the previous book and her own attempt to fill in his shoes as the magic defender of Chicago.
Piglet, from Winnie the Pooh, is a classic example: meek, timid, stuttering, always fretting over something, and in the Disney version is usually seen visibly trembling.
The White Rabbit, in almost all adaptations of Alice in Wonderland, is a Nervous Wreck due to being "late for a very important date," even going so far as twitching a lot.
Lori reacts to motherhood this way in Aunt Dimity Digs In. In an exaggerated bid to childproof the cottage, she fastens the kitchen cabinet doors so securely that no one can open them, padlocks the medicine cabinet and misplaces the key, and covers the edges of the coffee and end tables with miles of cotton batting. Ultimately, Bill finds her trying to wrestle their mattress out of its frame and onto the floor so the boys cannot crawl under it, although their little knees have yet to touch the carpet. Though she does calm down with time (and the services of a couple of nannies), Lori is still apt to react badly to the idea that her sons could get hurt, and the start of their schooling at Morningside in nearby Upper Deeping sets off another crisis in Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter.
Shrewtooth from Warrior Cats...until he Took a Level in Badass.
Matt in Peter Pays Tribute panics about things like giving an oral presentation to the class.
It's not uncommon for characters in the Cthulhu Mythos to become this, usually the result of surviving an indescribable horror. Danforth in At the Mountains of Madness would be a good example.

Live-Action TV

Doug ("Nervous Guy") Murphy from Scrubs, nervous about... everything.
These show up a LOT in Canada's Worst Driver. They're as scary as road ragers and ditzes.
Rebecca from Cheers.
Miles from Murphy Brown.
Lydia from Breaking Bad is an business executive who's secretly running a drug empire despite the fact that she's high-strung to the point of being completely nuts.

Music

"Basket Case" by Green Day is from the point of view of an extremely neurotic person.

Newspaper Comics

One character in Dilbert named Ted (not to be confused with Ted the generic guy) with an appropriate nickname.
TNT the cowardly talking dog from Rip Haywire.
Wade Duck from US Acres.

Roleplay

Kate Bishop in Dino Attack RPG. The fact that she was an 18-year-old stuck in the middle of a war certainly didn't help.
- Sam Race also became a Nervous Wreck when he started showing early signs of PTSD.

Theater

Hysterium in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Even the song "I'm Calm" reflected his status as a near-basket case.
Harpagon from The Miser, who's almost perpetually high-strung and paranoid about his money.
Malvolio in Twelfth Night is reduced to this by the end of the play thanks to the inhumanly cruel practical joke the other characters played on him. Granted, Malvolio personifies the Asshole Victim trope, but even the characters acknowledge they may have gone too far at the end.

Video Games

In The Sims 3, any Sim with the Neurotic trait is this.
Every single Elsen in OFF is one of these, to the point taking them two inches out of their comfort zone will trigger some nasty transformations and get them to assault you.

Visual Novels

Hanako of Katawa Shoujo has severe anxiety issues and regularly has panic attacks, and her teacher knows to simply let her run out of class if she needs to.

Web Animation

Flaky from Happy Tree Friends. Taken Up to Eleven in "Without a Hitch" where she got so scared of Flippy killing her, she stabbed him in the eye.

Web Comics

Dies Horribly in Goblins: Life Through Their Eyes is always on edge. This is justified because most goblins in his clan are named due to prophecy.
Jack Delitt from Newheimburg has this issue in spades.
Dr. Riley Zinc from A Loonatics Tale.
Cameron (pictured) and Jack from Zoophobia.

Web Original

Edward Borman in The Mercury Men. Justified, given the situation he's in.
The Nostalgia Critic is very prone to panic and stressing out over nothing.

Western Animation

Tweek from South Park.
The Earl of Lemongrab from Adventure Time. Whether his character and situation are hilarious, or terribly depressing, is debatable.
In the episode "The Truth Hurts" from The Replacements, the head of the school newspaper who is replaced is a Nervous Wreck who is constantly jittery and gets extremely nervous about the idea of anything being published in the school newspaper that would make things like fruit on the bottom yogurt as opposed to being like plain yogurt, as he likes it.
Shaggy and Scooby-Doo are usually this.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- Rainbow Dash normally presents the exact opposite of this. However, in a few cases it's shown that her cocky fa�ade is just that, and when she is no longer able to put up that fa�ade she collapses into a ball of nerves.
- Twilight Sparkle in "Lesson Zero" and "It's About Time".
- Fluttershy, frequently.
Jitters A. Dog from Raw Toonage and Bonkers.
Mr. Nervous from The Mr Men Show. He frequently lapses into daydreams, sort of blown-out-of-proportion scenarios involving whatever is going on around him at the time. Whether it be a short two-minute ride outside a store or a spider crawling out of his musical instrument. He will then usually flee for his life, screaming and shouting "Oh no no no!" or "This is the end!"
Skywarp of Transformers Animated exaggerates this. Here, the Seekers are clones of Starscream, each with one aspect of his personality, and Skywarp has his Dirty Cowardice. Thus, the only emotional and mental state he can process is utter fear. No wonder fans see him as The Woobie.
Munchy Beaver from PB And J Otter. Oh man, Munchy Beaver. In one episode, he's just getting over getting the measles. Peanut, Baby Butter and Jelly find a frog that looks like it has measles, decide to call it Measles and try to give it to him, but he incorrectly thinks that they want to give him the measles. In another episode, when two of his friends are arguing, he declares out loud, "I hate conflict." When he gets very nervous or worried, he tends to eat large amounts of wood.
Munchy: I'm so nervous. I'm so nervous. I have to go munch some wood.
PJ on Goof Troop. He's very uptight, panicky, pessimistic, fearful, and will often be shown trembling or freezing with anxiety. Considering that his father thinks the proper way to raise him is to insult and belittle him and to dominate him through intimidation and power, this is understandable. He gets significantly better by the end of the second movie.
Hey Arnold: What Olga Pataki actually is. Underneath her "perfect girl" fa�ade there's a Fragile Flower who has next to none self-worth and is severely stifled under her parents's super-high expectations of her, and who breaks down in tears at the mere thought of failing at something.
The animated version of Dilbert's Loud Howard, borrowing a trait from Nervous Ted to make him at least a tad more rounded.

Real Life

Generalized anxiety disorder.
Some people with PTSD are this to some measure. Because of their trauma, they are constantly "on guard" and wary of something bad happening to them. Additionally, they may be easily startled and have a Hair-Trigger Temper.