Repression Never Ends Well

Everyone needs a chance to release, to let everything out and vent. However, oftentimes people either can't or won't for a multitude of reasons. In these cases, characters might end up as Stepford Smilers as they try to pretend everything is fine, only to lash out later on.

What exactly the person is repressing varies from case to case, but the end result will always be a large outburst, albeit with different repercussions. If it's emotional, the person might finally snap and start screaming; if it's supernatural, the person might suddenly start unleashing Personality Powers uncontrollably.

Exactly why a character would hide something about themselves similarly varies; it could simply be chalked up to embarrassment, or in a more extreme case, they may very well be killed. Occasionally, in more lighthearted situations, characters will repress things, usually anger, only for others to force them to vent in order to avoid worse consequences. However, it's also possible for the character to have some kind of limit to how much they can repress, sometimes leading to a Rage Breaking Point or Did You Think I Can't Feel? moment.

Might overlap with Beware the Nice Ones or Beware the Quiet Ones if the character is usually pretty friendly or silent, Pent-Up Power Peril if superpowers happen to come out as well, or Angst Nuke in the case that the backlash is extremely destructive. Can also result in an Anguished Outburst or Fear Is Normal. Can lead to Cathartic Crying. "Anger Is Healthy" Aesop is when the character and audience is taught that anger is healthy as long as it's not taken to a violent extreme.

---

Examples:

Animation

• BoBoiBoy: It is revealed that the nightly fires throughout Season 3 were the titular hero's doing, but not on purpose. BoBoiBoy Fire emerged to relieve his stress while the hero slept, but his carelessness damages the town. Ironically, this contributes to the cycle as BoBoiBoy has to clean up the messes, adding to the responsibilities that caused him stress in the first place. He's shocked to find out from the investigation that he himself is the arsonist. Furthermore, Adu Du exposes his crimes and proposes to replace him with BoBoiBot as the robot has better control and wouldn't break under pressure like a human would.

Anime & Manga

• Retsuko does this on a regular basis in Aggretsuko. She's an Extreme Doormat who constantly tries to keep her coworkers, whom she can't stand, happy. This causes her to lash out very angrily through death metal.
• Beastars: Riz the brown bear suffers horrible migraines as a result of medicine he takes to keep his strength in check. He keeps this in check using honey, but the migraines do exacerbate Riz's aggressive nature, something he fights to keep in control. Unfortunately, a slip-up with his medication left him unprepared for rejection by his friend Tam the alpaca, resulting in Riz devouring the other student before the story began.
• My Hero Academia: Himiko's quirk, Transform, allows her to shapeshift into people whose blood she's consumed, giving her an intense fixation with blood. As a child, her parents were disturbed by her and forced Himiko to suppress her urges, putting pressure on her to be normal. However, in middle school she witnessed a boy (who was also her crush) get bloody in a fight, at which point she could no longer contain her bloodlust and killed him before drinking his blood. Not long after, she left home and became a villain.
• Promare: Discussed by Galo and Lio. Galo asks why the Burnish can't just try to control their urge to burn things, but Lio explains it's not that simple and it's something the Burnish can't hold back. Kray actively represses his link to the Promare and thinks he's inherently better than the other Burnish because of this, but it seems to have had major psychological consequences for him. As a college student, he wasn't able to get it under control and accidentally set fire to a building.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena: One of the Shadow Girls's plays depicts this through allegorical reference to Andersen's The Red Shoes. It begins with A-ko dancing merrily in her new red shoes while ignoring B-ko's warnings that this will end badly. In defiance of the fairytale's original moral, however, A-ko points out that B-ko has an identical pair of shoes she never wears before warning her that B-ko deliberately neglecting said shoes is at least as unwise. Given the later events in the show, it's quite warranted.
• Shimoneta: Anna Nishikinomiya's parents made it a mission to shelter her from any and all sexual obscenities, unaware that their actions were causing severe damage to their daughter's mental and emotional health. When Tanukichi Okuma accidentally kisses her, he inadvertently unleashes all the repressed urges within Anna, turning her into a psychotic and violent sexual predator with eyes only for him.

Comic Books

• Knight and Squire: Parodied in issue #4, in which Knight's repressed emotions take control of his armour and attack Shrike, a sort-of-villain who is dating Squire. Being British, Knight defeats the armour by repressing these feelings further, despite his American butler's advice to the contrary.
• Robin (1993): Tim tries to repress his feelings of disappointment and frustration with paternal figures, but once his father's injuries force him to actually buy a home in the city his son lives in and he and Tim move in together he flips and runs off when the man tries to tell Tim how Tim is changing and not the son he knows; as Tim puts it who is the son Jack "knows"? The man has never even lived with Tim before, instead having him housed in boarding schools. Bruce later ticks Tim off so badly that he quits being Robin for a bit in protest after yelling at him.
• X-Men:
  • Professor X, founder of the X-Men, has a rather nasty and repeated habit of trying to suppress every bad thought and feeling he ever had until it ultimately forms an evil split personality. Cases of this include the lead-up to the original Phoenix Saga (when he was haunted by visions of what'd turn out to be Lilandra calling for help), where it formed mental constructs of the original X-Men to combat the then-current team; the X-Men vs. Micronauts miniseries, where it was the Big Bad; and the Onslaught crossover as the titular Big Bad (only with influence from Magneto's mind).
  • In Astonishing X-Men, Cyclops copes with his childhood trauma by voluntarily choosing to let his powers run wild, thus giving himself something to constantly focus on and try to control in a moment when his life is falling apart due to events beyond his understanding. When Emma Frost forcibly makes Cyclops remember his decision and exposes him to all his repressed fears and insecurities, he sheds a Single Tear before falling into a catatonic state.
• Young Avengers: Loki is guilt-ridden over having manipulated events so he could take advantage of his young, previous self and kill him. It causes him to hallucinate his previous self taunting him before things take a turn for the worse and his guilt causes him to unconsciously use his magic to create constructs of the Young Avengers' exes which attack everyone until Loki finally fesses up.

Fan Works

• Child of the Storm has Harry, who has distinct problems expressing his emotions - especially anger - healthily thanks to his treatment by the Dursleys. Psychoactive Powers make this very, very problematic - cue Power Incontinence. Industrial grade therapy is required.
• This is symbolically shown off with Hoshi in Cinders and Ashes: the Chronicles of Kamen Rider Dante, where one of his forms, Yellowstone Mount, has no vents to let out his heat compared to his other two forms. Because of how his powers work by turning his Unstoppable Rage into a fuel for his fire powers (and in turn, having them fuel his anger), this results in Hoshi becoming angerier and angerier the more he uses it. At the same time the form was debuting, he discovers more and more about the truth behind his friend's tragic death and how he's bottling these emotions to himself, before ultimately exploding into a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Facing the Future Series: During the fourth episode, "Trial By Fire", Sam finds herself developing fire powers to match Danny's ice ones. She attempts to repress them but only ends up putting herself and Danny in even more danger. Dora Mattingly explains that in order to gain control of powers like that, you need to let them out, not keep them repressed.
• Feralnette AU: After constantly being blamed for the actions and mistakes of others, Marinette wound up internalizing this and convincing herself that the best thing she could do was remove herself from the equation as much as possible, withdrawing from her social life while focusing upon her duties as Ladybug/the new Guardian of the Miraculous. She continues internalizing her frustration as much as possible, not wanting to give Hawkmoth any opening to akumatize her... especially since he's zeroed in on Marinette, believing she'd make his most powerful akuma yet. It's made very clear that this repression and withdrawal is in no way healthy, and that it's only a matter of time before something gives...
• Junior Officers: Throughout the first several chapters, a few characters (but mostly Captain Barnacles) make some Innocently Insensitive remarks about Shellington. Shellington appears to be rather hurt by those words, but nothing comes of it... until "The Swell Shark", that is. When Shellington embarrasses himself by vomiting in the back of the GUP-A, he has an emotional breakdown and reveals that he's very insecure as a result of what Captain Barnacles and the others have said. He then spends the next few chapters in a Heroic BSoD.
• By the time The Karma of Lies begins, Marinette is on the verge of cracking under the pressure of bottling up all her frustration and other negative emotions. When she tries warning Adrien that she's about to break, he casually "encourages" her, claiming that she's strong enough to deal with it indefinitely. Thankfully, Tikki takes her concerns more seriously, as does Luka.
  • After Hawkmoth is finally unmasked and arrested, Ladybug calls out Chat Noir on how he refused to take his heroic duties seriously and kept trying to convince everyone they were "meant to be". She spells out in no uncertain terms that she'd repeatedly rejected him, and that the only reason she didn't put her foot down harder was for fear that one or both of them would wind up akumatized. But with Hawkmoth no longer around to exploit any Moments of Weakness, she's finally free to let her frustrations out at last.
• Olive's Last Partner: Olive has kept her rage over Oscar leaving her to work in the Lab bottled up for years upon years, which manifests in her thoughts as she rants about how terrible Oscar is and how terrible Oprah is for seemingly making him her favorite employee. She finally loses it and lets all her emotions pour out just when she's on the brink of drowning — and right to Oscar's face no less, which causes him to have a My God, What Have I Done? moment.
• Rain Code: New Game Plus: Karen constantly struggled to live up to their father's high expectations, and kept bottling up their emotions. This caused them to lash out when they thought poor Aiko was treating them with Condescending Compassion, resulting in her murdering Aiko in the heat of the moment. Afterwards, they are guilt-stricken, but continue concealing everything they can until they simply can't take it anymore.
• Raphael's Big Mistake: After witnessing her roommate April being kidnapped, Taylor can't talk to anyone about what happened because... well, who would believe that giant turtles were responsible for April's disappearance? So she keeps all her feelings bottled up, which only gets worse when Leo shows up to bring her to safety as well... until eventually, she hits her Rage Breaking Point.
• Sea Change Series: Mathias spends most of Scars trying to prevent Flynn from learning anything about how he was imprisoned in Felsoul Hold, or any of the things he endured there. This puts a lot of stress on their relationship.
• Unleashing of a Dark Night: Tomo is a Big Eater, but repeatedly tries to keep her appetite in check at several points throughout the story. This always ends with Hana's life nearly being endangered as a result.
• Two Letters: Marinette spends two years swallowing down her frustrations while striving to be the Ideal Heroine everyone expects Ladybug to be... which fuels a deep resentment over however everyone in Paris seems to be taking her protection for granted, expecting her to handle everything on her own without trying to avoid akumatization themselves. This builds to the point that she finally decides to quit being Ladybug, passing the Earrings to a Sketchy Successor. She's also Become Her Own Antithesis, as she's Stopped Caring about others and is focused upon her own happiness, even going so far as to become an outright Villain Protagonist.
• A Warlock's Wish: Since there's a Ban on Magic in his reality, Merlin is accustomed to repressing his powers as much as possible. This poses problems due to Pent-Up Power Peril; if he doesn't vent them in some fashion, even through harmless magic tricks, then that power will eventually overflow during moments of weakness, like when he's sick or going through a Heroic BSoD.
• In You're back, Mari, several characters have things they're repressing: Hero is repressing his memories of Mari and guilt over feeling like he broke his promise to her; Kel keeps downplaying all of his negative feelings out of the belief that he's got to act happy all the time and cheer the others up; and Sunny keeps using Omori to repress and process all his emotions. Among other things, this leads to Hero pushing Sunny's mother into traffic.

Films — Animation

• In Frozen, the main conflict stems from Elsa being forced to hide her ice powers for most of her life, leading to her unleashing them at her coronation party due to stress and plunging the kingdom into winter.
• My Little Pony: The Movie (2017): Twilight has been trying to hold in her frustration with her friends for treating this life-threatening adventure like another one of their regular everyday adventures. When Pinkie calls her out on not having faith in them, Twilight reaches the limit of her patience and in a fit of rage, yells that they're horrible friends and that things would be better off without them. This results in Pinkie being devastated, and the Mane Six leave Twilight alone to cool off their anger as she can only sob over what she has said.
• ParaNorman: The witch, Agatha, had been forced to hide her supernatural powers from the townsfolk to avoid being executed, but despite her efforts, they found out anyway and declared her guilty of witchcraft. During the trial, Agatha finally snapped and cursed her accusers to come back as zombies to feel the same pain she did. Deconstructed later on by Norman, who points out her actions make her similar to her oppressors.
• In Turning Red, Ming's repression of the emotional trauma she experienced growing up at the hands of her mother leads to not only inflicting similar trauma on her own daughter but also massive property damage once she reaches her Rage Breaking Point.

Films — Live-Action

• Chronicle: Andrew spends the entirety of the movie bottling up his anger and anxieties from being abused by his father and being bullied at school, all the while refusing to seek help with his issues. Andrew's breaking point is when he is hospitalized and his dad appears to berate and try to hurt him over his mother's death, with Andrew going from trying to kill his father to going on a rampage through the city with his powers.
• X-Men Film Series: Upon realizing Jean's limitless potential, Xavier grows afraid that she might one day be consumed by her powers and represses them by placing her under several psychic barriers. However, this has the side-effect of creating the Phoenix, a Split Personality who embodies her rage and lust, but lays dormant within Jean's subconscious for several years. Once the psychic locks are shattered, the Phoenix manifests itself as a murderous force of nature who furiously blames Xavier for messing with her head.

Literature

• The Empirium Trilogy: Ever since she was five, Rielle was forced to hide her powers and, to some extent, her person from the world. As the years passed, she began to believe her father's verbal abuse — continually reminding her that she's a monster/killer/dangerous/etc. — and thus eventually stopped fighting him for her freedom. This has the unintended side effect of making her powers more volatile, culminating in one particular burst of raw power that winds up killing not just Rielle's father, but Audric's father too (who is also the King of Celdaria).
• Harry Potter:
  • Obscurials are wizards who consciously repressed their powers as a result of abuse or prejudice. During moments of distress, their pent-up power causes them to involuntarily transform into a highly destructive magical force that embodies their fury and despair.
  • As Aberforth Dumbledore discloses to the lead trio during the events of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, his sister Arianna spent the rest of her life trying to repress her magical power after having suffered abuse when she was six, with devastating results like accidentally getting her and Aberforth's mother killed; it's later confirmed that she became an Obscurial.
• Discussed in the Junie B. Jones book "And Some Sneaky Peeky Spying". Junie B. catches her teacher (known only as "Mrs.") secretly eating a grape from the store without paying. Not wanting Mrs. to get in trouble, she keeps this to herself, but Lucille warns her that if she keeps a secret, her head will explode.

Live-Action TV

• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Jake and Boyle arrogantly believe they can manage an eight-day stakeout without a relief team. Unfortunately, they quickly realize how hellish it really is, but in order to prove themselves right, they pretend everything is fine and formulate a No-No List to ban potentially annoying behaviors. This only make things worse and eventually results in a massive fight between the two as they are unable to keep it together any longer.
• In Curon, anytime someone tries to completely repress their "inner self," it rises from the lake as an Evil Twin that tries to Kill and Replace them to live the life they tried to deny it.
• In Frasier, Niles holds back all his emotions when his ex-wife Maris is arrested for the murder of her new lover, which basically turns his own life into a circus. He stays unnaturally calm despite pressure on all sides, from the police, the media, his family, and Maris herself. Finally, when Cafe Nervosa runs out of straws and he can't get one in his coffee, he completely snaps and has a breakdown, stripping naked and disconnecting from reality for a little while.
• Malcolm in the Middle episode "Malcolm Holds His Tongue" has Malcolm decide to do what the title says after getting kicked off the basketball team. He sees a marked shift in his social life, which he appreciates through an internal monologue. His patience begins wearing thin from the incompetence of those around him, with his internal monologue beginning to sound downright demonic from rage. He then spits up blood on everyone around him when answering a question. A doctor's visit shows he developed a series of ulcers, with a stomach lining like an elderly man. The episode ends with Malcolm venting all his frustration in a rant at Lois when she's incredulous how this happened.
• The Odd Couple episode "Sleepwalker", Oscar's girlfriend, Dr. Nancy Cunningham, talks him into trying to exercise more patience with Felix, in the interest of decreasing his own stress. Oscar suppresses his desire to lash out at his roommate when he annoys him. However, the hostility comes to the fore while he sleeps, leading to him sleepwalking and hitting Felix with a newspaper nightly.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Original Series:
    • In Star Trek, Vulcans suffer from an intense mating drive, coupled with a total loss of control, every seven years. While this might appear to be just Bizarre Alien Biology, Dr. McCoy theorizes during "Amok Time" that the race pays for their complete repression the rest of the decade with this madness. Given that Romulans (Vulcans who split off from the planet when emotional repression became the norm) are never mentioned as suffering from ponn farr, he may have a point.
    • In "Plato's Stepchildren", Kirk and McCoy are trying to help Spock recover from the trauma of being controlled by the Platonians. When McCoy says that releasing emotions helps keep one emotionally healthy, Spock just answers that it's often unhealthy for people nearby.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Sarek", Spock's Vulcan father, Ambassador Sarek, is secretly struggling with Bendii Syndrome, the Vulcan version of Alzheimer's disease, which makes it practically impossible for him to repress his emotions at his advanced age, and this starts to adversely affect the Enterprise crew. Sarek resolves his struggle by mind melding with Picard, temporarily transferring his emotions to him, allowing Sarek the mental clarity to see to his diplomatic mission. We soon see that Picard suffers a breakdown dealing with these long-repressed emotions.
• An episode of Superstore has Amy forced to come into work directly after having a baby. She tries her best to keep it together despite having barely slept for several days and being severely enraged over her circumstances. It all comes to a head when Glenn mistakenly believes a bath bomb will solve her problems and she finally screams at him to commit suicide.
• The Umbrella Academy: Viktor's emotions have been repressed via drugs since he was a child. The result? When he goes off his meds and realizes he has superpowers, which have also been repressed by his sister Allison's Compelling Voice, he is furious and lashes out with them, nearly killing Allison.

Music

• This trope is the entire foundation behind Pink Floyd's The Wall. The Anti-Hero protagonist, aptly named Pink (meant to be an expy of both Syd Barrett and Roger Waters), has faced trauma ever since he was born and his father was killed in World War II. Since childhood, Pink has been building a metaphorical wall brick-by-brick to shield him from the world's strife, and come his adulthood as a famed rockstar and the news of his wife cheating on him, he completes his wall to utter radio silence. As he sinks deeper and deeper into isolation, he reflects on everything that brought him to this point, only to be interrupted by a doctor that his manager hired to get him into shape for an upcoming concert, who pumps him full of drugs. This throws Pink over the edge, and he becomes a manifestation of the very thing that kickstarted his trauma in the first place, a raging neo-Nazi. At this point, Pink has a Heel Realization of becoming a monster from his pent-up frustrations through his isolation, and through a metaphorical court trial, he relents and tears down his wall once and for all.

Theatre

• In Albert Herring, Albert shocks the officials who selected him to be May King yesterday based on his perceived moral purity, as well as his overprotective Mum, with his tale of how he spent the night and three pounds of his prize money on going to town, getting extremely drunk and starting a Bar Brawl to the point where he was Barred from Every Bar. He blames them for having repressed his curiosity for so long that something this drastic had to be done, and gives them his Snarking Thanks for having enabled the misadventure:
  Mum: But how could you do it? How could you?
  Albert: You know what drove me, you knew how I could.
  It was all because you squashed me down and reined me in,
  Did up my instincts with safety pins,
  Kept me wrapped in cotton wool,
  Measured my life by a twelve-inch rule,
  Protected me with such devotion,
  My only way out was a wild explosion!

Video Games

• In Chicory: A Colorful Tale, Chicory's struggle to become the wielder involved her hiding her own insecurities and perceived imperfections, which proves to be the main reason the corruption appears and the color wipe occurs. Furthermore, the final chapter reveals that the Brush itself is responsible for the corruption in the first place due to channeling the repressed fears and emotions of every wielder in history.
• Dare to Dream: Tyler's psychologist discerns that showing no negative emotions despite the death of his beloved father is a severe tendency of repression. All of those bottled up negative emotions end up coalescing into an entirely separate, entirely evil personality taking root in his mind.
• Genshin Impact: In the webcomic, after befriending Amber, Collei is guilt-ridden for causing the Black Fire Incident but is unable to tell her friend which, along with her self-loathing and Demonic Possession, becomes too much for the girl to bear. Eventually, unable to deal with shame and being overwhelmed by the creatures inside her, Collei tells Kaeya to kill her. Luckily, Amber does not allow this to happen.
• Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords deconstructs the Jedi Code and the various ways to follow it. The game's protagonist the Exile finds out that Jedi Master Atris, hurt by her disappointment on the Exile and the whole Jedi Order after the Revanite schism, has projected to rebuild the order in an authoritarian way where its tenets will never be challenged again. It turns out Atris actually wanted to join Revan along with the Exile, but couldn't bring herself to challenge the Jedi Order, and the resultant inner conflict broke her and guided her unconsciously to the Dark Side, with the result that their dreamed Jedi Order is openly undistinct from the Sith.
• In Night in the Woods, as a teenager Mae started suffering from some form of disassociation disorder, which went untreated and eventually caused her to put another kid in hospital during a softball game. The local doctor was pretty much the only avenue of treatment her parents had for her, and since he wasn't a psychiatrist, he didn't do much aside from having Mae write a journal and "suppress her anger". As a result, when she left for university while she didn't have another attack, she couldn't function in this new environment, and basically spent two years crying in her room, before coming home at the start of the game.
• Persona 4: the nature of the cognitive world embodies this trope; any human who stays in that world for too long risks everything that they're ashamed of manifesting in the form of a doppelganger, or rather, a Shadow. These Shadows are hostile to their other selves, happily proclaiming everything that they keep locked in the darkness of their hearts, such as Kanji's 'unmanly' interests and Naoto's real gender and her fears of never being taken seriously as a detective. It comes to a head when—not if, when their other selves deny that the Shadows are part of them, at which point the Shadows go berserk and turn into monsters; the only way to pacify the Shadows is for the owners to accept them as parts of themselves, which is how they turn into Personas.
• Persona 5:
  • The Awakenings of the characters in a nutshell. The whole theme of the game is rebellion, as the protagonist and the other party members are repressed in various ways by society and their peers, and they cannot express themselves and their desires in order to fit the mold - which they cannot do anyway. Therefore, their Personas represent their "rebellious spirit", and they awaken when they finally have enough of the repression they suffered. It also always overlaps with Rage Breaking Point, as said Awakenings are also triggered by anger:
    Ryuji: Stop lookin' down on me with that STUPID SMILE ON YOUR FACE!
    Ann: You've pissed me off, you son of a bitch!
    Yusuke: My eyes were truly blind... blind, and unable to see the true self behind this one horrible man!
    Makoto: Shut your damn mouth, you money-grubbing asshole!
    Futaba: I'LL NEVER FORGIVE THEM!
    Haru: I am no longer your subservient puppet!
  • A few Confidants in the game also suffer from this. Moon Confidant Yuuki Mishima has an entirely different problem. He was one of Kamoshida's favorite victims, so when the Phantom Thieves formed and brought him down, he became one of their biggest fans and supporters. And while he was helpful throughout the game with providing less-major targets, he was still insecure in and of himself, eventually manifesting a Shadow. Fortunately, it doesn't take much to stir his conscience and make him more self-confident.
  • Hanged Man Confidant Munehisa Iwai is a former Yakuza member who entered that life because his own parents were less than adequate. He quit the life of crime and became a legitimate (if shady) businessman when he adopted a baby boy, but the problems from his own parents made him unwilling to tell his son the truth about his past for risk of putting him through the same kind of hell. This ignorance is what gets Kaoru involved when Iwai's past comes back to bite him.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney: A culprit's defeat is signaled by a special cutscene in which all their fear, rage, or guilt culminates in an over-the-top, dramatic breakdown. In Kristoph Gavin's case, his repressed anger towards Phoenix Wright reaches its climax when his stoic appearance shatters and he loudly screams the protagonist's surname, before his remaining sanity is lost and he starts laughing uncontrollably.
• Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: Mikan acts submissive and timid, allowing everyone to walk all over her as a result of the bullying she endures. In Chapter 3, in her panic upon being discovered as the Blackened who murdered Ibuki and Hiyoko, Mikan turns into a shrieking mess, lashing out angrily at everyone for picking on her and demanding forgiveness. She even gets Nagito to shut up with an Armor-Piercing Response, which is quite the feat.
• Hanako from Katawa Shoujo is indeed aware that Hisao and Lilly pity her for her timidity, and she is not pleased about it. However, she doesn't really call either of them out for this, until her Bad Ending, when she snaps at Hisao and yells at him to get out of her room (and by extension, her life). Hisao feels terrible about it, and as for Hanako after that outburst, she has tears in her eyes, implying that she feels bad about exploding at him, too.

Web Animation

• Epithet Erased: Subverted. Molly puts up with her dad and sister's neglect while running the toy store all by herself, and constantly keeps a calm facade while letting them walk all over her. Word of God is Giovanni, who teaches her to do what she wants and to speak her mind, is the only thing preventing Molly from lashing out violently in a few years.
• RWBY:
  • After Ozpin warns Ruby — who has a history of bottling her feelings — to think carefully about how she'll uphold the daunting responsibility of leadership, she tells the struggling Jaune that leadership means never being allowed to fail. After Ozpin warns Oscar in Volume 5 that Ruby's inspirational leadership is a terrible burden, Volume 6 exposes the consequences of his own history of bottling his feelings, forcing Ruby to take over. The Atlas Arc explores the pressure of command and Ozpin's responsibilities as she begins making the same decisions and mistakes that he made. He sees where he went wrong in Volume 8 and Ruby learns the same lesson after she's left shattered by a villainous Despair Gambit in Volume 9. Only through discovering that the mother she idolised was as flawed as everyone else does she learn not to hold herself to impossible standards or try to be perfect for others.
  • Ren is very uncommunicative about his emotions and sharing in general. During the Atlas Arc, the pressure of the fight against Salem becomes so difficult for him to bear that he becomes rigidly inflexible, withdraws into himself and becomes increasingly intolerant of any mistakes he and the heroes are making. It's only during an argument with Harriet about whether dead team mates should be considered replacable that he explodes with fury and tells her exactly what he thinks of sentiments like that. The outburst unlocks a power upgrade for his emotion-linked Semblance, expanding his abilities from just Emotion Suppression to transform him into The Empath. From that point on, he becomes extremely attuned to his and everyone else's emotions, and becomes much more able to discuss how he and others are feeling.

Webcomics

• The Glass Scientists: Featured heavily regarding Jekyll and Hyde. Jekyll heavily represses the aspects of his personality he deems 'wrong' to play the part of a perfect gentleman and benefit the Society. Unfortunately, this makes him miserable, and unable to cope with the stress any longer, he creates Hyde- a separate personality containing all of his worst traits. However, it's later revealed that Hyde isn't really pure evil and only lacks Jekyll's inhibitions, making him immensely impulsive and destructive.
• Paranatural:
  • Implied to be the case with Mr. Spender and the shadow spirit. He and Lucifer try to contain the spirit possessing him, but he refuses to seek outside help even when it's clear he can't hold it back forever and when it comes out, it's not going to be pretty.
  • Isabel has a lot of anger towards her grandfather for holding her to an impossibly high standard for a child and berating her whenever she can't meet his expectations. When Ed doesn't stick up for her on top of losing Eightfold in chapter four, she decides to bottle up her problems for the majority of chapter five. She finally starts releasing them when she confronts Isaac who is on a similarly impossible path of getting everything out, and wails on Hijack.
• In Schlock Mercenary, Petey, the AI for the Post-Dated Check Loan, is ordered into repression and denial of the four centuries he spent locked out of his own systems ruminating on the noises in his plumbing that sounded like the ghosts of his dead crew. When the Ob'enn Empire recaptures him, the orders Tagon gave him are canceled, and he self-destructs after giving his new captain just enough time for an Oh, Crap! moment.

Western Animation

• One episode of The Amazing World of Gumball has Gumball resolve to stop criticizing people after an online quiz evaluates him as a loser for it. Repressing all his negativity gives him an upswing in popularity, but it's slowly, gruesomely poisoning him. We never see the full outcome of that, however, because the more pressing problem is that him being so nonconfrontational makes him uninteresting as a protagonist, so the show hastily retools itself to make Tobias the main character, and takes a drastic dip in quality that will either condemn everyone to cliché sitcom plots or get the show cancelled. Gumball has to vent his literally caustic venom at Tobias to return things to normal.
• American Dad!: Roger's alien species must act nastily, otherwise their "bitchiness turns into bile and poisons (them)". After he spends an entire episode repressing his evil impulses and making a genuine effort to be kind, he is bed-ridden and on the verge of death. To save himself, he delivers a massive, brutal "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Steve, which completely heals him.
• In the Arthur episode "Meek for a Week", Francine is dared to be polite for a week. However, she has no idea how to express her emotions diplomatically and as a result, she stuffs her emotions. Her friends think this is unhealthy and will lead to her "popping".
• Batman: The Animated Series: Two-Face's origin is a result of Harvey Dent repressing his anger since childhood. This resulted in a Split Personality, "Big Bad Harv", that he mostly kept under control. It isn't until his disfigurement during Rupert Thorne's attempt at blackmailing him that the Two-Face personality takes control, with Harvey Dent occasionally breaking through. In the episode "Judgement Day", Two-Face repressing Harvey Dent for so long, especially his passion for justice, results in a third personality forming: the Judge, a Vigilante Man who treats all crimes as punishable by death.
• Vex of The Legend of Vox Machina mentions to uptight, guarded Percy that he should cut loose once in a while, not long before the party attend a dinner where some of Percy's old enemies show up. What follows is a dark, bloody Roaring Rampage of Revenge spanning a full season and featuring Cold-Blooded Torture and Demonic Possession. Maybe not what she meant.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In "All Bottled Up", Starlight Glimmer tries to suppress her anger, but, being a unicorn, this anger turns into a cloud of magic. This magic eventually spreads to other people, making them mad.
  • In "Horse Play", Twilight invites Princess Celestia to take part in her play, only to realize that Celestia can't act at all. She tries to hide this from her mentor, on top of dealing with many other problems, until finally, she explodes and rants about how Celestia is "the worst actress in the history of Equestria" — with Celestia listening from behind the curtain.
• Mysticons: The episode "Quest Of The Vexed" has Emerald secretly using a device called a Vex-Away canister designed to literally bottle up her anger, and unknowingly ends up stuffing it dangerously beyond capacity. Things go awry when Emerald loses the device and it starts leaking, infecting all animals and people within range with her suppressed anger, including the citizens of Drake City.
• In The Owl House, Willow Park is The Reliable One of the Hexsquad friend group, and knows it, so in the Season 3 episode "For the Future", despite being just as scared and upset about the fate of her family and the Boiling Isles as everyone else, she does her best to hold in her emotions and stay strong for her friends. Soon, as a result, her Green Thumb powers start spiraling out of control, until she accidentally ensnares her best friend Gus and crush Hunter with vines, and her subsequent panic and attempt to release them causes her to become trapped with her own powers too. It takes Hunter saving her and both boys encouraging her to let her feelings out for her to calm down and retake control.
• The Real Ghostbusters: A more Space Whale Aesop version occurs in "The Boogeyman is Back". The Ghostbusters had previously sealed the monster's dimension off, keeping him from getting out. However, then Egon takes a tumble off the World Trade Center during a job, scaring him half to death. However, he refuses to admit it (which isn't helped by the others expressing admiration for his Nerves of Steel) and the repressed terror grows so strong that it reaches the Boogeyman and allows him to break out.
• Regular Show: In "Think Positive", Pops tells Benson that he'll be fired if he yells at Mordecai and Rigby again, leading him to repress his anger at their antics. He eventually holds in so much rage, that he risks exploding and destroying everything, leaving Pops no choice but to allow him to lose it, resulting in an epic chewing-out that literally deafens Mordecai and Rigby.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: All her life, Catra was emotionally and physically abused by Shadow Weaver and kept in Adora's shadow, but pretended to be fine with being in Adora's shadow, who was completely oblivious to it. Unfortunately, when Adora leaves for the Rebellion, Catra sees it as a personal affront, with her best friend and crush abandoning and completely devaluing her, motivating Catra to lash out by attacking the Rebellion.
  Adora: You always said you didn't care about things like that.
  Catra: Well I was lying, obviously!
• The Simpsons:
  • Discussed by Lisa and Homer in "Whacking Day":
    Homer: Just squeeze your rage into a bitter little ball and release it at an appropriate time. Like that day I hit the referee with a whiskey bottle. Remember that?
    Lisa: Yeah.
    Homer: When Daddy hit the referee?
    Lisa: Yeah.
  • "Hurricane Neddy" reveals that Ned Flanders used to be a brat until he was subjected to eight months of continuous spanking. This "treatment" made Ned unable to express anger, as any attempt would result in him subconsciously ending his sentences with nonsensical jabbering, namely his Verbal Tics "diddly" and "doodly". After being pushed too far, Ned erupts from years of suppressed rage and viciously berates his friends and neighbors, followed by willingly committing himself to a mental hospital immediately afterward.
  • In "I Am Furious (Yellow)", Homer is offended by Bart's Internet cartoon based on his angry outbursts and decides to hold in his anger, causing lumps to develop on his neck. Eventually, one of Bart's pranks makes Homer rampage through town and cause millions of dollars in property damage, but it's soon revealed that the boils on his neck would have killed him had he not been set off.
• 6teen: In "One Quiet Day", the gang points out that Jen's biggest flaw is being too judgmental and makes a bet that she cannot go a day without criticizing their actions. For most of the episode, Jen struggles not to say anything as her friends deliberately perform irresponsible or reprehensible acts, before she finally gives in and breaks into a long, rambling speech about how prone they are to making poor decisions.
• The storyline of Steven Universe: Future has Steven trying to hide his trauma from the original series and avoiding dealing with his problems. The episode "Everything's Fine" really drives the lesson home as Steven runs around trying to help people whilst in obvious psychological distress, with his powers eventually going out of control and transforming him into a monster.
• Teen Titans: In the episode "Fear Itself", the Titans watch a scary movie together, and Raven won't admit it frightened her. This becomes a problem when she loses control of her powers and the monsters from the movie come to life.

---