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The Berserker

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His name is Guts, and he's about to hack out yours.

"Bodvar Bjarki ploughed into them now, hacking two handed, his only thought to do as much damage as he could before he fell. And now they fall in heaps before him, one on top of another, and both his arms are bloodied to the shoulder, and he felled so many, the dead were stacked all about him. He stormed on as if he was insane."

The Berserker is a character who throws themself into a fight with such reckless abandon, it seems like they want to die. It could be over-enthusiasm, overconfidence, Unstoppable Rage, or because they do indeed want to die. Whatever the cause, it's usually accompanied by a bellowing warcry. Sometimes with total obliviousness to whether they're actually fighting the enemy. And they never, ever retreat.

For extra points of terrifying spectacle, oftentimes the Berserker is inexplicably immune to pain and/or injury. It's one thing for the screaming, frothing lunatic hacking people down left and right to simply be too savage to get near, but when they take so many arrows they look like a porcupine and it just pisses them off even more (or worse, makes them stronger) it is quite another. When they shrug off a cannonball with little more than a feral scream, that's usually sufficient for the opposing army to collectively shit itself and run.

Berserkers are equally capable of being good or evil, being either The Big Guy or The Brute respectively. If they're good, then out of battle, they will likely brood about whatever it is that causes their berserk fits or remorse about losing control of themselves. Most end up one of two ways: being taught by their teammates to control themselves after a particularly close call, or dying in a dramatic fashion while lamenting that they died without completing their mission. Good Berserkers are also very prone to Heroic Sacrifices, for very obvious reasons. When this is not played for drama, the Berserker may have a Boisterous Bruiser attitude when not in his battle rage. An evil Berserker, on the other hand, is generally just unrepentantly Ax-Crazy and very often Chaotic Evil.

The trope's title refers to the berserkr of Viking-Age Scandinavia: Warriors who are said to have thrown themselves into battle wearing only animal hides for armour and with no regard for their own safety. Their 'battle-madness', whose exact nature is presently unknown (some say it came from ingesting weird mushrooms or some other mind-altering substance before a battle) is said to have been a gift from Odin. The word "berserkr" means "Bear-shirt" in Old Norse, referring to either their going into battle with the ferocity of bears or for wearing bear pelts into battle. Their effectiveness in battle is up for debate, but they were an imposing and terrifying nightmare to the continental Europeans — and, if The Icelandic Sagas are to be trusted, to their own civilization. Some Norse societies would eventually outright ban the practices of the berserker, no doubt influenced by its people converting to Christianity.

With terms used in sources that speak of the Norse berserkr also occasionally giving off some implication of Shapeshifting (or at least stating their ferocity was like they became savage animals...), it's a possibility the tales of the berserker would later inspire that of the Werewolf.

Berserkers that truly do wish to die in battle are better known as Death Seekers — those who don't often overlap with the Blood Knight or Barbarian Hero instead. When foolishly done without any regard to strategy or planning, the Berserker becomes a Leeroy Jenkins. Because of its historical root, berserkers are likely Proud Warrior Race Guys.

Compare Berserk Button, which is when pressing a character's Trigger turns them into this. Compare Hulking Out for cases where the berserk character changes physically as well as mentally. If the Berserker fights this hard so that no one else needs to help him, he might also be a Martyr Without a Cause. Contrast Blinded by Rage, where a berserker's blind rage proves to be his undoing.

When the Berserker is pitted against an ace who matches him in combat, but also has a much cooler head on his shoulders, see Arrogant God vs. Raging Monster. If the berserker is the one with the cool head, see Temperate Berserker.

This trope should not be confused with the recurring character title of the Fate Series, the now-disbanded Australian grindcore band The Berzerker, the Berserker universe, the manga franchise Berserk, the classic arcade game Berzerk, or the 1967 B-horror movie Berserk.


Examples

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    Films — Animation 
  • A downplayed example in The Incredibles with Jack-Jack in that, as a toddler, his "berserker rage" is throwing a temper tantrum. However, the nature of his powers is such that when he has a tantrum he transforms into a red demonic imp form that has no compunctions against launching onto Bob's arm and gnawing upon it to vent his frustration at being denied a cookie.
  • WALL•E features HAN-S, a malfunctioning massage robot with anger issues. His arms tend to flail around uncontrollably, and he shakes and growls like an animal when his arms are restrained. Although he was not designed for combat, he is nevertheless powerful enough to singlehandedly wreck an entire platoon of Steward bots.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The Captain during the final battle in 300 becomes the Death Seeker version of this trope, having already witnessed the death of his son and knowing no Spartan will survive this fight. Boar spears have a cross-bar behind the head to prevent animals from doing the same thing the Captain does, which is charge up the spear haft after it pierces his gut - so that he can kill the wielder. Like most fabled berserkers, he is only defeated by the combined efforts of several enemies hacking him to pieces.
  • In The 13th Warrior, Ahmad ibn Fadlan goes battle-mad during one attack, but seeing as he's hanging around Vikings and taking on more and more of their culture, it's not surprising.
  • The Neomorphs in Alien: Covenant have almost all of the lethal speed and strength of their Xenomorph brethren, with none of their trademark subtlety and intelligence. They attack and try to feed on every biological organism they encounter. Shortly after being born from Ledward, the infant Neomorph savagely mauls Karine and then immediately goes after Faris without pause; outside, it eats Walter's hand trying to get to Daniels, then lunges at Rosenthal and shreds her forearms with its frantic biting and clawing.
  • The aptly-named Sven the Berserk in Erik the Viking is one comedic example. His father is also a berserker and lectures him on berserking. He goes into a rage over every little thing, which leaves him with insufficient pent-up rage when he actually needs it.
  • In Alita: Battle Angel, Alita tends to transition quickly between Tranquil Fury and ferociously attacking. Alita is inclined to rush into battle without adequate forethought or preparation. The military body Alita finds and later wears is even called "the Berserker body."
  • In Chai Lai Angels: Dangerous Flowers, Spadix gets stronger, tougher and more aggressive the angrier she gets: especially if someone gropes her ass or boobs. At her strongest, she can bend steel bars, or stomp an opponent literally into the ground.
  • Unleashed: Danny fights with pure aggression when he's let off his leash.
  • Dying in battle was a family tradition for Lieutenant Dan Taylor in Forrest Gump and he is furious when Forrest saves him (especially since he was crippled by his injury).
  • Godzilla. When he gets into a fight, he doesn't stop until either his enemy has been defeated or until the battle ends in a draw. Only rarely has he been defeated in battle.
    • Godzilla vs. Destoroyah: After Destoroyah kills Junior, Godzilla goes into a berserk rage and begins to unleash his wrath unto Destroyah all the while dying of a nuclear meltdown. This causes Destoroyah, one of the most (if not the most) sadistic and evil monsters in the films to run for his life.
    • This is a major plot point in the film Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla. It turns out that hearing Godzilla's roar is enough to send Kiryu (a cyborg version of the original Godzilla) to rampage across Tokyo. The JSDF end up reprogramming him to ensure this doesn't happen again.
    • Gigan and King Ghidorah are two evil examples of this. They don't care what planet they're helping the alien villains to conquer and why. As long as they get to fight and destroy things, they're happy.
  • Parodied by Mr. Furious in Mystery Men. He gets angry. He gets really angry. That's it. No super-strength, no supernatural resistance to pain or injury, and he doesn't change into a monster. He's just a raging Ben Stiller with all the fighting ability of a loaf of bread. Then he finally finds something to get righteously furious about, and suddenly becomes as super-strong as he's supposed to be...
  • Berserkers are depicted in The Northman in line with current historical understanding as warriors clad in animal pelts who enter a trance-like ritual state; even when not performing such rituals, Amleth still enters battle with ruthless ferocity.
  • Benjamin Martin in The Patriot (2000) exhibits berserker-like qualities in battle. Especially his first and last fight scenes.
  • One of the replacement players in The Replacements (2000) is Danny Bateman, a riot cop and Gulf War veteran. Stoic and reserved under normal circumstances, the second he's expected to perform he becomes a lunatic, equally likely to inflict bodily harm on friend and foe alike.
  • Star Wars: Kylo Ren's lightsaber fighting style is very aggressive and he cares little about getting hurt in the process.
  • Ajax in Troy. When he goes into battle, no Annoying Arrows or mere impalement can stop him from administering a righteous hammer of justice.
  • In the X-Men Film Series, Wolverine often flies into a rage when he's in a fight.

    Gamebooks 
  • In Lone Wolf, some enemies are described as entering fights in a state of rage, making them immune to basic psychic attacks.
    • This is common with the Drakkarim; they're sometimes seen hacking at lowly soldiers on their side, like Giaks, just to reach their main foe.
    • Several Acolytes of Vashna are also seen in battle frenzy in The Legacy of Vashna, thanks to the Adgana herb.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Angel:
    • Gunn, as a result of Survivor Guilt and blaming himself for Alonna's death. Negated when he fell in love with Fred, giving him a new lease on life.
    • Connor tries to commit Suicide by Cop after Jasmine's defeat, and doesn't care if the Cop has to be Angel.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: When we first meet Faith, the result of witnessing the gruesome death of her Watcher. She relapses back into it when she awakens from her coma.
    Buffy: Girl's not playing with a full deck, Giles. She has no deck. She has a 3.
  • Cobra Kai: Eli "Hawk" Moskowitz becomes Cobra Kai's most aggressive fighter, favoring the Attack! Attack! Attack! approach in all situations (Miguel, despite being a superior fighter, is more pragmatic). Before becoming Hawk, Eli was relentlessly bullied at school due to a facial scar; after joining Cobra Kai, Hawk's aggressive style is fueled by a desire to inflict the pain he's suffered on others. The second season deconstructs this, as Kreese's teachings lead Hawk to become more aggressive at the expense of his fighting skills, culminating in him losing a fight to Demetri of all people in the season finale.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • In the Season 6 episode "The Battle of the Bastards", Jon Snow goes completely berserk in the battlefield after Ramsay kills poor Rickon, singlehandedly slaying every enemy soldier he can gets his hands on. Even Tormund is unsettled. At the end of the episode, he's a Blood-Splattered Warrior who beats the living shit out of Ramsay. Jon only calms upon seeing his sister Sansa, who ultimately kills Ramsay herself by feeding him to his own dogs.
    • In battle, Tormund and Styr both scream and howl while delivering powerful blows.
    • Brienne starts her fights with proper poise and footwork, but when she's pushed she'll go absolutely feral on her enemies, biting and screaming like a maniac until they are down.
    • After Yoren is killed in "What is Dead May Never Die", Gendry charges at the Lannister soldiers armed only with his smith's hammer.
    • Euron is an axe-wielding berserk captain who personally leads his boarding party with an attacking zeal and passing regard at best for actively defending himself (uncommon for a berserker, he wears heavy armor). When he boards Yara's flagship, he takes several hits from the Sand Snakes and Yara during their respective fights, but shrugs them off as easily as mosquito bites.
  • Kamen Rider: Riders possessing alternate berserker forms is a common recurring trope in the franchise.
    • The titular Rider of Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue has strong berserker elements as an innate feature, with Shin going from a fairly-normal human to a ruthless, efficient, feral killer.
    • Kamen Rider Kuuga never truly introduces a berserker but does allude to one. If reached through improper means, Kuuga's Ultimate Form will have black eyes and be a destructive world-endangering monster. But if reached properly, it'll be red-eyed and fully under control.
    • Kamen Rider Agito's Burning Form grants a massive physical power-up and a brutal fighting style in exchange for the risk of Agito entering a berserk state. However, he eventually gains control over the form, causing it to evolves into the Shining Form.
    • Kamen Rider Blade has the Joker Undead, extremely powerful monsters driven purely by their instinct to fight, which is powerful enough to trump their reason. Hajime/Kamen Rider Chalice, the only natural Joker, initially loses control of himself after changing to his Joker form and attacks anything around him. Kenzaki/Kamen Rider Blade also becomes a berserker when his King Form first starts turning him into a Joker.
    • Kamen Rider Kabuto has the Red Shoes System, an in-built "safety" feature of the Zecters to ensure that the Rider will always fight the Worms. If taken over by the Red Shoes, the Rider in question will ruthlessly target and attempt to kill any potential enemy, regardless of said enemy's intent.
    • Kamen Rider Kiva briefly becomes a berserker when his Fangire blood is triggered.
    • Kamen Rider Double's Mid-Season Upgrade is FangJoker. This form is powered by the Fang Memory, a support robot whose only purpose is to protect Philip. It does this by turning him into the main body of W (as opposed to the usual candidate, Shotaro) and making him far more aggressive, attacking anything in reach. Just one use traumatised Philip badly enough to refuse to ever use the form again, only relenting thanks to Shotaro being in mortal danger. But with the latter's help, he gained control of the form, permanently ridding it of its berserker nature.
    • Kamen Rider OOO had the PuToTyra Combo, the final form of the titular Rider powered by the absence of desire. During Eiji's first use of the form, it was completely uncontrollable, with Eiji mercilessly attacking the two Births after easily obliterating the two Yummies. As if that wasn't bad enough, it also slowly corrupts him into a saurian Greeed monster, starting by robbing him of his taste for normal food. Eiji does eventually gain control of the form (at the cost of losing a good deal of its power), but intense stress not only returns PuToTyra to its fully-powered berserker state, but speeds up the Greeed transformation. Eventually, Eiji becomes the appropriately-named Eiji Greeed because of this, which starts out near-mindless, but then turns Eiji into a mindless berserker overwhelmed with one desire: the desire for nothing.
    • Kamen Rider Drive's Mid-Season Upgrade form is Dead Heat, a form that possesses a lot of speed and power, but hijacks its user's body if used for too long. This causes the fully aware user to uncontrollably attack anyone nearby.
    • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid's Drago Knight Hunter Z causes Ex-Aid to wildly lash out at anyone nearby while remaining conscious of what he was doing. This is because the armour provided by the Gashat was supposed to be split between four players, rather than be used by one person all at once. Strangely, it never has this effect when used by the other Riders.
    • Kamen Rider Build has the Hazard Trigger, also known as the "Forbidden Item". This upgrades his standard form changes into Hazard Forms, which are primarily black-coloured Lightning Bruisers. But if these forms are used for too long, the user's consciousness shuts down. They then turn into ruthless, efficient killing machines, set on destroying their target by any means necessary. This proves a problem when Sento traumatises himself after killing Aoba with it. In the end, Sento can only delay the loss of consciousness rather than fully overcome it, but eventually comes up with a workaround in the form of the FullFull RabbitTank Bottle.
      • Users of the Sclash Driver steadily turn into berserkers themselves, thanks to the Driver exposing them to potent doses of Nebula Gas, elevating their aggression and desire to fight with each use. However, the effect becomes less severe with experience.
    • Kamen Rider Zero-One has the MetalCluster Hopper Progrise Key, which causes the user's mind to be overwhelmed by a psychopathic AI. They remain fully aware, but their body attacks indiscriminately. It was supposed to be used to cripple Zero One, as the key locked out the previous transformations. But in practice, it created a murderous, near-unstoppable juggernaut before a workaround was found.
      • The movie of the series also has the HellRising Hopper Progrise Key, which is an Artifact of Doom that wasn't meant to be used to transform, but Aruto seizes it out of desperation. The transformation is not only unbelievably painful, but the sheer power of the key drives Aruto completely insane, only stopping when Is blocks his Finishing Move.
    • Kamen Rider Saber has the Primitive Dragon Wonder Ride Book, which binds itself to Touma out of their shared feelings of betrayal and makes him far stronger, at the cost of suppressing his personality and turning him into a rampaging, animalistic beast in a human's body. It's only when Touma reaches out to the desolate dragon and makes a happier ending to its story that Elemental Dragon, another new book, is made. Using it in conjunction with Primitive Dragon allows Touma to transform safely.
  • Gem and Gemma of Power Rangers RPM. A pair of psychopathic Man Children who have a five year old's fascination for guns and explosions (or rather, "boom time") and a Henshin Hero's armory. They have to be reminded rather frequently to, for example, not blow up the enemy factory until prisoners have been removed.
  • Numerous alien species from the various Star Trek franchises, including the Klingons and Jem'Hadar (the latter first appearing in Deep Space Nine continuity), are brutally fierce warrior races which not only show no fear of death but in some instances actually seem to relish the prospect of death in battle (although the Enterprise franchise plays down this aspect of Klingon culture somewhat).
    • The Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Doomsday Machine" features an unstoppable machine constructed by an unknown alien civilisation constructed to kill and destroy for ever without stopping.
  • Vikings: In Season 2, Rollo, Jarl Borg, and a group of Borg's men are seen eating mushrooms before a battle and charging into the fight bare chested. Rollo's actions in the battle are horrifically brutal, and he attacks several of his former comrades savagely until a combination of having killed one of those comrades via Impaled with Extreme Prejudice and being confronted by his brother Ragnar finally snap Rollo out of it.

    Myths & Religion 
  • In the mythology of the Trope Namers, Odin was the patron God of the berserkers. The name Odin actually means the furious.
  • In Irish legend, when the hero Cuchulainn went into "warp-spasm," he was invincible — but could not distinguish friend from foe.
  • Lancelot from Arthurian Legend had many aspects of this trope, which Monty Python and the Holy Grail preserves. He is memorable for scenes where he would kill innocents and be pretty sorry for it later, just like in the stories.
  • Classical Mythology:
    • Although Ajax is described as a defensive fighter in The Iliad, a post-Homeric source makes him into this. At one point, blind with fury over not getting the recently-deceased Achilles' armor, he goes into a berserk rage and kills a bunch of sheep, thinking they are the Greek army. When he realizes what he has done, he is Driven to Suicide. He is depicted the same way in Troy, although the whole "sheep-killing" thing is skipped over.
    • Diomedes also fits, being unwilling to stand down in the face of two deities. He wounds both of them and forces them to retreat.
    • Achilles himself is also an example— once he gets out of his tent, that is.
    • Heracles is also known to fly into mad rages at times. This is never a pleasant thing for anyone he was fighting — or for any innocents in the vicinity. He murdered his family one time after a particular nasty rage brought about by Hera, which led to him undertaking the Twelve Labors as atonement.
    • Ares represented this aspect of war, as opposed to Athena's more measured approach.
  • Hindu Mythology:
    • Kali. Normally the benevolent mother goddess Parvati, she notably slew the demon Raktabija who kept making copies each time his blood was spilled. The solution? She drains his blood and eats the duplicates. Trouble was, she got blood thirsty, literally. She wouldn't stop until her husband Shiva either turned into a baby to bring out her maternal instincts or got trampled by a dancing Kali who snapped out of it once she realized what she was doing.
    • Shiva was said to be prone to berserker rages as well. At one point, there was a party in his house that he didn't know about, so he went on a rampage and killed everyone present. It was only after he stopped that Parvati informed him that he'd killed their son, Ganesha, by chopping his head off. Remorseful, Shiva put everyone he'd killed back together, but some of the body parts got jumbled up; Shiva couldn't find Ganesha's head so he used the head of a female elephant that he found near Ganesha's body as a replacement.
  • The Book of Judges in The Bible reports that "the Spirit of the Lord came on Samson" several times, which inevitably resulted in a high body count. On one occasion he killed one thousand Philistines singlehandedly, armed only with a donkey's jawbone.

    Pro Wrestling 

    Roleplay 
  • The third RP of Darwin's Soldiers has Gustave, a man who has a penchant for violence and has little regard for his personal safety. Being an anthropomorphic Nile Crocodile with thick muscle, thick scaly skin and scutes that essentially serve as body armor, "personal safety" might mean different things to him.
  • In The Gamer's Alliance, Razoul and the warriors of Vanna's Black Guard in general. They tend to devour Drakeroot before battle in order to become more ferocious and powerful, but the root also has the side effect of turning them into nearly mindless brutes as a result.
  • Darth Apparatus in The Gungan Council. He may seem reserved when not in battle. Yet when the lightsabers light up, he rips apart enemies in a fit of pure rage. He even used Oghren's quotes on berserkers while describing how he fights.
  • Admiral Flota Vladimir Ilyavich Tokarev, HERO OF THE TRIBES, from v4 of Open Blue. The male population of the aforementioned "tribes" consists entirely of Hot-Blooded pseudo-Russo-Mongol warriors, and thus to be regarded as "HERO OF THE TRIBES" means you've gotta be a Berserker in your own right. It's even lampshaded as one of his specialties. Somewhat subverted in that he only does this when engaged in melees, and if there is no other viable ship tactic. When it's more effective to just blow you up from a distance, he will opt for that instead. Tokarev didn't become an admiral for stupidity, after all.

    Visual Novels 

    Web Animation 
  • Helluva Boss: While all the professional killers at IMP (and the receptionist if needed) can get quite bloodthirsty, Millie stands out among them, whether she's just having fun or in an Unstoppable Rage. Tellingly, she's not allowed to participate in the rodeo competition in her home village because she "gets carried away" and was responsible for nine out of the fifteen deaths the last time around.
  • Invoked and Exploited in Lackadaisy. Thanks to deliberate preparation and prompting by his cousin Rocky, newly recruited booze-runner and The Drag-Along Freckle goes into a cackling rage with dilated pupils when presented with a Tommy Gun hidden in Rocky's violin case, so dissociated that Rocky has to bodily move him from one car window to the other to turn a chase by rival gangsters into a fairer Car Chase Shootout. Freckle only comes out of it when asked if they're safe, but not before reflexively clawing holes in the upholstery.
    Freckle: *strained* Sorry! Sorry. I didn’t mean to. It’s just that there’s a ho- a fire. A burning hot fire i- in, uh. In the e-engine compartment!
  • Red vs. Blue: The Meta is like this but seemingly in the "berserker rage" state permanently. In Reconstruction, he goes on a massive killing rampage whenever he gets a new AI fragment, and in Revelation this is taken to its final extreme.

    Webcomics 
  • Dominic Deegan had a one-shot character named Brok that was hired by the Infernomancer during his first appearance, who goes into an Unstoppable Rage after Bumper tries (and fails) to knock him out by smashing a staff on the back of his head. He was at first meant to have a much longer run, but writer/artist Mookie stated that he just didn't feel right throwing in a Berserker-type character in a magic-based world, so a raging Brok chases Stunt and Bumper into the sunset and is never seen again.
  • Drowtales: The bulk of the Vloz'res army consists of heavily tainted warriors called berserkers. Curiously, the only named berserker is a subversion.
  • In El Goonish Shive, when Grace is well and truly pissed off, she defaults to her Super-Soldier conditioning and morphs into this, ferociously and relentlessly attacking whatever's causing her stress until it's completely obliterated. The climax of the "Painted Black" arc is essentially Grace entering a literally Unstoppable Rage against Damien after the latter threatens her friends one too many times.
  • Lewis Black has no superpowers in Fake News Rumble, but his sheer rage (and a chair) makes him just as capable of fighting monsters as his superpowered colleagues.
  • Girl Genius:
    • Jägermonsters. They were given the opportunity to become nigh unkillable super soldiers specifically because they were among the best and most dedicated warriors serving under the Heterodynes and any who chose to take the Jägerdraught did so knowing that it killed outright or drove to suicide nine out of ten of those who take it just so that they could continue fighting and pillaging alongside their Heterodyne and their descendants. Even the most reserved among them are eager to fling themselves into battle.
    • Not to suicidal levels, but Trelawney Thorpe has been shown to rather impulsively spring into action.
  • Subverted in Guilded Age: Byron the Berserker is arguably the most level-headed, well-adjusted member of the party because he apparently lives in fear of his tendency to lose his shit and become a true, foaming at the mouth, screaming, psychotic, berserkergang killing machine. (He does enjoy a good bloodbath, though.) The condition is probably some kind of supernatural curse. A cultist once tried to force him to kill one of his friends with it, and there's a Troubled Backstory Flashback that hints he might have killed a town as a boy. Possibly a deconstructed one.
  • Breakfast of the Gods: Several characters qualify, which makes sense given the premise. Consider how many cereal mascots over the years have regularly lost control over their preferred cereal...
    • Sonny the Cocoa Puffs Cuckoo-bird is a psychotic (and psychopathic) homicidal, maniac. When he's "sane" he's kept in a dungeon cell in a straitjacket.
    • Froot Brute is a pudgy sort of guy who turns into a bloodthirsty werewolf when he even thinks about his cereal
    • Near the end of book three, Super Bear makes an appearance. And everything the character has done through the first two books and first 3/4 of the final one makes perfect sense. In single combat he takes out Sonny and Froot Brute. And then is about to go after Tony the Tiger — one of his own friends.
  • Sweet, timid, Shrinking Violet Calvin in Lackadaisy can turn into a Berserker when you put a gun in his hands.
  • In Manly Guys Doing Manly Things Tank was literally engineered to be the berserker, forced into it by the army he worked for after an injury, because they wanted to see how far they can push this trope before a man becomes a liability to his team. His army family managed to jailbrake the chassis so the army couldn't pump Tank with aggro juice without warning, but this has left Tank with some hangups that occasionally prompt him to turn up the juice himself and take his insecurities out on his ex-boyfriend Commander Badass.
  • Ed from MegaTokyo not only seems to relish bloodshed and destruction and to engage in said activities with reckless abandon, he has himself been seriously maimed and/or killed numerous times only to be rebuilt/resurrected by his superiors that he might put himself (willingly) in harm's way again.
  • Normally, Violet from The Noordegraaf Files is rather calm, if a bit of a Deadpan Snarker. Manage to rile her up, (through making her angry, scaring her, or otherwise), however, and she'll fly into a rather intense Unstoppable Rage. Once this occurs, your best bet is to stand back and wait for her to calm down - after any possible hostiles in the area have been beaten into the ground, of course.
  • A berserker visits a bordello in Oglaf, only to begin frothing at the mouth and pelvic-thrusting uncontrollably while engaging the services of one of the employees, who has an emergency sap on hand for just such an occasion. He is then kicked out for ignoring the clearly labeled "No Berserkers" sign the establishment has up.
  • The Order of the Stick:
    • Thog of the Linear Guild, like all D&D barbarians, has the Rage ability (probably Greater Rage if he's around Roy's level) and is able to break open a jail cell and toss Roy around like a rag-doll while under its influence. Also, his post-Rage fatigue manifests itself as confusion and short-term memory loss.
    • Belkar Bitterleaf also has a couple of barbarian levels, but it's not always obvious when he goes into a rage because he's commonly in some kind of foul temper.
  • Parodied in Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, "Life as a Berserker", where two Norse berserkers discuss their profession in a modern-sounding way.
    Yeah, but what they don't tell you about is work-related stress. Descending into a blind rage is associated with thickening of the arteries and cardiac hypertrophy.
  • Otsana from Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki is a Valkyrie from The Days of Berserkers and "High Adventures" and she even has a wolf motif which would confirm her berserker status.
  • In Thistil Mistil Kistil, Coal's father, apparently. And Coal himself. Red Eyes, Take Warning...
  • In Weak Hero, Wolf's one-track bloodlust translates into a fighting style where he'll mindlessly absorb all of his opponent's hits so that he can get up close and pummel them in return, and in fact seems to get stronger the more that he's beaten up.

    Web Original 
  • In The Anglo/American – Nazi War, a lot of the Waffen-SS and Hitler Youth approach this due to fanaticism garnered through years of propaganda against the "evil English" and a general lack of options. Brainwashed Child Soldiers with automatic weapons are quite terrifying. But it's Deconstructed because no matter how crazy these kids are, they're no more or less vulnerable than anyone else; they tend to be brushed aside easily while the Heer troops, men in their forties and fifties pressed back into service with their old WW2-era guns, have a more methodical and rational approach to battle that means they can pull off good, even sometimes impressive efforts against the younger, fitter and better armed Allied troops.
  • Cobra Kai: This is Hawk's style of combat. He unleashes all of his pent up anger and aggression in a fury of offensive strikes that leave his opponent overwhelmed and unable to defend. Robby found this out the painful way — In the Back! — at the All Valley tournament when he mocked his "stupid haircut." However, he becomes a deconstructed example of this in season two, where it's shown that his ego and aggression have become so out of control that they have caused his skills to become less refined and sloppy. As a result, Demetri, who is very much a novice, is able to beat him in a straight fight.
  • In Dead West, the two MacArkills, and even possibly the Amber Duchess. This is more believeable from the elder MacArkill, nicknamed the Beast, who is absolutely built for it, but when the Porcelain Doctor has a meltdown, it is an impossible sight to behold. Mind you, the smaller brother is still 6 foot tall, but thin as a stick. This does zero to diminish the ensuing carnage.
  • Regan Bard in Void Dogs uses this, referred to in text as the "warp spasm" of Irish myth.
  • The Whateley Universe features an official "rager" classification for mutants that's Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Students afflicted that way frequently come to Whateley Academy with a body count already on their record. Razorback (a student turned into a sort of velociraptor by his mutation, complete with loss of his human vocal apparatus) is both a poster child and one of the good guys.

    Western Animation 
  • In Amphibia as shown in the episode "Grimes Pupil" that Toads are trained at a very young age to funnel their rage into strength against thier enemies. Grimes manages to teach this skill to Sprig.
  • Zuko of Avatar: The Last Airbender is prone to such moments (running Zhao's Fire Navy fleet, seeking out fights with his more powerful sister) because he truly cannot fathom walking away from a fight.
  • While he's always had anger issues, DuckTales (2017) gives Donald Duck an additional wealth of adventuring experience and protective fatherly instinct that combines to turn him into this. He's able to take down a Beagle Boy thrice his size handily when enraged; was able to put up a strong showing against A war-thirsty Alien General who was, once again, thrice his size; and even as a pre-teen, was capable of subduing a bestial monster (over thrice his size at that age!) after it broke his guitar.
  • Samurai Jack:
    • While Jack usually keeps his emotions in check, he has a couple of moments where he completely loses his temper, especially when his Inner-Self is in control of his negative emotions. Aku exploits this twice. First, in an episode when he created a dark version of the samurai in an attempt to finish Jack. Jack defeats Mad Jack by simply meditating. Second, when Aku destroyed the last time portal that will get Jack back to the past. Jack loses it and kills three sheep out of anger.
    • Ashi. Whenever sufficiently enraged enough to fight someone, she's absolutely brutal and ruthless to her opponents; as best seen when she battles, for example: Jack, the Dominator, or that Orc Army. Her possessed form is even worse.
    • The Scotsman's wife. After being shown as a damsel in distress, having been kidnapped by the enemy of the episode and making Jack and the Scotsman carry her out of the prison she was in, she flies off the handle when the enemy of the episode calls her fat. Cue Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • On the two occasions that the Sword of Protection comes into contact with a corrupted First One artefact in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, it turns Adora into this, at least in her She-Ra form: red-eyed, uncontrollable and mindlessly violent. After a season and a half of Adora pulling her punches against Catra, her Evil Former Friend and heavily-implied crush, "White Out" has Catra go toe-to-toe with corrupted Adora; the resultant fight is extremely one-sided, with Catra having to run for her life so Adora doesn't snap her in half. Perhaps fortunately for everyone, if she can be disarmed, the transformation ends and she instead ends up seemingly inebriated until something destroys the artefact.
  • The minor character Shoza in Shogun's Samurai. When Tadanaga chooses to surrender to avoid the massacre of his troops, his retainer rebukes his decision. The samurai boldly announces his independence before his former master and the enemy and proceeds to set off on a lone charge, determined to defeat every last soldier and retrieve the rival prince's head. Even the enemy commander sincerely declares that Tadanaga has a retainer on his hands before ordering his troops to gun him down.
  • In Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Darth Maul initially starts out as one, due to years of isolation after his dismemberment at the hands of Obi-Wan Kenobi. He later regains his more cunning, manipulative side (along with a working pair of legs) but in a fight his berserker tendencies come back to the fore.
  • Dinobot of Transformers: Beast Wars, is the very definition of this one. He wasn't afraid to die... Seeing a battle through to the end was a pretty significant part of his code of honor. True to form, he went out in a blaze of glory.
    • When Optimus gets infected with a cyberbee designed to make him a coward, but got the opposite effect, he tore through the Predacon base with apparent ease.
  • The Decepticon Sixshot is one of these. He is portrayed as possibly being the greatest pure warrior among the Transformers (though others may be more gifted at overall strategy, or just more powerful), aided by his (even more) rapid transformation speed and five alternate modes. Though a Decepticon, he speaks well of those he's beaten in combat, as he hopes that should anyone ever defeat him he will be treated as respectfully.
  • Superboy from Young Justice (2010). It's justified by the fact that, due to telepathic g-gnomes always either inhibiting or inducing anger, he's never really been angry before and it takes him a while to learn how to deal with it. By the second season, he's grown experienced at channeling it.

    Real Life 
  • The Vikings are both the Trope Namers and the best examples; among their soldiers there were the fabled Berserkers, warriors who, in a (possibly drug-fueled) fit of Unstoppable Rage, would plunge themselves into battle wearing little to no armor and slash their way through countless amounts of enemies, and earned themselves the mythic reputation they have today.
    • The commonly-known term "berserker" and their bear symbolism wasn't the only way frenzied Norse warriors would manifest — "Úlfhéðnar" warriors had a similar fame for battle ferocity but instead used the wolf for their cult motif, which may have been particularly associated with the god Odin given he had a pair of wolves as pets. Neither "fire or iron" harming the berserkers was a repeated phrase in reference to the warriors in throes of their signature rage. A boar warrior cult also existed, though it doesn't appear that they had the same reputation for going into an uncontrollable frenzy.
    • Descriptions also commonly mentioned the berserkers gnawing the rims of their own shields (as shown by some of the pieces of a 12th-century chess set found in Scotland) like crazed animals, unlike most media portraying berserkers as forsaking their fortitude by Dual Wielding or using a single oversized weapon (perhaps even the berserkers had a semblance of survival instincts?).
  • The Other Wiki describes the word "amok" as such: "The word derives from the Malay word amuk, traditionally meaning "an episode of sudden mass assault against people or objects, usually by a single individual, following a period of brooding, which has traditionally been regarded as occurring especially in Malaysian culture but is now increasingly viewed as psychopathological behavior". The article not only describes the state as much the same as berserking, but draws direct parallels.
    • The case of a single person going "amok" is described as "darkness taking their eyes" in contemporary Indonesia. This is almost exactly the same phrase that southern Slavic peoples, on the other side of the globe, use to describe situations where "it was all that someone could take" or someone reaching a violent psychological breaking point.
  • The Viking at Stamford Bridge volunteered to stay behind alone and hold back the Saxons while they waited for their reinforcements to arrive. For an hour, he stood alone on the bridge, killing over 40 men and wounding dozens more. He was only stopped when one soldier got the smart idea of floating in a barrel underneath the bridge, and jammed a spear up through the bridge right between the Viking's legs.
  • Silius's account of the Punic Wars talked about a Carthaginian mercenary from Spain named Larus, a huge Celtic bruiser that wielded a two-handed axe with a single arm and hunted bears as a pastime in his homeland. According to Silius, after his entire unit was killed in a battle in Celtiberia, Larus kept covering the field with Roman corpses by himself and making many of them flee in terror, until he was put down by Lucius Scipio.
  • An episode of the Lusitanian Wars, recorded by Orosius and Florus, involved a lone Lusitanian footsoldier who had became separated from his people and surrounded by multiple Roman horsemen. Instead of panicking, he resorted to attack them all out, killing a horse and immediately beheading its rider, which made the Romans panic so hard that they fled away from the warrior.
  • Ukrainian Cossacks had their own kind of berserkers named "kharakterniki" ("the ones with a character" or "special ones"). Legends gave them some supernatural abilities like turning into ravens or hawks, healing wounds and charming bullets with words or catching bullets with bare hands. Probably the most famous kharakternik in history is the 17th centuary Zaporozhian Cossacks leader (Koshovyi Otaman) Ivan Sirko.
  • During the course of World War II, Audie Murphy went berserk at Anzio when his best friend Lattie Tipton was killed by a German machine-gunner pretending to surrender. The result was Murphy killing the entire machine gun crew that killed his friend before commandeering their machine gun and grenades and turning them on German positions and destroying anything not wearing the right uniform. This got him the Distinguished Service Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor, which he got a year later in a truly ballsy move that involved commandeering the machine gun of a burning tank and using it to hold off a German squad, taking a wound in the leg in the process, before leading his men to repel the Germans.
  • Another WWII soldier, well dentist actually, went berserk against the Japanese. Benjamin “Ben” L. Salomon. As his Medal of Honor citation reads: Captain Ben L. Salomon was serving at Saipan, in the Marianas Islands on July 7, 1944, as the Surgeon for the 2nd Battalion, 105th Infantry Regiment, 27th Infantry Division. The Regiment’s 1st and 2d Battalions were attacked by an overwhelming force estimated between 3,000 and 5,000 Japanese soldiers. It was one of the largest attacks attempted in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Although both units fought furiously, the enemy soon penetrated the Battalions’ combined perimeter and inflicted overwhelming casualties. In the first minutes of the attack, approximately 30 wounded soldiers walked, crawled, or were carried into Captain Salomon’s aid station, and the small tent soon filled with wounded men. As the perimeter began to be overrun, it became increasingly difficult for Captain Salomon to work on the wounded. He then saw a Japanese soldier bayoneting one of the wounded soldiers lying near the tent. Firing from a squatting position, Captain Salomon quickly killed the enemy soldier. Then, as he turned his attention back to the wounded, two more Japanese soldiers appeared in the front entrance of the tent. As these enemy soldiers were killed, four more crawled under the tent walls. Rushing them, Captain Salomon kicked the knife out of the hand of one, shot another, and bayoneted a third. Captain Salomon butted the fourth enemy soldier in the stomach and a wounded comrade then shot and killed the enemy soldier. Realizing the gravity of the situation, Captain Salomon ordered the wounded to make their way as best they could back to the regimental aid station, while he attempted to hold off the enemy until they were clear. Captain Salomon then grabbed a rifle from one of the wounded and rushed out of the tent. After four men were killed while manning a machine gun, Captain Salomon took control of it. When his body was later found, 98 dead enemy soldiers were piled in front of his position. Captain Salomon’s extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.
  • Probably half of the real people profiled on Badass of the Week got on the site by going full berserker. Late US Senator Daniel Inouye's story has a good example. He charges a series of German machine gun nests, gets his arm blown off while trying to throw a hand grenade, then picks up the grenade he just dropped with his good arm and throws it, and then charges the next machine gun nest in a fugue state, firing one handed until getting wounded in the leg, at which point he props himself against a tree and keeps shooting. When his buddies told him what he did, he replied, "No, that can't be... you'd have to be insane to do all that."
  • As the above examples illustrate, "going berserk" is a rare but well established phenomenon that manifests as one of several responses to a person being pushed to their psychological limit. Instances have been recorded throughout history across many armies and battles.
  • Many people with autism can slip into a state called "meltdown" when overstressed or overstimulated. In this state they can sometimes (but do not always) violently lash out at their environment, not conscious of any harm to themselves. It's often mistaken for a mundane temper tantrum, but a normal toddler throwing a fit is in full control of themselves and making a power play, while a meltdown is not a controlled action.
    • There is evidence that at least some of these meltdowns are caused by an imbalance of grey and white matter in the brain, which renders the brain so sensitive to sensory input that being exposed to too many noises, smells or even colors at once can literally trigger a small seizure in the frontal lobe of the brain. For reference, the frontal lobe controls reason, emotional regulation, and decision making. Is it any wonder an autistic person in this state can become violent or unreasonably depressed?
  • This phenomenon also exists in the rest of the animal kingdom, of course:
    • Many animals are easily driven to anger to protect their families and turf. As evidenced by the trope names Papa Wolf and Mama Bear, wolves protecting their packs and female bears protecting their cubs are best known for this sort of behaviour, but other animals do it too. For example, though not as dangerous to humans as bears and wolves are, geese are aggressively territorial, especially ganders protecting their mates' nests.
    • Mating season is also a major time for berserk aggression throughout the animal kingdom when creatures compete for partners. Among mammals, males typically fight each other for females. A possibly related phenomenon is musth in bull elephants.
    • Sharks and piranhas infamously go into feeding frenzies, often triggered by finding large concentrations of prey animals and/or smelling blood.
    • Chicken flocks are known to go berserk and peck at birds with blood on their feathers. This cannibalistic behaviour is especially destructive because other flock members often get bloodied in these frenzies, leading the rest to turn on them too.
    • Hippos are surprisingly aggressive, too. In Africa, they kill more humans than any animal except mosquitoes and other humans.
    • Honey Badgers are in a constant state of berserk. Despite their small size, their sharp claws and tough skin allow them to severely injure or even kill larger animals, and they are NOT afraid to do it. They will attack lions, hyenas, and other large predators without an ounce of fear and one of their preferred food sources are snakes, deadly ones at that!

Alternative Title(s): Berserker

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Shizuo Loses It

This is one guy you should never mess around with.

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