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"Astfgl had passed through the earlier stage of fury and was now in that calm lagoon of rage where the voice is steady, the manner is measured and polite, and only a faint trace of spittle at the corner of the mouth betrays the inner inferno."
"Ender's anger was cold, and he could use it. Bonzo's anger was hot, and so it used him."
In every Badass's life, there may come a time when going berserk simply does not work. In this case, many people choose to turn to Tranquil Fury. This state of mind allows much whoop-ass to be uncanned without undue stress. When the time comes for the showdown between the Designated Hero and the Big Bad, do not expect to see furious angry rage. Instead, expect The Hero (or Anti Hero)'s face to be serenely, eerily calm. They will not appear to be even slightly put out with the villain. Of course, that won't stop them from trying to hack the villain to pieces. A defeat by someone in the grip of Tranquil Fury is likely to be more comprehensive than others, as they will be very sure to do the job properly.
This is different from The Quiet One and The Stoic. The character in the grip of Tranquil Fury isn't necessarily an emotional cripple, and in day to day life they may be perfectly normal and happy. What defines Tranquil Fury is the tendency to become deadly serious when it gets deadly serious.
Tranquil Fury is often preceded by the phrase "I didn't want to have to do this," or something similar. A loose real-life equivalent would be the concept of mushin .
Compare Bored With Insanity and Crouching Moron Hidden Badass. Contrast: Berserker Tears, Unstoppable Rage. Compare and contrast Dissonant Serenity. These characters often use Creepy Monotone and Death Glare.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- Giorno Giovanna is a god of this trope, NEVER take a look from him lightly, he can seem calm at the most tense of moments, such as someone almost getting a bullet through the brain of his friend or coming face to face with him after murdering his friends or even an INNOCENT JANITOR, but really, he is just plotting your demise in a very sneaky and sometimes quite horrific way. The best example of this is once he gains Gold Experience Requiem and faces off with Diavolo floating in the air with his new stand.
- Monkey D. Luffy is perhaps the master of this. Especially in the original Japanese. There are few times when Luffy will go in screaming and rip roaring mad, though to look at him you'd suppose otherwise. His most angry, serious look tends to be blank eyes.
- Bleach had one recently with Dark Action Girl Halibel. In the beginning of her fight with Hitsugaya, they simply exchange a few blows, and she even asks if he's all right when he notices Momo has returned to the battlefield. Then Yamamoto kills Halibel's three fraccion, and Halibel proceeds to unleash a BRUTAL No Holds Barred Beatdown on him, ending with CUTTING
Hitsugaya Hitsugaya's ice clone IN HALF IN ONE BLOW.
- In the latest Bleach Filler arc, Armagi Shuusuke has a really big fight with Ichigo. After he gets buried, he calmly uses his reitsu to shift the rocks so that he can stand again, and says in a very deadly calm, "I will fulfill my vendetta." After Ichigo yells that he can't fight anymore, he quietly responded "What did I just say? I am going to kill him." The sheer emotionlessness in his voice chilled this troper.
- Briareos in Appleseed is quite good at this. Having blank metal plate and five cammeras in place of a face certainly helps.
- Virgo Shaka in Saint Seiya. Then again, as a reincarnation of the Buddha, he might not have any hate or anger in him at all... but he'll still disassemble your ass, put it back together, and then kick it so far down the wheel of Karma you reincarnate as a protozoan.
- In Tsukihime, Shiki's occasional bouts of homicidal insanity come in a variety of flavors, depending on what triggers them. His usual version tends to be a "cold" fury, and he rarely if ever falls prey to a "hot" fury.
- In Dragon Ball Z, the Super Saiyan form is typically unlocked after emotional stress and anger reaching peak. Once they do this, the Saiyan becomes truer to their nature, becoming colder and more sadistic, although with enough training these negative traits fade away.
- The trope was used much earlier on in the series, when Goku returns from King Kai's planet and proceeds to tear Nappa a new one with a somewhat stern look on his face the entire time. The chapter was fittingly called The Quiet Rage of Son Goku.
- In the abridged series, Vegeta himself has arrived at a moment of tranquil fury upon having his tail cut off.
Vegeta: [Calmly] You know... I thought I'd be angrier, what with the utter humiliation and loss of my tail... Or maybe I'm just so unbelievably enraged that I've come full circle. Oh well! Either way it's time to put an end to this.
- Kyosuke Nanbu in the Super Robot Wars Original Generation games. In the first Original Generation, some members of the protagonist team wonder how he can be so calm and monosyllabic when confronted by a taunting, evil, More Than Mind Controlled Love Interest. Other members of the team, who have been working with him since the beginning of the game, recognize they need to get out of the way because some bad guys are about to get utterly, utterly wrecked.
- Ironically, Ascended Fanboy and Hot Blooded-teen extraordinary Ryusei is the only one to notice this at first. And he's only known Kyosuke for a short while in comparison to his comrades.
- The side-story manga, Record of ATX, gives readers a visual image◊ of Kyosuke's Tranquil Fury right after Excellen's been kidnapped by the Aerogators. Thankfully, Irm stops Kyosuke on the next page before Bullet gets a new orifice or twelve from his squad leader.
- This is said to be the highest state of mind for a fighter in G Gundam, a serene calm that cannot be broken by the strongest of maelstroms. It is through this rather than his trademark Unstoppable Rage that Domon Kasshu finally manages to become truly worthy of his status.
- It should probably be noted that this is a state of mind only- Domon becomes arguably more hotblooded when his Hyper Mode activates. I guess his is a hot blood tempered controlled, but not stemmed, by calm.
- It also demonstrated the difference between excitement and flat out anger.
- Kira Yamato's "SEED Mode" in both Gundam SEED. At first it was a sort of Unstoppable Rage but even after it became this, it is still just as exciting.
- In Katekyo Hitman Reborn, the standard Dying Will mode is a form of Unstoppable Rage, while Hyper Dying Will mode is more Tranquil Fury.
- The titular Afro in Afro Samurai uses this to call upon his subconscious to come up with an on-the-fly fighting style to counter his Mirror Match robot double.
- Jin of Samurai Champloo is nearly the personification of this.
- Kenshin's golden-eyed "Battousai" state in Rurouni Kenshin is his state of Tranquil Fury. He's not necessarily mad, he's just done playing nice and is now ready to beat you to a pulp.
- Though as the original Hitokiri Battousai he was more of a "kill off my emotion for efficiency" empathic killer.
- in Saiyuki, Stepford Smiler Hakkai is very good at this, able to carry on polite conversations as he is engaged in battle. But his past life Tenpou in the Gaiden manga raises this to a very creepy new level, politely saying "excuse me" before he calmly punches his superior's lights out, and in the battle where he sacrifices his life, engages in all manner of meaningless prattle that is totally unrelated to the battle at hand.
- Luck Gandor demonstrates Tranquil Fury in the first Baccano! light novel, in contrast to his brother Berga's furniture-smashing rage over the deaths of several of their men. When Berga rejects Luck's request for him to calm down, Luck patiently explains - while gripping a piece of broken wood hard enough to draw blood from his own hand - that he is in fact very angry, and that he wants to rip those responsible to pieces with his own hands, and that he is keeping himself occupied with thinking over the details lest he go on a Roaring Rampage Of Revenge and possibly even kill police or innocent bystanders if they got in the way. He then asks his brother to shoot him if it's necessary to keep him from doing so; all the while, his expression never changes, and by the time he's done Berga apologizes and says that Luck needs to calm down even more than he himself does.
- Yu Yu Hakusho's Sensui (the real one). I'd shake his hand if I were you.
- Circe Augusta von Zerbst, from Zero No Tsukaima. Usually hot-blooded, she gets unusually calm and lady-like when angered.
- Revy's "Whitman Fever" from Black Lagoon, which is more of a relapse of Ax Crazy than actual anger — when she starts to look like she's sleep-deprived and stops yelling and swearing, there will be blood and there will be lots of it.
- Kenshiro of Fist of the North Star does this occasionally.
- Only to be expected given the slightly weird mindset of contractors in Darker Than Black. We see it the most from Hei (unless someone hits his Berserk Button, in which case the "tranquil" part disappears), but it's also fairly prominent when November 11 is really mad.
- Good November 11 example would be after his partner, April, gets badly injured. As he watches her at the hospital, his face is no longer his perpetual smirk, or even the expected rage; it's basically expressionless, although slightly glum. This is pretty much Dull Surprise made terrifying.
- In the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, King Bradley is the embodiment of wrath but never actually seems angry. He swaps between this and Dissonant Serenity.
- When switching on his blue lantern, Randel Oland from Pumpkin Scissors, enters a trance that focuses him single-mindedly on his goal, making him impervious to pain and turning him into a fearless, heartless, lethal automaton. He only retains enough humanity to know when to switch it off, and then he returns to normal.
- Princess Mononoke had a good example with this when Ashitaka simply walks up to the dueling Mononoke and Eboshi - surrounded by the blue-black glow of the demon inside him, but still calm nonetheless.
- Sailor Moon has its protagonist in this mode as she confronts Queen Beryl in the final scene of season one after the deaths of her fellow Senshi. Dub hate aside, Sailor Moon's voice actress Terri Hawkes evokes this powerfully:
Comics
- The Punisher will vary between Tranquil Fury and Unstoppable Rage, depending on the situation and writer, although sometimes one hides the other. (The point of the infamous Nicky Cavella incident was to cause him to mess up, and it worked - once he could no longer hide the Unstoppable Rage under the veneer of Tranquil Fury, Frank knowingly walked right into the trap, only surviving through outside intervention, and it was only by returning to Tranquil Fury that he successfully ends the arc... and Nicky, ever so slowly.)
- Gold Digger When Julia Diggers went Mama Bear on the assassin Zero, who was waiting in ambush near her first student Gar's body mortally wounded and no longer breathing. He was count on seeing Gar causing Julia to lose her cool and he could take advantage of it to kill her, since Zero needed only the slightest opening to gain the edge. He was badly mistaken.
- Darkseid is this all the time
- World War Hulk. This troper heard someone describe the Hulk as "so angry he's calm."
- Turns out Soundwave is like this so much only he's immune to Frenzy's infrasonic manipulation (which doubles as turning everyone Axe Crazy).
- Wedge Antilles, in an arc where he confronts the man who killed his parents when he was younger, naturally flashes back to their deaths. When they were in the midst of their Heroic Sacrifice he was almost uncontrollable, understandably, but later he's scary calm. It slips a little, but he was still cold. Outside of the flashback and having to deal with the man, he's rigidly polite... until the guy has him locked up and goads◊ him.
- The novels mention a few times that the Wedge in starfighter combat is very unlike the usual Wedge - much, much more focused. It may not just be in combat, but when he has a purpose in mind and can't let himself fail - Iella remarks on this. One of his pilots, Wes Janson, is a snarky prankster, but similarly becomes extremely focused and controlled in combat.
- This is exactly the reason you do not piss off Spider Man. You wouldn't know it considering how he loves talk, but the nanosecond you get him to stop joking (usually by doing something to threaten his family or friends), you've ensured yourself a very painful and through defeat.
- V of V For Vendetta serves his vengeance cold, not once raising his voice to his targets (unless you count Madam Justice). His kills are usually done quietly and made to look like unrelated accidents, but by the time we see him in the comic, he's elevated killing to high theater. Sometimes he slaughters men while reciting Shakespeare or Bible verses, sometimes he abducts them and puts on little plays, or manipulates an Innocent Bystander into doing the killing for him, and in the "Vertigo" episode simply stands motionless in complete silence and compels his victim to kill himself. The fact that at all times he's wearing a mask with the most cheerful smile imaginable makes him all the more terrifying to those who wronged him.
- This is how Watchmen's Rorschach operates. Unlike the other characters, who express fury through violent outbursts (The Comedian particularly), Rorschach is almost always calm and quiet in his violence. Even when pushed to his very limit in 1975, he didn't yell or lash out, he retained his quiet demeanor. Of course, Rorschach is emotionally withdrawn and during his adulthood he only makes a facial expression twice in the book (Panel 8 of Page 7 of Chapter 6, when he remembers a childhood incident, and when he orders Manhattan to kill him . For the rest of the story his face is either covered by his mask or a blank stare.
- This is changed in the movie, however. His blank stare is replaced by a Clint Squint, and he is prone to fits of eye-twitchery. In 1975, when pushed to his limitations, instead of breaking down into the calm psycho he breaks up into an aggressive animal.
Fan Works
- Emily Hastings from An Entry With A Bang! does this when a friend of hers gets killed, toying with the ASF pilot responsible and taking him out methodically weapon-by-weapon.
Film
- Neo, in The Matrix, becomes this at the climax of the first movie, right after coming back from the dead. He goes from using all of his effort to barely handle one agent to being able to deflect their punches with barely any motion or effort at all, and with complete serenity. This is arguably what most current versions of Tranquil Fury are imitating.
- Eric Draven, in the big shootout in the club towards the end of The Crow: "You're all going to die." Said so calmly and quietly he probably wasn't even heard over the thumping music.
- John Preston in Equilibrium. Four words: "No. Not without incident."
- Accompanied by two other words when the polygraph he's hooked up to flatlines after the Tranquil Fury takes over: "Oh, shit!"
- Darth Vader in Star Wars: Episode V. The way he Force-chokes Admiral Ozzel for failure while giving new orders to his replacement in a tone that falls somewhere between creepily serene and menacingly cold practically defines this trope.
- River's decision in Serenity to charge the Reavers to protect her friends at the cost of her own life is accompanied by a very chilling degree of calm, especially considering what the Reavers would do to her if she lost. And in the scene immediately afterwards, where the Alliance troops break through the wall and have the entire crew covered and ready to gun them down, River is calmly and emotionlessly preparing to kill them too, even with twenty rifles pointed at her.
- What makes this scene truly powerful? If you've watched the TV series and know that River is not only one of the most erratically emotive characters in the series, but that she is physically incapable of controlling her emotions. Especially fear. So to see her slowly, calmly turn her head, look straight at the Alliance soldiers, and prepare to massacre them too without the tiniest twitch of emotion on her face isn't simply awesome...its a bit terrifying.
- Earlier in the film she has another. After she wanders into the bar where Mal is meeting with a contact, the Alliance bad guys trigger her Berserk Button with a subliminal message. She proceeds to wipe out everyone in the bar with more or less the same calm as she shows in the previous example. What makes it especially disorienting is that the scene includes a few shots of the fight through River-vision: she's almost alone in a bright, empty space, moving so slowly and gracefully that she's almost dancing. Then it immediately cuts back to the noise and chaos in the crowded bar where she's attacking everyone who comes within reach.
- Zoe has a similar moment after Wash is killed. She's shown very calmly loading her shotgun, and when the Reavers attack, she slowly rises from behind cover, blasting away, and closes into melee with them with the disturbingly calm look on her face.
- In The Princess Bride:
- In the actual book, it is explained that this is what Vizzini becomes like when he gets mad: he speaks in a very soft voice, with a very calm face, and scares the hell out of Inigo and Fezzik. Of course, in the movie, he just gets higher and higher pitched.
- Dustin Hoffman's long-awaited rampage at the end of Straw Dogs. He's slightly nervous, and that's about it.
- William Wallace in Braveheart after his wife is killed. His expression is virtually blank from the moment he rides into the village to the moment he cuts the murderer's throat.
- In Aguirre The Wrath Of God, when Aguirre makes his final monologue proclaiming eternal vengeance on any who would disobey him, to a raft of corpses and monkeys no less, he speaks with in a low, sedate voice. This was Enforced Method Acting on the part of Werner Herzog. Klaus Kinski wanted to do the scene in a rage, but Herzog intentionally enfuriated him off-camera until he was so exhausted that he performed the scene in what appears to be tranquil fury.
- The scene in Over The Hedge in which Hammy, an exceptionally hyper squirrel, tries caffeine for the first time seems like a good example of this trope. From his (and our) POV, time appears to almost stop as he calmly walks through a laser grid, though in the reality of the story, he is likely going berserk faster than the eye can see.
- Which is shown by the fact that he is casually strolling ahead of a newly activated laser beam. That's faster-than-light strolling.
- The assassin named T, from the Singaporean movie One Last Dance, has this as his signature style. It is shown mainly in the confrontation with his former partner-in-crime, as well as the ensuing revenge on the men who raped his friend's sister.
- Maximus embodies this.
- Michael Corleone in The Godfather. You do not desire to make him think it's not just business.
Literature
- "You shouldn't have done that."
- Harry's entire fight with Voldemort at the end was a great example of this. In fact, if Mr. Potter isn't going out of his mind with rage - if he is in fact calm and collected - be afraid. Because you're about to get had.
- Invoked ad infinitum in The Black Jewels Trilogy, where hot anger means Daemon Sadi is merely pissed, but cold anger means he is about to (on one occasion) torment your body and then blow it to smithereens before butchering everyone in his escape.
- A drop in the ocean compared to Saetan, though. He scares the shit out of his friends.
- It bears noting that the main reason people are more scared of Saetan than Daemon is familiarity. Lucivar is probably about equally scared of both of them when they "go cold" generally preparing to sacrifice himself to blunt their tempers and save others.
- Captain Carrot, in Men at Arms dropped the Big Bad with barely a word. This troper would argue that he was just doing his duty...if it weren't for the Big Bad having shot his girlfriend. Significantly, he does so by putting a sword into (well, through) a stone, which earlier in the book is described as vastly more impressive than drawing a sword out of a stone.
- For clarity's sake, it should be noted that said Big Bad was between Carrot's sword and the aforementioned stone. Carrot's expression does not change.
- Vimes' thoughts on the subject are virtually the definition of Tranquil Fury.
"If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you are going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat. They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word."
- Normally accompanied by Carrot calmly pointing out that "personal isn't the same as important". He really believes this too - in Jingo he manages to have a quiet sleep while sailing after his kidnapped girlfriend, because it won't do him any good if he's tired once he catches up to her.
- It should be noted that the one time we see Carrot abandon this trope (When he chases after Angua in The Fifth Elephant), he ends up getting utterly pwned by Angua's Complete Monster brother.
- Which is very likely a (perhaps subconsciously planned) Xanatos Gambit on Carrot's part, to put himself in a position where Angua would have to come to his aid, and therefore force her hand against her brother.
- At least one Bad Ass in every single one of David Gemmell's novels — if it's a secondary character, they will die by the end of the novel; if the main character doesn't do this at the beginning, he'll probably figure out how by the end.
- Waylander especially epitomises this trope. In the first novel, Dardalion uses his powers to observe Waylander's aura and describes it as a state of "controlled fury."
- And his long-time friend was clearly a case of Dissonant Serenity, as his aura was one of calmness. This is maybe the time to remind you that David Gemmell has probably known violence first-hand as a bouncer. It might be a case of Truth In Television or not, everyone has to make up his/her own mind on this.
- Richard Rahl from the Sword Of Truth series, both when turning the blade white and when he dances with the spirits of previous Seekers.
- Which is probably the reason that it's alluded to that people are flat fucking terrified of the Sword of Truth and its wielder.
- Guido usually regards violence and threats as work, but shows this in M.Y.T.H. Inc in Action:
"What are you? Some kind of PACIFIST?"
"What... did... you... call... me...?" I sez in my softest voice, which I only use on special occasions.
- This also tends to happen on the rare occasions when Skeeve really loses his temper. He gets very cold and very calm and people start backing away very fast.
- Two examples from Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga. The first is from Barrayar when Aral apparently catches Cordelia canoodling with Lt Koudelka. When Cordelia goes to have it out with him she wonders is she can keep her voice down and reflects: "Aral's no problem; when he gets mad he whispers."
- The second is referenced in this exchange from "A Civil Campaign":
Ivan: ". . .You don't what to know what he [Emperor Gregor] looks like when he gets mad."
Byerly [interested]: "Why? What does he look like?"
Ivan: "Exactly the same as he does the rest of the time. That's the scary part."
- Incidentally, that event? Gregor was confronting the man who tried to murder his head of security, framed his foster brother for the crippling attack, then framed his new fiancee's friend and tried to bribe the aformentioned foster brother when that did not stick. The foster brother in question observed that he was "So neutral he was grey."
Miles: (thinking) So this is what rage looks like on him.
- Honor Harrington personifies this in her duel with Pavel Young. He tried to rape her in the academy, he's used his family connections to block her advancement, he's left her to die when he was her superior, he arranged the death of her lover, when she brought this up in open court he challenged her to a duel, and then he just broke the laws on dueling by turning early. Her response was to send 3 bullets into his heart without a single twitch of facial muscle despite his cheating in the duel and turning around early to shoot her in the back.
- And let's not forget the (first) climax of Flag in Exile:
Honor raised a hand, and shock stopped him in midsentence. No one ever interrupted the Protector of Grayson when he spoke from the throne! It was unheard of, but she seemed unaware of that. She simply gazed up at him, never even turning to glance at Burdette, and her cold, dispassionate soprano was as clear and carrying as his own voice had been.
"Your Grace," she said, "I have only one question. Do you wish this man crippled, or dead?"
- Moreover, she maintains that utter calm throughout the (very short) duel, and it's exactly what enables her to kill the far more experienced swordsman Burdette.
- Gordon Dickson wrote a short story about this, in which the dominant powers of the galaxy recruit a Token Brigade of humans and other less-advanced species to help fight an oncoming invasion—we're useless, but we have a stake in the outcome and deserve to have our shot. Turns out said dominant powers are Straw Vulcans—when they see how large the invasion fleet is, they prepare to surrender because their calculations indicate there's no way to win (even though surrender means the destruction of all life in the galaxy). The "less-advanced" folks pass through a state of fury and into Tranquil Fury, allowing them to use the ship's psychic weapons more effectively; it then turns out that the super-aliens never considered a berserker one-ship attack as a viable tactic. The enemy are thrown into disarray, and the defenders win the day.
- Chili Palmer, the Anti Hero of Get Shorty originally got his nickname on account of a Hot Blooded personality. Over time though, he cooled down to the point of icy calmness and his nickname took on a new meaning. He is a Loan Shark who can get payment without raising his voice or ever needing to use violence. When someone gets on his bad side, he evidences only a slight irritation.
- The eponymous hero of Andrew Vachss' Burke novels is a master of this:
You know what it takes to sit across the table from a man, listen to him talk, look into his eyes ... and then blow his brains all over the wallpaper?
Nothing.
And the more of that you have, the easier it is.
- John Kelly/Clark, from Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels, is another shining example; indeed, the Dryden quote in the quotes page for this trope appears on the opening page of Without Remorse, the book that explains how and why Navy SEAL and Vietnam vet John Kelly became the CIA's deadliest black operative, Mr. Clark.
- In Iain M Bank's Culture novel The Player of Games, gives a Tranquil Fury example against a whole civilisation. The protagonist, Jurneau Gurgeh is sent to the foreign Azadian empire to play in a games tournament (winning the tournament makes you the emperor). After having a fairly enjoyable time playing and drinking in what he sees as a crude but still intersting society, Jurneau's companion shows him just how bad things are in the empire (exploitation of mentally sick people, no support for the elderly or poor, brutal police force etc). He gets a bit upset, but doesn't think much of it. He's then shown a series of TV programs showing, in order, normal pornography, sado-dominative pornography, and finally, the most twisted kinds of sexually motivated anatomically horrific torture possibly conceived (a particularly vile example shows a pregnant woman being thrown into a room with a violently psychopathic prisoner armed with knife and injected with a massive amount of sex hormones). He is then informed that this kind of thing happens all the time in the Azadian empire. Cue his next games match. Where previously, he'd been playing out of sport and fun, Jurneau utterly annihilates his opponent in the most absolute way possible.
- And it's a sign of how complex a writer Banks is that the opponent being annihilated is the most sympathetic one Gurgeh has ever faced and the penalty for losing is gelding. And what makes it worse is that the opponent is pregnant for the first time and will lose all hope of ever having children, as well as his/her job (the ruling class in the Empire are hermaphrodites.) There are strong hints that Gurgeh has been driven somewhat Ax Crazy by seeing the dark side of the Empire up close and personal.
- Yo-less, in Johnny And The Bomb.
[[Johnny]]'d never seen Yo-less so angry. It was a kind of rigid, brittle anger.
Live Action TV
Tabletop Games
- Drizzt Do'Urden normally does an Unstoppable Rage when he's pressed enough; he calls that mindset The Hunter. But he also has a "level 2" variant, referred to as the Warrior Incarnate, that's much more Tranquil Fury. As far as this troper can recall, he's only ever entered that once, and then only when he thought all his friends had been killed at the same time.
- The berserkers of the Crab Clan in Legend Of The Five Rings were originally portrayed as this, but are occasionally Flanderized into the normal, Unstoppable Rage kind of berserkers.
- In D&D 4th Edition, a Paragon Path for the rage-focused Barbarian class called "Calm Fury" is available, allowing them to use some of their most powerful abilities while not explicitly raging. According to the flavour text, "You now attain the furious clarity on the far side of rage".
- In War Hammer 40000 Space Marines and Eldar deliberately try to enter this state rather than "hot" fury. Given what they know about Chaos, justified trope. Tau are also normally calm during battle unless their Berserk Button gets pushed.
Theater
- Anthony Hopkins's portrayal of Othello in the BBC TV show, during the climax, was mostly like this.
Video Games
- The BSOD undertaken by the main antagonists of both Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy IX the first by setting fire to a village, the latter by setting fire to an entire world are both done with just the hint of a serene smile on their faces... although both of these may be more properly described as Dissonant Serenity.
- Kazuma Kiryuu of Yakuza exists in a state of Tranquil Fury pretty much all the time. Which makes the moments when he does get visibly pissed off that much more awesome.
- In Ratchet And Clank: Deadlocked, when Vox catches Ratchet in his attempt to deactivate the cells holding the other heroes captive, Ratchet just smiles as if to say, "Congratulations, now watch me destroy your frickin' space station."
- In the briefing for the penultimate mission of Modern Warfare 2, Soap angsts about how it's just him and Price up against Shepherd's entire Shadow Company. Price is simply checking inventory and explaining, in a voice so calm that it sends shivers down any player's spine, that there's a certain satisfaction to knowing when you will die, and that Shepherd's number is up.
- Agent 47 of the Hitman series is the epitome of this. He takes out all of his targets without displaying any sort of emotion, even if they beg for their life in front of him. Even when he killed his creator, Dr. Ort-Meyer, by snapping his neck, he still remained as coldly detached as always.
Web Comics
- In Sam and Fuzzy, what did begin with a normal and quite amusing, really, Unstoppable Rage, became first a little monologue from Mr. Black (that, actually, made me feel really bad for Mr. Blank), then Tranquil Fury from Mr. Blank. The funny thing? I'm even more sorry for Mr. Blank... even if that is, probably, a Kick The Dog moment. Or... Shoot The Dog. Choose the best.
Western Animation
Other
- Vtan 'Arume goes into this after his old friend Rukth is killed. Vtan's human friend Perry states that this is the first time he's ever been truly scared of Vtan.
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