Mama Bear / Animated Films

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• In 101 Dalmatians, Perdita is perhaps the only female character in the old school Disney Animated Canon who truly enters combat and that's when her puppies are threatened. When it comes to that, she's even better at it than Pongo.
• Eve from Alpha and Omega can be summed up in one line.
  Eve: I just want to say one thing. If any of you wolves have hurt my daughter, I will personally rip out your eyes and shove them down your throat, so you can see my claws TEAR YOUR CARCASS OPEN!
• BoBoiBoy Movie 2: The alien on Planet Saharu is very protective of her eggs, as she's instantly hostile to whoever steals them, like Gopal. Once the stolen egg hatches and the child cries out, she wakes up and chases Gopal and BoBoiBoy.
• Bolt: Penny's mother decks her agent (knocking him clean out of the ambulance) for daring to suggest ways they could exploit Penny's near death in a fire. (The fact that one of the supposed benefits was executive producer credit for himself was probably what set her off. Shaking Penny's stretcher (with Penny in it) and exclaiming "This is so great!" didn't help either.)
• Carmen Sanchez from The Book of Life, don't mess with Manolo while she's around. Gutierrez even confirms that Carmen died saving baby Manolo from the war.
• Queen Elinor in Brave is one of these both figuratively and literally, as she's cursed into the form of a bear. When her daughter's life is threatened, she throws off at least two dozen men pinning her to the ground and fights Mor'du, a cursed bear that seems to be immune to normal weapons, until she finally brings a stone column down on his head and kills him. And what's even more awesome is that throughout the entire film, she has engaged in no violence at all, seeing it as a lapse into her bear side. But Mordu goes for her daughter? All bets are off.
• Koda's mother in Brother Bear is a very literal example. Kenai learns this the hard way.
• In Despicable Me 3, Lucy has become this for the girls since marrying Gru. At one point, she thinks she hears Agnes screaming in terror (it's actually in glee) and breaks into a bar, going One Woman Army on anyone she thinks might be threatening her and Edith. This is even lampshaded by Lucy herself verbatim:
  Lucy Wilde: Sorry, went a little mama bear on ya. You know, I heard a scream and... Yeah, okay. Have a good one!
  • Later, when a village woman angrily insults Margo, Lucy gets in her face and threatens her back, even hoisting the much larger woman into the air to do it. When Balthazar kidnaps the girls during the climax, Lucy leaves Gru and Dru to deal with him, going to save them by herself.
    Lucy Wilde: Nobody, nobody curses my daughter, you got that? Because if you mess with Margo, you mess with me! And I promise, you do not want to mess with me! Do you understand me?
• Mrs. Jumbo in Dumbo is branded a "mad elephant" and caged after she goes berserk trying to protect her son from some teasing kids.
• Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children: Tifa Lockhart may not be Marlene and Denzel's biological mother, but woe betide you if you threaten them with her around. There's a reason she's the Bare-Fisted Monk of AVALANCHE.
• Norma Jean from Happy Feet, despite her calm, loving demeanor, shows flashes of this. She is the first and only emperor penguin, in their extremely conformist and conservative society, to try to oppose the Elders, verbally lashing out at them when they force her son Mumble into exile. She also expresses great disdain for them during the graduation ceremony, as Mumble had not been permitted to graduate.
• Hotel Transylvania: Mavis graduates to this after having a son. After seeing a video of him in danger (thanks to Drac) she carries her husband AND their luggage all the way from California to the hotel... just in time to angrily greet her father and his friends.
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney) has a tragic example with Quasimodo's Roma mother. Her baby was the only thing left in her life and she died trying to keep him away from Frollo. He caught her and another Romani on top of the stairs of Notre Dame, tried to take baby!Quasi away from her, and in the struggle, she fell down the stairs and died.
  • Esmeralda later becomes one with her son in the sequel.
• Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs:
  • The mother T. rex when she finds her eggs are gone. She goes out and searches for them and was more than eager to eat Sid for taking them away from her.
  • After a carnivorous plant eats Manny and Diego before threatening Crash and Eddie, Ellie prepares to tear it up from the roots. And she would have if Buck didn't warn her that it would only make things worse.
• Elastigirl from The Incredibles is a major one:
  • She throws herself on top of her kids as the plane they are in is about to explode, then uses her flexibility powers to make herself into a parachute.
  • When Helen, Dash, and Violet are on Syndrome's island, she makes it brutally clear to her kids that supervillains and their Mooks are not like those on Saturday morning cartoons; that they will kill them if they get a chance and implores her kids to use their powers so the bad guys never get that chance.
  • She carries Violet to safety after she was knocked out by the Omnidroid dropping on her force field.
• Kubo's mother in Kubo and the Two Strings. With the last of her strength, she magically sends him away while she distracts her sisters to buy him time to escape. She in fact dies twice to protect Kubo.
  • Monkey takes her job protecting Kubo very seriously. She handles herself very well against Kubo's aunts and even manages to kill one of them during the sea fight. Since Monkey is Kubo's mother in a different form, this makes a lot of sense.
• Kala from Tarzan. Thanks to losing her baby to Sabor the Leopard, she's sure as hell gonna fight off the same Leopard to protect baby Tarzan. And when Kerchak (the massive Silverback Gorilla) is displeased when she brings the baby home and charges at Tarzan, Kala shields him with her arms and just glares at her mate, stopping him instantly.
• Lady of Lady and the Tramp is extremely protective of Jim Dear and Darling's baby son. She steps in front of Si and Am and growls to stop them going up to the baby's room to steal milk. When a rat sneaks into the room, she goes absolutely berserk barking her head off and even pulls the chain off the wall of her doghouse so she can get loose and chase after it.
• Littlefoot's mother from The Land Before Time. For most of her screen time, she's shown to be gentle, caring, and nurturing to her son. But when he's about to be eaten by a "Sharptooth", she whips that fully grown, red-eyed T. Rex in the face with her tail, hard enough to knock him off his feet and send him flying into a rock. That one close-up of her face is the very definition of Mama Bear mode. Even after the T. Rex visibly tears out chunks of her back, she manages to strike him one more time (on a cliff in the middle of an earthquake, by the way) and send him falling into a chasm, and somehow turns herself around just in time to catch Littlefoot and Cera with her teeth before they fall.
  • Please consider the fact that this is a Mama Bear 70 feet long weighing approximately 30 TONS.
  • Chomper's mom counts as well, having determinedly searched for her son since he was lost as an egg.
  • This is kind of a trend with LBT moms; Ducky and Spike's mom, for example, leaps into ice water to save her son from drowning in one installment, and in another, Petrie's mother flies through what can only be described as a typhoon to find her missing son.
  • Littlefoot's grandmother is likewise shown to be extremely protective of him. It's also safe to assume that she was like this toward her own daughter, considering Mama Longneck reached adulthood in the Death World outside the Great Valley.
• Sarabi in The Lion King (2019), as she challenges Scar's inconsistent story regarding the stampede, not only out of rage for the death of her husband Mufasa, but in defense of her son Simba when Scar accused him for it.
  Sarabi: (defending Simba) Scar, you said that you didn't make it to the gorge in time.
  Scar: That's true.
  Sarabi: (angrily) Then HOW DID YOU SEE THE LOOK IN MUFASA'S EYES?!!
  (Scar stares coldly, realizing that he has inadvertently exposed himself as Mufasa's murderer)
  Simba: (angrily) MURDERER!!!
• Ursula from The Little Mermaid (1989). Unlike the other Disney villains, she actually treats her Mooks Flotsam and Jetsam with love and respect, as if they were her sons; they in turn serve her loyally, and they probably are the most competent Disney villain's mooks ever. When they are accidentally killed by Ursula (thanks to Ariel pulling her hair when she was about to kill Eric, thus throwing off her aim), she first mourns ("Babies! My poor little poopsies!"), then goes into a psychotic rage, growing to a good hundred times her normal size and attempting to kill both Ariel and Eric with the powers of the sea.
  • Ariel herself is an inversion: After witnessing her father sacrifice himself to save her from Ursula in a Fate Worse than Death manner with Ursula laughing, she went berserk, and actually attempted to attack Ursula despite being a mermaid out of water.
  • She even becomes one for her own daughter, almost becoming an overprotective mother like her father was.
• In the climax of The Mitchells vs. the Machines, Linda goes absolutely berserk when she sees her son Aaron being captured and tears her way through a horde of PAL Max Primes to save him. The rest of PAL’s army quickly learn to fear her as “The Lavender One.”
  I am Linda Mitchell, mother of two! LOOK UPON ME IN FEAR!
• In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Legend of Everfree, Principal Celestia shows signs of this, mixed with Big Sister Instinct, as she tries to shield some students and her sister from Gaea Everfree.
• Laurel Lightfoot from Onward, who is willing to fight a dragon to protect her sons!
• Quest for Camelot has Juliana shouting at Ruber not to harm Kayley, her daughter, when Ruber's minions capture her and plan to kill her if Juliana doesn't comply with Ruber's plan.
• Lillian in Shrek 2, though she was shocked that Fiona was an ogre and had married an ogre, she tries her best to be supportive of her daughter, defending her choice against her father.
• Aunt May has a moment in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse when the Rogues Gallery attacks the heroes whom May plays Team Mom to in her house^note  also, two of said heroes are different versions of her dead nephew, leading to May literally beating up Tombstone with a baseball bat and knocking his ass out of the house.
• Yubaba from Spirited Away may be on the cruel and vindictive side, but make no mistake, she loves her son Bo, and goes absolutely ballistic when he disappears late in the film.
• Turning Red:
  • Ming deconstructs this. Her attitude and actions clearly show what can happen when this trope goes wrong. Repeatedly throughout the movie, she aggressively acts to protect or defend her beloved Mei-Mei, but in every case, Mei was never actually in danger, and Ming's actions make things worse for her daughter instead of better.
  • Ming's own mother Wu, however, plays this straight. When Mei isn't strong enough to pull Ming into the sealing circle, Wu doesn't hesitate to destroy her own talisman and reclaim her ability in an effort to help her daughter.
• Mebh's mother Moll in Wolfwalkers tries to avoid conflict with the townsfolk and insists that Mebh should leave the forest without her instead of trying to rescue her when she's captured in her wolf form. But when she sees Mebh being threatened, she breaks a metal muzzle through sheer force of will to protect her daughter and even bites Bill's arm which later leads to Bill's Karmic Transformation into a Wolfwalker.

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