Villainous Breakdown / Western Animation

Sometimes a Magnificent Bitch loses her magnificence.

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• Adventure Time:
  • In "Mortal Folly", the Lich starts laughing insanely when Finn is on the verge of destroying him — with a sweater, no less.
  • He snaps for good in "Escape from the Citadel" as he's rebooted by the Guardian blood. He panics and starts screaming gibberish in an attempt to get it off, to no avail.
  • Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake sees his Extinct World counterpart suffering a breakdown, but rather than because he was defeated it's because he's confronting his god after killing all life in his universe only to have no fulfillment or satisfaction. He initially starts calm before angrily demanding why GOLB doesn't respond how he wants, tearing off his old Billy disguise and ranting like a madman. All this does is GOLB turning him into a block, him screaming in horror during the process.
• Amphibia:
  • King Andrias Leviathan, the Faux Affably Evil, Tragic Villain of the story loses it when Anne, in her Super Mode, starts to taunt him about his choice of spending centuries boiling in grudges and loathing about the loss of his friends Leif and Barrel, shouting at her to shut up and trying to squish her and Sprig, who has stepped in to help her, but when the latter reads the letter that Leif left to him, hopefully begging him to listen to his heart and do the right thing, he completely loses it, breaking out crying after realizing that she never betrayed him as he thought, and that the pain he put the frogkind through for revenge was pointless.
  • The Core, the true Big Bad behind the whole plot, a Manipulative Bastard like it is, loses it first when Sasha Waybright cut off its power cable that connectes it to Marcy's brain, screaming that she has no idea of what she has done, and screaming a row of Big Nos in the sky before falling on the floor, leaving the Lovable Nerd's body for good.
  • The Core has an even bigger one when its plan to take over Earth is foiled a bit later, leaving it without any choice but to fuse with the moon to perform a Colony Drop over Amphibia out of spite for its defeat. It leaves every track of sanity it had left after Andrias refuses to help it destroy the girls with his robots, since he has had a Heel–Face Turn and have had enough of its crap.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Azula becomes progressively more unhinged throughout the Grand Finale, kicked off by the betrayal of her closest friends, Mai and Ty Lee. She spirals faster when her father dismisses her plea to accompany him on the Nation's final war offensive, and it goes even farther when she fires her servants out of paranoia when she thinks they are plotting against her, leads to her hallucinating a conversation with her mother, who insists that she truly does love her, to which Azula shatters the mirror where she's imaging her image and collapses to the floor, crying. Everything comes to a boiling point when Zuko and Katara interrupt her coronation and defeat her in an Agni Kai and immobilize her; she tries to spit fire at them before she finally accepts defeat and sobs, tears rolling down her face. Zuko and Katara can't bring themselves to make eye contact with her. Seeing her fall really does remind you that she's only fourteen.
  • Ozai himself undergoes this. At the start of his battle with Aang, he's smug and confident. But after Aang finally achieves the Avatar State and proceeds to kick his ass all over the place, Ozai is visibly terrified and tries to flee. After Aang strips him of his powers, Ozai is simply a wretched shell who speaks in a monotone, "don't give a shit about life anymore" voice.
• In Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Batman attempts to battle Equinox but realizes pure might won't save the day. Instead, he surrenders and makes him realize a crucial flaw in his plan to recreate time/space in perfect harmony: someone who isn't in perfect harmony can't make it. Equinox realizes that his hatred of the Lords of Order and Chaos outweigh his desire for harmony and he realizes what he's doing is for nothing. He lets out a Big "NO!" before Batman knocks him into his portal, shattering him into pieces scattered throughout time/space.
• Beavis and Butt-Head: Principal McVicker seems to be in a constant state thanks to the duo's antics. Two good examples are his panicked race towards the school gym when he finds out the Secret Service has allowed the duo to join other students in asking questions to then-President Bill Clinton and his heart attack in the original Grand Finale when it was revealed that the duo wasn't dead at all. The Christmas Special, a parody of It's a Wonderful Life where an angel shows Butt-Head how much better the world would be had he never been born, is pretty much the only time you don't see him in this state: without Butt-Head, he is a calm, friendly, children-loving McVicker who is passionate about his job and has hair.
• Ben 10:
  • Original Series:
    • It's subtle, but every time Vilgax appears after the Season 1 finale, he's slightly more erratic and he gets progressively more hellbent for the Omnitrix on Ben's wrist. Then again, when you're a galactic overlord constantly getting beaten down by a kid, his grandpa, and his cousin, that does guarantee a breakdown. After being thrown into the Null Void and escaping, he has a Twitchy Eye just thinking about what happened to him and is now all out for revenge on Ben in addition to obtaining the Omnitrix, even if it results in the destruction of the universe including him. Ben even offers to surrender the Omnitrix without a fight if he gets the self destruct turned off and prevents the destruction of universe, Vilgax doesn't accept it because he wants revenge on Ben so greatly.
    • Clancy has one when Ben destroys his house and kills many of his beloved bugs.
  • Omniverse:
    • Malware has a very gradual in "Showdown Part 2". He starts losing his cool when Azmuth acts unimpressed by him blowing up Galvan B and starts going on a rampage. Then, when Blukic and Driba manage to stop him from corrupting Galvan Prime's core, he snaps, goes One-Winged Angel, and tries to absorb Ben in retaliation. Finally, the revived Mechamorphs rain down on him, returning him to normal size. His plans ruined, he makes one final attempt to kill Ben out of spite, only to be easily defeated.
    • Emperoer Milleous has one when Ben returns, to the point he demands his severely damaged flagship to enter the fray despite the warnings of his officers.
• Castlevania (2017):
  • Dracula has one of the most tragic in animation history. Throughout the final fight of Season 2, Dracula and Alucard are savagely beating each other up, one fighting for mankind's destruction, one for mankind's salvation. Then, Dracula kicks his son through the final wall, looks up and realizes that they're in his childhood bedroom. At that point, he turns nearly catatonic from grief, and allows Alucard to stake him.
    Dracula: I'm... I'm killing my boy...
  • The Bishop has a minor one while speaking with Trevor when the latter calls the Church out for branding the Belmonts as heretics simply because they were doing their job of defending Wallachia, shouting that the Belmonts "never understood the power of the word of God" and that the people of Gresit are his to command and will kill the Speakers if they believe it's God's will, then warns Trevor that by sundown, he'll either be out of Gresit or be dead. Later, when confronted by Blue Fangs inside his own church, the Bishop begins to crack under the demon's accusations, vehemently stating that his life's work has been in the name of God and denying that Dracula's genocide is his fault before screaming that Lisa was a witch. Bluefangs epically shoots down each and every one of the Bishop's denials in order, and by the time his face gets bitten off, the only thing leaving his mouth is frightened whimpering.
  • When Blue Fangs has been skewered on an icicle after several of his demons have been killed, he rants and raves about Dracula having "an army [of us] from Hell". A far cry from his calm demeanor when speaking to the Bishop.
  • Prior Sala, the head of the Religion of Evil that worships Dracula posthumously. He loses all composure when the Visitor doesn't just resurrect Dracula but opens a gateway to Hell that he didn't even know was there, and he ends up frantically running for his life from what he's unleashed.
    Prior Sala: What the fuck is that?
  • Episode 6 of Season 4 is basically this for Carmilla as her Night Creature army falters due to planning by Hector and it ends with her committing suicide rather than letting Isaac kill her.
    "What the fuck is going on? What is this? Are these Hector's night creatures? ... No.
  • Even before that, when Lenore questions Carmilla over The Plan, it dissolves into one massive, deranged rant from Carmilla. She starts pulling down curtains, bellowing about how since she had everything taken from her, she'll take the entire world and make everyone pay for their treatment of her. Lenore at this realizes with horror that The Chessmaster she thought she was loyally serving is actually just a petty and spiteful old madwoman.
• Chip Whistler from Big City Greens suffers from this trope thrice in the series:
  • In "Reckoning Ball", Chip suffers his first breakdown. After failing in fixing the roof and the garden of the Green House and accidentally burying the bikes of Tilly and Cricket. Bill keeps adding chores to Chip's list. This eventually causes Chip to snap and starts to destroy all the house and the garden intentionally, even going as far of driving the tractor to run over the garden, until he's stopped by Grandma throwing a rake, causing Chip to crash somewhere off-screen. Cricket says the logical thing afterwards.
    Cricket: If he hadn't already chipped his tooth, that's where he would've done it.
  • This happens again in "Chipwrecked". After his newest plan of leaving Cricket jobless by leaving "Big Coffee" out of business is foiled in a very humilliating fashion (he attempted to use a tank to serve cofee to the citizens, but Officer Keys gave him a fine and towed him, for parking in front of a fire hydrant, Chip not wanting to be towed, he clings to the fire hydrant, causing it to break and be launched, like a rocket with it to a billboard, when Chip brags how he's still fine, he loses his balance and falls to a hot dog stand, still claiming to be alive, then the billboard from before falls over him and chips his titanium tooth, causing Chip Whistler to be reduced to screaming like a lunatic) and being considered a "joke" by Cricket. Chip gets sunk into a depression and believes Cricket is right he's a joke. He gets over it when he receives a call from his father and learns from his mistakes, taking the advises from Cricket and his dad to heart.
  • His biggest and real one happens in "Chipocalypse Now", after everybody in Big City sides with the Greens and this makes the mayor realize that Chip faked the signatures, he decides to ban Chip Whistler from Big City forever, Chip snaps and attempts to chop Cricket with his helicopter, but Cricket jumps over the roof and lands on his father's arms. Then seeing the family, Chip going ballistic decided to kamikaze the Greens to get rid of them of all of them at once, but he gets jammed in telephone wires and his tooth gets chipped again, causing him to be flung to the sky, out of Big City, when he releases the controls of the helicopter.
    Chip Whistler: Cricket Green, you made a fool of me FOR THE LAST TIME! [attempts to chop Cricket with the blades of his helicopter]
    Now I can get rid of all the Greens at once! [attempts to kamikaze the Greens with his helicopter]
• XANA from Code Lyoko has one at the end of an episode where he's trapped the gang in a virtual version of Earth with himself assuming the form of Jérémie. When the real Jérémie shows up, XANA has an extremely frightening breakdown because he cannot understand how Jérémie overcame his fear and entered the scanner because it's "not logical". It's also the only (canonical) time we hear him speak in his own voice and not through someone else.
  XANA: NOT LOGICAL! NOT LOGICAL!
• Codename: Kids Next Door:
  • Father had quite a fair few throughout the series. His last one in the series finale after Numbuh 1 steals his pipe is a sight to behold.
  • After his treachery is revealed in "Operation E.N.D.", Numbuh 274 (Chad Dickson) loses it, ranting about how he had been running the KND years and wasn't going to have his legacy ruined by a bunch of "snot-nosed brats", before taking Tommy hostage and setting the Moon Base for a direct course to the sun. As Numbuh 1 idly points out, he sounded just like a teenager. Seasons later, however, revealed all of this to be an act.
    • Chad has another one in "Operation T.R.E.A.T.Y." that lasts the entire episode. It begins to simmer when Numbuh Infinity tells him that the GKND representative will be Numbuh 1 and not him, gets worse when a Chained Heat situation leaves him stuck with a very vitriolic Numbuh 1 (who is just about the last person he wants to see), and culminates in him fighting Nigel in a Duel to the Death, screaming about how he's still the best there is, only to be defeated. Even with the reveal of Chad being a Fake Defector, the damage had been done to their already fractured relationship and Nigel's remaining admiration of him very much eroded.
• Danny Phantom
  • Walker goes through one when Danny pretty much turns his prison on its ear and breaks his perfect record. At first, the ghost warden is calm and ruthless in enforcing the rules. By the end of his debut episode, He's already raging and ready to beat Danny within "an inch of his afterlife." And when Danny escapes, Walker can only respond with the classic Nooo! Come the end of "Public Enemies" and Walker's about to be sucked back into the Ghost Zone. And all he can do is shout how Danny still lost by being made public enemy #1 in Amity Park.
  • In the Season 2 finale, Vlad's most desperate plan to obtain Danny as his son has him building a perfect clone of him with plans to kill the original one after. As if that wasn't crazy in itself, everything was going great until Danny's Opposite-Sex Clone does a Heel–Face Turn (because Vlad threw off a rant-inducing slight) and teams up with the hero to destroy the clone lab, including the perfect clone. Vlad, once calm and preserved, goes insane, delivers a very emotional Big "NO!", and was downright close to murdering everyone if not for a timely rescue by Danny's friends. And it's permanent. Oh so painfully permanent. In Season 3, it's shown that Vlad's attitude towards Danny has drastically changed. Vlad used to think that of Danny as a son who needed to be convinced into joining him. After that breakdown, Danny became an all-out enemy, and Vlad wanted nothing more than to destroy him and see him suffer.
  • In his second appearance in the series' third TV movie, the evil ringmaster Freakshow suffered from one when Danny played on his jealousy of ghosts, resulting in him using the powerful Reality Gauntlet to become a ghost himself, which is exactly what Danny wanted so he could use the Fenton Thermos to trap him and save the world.
  • Dark Danny, the jerky, evil version of Danny from a Bad Future, who was usually calm and confident that nothing could prevent the incident that resulted in his existence. However, he received a powerful shock (in more ways than one) when Danny's will to Screw Destiny resulted in him developing one of his strongest powers ten years earlier than in Dark Danny's future.
  • When Ember's Popularity Power stopped working and her 'fans' stopped screaming for her she freaks out. She tries to get them to chant her name but no one does. Ember then falls to the floor in a twitching mess, which is how Danny captures her.
• DC Animated Universe:
  • Batman: The Animated Series:
    • The usually chillingly calm but unstable Two-Face has a complete mental breakdown at the end of "Two-Face: Part 2" when the coin he flips to make his decisions for him gets lost among a pile of other coins that Batman pours out. (This is also how Batman tricks Two-Face into falling to "a watery grave" in Batman Forever.)
      "I HAVE TO HAVE IT! I HAVE TO! AAAAAAARRRRRGH! AAAAAAAAAH!"
    • In "Joker's Favor", the Joker bullies Charlie Collins because he gave him a rant-inducing slight... for two years. Then Charlie Collins manages to convince the Joker that he has been Driven to Madness because He Who Fights Monsters (this is the effect Joker has on normal people). So, what the does the Joker say when Charlie threatens to kill him instead of the Batman, ruining Joker's dream of The Only One Allowed to Defeat You?
      Joker: Look, Charlie, you've had a busy day. All this running around, all this excitement with... BATMAAAAAAAN! [pleading] S-Stop! You're crazy!
      Charlie: I had a good teacher. [holds the bomb close to him with a Slasher Smile] Say goodnight, Gracie!
      Joker: [crawling away in utter fear] NO! BATMAAAAAAAN! BATMAAAAAAAAAAAAN!
    • In "His Silicon Soul", a robotic Batman flips out when he realizes that he just "murdered" Batman, destroying the Batcomputer before H.A.R.D.A.C. can be resurrected.
    • The Ventriloquist gets one at the end of "Read My Lips". You'd think that Batman "killing" Scarface and freeing the poor, downtrodden puppeteer would give him some relief, but seeing Scarface dead reduces the Ventriloquist to a screaming, sobbing wreck. He's better the next time we see him... Presumably because he's carving a new dummy.
    • In "Bane", the eponymous villain has a nightmarish one when Batman jams a Batarang into his Venom injector, injecting a massive overdose of Venom into Bane's body. His muscles swell up to dangerous proportions, and his eyes bulge out enough to make the red lenses in his luchador mask pop out. The overdose is so painful that he actually begs Batman to help him.
    • In "Baby-Doll", the titular villainess leads Batman into a carnival funhouse. Once he's cornered her in its hall of mirrors, she is understandably startled and then bittersweetly distracted: the mirrors are the Hand Wave that allow us to see how Baby would have appeared if her growth hadn't been stunted. Watch the rest of the finale here.
    • Riddler gets one in "Riddler's Reform" after Batman escapes from what was supposed to be his last Death Trap, then tricks Riddler into revealing what he did without upholding his end of the deal of telling Riddler how he managed to escape, in essence ruining Riddler's already failed attempt at reform. The episode ends with him screaming wildly in his cell in Arkham:
      "It's impossible, I tell you! Impossible! My trap was perfect! How did he do it? I have to know! SOMEBODY TELL ME! IT'S NOT FAIR! THERE WAS NO WAY, I TELL YOU, NO WAY HE COULD HAVE GOTTEN OUT! SOMEBODY TELL ME! DO YOU HEAR ME?! SOMEBODY TELL ME HOW HE DID IT! I HAVE TO KNOW! I HAVE TO KNOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!"
    • In "Judgement Day", Two-Face assumes a third Split Personality as a vigilante who wishes to rid Gotham of all the corruption caused by his own alter ego. Eventually the two personalities forget they're one and the same and Two-Face, after being arrested, can be heard putting himself on trial in Arkham.
  • Batman Beyond:
    • Derek Powers has one spanning Season 1 after he's turned into Blight... culminating in an enraged breakdown that brings whole new meaning to "having a meltdown".
    • At the end of the episode "Joyride", after Scab's hijacked ship crashes, the episode ends with him trying to make it fly again, then pounding on the controls, gnashing his teeth, and generally losing it. (It doesn't stick; in a later episode, he's back on the streets.)
  • President Lex Luthor suffers from one of these at the beginning of the Justice League episode "A Better World". As the alternate-dimension League close in on him, he's cryptically mumbling "They couldn't see the beauty! No imagination! It could have been so perfect!" We never learn exactly what Luthor was up to prior to this, but the way normally cool-headed Lex seems to be coming apart indicates it was an outcome he obviously didn't plan for. Also, he's killed the Flash. When Superman finally confronts him, Lex actually threatens to start a nuclear war if Supes doesn't back down.
    Superman: I let it get this far because of the law and the will of the people.
    Lex: The people? This is all their fault! And they're going to burn for it... BUUUUURN!
• DuckTales (2017):
  • General Lunaris is a chessmaster of the highest degree able to best Scrooge at every single turn. Having invaded Earth and destroyed most of its defenses, he places himself on the verge of victory. Out of ideas, Scrooge is forced to rely on Flintheart Glomgold to come up with a plan to stop Lunaris. Several Scenes and Noodle Implements later, the plan starts to work. Lunaris loses all composure unable to comprehend that he can't see the logical outcome of a plan If there is no logic in it in the first place.
  • Magica has too fits of this as well:
    • Upon losing her powers when Donald Duck accidentally breaks the crystal on her staff, Magica descends into a fist-shaking, near-bawling rage.
    Magica: My powers! They're gone! You ruined EVERYTHING!! AAAAAAAAGGGGGHHH!!!
    • Continues this in her second appearance when Lena realizes she is completely powerless and loses her fear of her, and she is left clawing at the kids through the manor's gates like a caged animal while having a ranting fit.
    Magica: I'll claw out your soul, grind your heart to dust beneath my heel, and rip my powers out from you with my bare teeth! You think you've won, but I am your FATE! I am the DARK FORCE at the core of all things! I AM MAGICA DE SPELL!! RRRAAAAAAAARRRR!!
  • It's already bad enough when Jim finds out he's being left out of the Darkwing Duck movie, but the final straw comes when Boorswan demands to cut when Jim unwittingly puts the set on fire.
  • After Darkwing, Launchpad, and Gosalyn end up injuring Taurus Bulba, he starts going off the deep end, summoning supervillains into St. Canard, which also results in him attempting to upend Bradford.
  • Ponce De Leon goes into a mad, sword-swinging rage when he finds out that Scrooge and Goldie had taken some of the youth water.
  • As the McDucks continue to fight him even after he makes Scrooge sign on the Papyrus of Binding, the Sword of Swanstatine turns Bradford into a monster, but he only breaks down when Huey manages to destroy the Papyrus through use of a paradox, having him drop the sword and turn to normal, just in time to be turned into a mindless buzzard minion by Magica DeSpell.
• Exo Squad's Big Bad Phaeton loses it after he contracts automutation syndrome in the aftermath of a battle with J.T. Marsh. He becomes more enamored with doomsday weapon projects, abandons all subtlety, and resorts to grandiose speeches and rants as everything falls apart for the Commonwealth due to his increasingly irrational command decisions. One of the more justified examples since the automutation syndrome is gradually liquefying him. That can't be good for one's sanity.
• Family Guy: Diane Simmons reveals to Lois, she was the one behind the five murders and started becoming a terrorist to get revenge on Tom Tucker and James Woods in a furious meltdown shouting "There's no way she could have known that I planned to kill James Woods and frame Tom Tucker. Thereby destroying the two people who cast me aside and ruined my life!" just moments before almost killing off Lois Griffin.
• Gargoyles has a few:
  • When cornered, Hakon turns on the Captain of the Guard, blaming him, and the two fight, falling off a cliff in the process. Happens again with him in “Shadows of the Past” where the ghost of Hakon screams and rants after getting sealed in a shard of crystal.
  • City of Stone has Demona breakdown and cry at the end of it when the Weird Sisters confront her with her actions she gives the access code to finish the heroes plan: Alone. Then seconds later, she goes into this again for a completely different reason, ranting and raving about how her scheme was ruined and how everyone else is to blame but herself.
  • Xanatos distinguishes himself as not having one, he doesn't have a breaking point, unlike all the other show's villains, as he can bounce back from his defeats while keeping a relatively cool head. The closest he got to one was when all of his plans, schemes, In-laws, allies, and his Enemy Mine with the Gargoyles failed to stop Oberon, and even after that, he recovers enough to help work things out.
• The Big Bad of the first season of The Ghost and Molly McGee, The Chairman, despite being most of the time The Speechless and The Stoic, goes down kicking and screaming while he dies.
• G.I. Joe:
  • In the movie, another failed plot causes the rest of Cobra's leadership to lose patience and begin considering overthrowing Cobra Commander. Commander's already pretty stressed out at this point and the added shock of his minions putting him on trial causes him to snap, leading to one of the most spectacular screaming fits in the history of film.
  "Unsubstantiated fantasy! LIES! LIES!! LLLLLLLLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSS!!!
  • In the miniseries G.I. Joe: Resolute, Cobra Commander is a little... "off" to start with, but by the end of the series, he hacks a roomful of his own men apart and paints a cobra symbol on the wall in blood because one guy had the nerve to tell him that the death ray was not fully charged at the time.
  Cobra Commander: Less than twelve hours, and it's all. Gone. Wrong. I mean, you KNOW I missed some of them with the cannon shot! You know it. There is only one thing to do. Ramp up the reactor output! I want to start striking cities randomly until they give me what I WANT!
  Henchman: Sir, that could take a few hours. We don't have the dedicated output to-
  [Cobra Commander slits his throat with his sword]
  Cobra Commander: Get rid of this garbage.
• Gravity Falls
  • Bill Cipher has one in his debut episode in which he tries to kill the gang after his plans are foiled. As Affably Evil as he is, he puts on the rage better than a lot of the series' other villains. Subverted when he suddenly goes back to normal mid-battle and lets them win with grace, deciding they'll be useful to him later.
    Bill Cipher: Do you have any idea what I'm like when I'm mad!?
  • Bill Cipher gets another breakdown in the Grand Finale. Bill increasingly loses his Smug Snake act and becomes enraged as he starts to get annoyed. It finally comes to a head when he's about to be erased, with Stan trapping Bill in his own mind while a Memory Eraser gun wipes it out, meaning that Bill's Reality Warper powers are completely nullified. This means Stan's mind will be erased as well, but he's made peace with that. Bill most assuredly hasn't; the powerful dream demon is reduced to begging for his life as his body rapidly changes into broken forms, even attempting to call out to his nemesis to save him. None of it works, and Bill is finally destroyed by Stan punching Bill into oblivion.
    Stan: Hey, look at me. Turn around and look at me, ya One-Eyed Demon! (Bill turns around) You're a real wise guy, but ya made one fatal mistake: Ya messed with my family.
    Bill Cipher: You're making a mistake! I'll give you anything! Money, fame, riches, infinite power, your own galaxy! Please! No! What's happening to me?! Nruter yam I taht rewop tneicna eht ekovni I! Nrub ot emoc sah emit ym! L-T-O-L-O-X-A! STANLEY!
  • Lil' Gideon also has one in the Season 1 finale, where he pilots a giant robot in order to destroy the twins after realizing that the journal he took from Dipper was the wrong one.
• Hazbin Hotel:
  • Vox undergoes a proverbial breakdown when he learns that Alastor has returned from a seven year absence. Then he has a more literal one while singing Stayed Gone as the Radio Demon deconstructs Vox's rather petty attempt to discredit him, which makes Vox blow a fuse so hard he causes a Big Blackout across the entire Pride Ring.
    Vox: You olllllllld-timey prick! I'll show you sufffFFFFFfffering!
    Alastor: (mockingly) Uh-oh, the TV is buffering!
  • Adam undergoes a massive breakdown in the first season finale after Lucifer beats the shit out of him for attacking Charlie. Even after Lucifer spares his life at Charlie's prompting, Adam refuses to let it end as he goes on an angry tirade about how humanity and the sinners should be worshipping him as the Original Man. He's quickly silenced after Niffty stabs him to death.
  • The events of the first season finale leave Alastor incredibly rattled: his brush with death at the hands of Adam has forced him to face the fact that he's not as untouchable as he portrays himself, and his tone of voice, facial expressions and body language scream how close he is to losing it. While he ultimately collects himself, Alastor makes it clear that he's more desperate than ever to find a way out of whatever deal he made that bound his soul to someone else.
• In the Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi episode "Julie AmiYumi", the until then unmentioned former member of the band known as Julie orchestrates a scheme to get back at her former bandmates Ami and Yumi by humiliating them during their reunion concert. Instead of being loved by the audience, she gets booed by them for ruining the duo's performance, which causes her to go into a meltdown and end up carried away in a straitjacket.
• The various characters of Invader Zim tend to fly into a rage when things don't go as they planned, with Zim himself being by far the most prone; in the episode "A Room with a Moose", for example, when Dib manages to foil the Irken's diabolical plan to send his classmates into a wormhole, Zim completely loses it and wails, "NO! NOOO, THE MOOSE HAS FAILED ME!"
  • This tendency, however, has been averted on the rare occasion: when another one of his plans (involving a robot copy of Dib and a monkey beating up the original), Zim screams "NOOO!!!" for a few seconds, but his anger peters out after a few seconds and he loses interest.
• Justin Hammer in Iron Man: Armored Adventures started out as an eccentric, amoral and corrupted, but relatively civil and calm villain. Over the course of the story, however, his insanity becomes more and more clear, as he displays Ax-Crazy and Psychopathic Manchild sides whenever he is having fun or when things don't go how he wanted. Eventually, "The Hammer Falls" involves him being blackmailed by a mysterious traitor; this causes him to go completely nuts, take down all his supervillain thugs out of paranoia, attempting to deliver a Zombie Apocalypse on Manhattan and losing the little sanity he had left.
  • Obidiah Stane experienced one as well when he found out who Iron Man really is.
• Invincible (2021):
  • After one of his Reanimen removes his own chip and the others are defeated, and after enduring a mild beatdown by an enraged William which leaves him bloody, Sinclair is raving and babbling about how he's securing scientific progress and saving humanity from disease, before Invincible shuts him up with a jaw-break.
  • In episode 8, Nolan/Omni-Man becomes increasingly agitated as his fight with Mark drags on, both from his growing guilt and Mark's own refusal to back down or join him. By the time he's reduced Mark to a bloody pulp, he's outright screaming at him that he'll outlive everyone he ever cared about. Then Mark responds that he'd still have his dad, causing Nolan to abandon the planet and his mission as he tries his hardest (and fails) not to cry over what he's just done.
  "Why did you make me do this?! You're fighting so you can watch everyone around you die! Think, Mark! THINK! You'll outlast every fragile, insignificant being on this planet. You'll live to see this world crumble to dust and blow away! Everything and everyone you know will be gone. ... What will you have after five hundred years?"
• Jackie Chan Adventures: In "Bullies", Valmont gets his hands on the dragon talisman, which provides the power of combustion, which he uses to rob Fort Knox. Jackie follows him, and remembering his own struggles with his Berserk Button (Captain Black's injuries by Valmont) throughout the episode, decides to press Valmont's Berserk Button by tossing gold overboard, while sarcastically asking things like "How much is this gold worth? A new Ferrari?" Valmont loses it, fires at Jackie in a rage, and proceeds to sink his own raft.
• On Jimmy Two-Shoes, Lucius loses his mind when he finds that Miseryville has been turned into the perfect, happy Smilesville as part of a prank against him. The episode ends with him in a padded cell. He's fine the next episode, however.
• The Legend of Korra: All four Arc Villains experience these:
  • Amon loses his composure and control in the finale once Korra gets the upper hand in her fight with him, leading to him exposing the true source of his mysterious powers in a desperate attempt to survive the Avatar's attacks. From there, he's so ashamed and afraid he flees the battle.
  • Unalaq has one after Jinora reawakens Raava. When Korra extracts it and uses his own technique against him, he can only scream in rage.
  • The terrorist villain of Season 3, Zaheer, becomes increasingly detached and cold as his plans near completion, until the very end of his plan, which leaves him laughing, raving, and lying about his righteousness until he's forced to (literally) put a sock in it. It's bound to happen when your lover and only two friends are killed within one day.
  • Kuvira's breakdown in the series finale progresses as the protagonists slowly make progress in dismantling and breaking through her forces, leaving her to attack her own forces and destroy her own tech in her attempts to stop Korra from defeating her. She refuses to surrender even as she physically ruins herself fighting the Avatar, leading her to rashly fire a giant spirit laser in a last ditch attempt to kill Korra...which leads to a psuedo-nuclear explosion, which Kuvira is spared death from only because Korra reaches a new pinnacle of power in deflecting the beam in an effort to save her. She still tries to escape before Korra compassionately talks her down and helps her realize how mad she has become, leading to her handing herself over.
• Looney Tunes:
  • Daffy Duck has one in "Duck! Rabbit! Duck!" after being shot by Elmer Fudd for the sixth time,
    Daffy: Shoot me again! I enjoy it! I love the smell of burnt feathers, and gunpowder, and cordite! I'm an elk! Shoot me, go on! It's elk season! I'm a fiddler crab! Why don't you shoot me?! It's fiddler crab season!
  • Elmer himself gets one in "What's Opera, Doc?": when he realizes that he had been duped by Bugs Bunny disguised as Brunehilde, he lets loose with Unstoppable Rage on the rabbit and summons the elements to help do him in.
    Elmer: I'LL KILL THE WABBIT! AWISE, STORM! NORTH WIND BWOW! SOUTH WIND BWOW! TYPHOONS! HUWWICANES! EARTHQUAKES! SMOG!
• Magnacat in Monster Allergy gets this after becoming bankrupt.
  • Moog Magister when he destroys the fair and the presents due to unable to get the monsters.
• Clay in Moral Orel has this in the third season, most notably in the episodes "Nature", "Sacrifice", "Nesting" and "Honor" which overlaps with his Freudian Excuse / Attention Whore attitude.
• My Adventures with Superman: Ivo spends the entire first season in the throws of one, as he gradually descends into madness from his insistence on continuing to use the Parasite armor. He was already a Jerkass and a Corrupt Corporate Executive from the start, but the toll the armor takes on his body and mind gradually reduces him from an eccentric genius to being a borderline feral berserker. It reaches its apex in "Zero Day, Pt. 2", where after transforming into a Kaiju and rampaging through Metropolis, Superman manages to get the edge up on him. Ivo snaps, and throws a childish temper tantrum blaming Superman for all his actions. whining about how Superman "cheated", and spewing racist insults at him.
• In the My Life as a Teenage Robot episode "Trash Talk", it's clear that Vexus' constant defeats at the hands of Jenny have taken their toll on her sanity, since she's planning to blow up the asteroid she's trapped on and escape in a ship made out of a coffee can.
• My Little Pony:
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends: In "The End of Flutter Valley, Part 10", when the ponies return to Flutter Valley with the Sunstone, seeing her plans crushed at the last moment before victory causes Hydia to break down into hysterics and she has to be carried off by her daughters while crying about how it just isn't fair.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • In "The Return of Harmony, Part 1", Discord snaps when Fluttershy doesn't play along with his twisted mind games. He drops the Faux Affably Evil act and just brainwashes her. Later, he actually gets terrified when he realizes he's about to be hit with the Elements of Harmony. His Faux Affably Evil act dissolves into fear as there's nothing he can do as the attack strikes him. Considering everything he'd done over the past two episodes has just effectively imploded right in front of him, this makes perfect sense. He gets much better when he gets a Heel–Face Turn.
    • In "Power Ponies", the supervillain The Mane-iac gets two in the climax of the episode. First, when Humdrum, who she previously dismissed as "pointless" manages to free the other Power Ponies. She loses all her composure and is reduced to barking orders at all her hencponies and calling them idiots as they are easily beaten. Then, when she is blasted by her own doomsday weapon, she loses control of her mane, screaming "MY MANE!" as it wraps around her whole body, entrapping her like a straitjacket. Defeated and helpless, trapped by her own hair, she is reduced to just laugh insanely as she hops in place, clearly having lost whatever was left of her sanity.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Lord Tirek gets an Oh, Crap! when Twilight and her friends have magic again and finds himself completely overpowered by them.
    • In "The Cutie Map, Part 2", Starlight Glimmer has a rather vivid one. Normally a Faux Affably Evil leader who runs on Sugary Malice and charisma, but once her plans fall apart she finally settles purely on rage. She's been stuck in it when she returns at the end of the fifth season, but really goes into it when Twilight drags her into the future and shows her a barren wasteland caused by trying to stop the Sonic Rainboom. She gets much better when she gets a Heel–Face Turn.
    • By the time Season 9 rolls around, Queen Chrysalis has been gradually degraded to a rambling cackling mess who shambles around the forest, carving changelings into stumps, and crazily raving about how the Mane Six stole everything from her. Getting your rump soundly kicked after what was almost a decisive victory twice in a row, getting your rump kicked by your own followers when they decided you'd outlived your usefulness, and losing your entire kingdom in the process will do that to the best of them. With no other choice, she decides to join forces with Grogar's Legion of Doom.
    • At that same point, King Sombra breaks into a glorious one as the Mane Six comes at him with the power of the Elements of Harmony despite the fact that he destroyed the stones. His Near-Villain Victory being snatched from him leads to him nearly breaking into tears as he's vaporized for the final time.
• Ninjago:
  • the Overlord becomes very unhinged in the moments before his defeat, letting out a rapid-fire "no".
  • In Season 4, Master Chen, transformed into the form of an Anacondrai, begins screaming as the spirits of actual Anaconrai drag him away into the Cursed Realm, insisting to them that they're on the same side, and calling out for his daughter to help him despite his treatment of her previously.
  • Harumi/the Quiet One undergoes a fittingly silent villainous blue screen of death as she stands atop a building about to collapse, killing her in the exact same way her parents died, which was also her entire motivation for villainy.
  • Garmadon in turn suffers one after Harumi's death, disregarding the fact that he very directly caused her to die.
  • Vangelis, similar to Chen, starts by asking the Ninja, then his daughter and his subjects to forgive him, and then devolves to frantically shouting "I am your king!" as he's dragged away by his own guards to be locked away.
• Over the Garden Wall: The Beast spends almost the entirety of the miniseries deathly calm and collected, only raising his voice off-camera to sing one of his bombastic songs. Then, when Wirt finally confronts him and realizes that the lantern the Woodsman has been carrying around actually harbors the Beast's soul, he threatens to blow it out, causing the Beast to do this◊.
• The Owl House: Emperor Belos comes undone both figuratively and literally in the last few episodes, starting when the Draining Spell he spent centuries preparing is turned against him by Luz and then stopped by his former ally The Collector, who smashes him into goop for his betrayals. He goes on to frantically possess various wildlife, then Hunter, then Raine, and finally The Titan itself in a last-ditch attempt to survive and finish what he started, all while being haunted by ghosts/visions of his brother Caleb and the previous Grimwalkers. Luz and her friends ultimately defeat him a second time, leading to his Undignified Death at their hands.
  Belos: (to Luz as he dissolves in the Demon Realm's boiling rain) Don't just stand there! You'll be just as bad, just as conniving, just as evil, and just as unforgivable as those witches! We're human! We're better than this!
  Eda: Well, we ain't! (stomps his remains to death with Raine and King)
• The Hooded Claw throws a tantrum at the end of The Perils of Penelope Pitstop episode "The Treacherous Movie Lot Plot". He had been filming all of the perils to which he subjected Penelope and figured that if he can't have the Pitstop fortune, he'll make a fortune himself with the movie. One problem: He never loaded film into the camera.
• There were times where Mojo Jojo would be pushed too far in The Powerpuff Girls (1998). When he reached his limit, he would regress into a violent animal, screeching and thrashing anything he could get his hands on.
  • A perfect example is the episode "Forced Kin", where such a fit of rage (because the seemingly-unbeatable Monster of the Week alien was starting to copy his plans) led directly to a Nice Job Fixing It, Villain moment.
    Mojo Jojo: YOU! HAVE! BROKEN! MY! DREEEAAAAMS!!!
  • A Villainous BSoD-like moment happens in "Mr. Mojo's Rising" when he realizes he created the Powerpuff Girls in the accident that gave him his superintelligence.
    Mojo: I created them. It's All My Fault. I did it. It was me. It was me. It was me. (cut to credit sequence)
    Narrator: Wow! Talk about ironic! Professor creates Mojo, Mojo creates girls, it’s crazy, I tell you! Yeah! So once again the day is saved, thanks to the Powerpuff Girls—
    But thanks originally to Mojo!
    Mojo: It was me. It was me. It was me...
• Many of the ghosts from The Real Ghostbusters went into fits of complete rage when they were defeated. One particular example is Karro Zans from the episode Ghostworld, who was driven insane by Egon Spengler outsmarting him and started using his powers to tear the amusement park he constructed apart and even growing to gigantic size while screaming "Prepare to die, Spengler!"
• Hexadecimal from ReBoot plays this straight for about all of five seconds, and then immediately subverts it. Her Medusa Bug turns all of Mainframe to stone, and Bob points out that she has made the entire place calm and predictable. As Hex is the poster child of chaotic behavior, this causes her to panic.
  Hexadecimal: No! No! I must...I must stop it! Stop it all from going so very wrong! (Snaps fingers, undoes bug and walks off with a sly smile)
• Happens in Regular Show to The Warden of the Internet in "Go Viral". After all her prisoners are freed, she flies into a rage, tearing herself out of the wall and going on a rampage.
• Ren's most infamous breakdown is in Adult Party Cartoon's episode "Ren Seeks Help". After hearing Ren's life story and what he did to hurt Stimpy, Dr. Mr. Horse is horrified by Ren's actions and calls him crazy and proceeds to attack him. In retaliation, Ren completely snaps and goes on a rampage. He beats Dr. Mr. Horse to death, bites off an animal control worker's hand and eats it before being taken away while he's still thrashing and foaming at the mouth.
• Aku, the evil shapeshifting demon/wizard, does this in episode 13 of Samurai Jack in which he tries to convince the children of the world that Jack is the true villain and Aku is actually a hero. He does this through telling modified fairy tales where Jack is the bad guy. After being interrupted and contradicted a bunch of times during the fairytales by some terrified witless children, he starts to completely mix up fairy tales in increasingly hysterical, convoluted (and incredibly hilarious) ways. Finally, it ends with him shouting "THE END!" and swirling away.
  • After Jack defeats her and her sisters, Ashi is left hanging by her kusari chain from a tree branch with Jack standing over her. She launches into a screaming fit (mostly consisting of her childishly saying Jack will die) while Jack calmly unwraps the chain and drops Ashi into the forest below.
  • In the Grand Finale, Aku gets two in two different time periods. Future-Aku has a subdued one when Ashi uses his powers (which he himself awakened in her) to take Jack back in time to kill him in the past, becoming terrified as he realizes he's about to be erased from existence and there's nothing he can do about it. Past-Aku's is far more pronounced, as his last few minutes of existence are spent frantically trying to escape Jack with a look of terror on his face.
• In Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated Professor Pericles goes through one following the episode "Wrath of the Krampus" which he shown to be more prone to outbursts and is willing to kill anyone in his way.
• The villainous monster in human clothing V.V Argost had one of these in the final episode of The Secret Saturdays where he makes a planetwide broadcast for the world to yield to him as his army of cryptids are terrorizing the earth, and the Saturdays interrupt him by appearing with their own army. Argost's reaction was quite amusing.
  Argost: THAT... WAS... MY... MOMENT!
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power:
  • Seasons 2 and 3 show Hordak bonding with Entrapta (his collaborator on technology-related projects, friend, and eventual love interest). Catra exiles Entrapta to Beast Island and lies to Hordak about it, telling him that Entrapta betrayed him to the princesses. This lie triggers Hordak's breakdown in "Coronation", in which he broods in the wreckage of the portal machine he built with Entrapta, exhibits unsound tactical judgment, and reacts violently to the mention of Entrapta's name. He regains his composure and acts as an effective leader for most of Season 4, but when Double Trouble reveals what actually happened to Entrapta, Hordak attacks Catra in a berserk rampage.
  • Catra has a rough time when she loses. It doesn't help that she's Driven by Envy over Adora being far more special than her.
    • In the second season, her Abusive Parent, Shadow Weaver, cruelly plays on Catra's insecurities and need for validation before escaping the Fright Zone. After realizing she's been tricked, Catra's reduced to a crying, screaming mess.
    • Midway through the third season, Catra's finally gotten to a position where she might be happy, running a gang in the Crimson Wastes alongside Scorpia, who she seems to finally accept as being her closest friend... and then she learns that after escaping, Shadow Weaver defected to the Rebellion. At this point, Catra's envy and resentment of Adora boil over into outright obsession, and her ability to make sensible decisions — never exactly her primary talent at the best of times — goes out the window, leading to her burning her own life down around her in the hope that Adora will get caught in the fire. This includes sending Entrapta to Beast Island when she won't go along with Catra's schemes, lying to Hordak that Entrapta defected, and trying to cause The End of the World as We Know It because it would at least mean that Catra will have beaten Adora at something. After all of this, Adora decides that Catra isn't worth trying to redeem anymore.
    • In the fourth season, Catra has an even worse breakdown. When the previously staunchly loyal Scorpia leaves the Horde entirely rather than deal with Catra any longer, Catra fixates on destroying the Rebellion at all costs, working herself and her troops to exhaustion with an unending blitzkrieg. The sight of what might be Scorpia hiding in the woods via security camera prompts a frenzy of loss-fueled anger that leaves the console Catra was using in ruins. She leaps on any opportunity to cause more damage to the Rebellion, making her easy prey for Double Trouble's manipulations. Finally, after a pissed-off Hordak attempts to murder Catra and she narrowly beats him, Double Trouble subjects Catra to a Breaking Speech that actually breaks her. Double Trouble uses their shapeshifting to point out that the reason everyone Catra ever cared about left her was that she pushed them away. When Glimmer finds Catra, she's so beaten down that she not only doesn't fight back, she actually seems to want Glimmer to kill her.
  • Horde Prime takes a turn in Season 5. When the BFS and Entrapta thwart him and escape, he starts to fume and sends more of his armies against Etheria. As the heroes start messing with his plans, freeing his minions and so on, he starts to get steadily more unstable, culminating in a mad attempt to destroy the universe with the Heart of Etheria while yelling about how at least that will bring "peace".
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Sideshow Bob Roberts", Sideshow Bob is elected mayor and put on trial under the accusation that he rigged the election. Bart and Lisa drive him crazy by insisting that he was too stupid to rig the election and that his running mate, Barlow, was the real mastermind. Bob ultimately digs his own grave:
    Bob: Only I could have executed such a masterpiece of electoral fraud! And I have the records to prove it! Here, just look at these (pulls out binders and floppy disks) each one a work of Machiavellian art!
    Judge: But why?
    Bob: Because you need me, Springfield. Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Democratic, but deep down inside, you secretly long for a cold-hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule you like a king. That's why I did this: to protect you from yourselves. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a city to run.
    Judge: Bailiffs, place the mayor under arrest.
    Bob: What?! (resignedly) Oh, yes, all that stuff I did...
  • There's also Russ Cargill in the Movie who, after the dome is destroyed, turns a shotgun on Homer. (He does manage to superficially keep his cool, only losing his dignity when Maggie knocks him out.)
  • Frank Grimes. At the end of his episode, Grimes actually goes crazy and starts running around the power plant doing very dangerous things, pretending that he's Homer Simpson, before finally touching several live electric wires and being electrocuted.
    Grimes: Extremely high voltage? Well, I don't need safety gloves 'cause I'm Homer Simp— (zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz)
• Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM): Robotnik in the Grand Finale, as The Doomsday Project explodes and he is forced to flee but gets caught in the destruction and seemingly wiped from existence, references his Catchphrase from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog:
  Robotnik: I really... hate... that hedgehog... I hate him. I hate him! HATE HIIIMMM!! Hate! Hate!! HATE!!! HAAAAAATE!!!!!!
• South Park
  • The guy-with-no-life Jenkins in "Make Love, Not Warcraft" does the "shutting down" version when his character is finally killed in World of Warcraft. We don't get to see what he does after those first few seconds, as he's only ever shown in-game and in brief flashes sitting in front of his computer, almost reacting to what happens there. Being defeated makes him... flinch.
  • When Cartman learns that he murdered his own father he simply stares in empty shock and doesn't even resist when Scott rams his head into a chili bowl. Cartman being Cartman, the cause of his BSOD is the discovery that he's actually part ginger.
  • In "Cartmanland", Cartman starts going downhill when he has to keep letting more and more people into the park he bought with his inheritance money in order to hire the people he needs to keep it going, eventually just selling it back to the original owner. Then, officials take the money he made due to tax evasion and a lawsuit from when Kenny died earlier on, and it's revealed that he owes several thousand dollars more and the original owner refuses to sell the park back to him, leading him to break down in tears and a litany of swearing.
  • In "HUMANCENTiPAD", when Cartman didn't get his way, he blamed God, who struck him with a bolt of lightning. Cartman ended up in the hospital, bandaged and crying.
  • In "Christian Rock Hard", Cartman learns that Christian record companies use different certifications for their sales, meaning that Cartman technically hasn't won his bet with Kyle by making a platinum-selling album. Cartman flies into a rage, smashes his band's myrrh album and screams blasphemous obscenities in front of a horrified crowd of Christian rock fans.
  • Butters AKA Professor Chaos has this in "The Simpsons Already Did It" where, after watching every Simpsons episode to make sure one of his plans won't be a ripoff of an episode and leaving to inact it, he hears a commercial of Bart doing the same thing. He then hallucinates of every place and person looking all like Simpsons characters. He gets better when he learns that the ideas the Simpsons used were used before the Simpsons too.
  • In "Cash for Gold", Stan calls the host of a shopping network that rips off elderly people and tells him to kill himself. At the end of the episode, it is revealed that since Stan called and told him to do it, elderly people are calling him constantly, repeating Stan's request until he snaps and finally shoots himself.
  • In "Splatty Tomato" Heidi breaks up with Cartman upon realizing how much his influence changed her. Cartman response to this by putting a gun to his head threatening to kill himself unless she takes him back, only for her to reply that its not going to work this time and simply walks away making it clear that this time they're breaking up for good. He is last seen all alone dumbfound, and outraged that he has lost his control over Heidi.
  • Cartman has one of his biggest breakdowns in "DikinBaus Hot Dogs". After stealing all of Butters’ hard-earned wages, Butters gets his revenge on Cartman for his thievery by arranging for him and his mother to move from his dream home and back into his old home, resulting in Cartman spending the entire ending crying hysterically about wanting to go back to his dream home.
• Skull Island (2023): During the Final Battle in the first season's finale, the Kraken completely loses its mind after Kong stabs its eyes out with a shipwreck; howling with hatred, and going all-out to try kill Kong with its bare limbs as quickly as possible, whereas before it was fighting him pragmatically.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man:
  • When the Master Planner's (alias Doctor Octopus) master plan falls apart, and he is briefly overwhelmed by information to boot, his reaction is relatively subtle. Rather than visibly lose his composure, his voice becomes frighteningly quiet and deranged (if his eyes were visible, they would probably be bulging) as he does everything in his power to sentence Spider-Man to his doom.
  • Shocker has one in his first big fight with Spider-Man. Beforehand and for most of the fight he's calm and jovial, confidently explaining his more professional motivations. However when Spider-Man refuses to take him seriously and just cuts into him with even more vicious jokes, Shocker loses his cool and begins blasting his gauntlets madly while screaming threats. This ends up causing the condemned building they're fighting in to collapse on top of Shocker, which was naturally exactly what Spidey was counting on.
  • Venom completely loses it when Spider-Man uses the threat of the gene cleanser in the school to forcibly remove his symbiote. He collapses into a mess crying over losing it and yelling mad phrases. Spider-Man is suitably disturbed.
• Spongebob Squarepants:
  • Squidward's Smug Snake rival, Squilliam Fancyson, gets two of these.
    • In the episode "Band Geeks", after setting Squidward up to fail for shits and giggles, seeing Squidward's band epically succeed causes him to stare in empty shock before HAVING A HEART ATTACK. Never has a Smug Snake been more brutally taken down.
    • In "House Fancy", Squidward's completely destroyed house is considered far fancier than his own and awarded several high honors for being 'artistic'. Squilliam's response is to sink to the ground and lay there crying his eyes out.
  • Krabs' megalomaniacal business rival Plankton gets several:
    • In the episode "The Algae's Always Greener", Plankton loses it when Mr. Krabs keeps on saying "And the next day." His reaction?
      Plankton: (rips off his clothes, revealing a remote control underneath) It's not worth it! It's just not worth it! (He then regains his sanity) Goodbye, everyone, I'll remember you all in therapy! (pushes button and vanishes)
    • In The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, he has one when SpongeBob begins freeing the Bikini Bottomites from his mind control helmets. He has a rough time handling it and calls out to Karen to do something, only to see she is being carried by the crowd. He then commands for King Neptune to kill SpongeBob, but he too is freed from his mind control. He tries to make a run for it, but he is then run over by the crowd while screaming in agony.
  • Then, as he is taken away by the police for his actions, he tries to cover it up with a "Just Joking" Justification, but then, just as the police car drives off with him in it, he takes it all back by screaming, "I WILL DESTROY ALL OF YOU!!!"
  • Dennis also has a bit of one in The Movie as well. He's a lot less cool and calm and a lot more prone to anger when confronting Spongebob and Patrick on top of David Hasselhoff than he was when tracking them down or his first confrontation. At this point, he was just crushed by a boot, and his loss of glasses and bandana shows more of his facial expressions.
  • Krabs himself still had a few of these, namely in "One Krab's Trash", where he has a breakdown after realizing the supposedly million-dollar #1 hat turned out to be worthless.
    Squidward: What a baby.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars; Darth Maul is a simmering pile of rage already, but he's normally able to keep his emotions under control. Not so at the end of "The Lawless", when his actions lead to Darth Sidious himself coming to Mandalore to show his former apprentice who's the real Sith Lord. Maul is reduced to a broken, sobbing mess at the end of their fight, desperately pleading for mercy as Sidious gleefully hits him with Force lightning.
  • Maul has another one in The Phantom Apprentice when he begins screaming about how the Republic and everyone in it will burn. What makes this different from many Villainous breakdowns? He's absolutely right. As he's being transported to Coruscant Palpatine executes Order 66.
• Star Wars Rebels: In "Zero Hour", Governor Pryce starts to get one when the Mandalorian fighters, led by Fenn Rau, inflict serious losses on the Imperial forces. Kallus starts taunting her about the losses, saying that Thrawn will blame her for them, so, infuriated, she orders him Thrown Out the Airlock — and it turns out he was taking advantage of her breakdown to make his escape.
• Steven Universe:
  • Peridot has a few of these, Played for Laughs, her sanity slipping as the season progresses, to the point of repeatedly screaming the word "DIE!" while trying to blast the Gems with remote lasers. She eventually resorts to kidnapping Steven to try and get off Earth. After that fails, she just sits down and laughs sadly.
  • From what little we've seen, Jasper seems to be undergoing this due to her individuality being worn away from being forced to stay fused with Lapis.
    • After they're unfused, Jasper is seen hunting down Lapis, trying to reform Malachite.
    • She had a massive breakdown at the end of "Earthlings". She tried fusing with a Gem Monster, only to unfuse and become corrupted herself. As she's slowly corrupting, she attacks Steven (who was trying to help her) and starts ranting about how every moment of her life was devoted to hating what Rose did, right before fully becoming a Gem Monster and then getting poofed.
  • On a much lesser scale, in "Beach City Drift", Kevin has one after he wins a street race versus Stevonnie... only to have them be a Graceful Loser when he tries to rub their face(s) in it. At the end — as Stevonnie drives off with a snarky parting shot — Kevin is reduced to squalling incoherently in their wake about their imagined "obsession" with him due to being incapable of taking having someone not pay attention to him, even through hate.
  • In the Season 5 finale, "Change Your Mind", White Diamond has an absolutely epic breakdown. In an effort to curtail "Pink Diamond's" rebellious streak, she removes Steven's Gem, and instead of reforming into Pink Diamond or Rose Quartz it becomes a clone of Steven that shrugs off all her attempts to zap it with her Mind Control beams and fuses with Steven again. White throws a massive tantrum on finding the one thing in the Gem Empire she can't control, and her flawless façade slips away completely.
  • In Steven Universe: The Movie, Spinel, a Gem filled with rage and hurt at being abandoned by Pink Diamond and isolated for 6000 years, has a disturbingly visceral one that kicks off the climax. After Steven manages to convince her to turn off the injector, a poor choice of words from Steven makes her believe that his attempts at helping her were a ruse to get her to turn the injector off, and now that he got what he wanted, he was going to reboot her again or worse, abandon her completely as Pink had done before. She immediately has a panic attack, claims that loving her is impossible because of how damaged she is, accuses Steven of planning to reboot her while her back was turned, and has a complete relapse that sees her turn the injector back on into overdrive, try to goad Steven into using the Rejuvenator on her, and when that fails, just flat out try to kill him. When his powers come back, allowing him to No-Sell all her attacks, she finally breaks down into Cry Laughing and then sobbing when she realizes how twisted and toxic she's become, admitting that she doesn't know why she wants to hurt Steven so badly when all he did was try to help her.
• Storm Hawks:
  • Repton is prone to these due to his temper when things aren't going his way near the end of each episode appearance. Cyclonis loses her cool at the end of the pilot and tries to shoot Aerrow with a crystal out of spite when he destroys her Doomsday Device.
  • Towards the end of the series, both Cyclonis and the Dark Ace seem to be going through a gradual Villainous Breakdown: their relationship is notably more strained in the penultimate episode than it was at the start of the series, Cyclonis in particular has begun showing signs of losing it, and they only get worse in the final episode after they've conquered the Atmos and found they still can't fully stamp out the thorns in their sides that are the Storm Hawks. It culminates in the Dark Ace, arguably Cyclonis' most faithful and devoted servant, yelling at his boss (who is known for her wrathful temper), "Do something, you arrogant witch!" And when Cyclonis starts overloading the Dark Ace with Far Side energy, all he can do is maniacally yell like a rabid dog to have more and more power poured into him even as it overloads him; whilst Cyclonis in her rage and desperation to regain her slipping power apparently doesn't notice herself getting carried away until the Dark Ace explodes from the overload.
• In Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters, the Tech Men's leader, Number One AKA Malcolm Kane, does not take it well when his plan of permanently brainwashing everyone in Charter City is ruined. While the Tech Men escape into the anonymity of their civilian identities to fight another day, Number One desperately tries to salvage his plan, only to get knocked out and arrested.
• In the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles incarnation, the episode "Insane In The Membrane" serves as a whole episode Villainous Breakdown for Baxter Stockman. His punishments for his constant failures was Shredder to reduce him to a brain in a jar, so he made himself a new body. Unfortunately, the new body begins to rot when he's in it. What is apparently hours or days later, the now half rotted and green-skinned Stockman begins having hallucinations about his childhood and his mother dying. He also promptly deludes himself into thinking April is evil, and responsible for everything wrong with his life. So Stockmanstein breaks into her apartment, takes her back to his lab, and yeah, more weird, oedipal stuff involving a cable car.
  • Shredder suffers this moments before being killed in both "Same As It Never Was" and Turtles Forever. Both scenes go about the same way:
    Shredder: No! I AM THE SHREDDER! I AM INVINCIBLE!!! I... I... NO!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!
    • He gets another one in "Exodus Part 2" when the Utrom council judges him as guilty of his crimes and prepares to exile him to the ice asteroid belt of Mor Tal, screaming at them that they aren't fit to judge him and claiming to be invincible before he is completely warped away.
• Tangled: The Series:
  • Varian undergoes one in "Secret of the Sundrop" when he completely fails to free his father with Rapunzel's hair but sees Rapunzel reunited with both her parents, prompting him to unleash a giant automaton to kill her.
  • Zhan Tiri has one when she sees Cassandra working with Rapunzel to unite the Sundrop and Moonstone to defeat her.
• Brother Blood from Teen Titans (2003) had one that progressed over each of his appearances. In his first appearance, he was usually calm and controlled his students through trickery, fear and rage. By his last apperance, he was reduced to shouting in rage over Cyborg somehow being able to defy his control. It got even worse when Cyborg kicked his butt.
  • Slade's are more subtle, owing to his being The Stoic, but the climaxes of the Seasons 1 and 2 finales both have him showing visible emotion (namely, anger) for the first time in those arcs, and when his normal cold-blooded cruelty gets mixed with that rage, the resulting actions push him even further into horrifying than he was already.
• The Big Bad Wolf in The Three Little Pigs, after his Fuller Brush Man disguise (or Jewish peddler disguise, depending on where you live in the world) fails. It also causes him to devolve back into an ordinary wolf.
  Big Bad Wolf: By the hair on your chinny-chin-chin, I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in!
• Megatron from Transformers: Animated is probably the most wily incarnation yet. He's manipulative, charismatic, and utterly badass. But in the Grand Finale "Endgame" he loses his cool when his "ultimate weapons", the "Lugnut" Supremes, are damaged and lose their flight capabilities, thus stuck on Earth.
  Megatron: Lugnut! This field test has been a complete failure! Order the clones back to the moon!
  Lugnut: I am sorry, master. The clones' flight capabilities have been disabled—
  Megatron: Then destroy the Autobots! Destroy the city! DESTROY ANYTHING THAT'S NOT ME!!!
  • The Megatron of Transformers: Armada has the "catatonia" kind of breakdown after Optimus Prime's death. Without a Worthy Opponent to challenge him, he's so despondent that he can hardly be bothered to do anything anymore.
  • The Megatron of Transformers: Prime is probably more terrifiying than his Animated conterpart. Taking charismatic and replacing it with... sadistic. He finally has a breakdown of his own after Optimus Prime destroys his new base, beating him badly in the process.
  • Unicron goes through one in the original cartoon's movie while he's blown apart by the Autobot Matrix of Leadership.
    Unicron: Destiny....you cannot destroy my...destiny!
• At the start of The Venture Bros. Season 4, Phantom Limb shows up utterly batshit crazy, with a "Revenge Society" consisting of a toaster, a coffee mug, and a black patent leather Ferragamo pump.
  • To top it all off the pump belonged to his ex, Dr. Girlfriend, who was by then Dr. Mrs. The Monarch.
  • He gets better after Professor Impossible's Face–Heel Turn and the restoration of his missing limbs, returning to his Season 2 personality and style. He then starts staffing the Revenge Society with actual supervillains (and some D-list would-be fillers).
• Dick Dastardly throws a teary tantrum at the end of the Wacky Races episode "Race Rally to Raleigh" after failing to cross the finish line:
  Dastardly: Oh, who wanted to win this old race, anyway? I DID!!! I WANTED TO WIN THE RACE!!! I NEVER GET TO WIN A RACE!!!
• While Nox in Wakfu was always pretty crazy, he snaps near the end of episode 26 after the Eliacube uses up all of the Wakfu he spent 200 years collecting in order to travel back in time to save his family — and only goes back twenty minutes. After a Big "NO!" and angrily demanding answers from the Eliacube (which he actually believes can talk), Nox almost shuts down. His breakdown is reflected by the fate of his creations: bereft of the Eliacube's Wakfu, all of them shut down and fall apart. The ending credits of episode 26 reveal that he was Driven to Suicide. Granted, he wouldn't have lasted much longer anyway without the Wakfu of the Eliacube to sustain him.
• In Winx Club, Lord Darkar gets one when Bloom returns to normal via Prince Sky's kind words of "I love you", and returns the Ultimate power back to its rightful place.
  Lord Darkar: NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! What did you do to it (the Ultimate power)?!
  Bloom: Sorry, but the Ultimate power's going back where it belongs.
  • And in response, he attempts to destroy and take his revenge on Bloom's friends and take Bloom back by spewing flames at the group, which Professor Faragonda and the other teachers deflect by putting up a magical shield around everyone, and he progressively continues spewing the flames at the shield in an attempt to break it and destroy everyone until the fairies unleash their convergence spell involving their Charmix, which allows them to conjure an expanding mass of light that causes Darkar to receive a massive Oh, Crap! moment and scream "NOOOOO!!! This can't be happening!! NOOOOOOOO!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" as the mass overwhelms him and sends him back to the chaos that spawned him where he will remain forever, and afterwards causes both his castle and Realix to start trembling and collapsing.
  • Valtor also gets one when he realizes that Bloom caused the box he kept all the magic he stole from all over the universe in to start leaking it out and returning said magic to their rightful places. He regains his Villainous Breakdown when Bloom cancels out his elemental clone attack involving the Spell of the Elements cloning four of the Red Fountain specialists by attacking him in his throne room from where she is fighting Prince Sky's clone.
  • Icy undergoes this after Bloom regains her powers. For the whole season, she's a smarmy, psychopathic Smug Snake; after Bloom gets her powers back she loses her cool, progressively screaming more and more until finally getting knocked out of the sky.
• WordGirl: Miss Power has one in "The Rise of Miss Power" when WordGirl started to use nice words instead of mean ones, and she starts to lose her power. She then begins to stutter that she never loses, and she flees Earth, so that she wouldn't be defeated.
  • Dr. Two-Brains has one in the episode "WordGirl and Bobbleboy" when he's surrounded by bobblehead replicas of WordGirl, and he starts to lose it at how many WordGirls there were.
• X-Men: The Animated Series:
  • Henry Peter Gyrich was always a little unhinged, but after years of being on the losing end of an on-and-off conflict with Professor Xavier, topped off by weeks of (offscreen) struggling with him to ratify the latest anti-mutant bill, he finally cracks in the last episode. This turns out to be the "dangerous" version, as in the space of a minute, he throws his whole reputation out the window to make things go very, very bad.
  • This is deliberately induced in Graydon Creed. Throughout Season 2, he's a Smug Snake bigot, leader of KKK expy "The Friends of Humanity" and displays no emotions beside contempt... until Wolverine shows up and recognizes Creed as the son of Sabretooth. Confronted by an image of his abusive father, Graydon falls to his knees, screaming and weeping about how he's "not like him" and how he's "normal" before grabbing a gun and shooting the hologram, even though he knows it isn't real, howling that it isn't his father. Let's not even think about what Creed endured with Sabretooth as his dad, to provoke such a strong reaction. In his last appearance in the series, he's lost it, and his fellow FoH members are tired of his failures. They offer him one last chance to redeem himself by ordering him to kill his mother Mystique and his brother Nightcrawler. When he messes that up, they punish him by leaving him at Sabretooth's doorstep. The last that is heard of Graydon Creed in the series is his pitiful whimpering as his father grabs him and says "Come to papa..."
    "YOU'RE NOT MY FATHER! YOU'RE NOT MY FATHER!!"
• Young Justice (2010): In "Secrets", Harm's sociopathic villain act falls apart when he sees his sister Greta's ghost. The Sword of Beowulf rejects him when Greta removes the purity of his evil, and Artemis easily overpowers his clumsy attempts at close combat. He even drops the Third-Person Person speech.

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