History VillainousBreakdown / ComicBooks

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* ComicBook/{{Venom}} (Eddie Brock), in an issue of SpiderMan, suffers a villainous breakdown after he recieves a touch of death from another villain. Eddie Brock is unharmed as his body is protected by the symbiote but the symbiote itself seemingly dies as it melts into a lifeless, motionless, puddle. Brock, who up to this point has lost everything and now the only friend he had is dead, breaks down and cries for his fallen partner. Even Spider-Man, who has been stalked and tormented relentlessly by Venom, can't help but to feel sorry for Brock. Although, the symbiote would soon recover.

* ComicBook/TheRiddler has a grand one when he decides to deal with [[TheFlash Impulse]]. After a bad encounter with TheFlash and Comicbook/{{Robin}}[[note]]Riddler had bailed from Gotham following the events of ComicBook/BatmanNoMansLand[[/note]], Edward heads for Manchester to deal with Impulse, thinking he can easily outwit the protege of the Scarlet Speedster and one of the Boy Wonder's closest allies. Instead, poor Eddie is left a blabbering mess with Bart utterly ignores every sign that the Riddler wants him (too busy playing video games), Bart's inability to recognize who he was (he mistakes him for TheQuestion, Mr. Freeze and Abra Kadabra), outwitting his traps without thinking (before he's done reading off his first clue, Bart comes back with the bombs by looking under every porch in town. And finds his other bombs while he was at it!) and ultimately saves his captives by retaping his last clue that he tore up. His comment after revealing the second set of bombs sells it, though:

* ComicBook/TheRiddler has a grand one when he decides to deal with [[TheFlash Impulse]]. After a bad encounter with TheFlash and Comicbook/{{Robin}}[[note]]Riddler had bailed from Gotham following [[ComicBook/BatmanNoMansLand the quake[[/note]], Edward heads for Manchester to deal with Impulse, thinking he can easily outwit the protege of the Scarlet Speedster and one of the Boy Wonder's closest allies. Instead, poor Eddie is left a blabbering mess with Bart utterly ignores every sign that the Riddler wants him (too busy playing video games), Bart's inability to recognize who he was (he mistakes him for TheQuestion, Mr. Freeze and Abra Kadabra), outwitting his traps without thinking (before he's done reading off his first clue, Bart comes back with the bombs by looking under every porch in town. And finds his other bombs while he was at it!) and ultimately saves his captives by retaping his last clue that he tore up. His comment after revealing the second set of bombs sells it, though:

** If you read the issue, its art suggests that Snively is [[WhattheHellHero calling Sonic out]] for putting [[spoiler:Dr. Robotnik, or Eggman if you prefer,]] in that condition to begin with.

*** As well, despite snapping himself out of it, [[spoiler:Dr. Eggman]] has yet to really recover from the moment, going so far as to [[spoiler:leave the Freedom Fighters to grieve at Antoine's seeming death instead of wiping them out right then and there.]] It pisses Snively off so much he pulls a ScrewThisImOuttaHere and decides to handle things ''his'' way again.

** And as of Siege #3, it's happened. Though after all the buildup it was given and the ''masterful'' snap he had in Thunderbolts, readers found this one ([[spoiler: A painted up face, jeans and a t-shirt under the armor, and nonsensical babbling about how his plans to save everything from the Void had been ruined]]) more than a little underwhelming. The part ''before'' that ([[spoiler: where he flat-out orders Sentry to bring down ''the entire floating city of Asgard'']]) was much better.

* The Riddler has a grand one when he decides to deal with [[TheFlash Impulse]]. After a bad encounter with TheFlash and Comicbook/{{Robin}}[[note]]Riddler had bailed from Gotham following [[ComicBook/BatmanNoMansLand the quake[[/note]], Edward heads for Manchester to deal with Impulse, thinking he can easily outwit the protege of the Scarlet Speedster and one of the Boy Wonder's closest allies. Instead, poor Eddie is left a blabbering mess with Bart utterly ignores every sign that the Riddler wants him (too busy playing video games), Bart's inability to recognize who he was (he mistakes him for TheQuestion, Mr. Freeze and Abra Kadabra), outwitting his traps without thinking (before he's done reading off his first clue, Bart comes back with the bombs by looking under every porch in town. And finds his other bombs while he was at it!) and ultimately saves his captives by retaping his last clue that he tore up. His comment after revealing the second set of bombs sells it, though:

* In the crossover ''ComicBook/SpiderMan / ComicBook/{{Batman}}'', Carnage has a spectacular one. Near the end of the story, he has Batman at his mercy and Spidey unable to act. Then, TheJoker reappears holding a Jack-In-The-Box and ready to pop it open and unleash a deadly virus, ''[[TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou all because he won't let anyone else kill the Batman]]''. Carnage, a mass murderer himself, flies into a magnificent panic and giving Batman the opening to free himself and take him down and allowing Spidey to stop the Joker.

* The Riddler has a grand one when he decides to deal with [[TheFlash Impulse]]. After a bad encounter with TheFlash and {{Robin}}[[note]]Riddler had bailed from Gotham following [[ComicBook/BatmanNoMansLand the quake[[/note]], Edward heads for Manchester to deal with Impulse, thinking he can easily outwit the protege of the Scarlet Speedster and one of the Boy Wonder's closest allies. Instead, poor Eddie is left a blabbering mess with Bart utterly ignores every sign that the Riddler wants him (too busy playing video games), Bart's inability to recognize who he was (he mistakes him for TheQuestion, Mr. Freeze and Abra Kadabra), outwitting his traps without thinking (before he's done reading off his first clue, Bart comes back with the bombs by looking under every porch in town. And finds his other bombs while he was at it!) and ultimately saves his captives by retaping his last clue that he tore up. His comment after revealing the second set of bombs sells it, though:

* Joe Dalton tends to go through one of these whenever someone mentions the name ComicBook/LukcyLuke in his presence. Usually inverted, as it tends to happen at the beginning of an episode, and as soon as he regains his calm, he devices a plan to break out of the CardboardPrison, starting the plot.

* [[UltimateMarvel Ultimate]] Magneto suffers a breakdown at the climax of ''Ultimatum'' when Jean Grey shares Nick Fury's memories with him and he learns that [[spoiler: the existence of mutants was just an accidental byproduct of a SuperSoldier experiment]]. This information shatters Magneto's delusions of grandeur and he completely loses the will to fight.

* Joe Dalton tends to go through one of these whenever someone mentions the name LuckyLuke in his presence. Usually inverted, as it tends to happen at the beginning of an episode, and as soon as he regains his calm, he devices a plan to break out of the CardboardPrison, starting the plot.

* In the crossover ''ComicBook/SpiderMan / ComicBook/{{Batman}}'', Carnage has a spectacular one. Near the end of the story, he has Batman at his mercy and Spidey unable to act. Then, TheJoker reappears holding a Jack-In-The-Box and ready to pop it open and unleash a deadly virus, ''all because he won't let anyone else kill the Batman''. Carnage, a mass murderer himself, flies into a magnificent panic and giving Batman the opening to free himself and take him down and allowing Spidey to stop the Joker.

* SelfDemonstrating/TheJoker suffered a truly epic one in ''ComicBook/EmperorJoker''. Let's recap: He steals [[RealityWarper Mr.]] [[GreatGazoo Mxyzptlk's]] powers, turns the ''entire universe'' into his playground, his abuse of the power begins the [[EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt end of Time, Space, and Existence]], and he tears Superman's heart out and eats it. [[spoiler: As he lies dying, Superman dares Joker to kill Batman. Joker does so, but right after he does, Batman reappears, good as new. Confused, Joker tries it again and again, growing increasingly frantic as Batman repeatedly comes back, going as far as to [[BreakingTheFourthWall beg the writers and artists to let him finish Batman off]]. Superman [[HannibalLecture taunts him, revealing that despite having all that power, Joker is still nothing but a clown, unable to do anything useful with his life and needing Batman to have any purpose at all]]. As Joker breaks down, Mxyzptlk uses the opening to take his powers back and fix everything.]]

** He also suffers from this in Brian Azzarello's ''{{Joker}}''. You can see it briefly when he trashes the bar after Harvey Dent doesn't take his phone call, but he finally reaches breaking point at the end when [[spoiler: Batman turn his HannibalLecture back on him, causing him to fly into a blind rage and shoot his own loyal henchman.]]

** Later comics in "Comicbook/DarkReign" made it pretty clear that for all Norman's VillainWithGoodPublicity act, he was most of the time a hop, skip and jump away from a full psychotic breakdown. And having to maintain a good public reputation as the head of the Initiative only helped slowly push him closer to one. As was particularly cruelly lampshaded in a HannibalLecture delivered to Norman by the Molecule Man, it was a default position amongst the main players of the Marvel Universe that it wasn't not so much a question of "Will Norman crack under the strain?" as "''When'' will Norman crack under the strain?" Several of them were waiting for his breakdown since he first took power.

*** Fleetway's Dr. Robotnik did it about 8-9 years earlier, for much the same reasons. During the Sonic Adventure storyline, he cracks and goes from wanting to conquer the world to just flat-out destroying it because he sees it as the only way to rid himself of Sonic.

* Kingpin in ''[[UltimateSpiderMan Ultimate Spider-Man]]''; after being completely in control through the entire series, manipulating everyone and getting away with murdering someone with his bare hands and taping it, his schemes are thwarted by [[spoiler:Daredevil holding the only thing he cares about, his comatose wife, hostage]]. As he's on the way to a flight to leave the country, he has a VillainousBreakdown during which he orders his henchmen to ''bomb a high school while it's in session''.

** Kingpin's first story arc in ''[[UltimateSpiderMan Ultimate Spider-Man]]'' also played this trope for laughs. After spending several issues as a smug, collected crime boss, he's reduced to a screaming, enraged fit when Spider-Man attacks him with a barrage of [[YouAreFat "You're so fat" jokes.]]

* At the end of ''{{Comicbook/Hellboy}}'': ''Conqueror Worm'', even though all his plans have failed and he is now nothing but a ghost, Rasputin still believes that he will be the one to release the Ogdru Jahad and bring about Ragnarok. However, he is confronted by the godess Hecate, who bluntly [[BreakThemByTalking tells him that he is completely insignificant in the grand scheme of things,]] that Hellboy is the only one with the power that he seeks and that even, after summoning him to Earth, he has no control over him. Rasputin flies into such a rage that he appears to be on the verge of attacking Hecate before she obliterates him with a wave of her hand.

* In ''Comicbook/{{Superman}}[=/=]Comicbook/{{Batman}}'', when [[PresidentEvil President]] Lex Luthor's scheme to smash a Kryptonite asteroid into the Earth fails, Luthor (who was the U.S. President at the time) uses a variant combination of the "super-steroid" Venom (a chemical associated with the Batman villain Bane), liquid synthetic Kryptonite, and an Apokoliptian battlesuit to go on a violent rampage. This, unsurprisingly, gets him impeached.

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** Kingpin's first story arc in ''[[UltimateSpiderMan Ultimate Spider-Man]]'' also played this trope for laughs. After spending several issues as a smug, collected crime boss, he's reduced to a screaming, enraged fit when [[spoiler: Spider-Man attacks him with a barrage of "You're so fat" jokes.]]

* Venom (Eddie Brock), in an issue of SpiderMan, suffers a villainous breakdown after he recieves a touch of death from another villain. Eddie Brock is unharmed as his body is protected by the symbiote but the symbiote itself seemingly dies as it melts into a lifeless, motionless, puddle. Brock, who up to this point has lost everything and now the only friend he had is dead, breaks down and cries for his fallen partner. Even Spider-Man, who has been stalked and tormented relentlessly by Venom, can't help but to feel sorry for Brock. Although, the symbiote would soon recover.

* DoctorDoom suffered a pretty huge one in one story. At one point he had Reed Richards imprisoned in a torture room full of mirrors placed in such a way that the warped reflections would drive anyone crazy. At the start, he's classic arrogant gloating Doom. By the end of the story a few issues later, he's beating the crap out of Reed while screaming and ranting about how much he hates Reed. The fight takes them to the torture room, and Reed removes Doom's mask. Seeing thousands of warped reflections of his own scarred face drives Doom insane.