Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Fear-Induced Idiocy

Go To

"I could not look on Death, which being known, Men led me to him, blindfold and alone."
— Rudyard Kipling, "The Coward"

Fear can cloud one's judgment, but in this trope, someone's judgment is so clouded by fear that they barely even know which way is up anymore.

If played for laughs, Fear-Induced Idiocy results in harmless things, like forgetting their name, getting such a bad case of Performance Anxiety that they forget their lines even if the line was something minor like "Yes" or "No", or getting such bad test stress that they answer the questions with a Non Sequitur. It might also be downplayed by having the character be already dumb.

If played for drama, however, they might do something rash like assume someone they're scared of is a threat and kill them too soon, run into danger in an attempt to escape it (perhaps justifying Too Dumb to Live or Accidental Suicide), or it may be a symptom of a bona fide psychological disorder, such as an anxiety disorder or catatonic shock.

Sometimes used in a twist when a character thinks they're stupid, clumsy, or bad at something but it turns out that they're just afraid. Alternatively, the trope might be subverted by having a character act stupid and people assume it's just stress but it's actually something much more serious.

Subtrope of Idiot Ball. Paranoia Gambit is a subtrope for when this trope is invoked. If someone believes this trope applies to all fear, they might be a Straw Vulcan.

Compare...

Could be part of a Heroic BSoD, Deer in the Headlights, Epic Fail, One-Line Anxiety, 1-Dimensional Thinking, Remembered I Could Fly, Stop Drowning and Stand Up, Ignorant About Fire, Drives Like Crazy, Slower than a Speeding Bullet, Worf Had the Flu, and Go Mad from the Apocalypse.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Area 88: While flying through the canyon, one of the pilots got scared, flew higher, and was shot down by enemy air defense.
  • In Doraemon, the titular robot tends to go Rummage Fail on his 4-dimensional Pocket whenever he's panicking when the situation suddenly becomes tense or dangerous.
  • Subverted in Doraemon: Nobita and the Steel Troops (manga and original only), when Doraemon and gang, including Suneo's new human-sized robot Micros, have to infiltrate mirror dimension's Tokyo conquered by hostile robots, with the steel troops patrolling the streets. As everyone hides in a Blind Alley, Micros suddenly had a panic attack and runs out, right in front of an enemy robot... who simply ignores him. Turns out the steel troops had mistaken Micros for one of them, though Micros later got a scolding from Suneo for being cowardly and embarrassing him.
  • Durarara!!: Upon seeing that Shizuo Heiwajima is standing in front of him, a nameless street thug panics to the point of losing all rationality and clubs him in the head hard enough to draw blood. Shizuo being Shizuo, this proves to be a very painful mistake.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist: An unnamed member of the corrupt Military Senior Staff unleashes the Mannequin Soldiers despite a similarly unnamed scientist's warnings that the tests aren't done yet. The arrogant and smug general gets killed when he tries to command the Mannequin Soldiers, while the scientist pulls out a gun that only briefly slows them down. The scientist is too paralyzed with fear to even try fleeing for his life, becoming the next victim.
  • One Piece: In Clockwork Island Adventure movie, after seeing that her comrades were defeated, Honey Queen, despite being a Logia (an invincible force at that period of the story), decided to escape with her powers through the pipe. But Nami saw her trick earlier and redirected that pipe to a jar, trapping Honey Queen as a result.

    Comic Strips 
  • Peanuts: In one arc, Sally plays an angel for a Christmas play. Her Performance Anxiety is so bad that she flubs her single line, "Hark", as "Hockey stick!" Downplayed, though, as she was already a Dumb Blonde.

    Films — Animation 
  • Bambi: The birds hide from the hunter in the tall grass, but one has a panic attack, takes off, and immediately receives a shot from the aforementioned hunter.
  • Bambi II: When Bambi and The Great Prince are confronted by hunters, Bambi goes into a literal state of Deer in the Headlights and is unable to move from his spot, resulting in him nearly being caught. The Prince yells at him for just standing there.
  • Monsters vs. Aliens: When Susan sees an oncoming meteor, she gets so scared that she attempts to run away, only to run right in its path (keep in mind that she was well out of its direction at first). She gets crushed by it and ends up becoming a Giant Woman during her wedding.
  • Rock-A-Doodle: Snipes the Magpie has severe Claustrophobia. When he and the others are in a closed chest floating down a raging river, Snipes has a panic attack and starts poking holes in the chest, desperate for air. This causes the chest to flood and nearly drowns the group.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Aliens: When the Xenomorphs invade the main characters' hiding place, Burke makes a run for the nearest door and locks it behind him, shutting out the others in favor of saving his own skin (not just from the Xenos, but from the irate marines who've just decided he needs to pay for trying to get Ripley and Newt implanted with facehugger embryos). Not long after, he is ambushed by a lone Xenomorph, his solitude making him easy prey.
  • 47 Meters Down: Uncaged:
    • Having talked her friends into exploring the underwater ruins, Nicole ends up causing trouble by panicking at the sight of an angry cavefish and kicking wildly out of the way — a serious no-no in cave-diving. As a result, she ends up knocking over a stone column, throwing up a huge cloud of silt that leaves the friends disoriented and separated, allowing the cave sharks time to ambush them.
    • Later, the divers have finally found the rope that can lead them out of the lagoon and onto the dry land atop the surrounding cliffs. Grant advises them to proceed slowly up the rope, and though cave sharks are gathering below, they're blind and can't sense their prey if they don't move too much. However, Nicole panics again and climbs over Alexa to get to the rope; in the process, she sends Alexa tumbling back into the water, accidentally tears the rope out of its mooring, costs the divers their best chance to escape, and ends up falling back into the lagoon anyway when she loses her grip on the cliff. Not only do the sharks tear her to pieces as a result of all the kicking and screaming, but as a result of her panic, she also gets Grant and Alexa killed as well.
  • Ghostbusters II: Peter, Ray, and Egon try to get to the slime river near Dana's apartment by initially just setting up drilling equipment in the middle of the street, dressing like street workers and acting like they're on a job for the power company. This works until a police officer and an actual power company worker notice they're just drilling a random hole in the street, far away from anything they could potentially need to work on like the phone or power lines. As Peter tries to bluff them, Ray gets a sample of slime, but sees the slime forming appendages that try to grab at his feet. As Ray screams to get out of there, they pull him back up, but he accidentally breaks a pipe, which falls onto a power cable and causes a city-wide blackout, which gets them in more trouble with the law.
  • Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn: During the evacuation, Dimah Tchakova lost her nerve. The girl suggested that her teammates take advantage of their position (they are all from very important families) to evacuate out of turn. The other cadets did not support her, then Dimah approached the officer alone and reminded her of whose daughter she was. So Tchakova got into the orbital elevator without a queue ... which, after half a minute, was shot by suddenly appeared ships of the Covenant, which gets her killed.
  • Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (aka Sorcerer's Stone): When trapped in the Devil's Snare, Ron is too nervous to stop moving despite knowing that's the way to get free, and Hermione temporarily forgets that she knows a spell to make a fire without wood.
  • Interstellar: Dr. Mann, unable to handle the pressure and isolation of his space mission, fakes promising results to trick the Endurance crew into retrieving him, before hijacking one of their landers with the intent of stranding them on a hostile ice planet while saving himself (all the while, trying to justify his cowardice over the comms as "necessary to complete the mission" even though he's the one jeopardizing it). Unfortunately for him, the Properly Paranoid robot TARS already disabled the lander's docking computer, forcing Mann to try docking to Endurance manually. The resulting imperfect seal ends up causing an explosive depressurization that sucks Mann into deep space.
  • Jason X: After seeing her boyfriend murdered in front of her by Jason Voorhees, Kinsa spends the rest of the film in a state of Cloudcuckoolander Heroic BSoD. When the survivors try to escape the Grendel via a shuttle and Jason kills the pilot Fat Lou as he's setting up the shuttle for launch, all of the survivors can hear the slaughter over the radio and Kinsa completely snaps and tries to launch the shuttle herself... while the fuel line is still connected (a fact that the rest of the survivors tell her repeatedly as they plea for her to stop). The result: the shuttle collides with the Grendel and the resulting explosion kills her and seriously damages the ship.
  • Lone Wolf and Cub: In Baby Cart In Peril, Itto has taken the local Lord Owari hostage after a failed attempt to quell their persecution of a Gomune village by revealing the late Enki's nature as a rapist and why his death at Oyuki's hands was necessary. Their pursuers try killing off the Lone Wolf and his Cub with a volley of gunpowder fire. Owari takes cover with them for a time but loses himself to fear and exits his hiding spot to try and stand the shooters down. He's unceremoniously wiped out by the volley that follows.
  • The Lost World: Jurassic Park: After the T-rex attacks the camp, several characters take refuge in a small cave behind a waterfall, where they are just out of its reach, though all understandably terrified. However, one of them, Burke, has a snake slither into his clothes, and freaks out, jumping around trying to get rid of it — which brings him within reach of the hungry dino's jaws. Burke (and, presumably, the unlucky snake) promptly become lunch. To make it worse, the snake was a harmless milk snake, meaning he'd have been fine if he had managed to control himself.
  • Lucy: The eponymous protagonist begins her journey to godhood suddenly forced into a Fantastic Drug drop-off that leads to her being surrounded by corpses, guns, and An Offer You Can't Refuse. By this point, she's so terrified she can barely hiccup her refusal before one of the mobsters knocks her out since they're not asking for her help. Here, the movie segues to a large "0%", showing how she was so afraid she wasn't even using her brain (as opposed to the events that will lead her to unlocking its full potential).
  • The Mummy (1999): Beni is a sniveling coward that will try and avoid danger in any way he can at a moment's notice: electing to flee at first instinct and abandoning his fellow Legionnaires (Rick included) to die at the hands of their enemies during the Battle at Hamunaptra in the past and helping Imhotep out of cowardly self-preservation. His greed doesn't help him much either. It literally comes back to bite him when he ends up trapped in Hamunaptra's treasure chamber with a mob of scarabs that eat him alive. The main catch is that his cowardice and greed caused Genre Blindness: he was fully convinced that Imhotep would spare him, even after he slowly and diligently robbed from his temple. Everyone would run away the second Imhotep is away but falsely convinced Beni couldn't stopped because of his avarice (the only Beni's feeling that is stronger than his cowardice).
  • Night of the Living Dead (1990): A recurring subplot is the group of survivors planning to refuel the truck at a nearby gas pump to escape. When Tom and Judy attempt to pull off the plan while the zombies are swarming in, Tom discovers that none of the keys on the key ring match the lock for the pump. In a blind panic, he attempts to Shoot Out the Lock, and instead punctures the hose, sending fuel spraying onto the lit torch in the bed of the truck, causing everything to explode. (The original 1968 movie counts to a lesser degree — a similar fire is caused, but the movie doesn't portray the lock-shooting as an obviously stupid action everyone was telling Tom to not do.)
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: After being separated into two hanging cages by the Cannibal Tribe, the crew of the Black Pearl begin an escape attempt by swinging their cages to the opposite cliff face and ascending the vines to freedom. Unfortunately, the Pearl only needs six people to make it off the island, turning the whole thing into a race to not get left behind. While ascending, the ringleader of the second cage accidentally grabs a snake instead of a vine and screams, prompting his fellow pirates to panic as well... and let go of their vines, sending them plummeting to their deaths. Worse still, the commotion alerts a passing tribesman, leaving Will and the remaining crew fleeing for their lives with the cannibals in hot pursuit.
  • Pulp Fiction: Pumpkin and Yolanda's attempts to rob the coffee shop go horribly wrong when one of the customers turns out to be Jules, who holds Pumpkin at gunpoint, causing Yolanda to panic and threaten to open fire if any harm comes to him. Fortunately, Jules is planning on turning over a new leaf and decides to end the conflict peacefully by giving them all his money; unfortunately, Vincent walks in and proceeds to undermine all of Jules' efforts by threatening to shoot Pumpkin "on general principle" if Jules gives him the money. As Jules screams at Vincent to shut the fuck up, a panicking Yolanda attempts to hold both Jules and Vincent at gunpoint Guns Akimbo-style, despite only having one handgun, leaving her gesturing uselessly with her empty left hand; for good measure, Yolanda's so freaked-out she doesn't even notice her mistake.
  • Tremors: Poor Nestor was panicked when the Graboids attacked the town of Perfection, and he wasn't thinking too clearly, or he might have realized that sitting in the hollow of a tire on the ground wasn't exactly out of range of the subterranean monsters. He's dragged screaming underground even as the others try to point out the obvious flaw in his choice of hiding place.

    Literature 
  • In the novel of 2001: A Space Odyssey, this is actually a key reason for HAL-9000's villainy. When HAL starts making mistakes as a result of an unforeseen Logic Bomb, his human shipmates discuss the possibility that he might have to be shut down so they can work out what went wrong with him. Unfortunately, HAL doesn't know that being shut down is simply the computer equivalent of being sedated for surgery, instead believing it to mean death — and panics. Consequently, he tries to destroy the "faulty" component that would confirm his mistake by launching one of the ship's pods at Frank Poole while he's retrieving it, apparently trying to get him to lose the component in space... only to accidentally hit Frank instead, killing him. And when Dave Bowman decides to revive the crewmembers in stasis to handle the emergency, HAL's response is to try to kill everyone onboard in a delusional attempt to save himself.
  • "Straw, coal, and bean" of The Brothers Grimm. If Coal had calmly walked along the Straw, they would have continued their journey. But no, it was necessary, having heard the splash of water under you, to stop in the middle and yell: "I'm afraid of water, I'm afraid of water!" The straw, of course, while he was shouting, ignited, and the failed travelers drowned in the stream.
  • Discworld: Played for Horror in "The Amazing Maurice", wherein if a talking rat gets sufficiently scared, they go mute and lose their sapience.
  • Dune: The Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear is a mantra that is recited to allow a person to mentally overcome their fear and face whatever is causing it, while invoking the concept.
    "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
  • Every Thing On It: In the poem "Openin' Night", a woman is so overcome by Performance Anxiety that she ends up flubbing her line as "meow" when she's supposed to say "moo", which gets her laughed at by the audience.
  • A Series of Unfortunate Events: In "The Reptile Room", when the deliberately-misnamed Incredibly Deadly Viper bites Sunny (a baby), Mr. Poe is scared senseless due to thinking that it really is dangerous. He begins "babbling" contradictory instructions (e.g. first saying not to touch Sunny, then saying to grab her, and later saying to leave the snake alone, but then to give it some food or lure it away.)
  • Under the Magician's Spell: You can be faced with choosing two different paths in a strange dimension; one to safety, one to doom. You tell your friend Sid, and little sister Joanie to wait while you explore a path, and if it turns out to be the Doom Path, you'll scream before you die, and then they can take the other one. However, if you do choose the wrong path (which is by chance, by the way) your Heroic Sacrifice fails miserably, as you become so scared you forget to scream, and suddenly remember a second before you die, and realize you have caused your friend and sister's deaths.
  • Wulfrik: During a raid on a Chaos Dwarf fortress, Wulfrik's men find statues enchanted to cause fear in anyone who looks at them. Being Norscans, they don't flee as mere southerners might... but since what they do is charge the statues and attack them, tiring themselves out and blunting their weapons, it's not much better. Even Wulfrik killing one doesn't stop them, and the dwarfs use the distraction to attack unimpeded until Wulfrik gets Zarnath to break the spell.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Book of Boba Fett: When Boba Fett is captured by Tuskens and tied up, he manages to cut the ropes and offers to do the same for a Rodian the Tuskens had also captured. The Rodian alerts the Tuskens to Boba's escape. The Rodian later dies when the Tuskens have him digging for water.
  • The Brittas Empire:
    • When Carole notices that someone has taken her baby, her actions will be clouded by her resultant fear. Special point goes to "Back from the Dead" where she ends up mistaking a baby doll that Brittas had bought in Bulgaria for the aforementioned baby, to the point of attacking his car with an excavator (under the belief that he was going to use the baby as a source to both get back into the world of the living and for eternal youth) even as he shows her the doll.
    • In "Safety First", a fire starts in the leisure centre, and the customers are misdirected by Linda (who is unaware of the fire, but currently doing safety drills for the centre) into thinking that they can't go down past the third floor. The panicking crowd ends up all on the same ladder in a disused room to get down, in spite of the fact that the ladder is designed to handle only 8 people and the crowd is of a higher number than that. Special mention goes to Councillor Dapping, who tells everyone to get off as the ladder can't handle the weight... whilst on the ladder. Naturally, everyone ends up injured when the ladder breaks.
  • Doctor Who: In "The Poison Sky", Donna gets brought up to the Sontaran command ship when they seize the TARDIS. The Doctor tries to guide her through the rooms until she gets to a door which is activated by a hand-shaped button. Startled by being on an alien spaceship, she forgets the fact she has three fingers.
  • Fargo: Season One: in the final episode, Lester Nygaard goes on the run after being implicated for his wife's murder. When the police catch up to him at the Canadian border, he panics and tries to flee on foot across a frozen lake, ignoring the sign reading "Danger: Thin Ice" and the repeated shouted warnings of the police. As a result he ends up falling through the ice to his death.
  • Farscape: In "Liars, Guns, And Money Part 1", Stark begins to panic once he realizes that his carefully planned Shadow Depository heist is spiralling out of control — especially since it means that Scorpius is now hot on the crew's collective tails — resulting in his Mission Control beginning to deteriorate. This comes to a head when Zhaan and Chiana find themselves trapped at a doorway with guards closing in, whereupon Stark freaks out and smashes the console he was using to help the others, forcing D'Argo to knock him out, then put the whole console together again from scratch in record time.
  • In Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, much of Truman Capote's self-destructive behavior is attributed to fear — he enters into a toxic relationship with John O'Shea because he's afraid of being alone, he betrays his friends' confidence by writing an unflattering story about them because he's afraid of running out of money, and in "The Secret Inner Life of Swans", he claims that he drinks heavily because he's terrified of everything.
  • Invoked several times in The Irrational, where Alec Mercer frequently points out how fear can impair judgment and cause people to make bad decisions. For example, in "Lucky Charms", his former student Camille Lawson ends up in financial trouble after her fear of losing a big poker game caused her to bet more money than she could afford in a desperate attempt to stay in the game, which kicked off a string of bad decisions that now threatens to put her mother's house in foreclosure.
  • Odd Squad: During the Ring Toss section of the O Games, Otto begins to panic because he doesn't want to get hit by a robot princess. Not wanting to be disqualified, he goes from playing defense throughout the entire game to throwing all ten of his rings backward in the hopes that he'll score some points. He quickly realizes that wasn't the best course of action and rushes to catch his rings before they can be stolen, but manages to get all ten rings around one robot princess, score 100 points, and be the first contestant to qualify for the final round anyway.
  • Sesame Street: In one episode, Jack from the Nursery Rhyme "Jack be Nimble", Jack tries to jump eight candlesticks. When he fails, he gets so nervous about failing again, he forgets how to jump entirely.
  • In the first-season finale of Son of a Critch, Mark's father and grandfather are both seized by fears of financial ruin (as Mike Sr. has heard a rumor that his radio show is being replaced with a music program while Pop is paranoid about the government's plans to replace dollar banknotes with dollar coins.) Consequently, both behave erratically, with Pop trying to hoard dollar banknotes while Mike Sr. tries desperately to get caught up on the latest music trends in the hopes of becoming a disc jockey.
  • Squid Game: During the first game, "Red Light, Green Light" (where you need to stand still when the doll announces "red light"), participants panicked when they realised that being eliminated from the game means getting killed. Many of them started to run in panic and were shot immediately as a result.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In one episode, Nog is so nervous in front of his crush Varis that he introduces himself as "Jog", and then "Jake", which is actually his best friend's name.
  • Trailer Park Boys: Philadelphia "Phil" Collins is already pretty stupid by default, but in one part of Season 7 when he finds himself being held hostage at gunpoint by Sam Losco after A) being late with his rent and B) calling Sam a caveman (a sure-fire way to make him angry), he starts panicking. Sam then orders him to drive his RV out of the trailer park until he's ready to negotiate, only for a nervous Phil to end up driving in a really clumsy way, crashing into stationary obstacles in front and behind of him.
    Sam: Oh, nice fuck-up, Phil!
    Phil: Shut up, Flintstone, I'm under a lot of pressure here.
    Ricky: (who's none too happy with Sam for shooting him in the foot recently) That's what happens when you kidnap a dinosaur, you fucking cave-dwelling prick!

    Multi-Media Franchises 
  • Transformers:
    • Invoked by Dirge, the morose Decepticon Seeker (especially based on the original G1 Dirge). His engines generate a low-frequency hum that affects the part of the brain that controls fear, causing his enemies to at best feel a sense of unease or at worse go into a terrified panic. This makes them easy pickings for Dirge or his Conehead wingmates Thrust and Ramjet. On the other hand, when confronted by someone unaffected by his powers (e.g. strong-willed individuals like Optimus Prime, Megatron, or Grimlock) Dirge unfortunately becomes victim to them himself, sending him fleeing.
    • One of the factors that make Starscream genuinely dangerous despite being, well, The Starscream is that the various incarnations of Starscream throughout the franchise generally don't represent this trope. While Starscream is nearly always a Dirty Coward, he rarely lets his cowardice get the better of him (his more significant flaw is his Chronic Backstabbing Disorder). One notable occasion was in Marvel's The Transformers, where he was returned to life as a powerful Pretender as part of Megatron's plan to regain leadership of the Decepticons from Scorponok. Despite being powerful enough to fight both Optimus Prime and Scorponok as well as several other Autobots and Decepticons simultaneously, when Megatron's brainwashing wore off he immediately begged for his life and pledged allegiance to Scorponok.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In One Page Rules' Grimdark Future, unit squads that have been taken to half strength or less must do a bravery test to maintain unit cohesion — if they lose the test, they immediately run away and off the board, leaving their army behind. Units who are considered fearless either can do a reroll (but are subject to the same results if they lose) or automatically pass the test but lose a hit point (in a game in which most units are a One-Hit-Point Wonder — representing things such as Heroic RRoD or summary execution of a squad soldier for cowardice).
  • Warhammer 40,000: A squad has a morale stat, and when it drops enough the squad is considered "broken", forcing them to flee until they can rally and reform their ranks. This can lead to them fleeing from cover and leaving themselves open to further attacks from ranged enemy units. Some squads are completely immune to this, with reasons ranging from a literal lack of fear like the Necrons or Tyranids, to sheer strength of will like the Space Marines or some units of the Imperial Guard.
    • Dark Heresy and its sister games have tables of fear effects that can occur through exposure to particularly horrible events, frightening monsters and Supernatural Fear Inducers. The most extreme results can see characters collapse into whimpering heaps, flee blindly in terror, scream and vomit uncontrollably, or go berserk and start attacking everyone around them.

    Video Games 
  • Dawn of War: Like in the source material, units have a morale meter. When depleted, the unit will break and retreat to the nearest rally point or defensible position in an attempt to reform their lines. If they happen to already be in cover, they'll abandon said cover and retreat to the nearest point where they aren't at risk of enemy attack, meaning they might be under enemy fire all the way to their rally point. Luckily, broken units gain a bonus to evasion and defense, ensuring that generally some of the unit members will reach a rallying point and rally, allowing the player to replenish their ranks and bring it back up to full strength.
  • Epic Mickey: In a flashback, the Wasteland floods with paint thinner. As a World-Wrecking Wave occurs, several townspeople run for their lives, except for one guy resembling Goofy, who just stands frozen in fear. After the wave passes by, he has disappeared, implying that the thinner caused him to melt.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, the Endwalker main story includes a section where the heroes are trying to bring much-needed aid and supplies to Garlemald after it has been devastated by a civil war. But years of propaganda have made the people of Garlemald terrified of the Eorzeans, seeing them as liars and conquerors who would press them into slavery. A teenage girl named Licinia and her sickly sister would rather take their chances venturing into the frozen wilderness than accept aid from the Eorzeans. This ends in the girls' deaths when they're ambushed by wild beasts before the heroes can catch up to them.
  • Haunt the House: While the player must scare the house's residents in order to drive them out the door, scaring them too much can instead make them run to a window and jump out.
  • Jurassic Park: The Game: Miles Chadwick is a Dirty Coward who decided to sacrifice Nima to the Dilophosaurs to save himself and run away like hell. But the schmuck was so scared that he forgot that the Dilophosaurs react less like intelligent beings and more like the feral predators they are so instead of targeting the easy prey, they're far more interested in a fleeing target that broke from its "pack" which promptly gets him killed.
  • League of Legends has a type of soft crowd control called Fear that forces affected units to walk away from the champion causing the effect, and disables abilities and summoner spells, while also applying a slow.
  • Mass Effect 3: During the "Leviathan" DLC, on the mission to retrieve Ann Bryson, two of her companions panic while under Reaper assault and try to run for it. They don't get far.
  • Plants vs. Zombies: Scaredy-shroom hides in the ground and stops shooting if there are zombies on any of the neighboring eight cells. Which makes him a very easy prey as a result.
  • The Secret World: In the wake of the Fog's arrival around Solomon Island, most of Innsmouth Academy's staff panicked in the face of all the supernatural terrors and tried to flee the island by boat, even though all of them were trained magi who knew of the academy's defences. They left behind only Headmaster Montag, Annabel Usher, and the only surviving student, Carter, who all survived by virtue of bunkering down in the heavily-warded admin office. By contrast, the mission "The Strange Boathouse In The Mist" reveals that the fleeing faculty members were all killed in their escape attempt, either by the animated scarecrows wandering the countryside, the revenants that followed, or the Deep Ones patrolling the waterways.
  • In The Sims, if a fire breaks out near a Sim, they will usually panic and run towards the fire instead of evacuating (and in fact, they will usually ignore any attempt to force them to evacuate.)
  • Tomb Raider II: The "40 Fathoms" level begins with a cutscene of Lara hitching a ride on the outside of a Fiamma Nera submersible. The pilot of the submarine is about to yank Lara off with a mechanical claw when he sees a great white shark swimming in the direction of his cockpit glass and freaks out. While great whites are notorious apex predators, the guy was inside a fairly large metal vehicle that would've adequately protected him from the big fish. Nevertheless, the panicked pilot veers away — and right into an underwater cliff, wrecking the sub. Ironically, it's only after this happens that the shark circles back around to the sub to eat the dead pilot now that the glass is no longer blocking the way.
  • Total War: Used as a mechanic in the series in the form of the morale meter. When a unit's morale meter is depleted, this causes them to break and flee from a fight. This sometimes leads to units abandoning defensible locations and running into open ground in their desperation to flee, making them easy pickings for pursuing enemies (especially light cavalry). If a player's army is made up of units with naturally low morale, this can lead to a disastrous cascading effect where one unit's panicked retreat causes the panic to spread, causing the army to effectively disintegrate as everyone scrambles to get away.
  • Warframe: Nekros is a Warframe whose second ability, Terrify, forces enemies to disengage from combat and temporarily strip them of their armor.
  • In the X-COM series, hits to Will and psionic attacks can cause your soldiers to panic or go berserk, causing them to take random actions on their own. When this happens, there's a good chance they'll do something tactically stupid, like running out of cover, taking extremely inaccurate shots, skipping their turn, dropping their weapon, or even committing friendly fire.

    Web Animation 
  • DEATH BATTLE!: This is how the Koopa meets its demise in the episode "Goomba vs. Koopa". After a kick sends it sliding across the ground, the Koopa — too timid to come out of its shell and stop itself — ends up sliding right into a lava pit.
  • GoAnimate: Whenever the troublemaker of the day is about to attack their victim, their victim will just freeze on the spot and repeat a multitude of no's. Their inaction allows the troublemaker to beat them up.
  • Happy Tree Friends: Considering how Too Dumb to Live the characters can be, this is a rather common occurrence:
  • RWBY has this in spades with General Ironwood near the end of Volume 7. His already fraying sanity due to his issues with paranoia, and inability to really understand the machinations of his opponent Salem makes him an easy target for eroding his mind. This eventually reaches a breaking point after Salem baits him by claiming she was intending to invade Atlas (which is true, but not for the reasons Ironwood thinks). Combined with the perceived betrayal of Team RWBY (Who are trying desperately to get him to calm down and see sense), Ironwood completely snaps and falls into making bad decision after bad decision based on his fear, which he hides behind the facade of cold logic throughout Volume 8. This makes him pathetically easy to manipulate by Watts and Cinder, who exploit his weaknesses so thoroughly that he basically ensures the Fall of Atlas. The only reason things aren't worse is only because of the work of Team RWBYJNPR and the Happy Huntresses in trying to mitigate the damage.

    Web Videos 
  • Dragon Ball Z Abridged: a Running Gag during the Freeza arc is Krillin openly saying things he shouldn't to or within earshot of the enemies, which he does because of how scared he is. This includes telling Vegeta about Guru giving Gohan a power boost and telling the Ginyu Force the location of the Dragon Balls. Piccolo and Gohan have to stop him from spilling anything to Freeza.
  • Pop Cross Studios: In this video, both Clayton Costuss and his father are afraid of germs and getting dirty, and their fear attracts the attention of Mysomucus, a gigantic germ demon. After it intimidates them by surrounding their house with a cloud of allergy-inducing spores, running all over their surface with its dirty hands, and rubbing mucus and mud into their faces, Clayton is able to overcome his fear enough to stand up and try fighting back or escaping, but his father is so paralyzed with fear that he refuses to get up, staying cowering in the corner where the demon found him. Mysomucus ate Clayton's father alive where he lay.
  • Smosh: In "My Pet Pikachu", Pikachu (who turns out to be a hobo in disguise) shoots out an orb of electricity to neutralize a fire, only for Ian to step in the orb's path. He just stands there panicking, even though the orb is clearly moving slowly enough for him to step out of the way, much to Anthony's annoyance. Ian then gets comically electrocuted.

    Western Animation 

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top