Lizzie Borden took an axe,
and gave her mother forty whacks.
And when he saw what she had done,
she gave her father forty-one.
and gave her mother forty whacks.
And when he saw what she had done,
she gave her father forty-one.
— American Nursery Rhyme note
An "ax-crazy" character is someone who is psychologically unstablenote and presents a clear and present danger to others. They are capable of extreme violence, whether carried out with a Slasher Smile, insane laughter, speaking in a Creepy Monotone and/or Word-Salad Horror, or out and out murderous rage; and with no way of knowing just what will set them off, this makes them extremely frightening to deal with. This mainly differentiates them from other eccentric characters who may themselves be obsessive, weird or seemingly crazy, but use this condition hand in hand with doing good, or at least not being in the way. However, some formerly established heroes can go through an episode of ax-craziness and still retain their heroic mantle.
Despite the title, ax-crazies aren't limited to wielding axes. Any instrument of death will do, from knives or straight razors to swords to chainsaws and beyond. A good number of other ax-crazies are also Trigger-Happy, preferring either Hand Cannons that blow really big holes in people, or weapons that allow them to kill lots of people with reckless abandon, such as any automatic weapon. And for the truly disturbed for whom the above just won't do, a heaping helping of high explosives or a good-sized flamethrower will do quite nicely. Sometimes, they don't even need weapons and just use magic spells or other powers if they have them. There are also plenty who are just as happy to beat people into an unrecognizable pulp-like mass with their bare hands. Less outwardly violent and unstable examples are likely to be the vindictive and vengeful sort; any sort of petty slight (real or imagined) is likely to trigger a Disproportionate Retribution, and these types tend to be the more dangerous variety due to the lengths to which they will go to carry out their revenge and make the party who attracted their wrath suffer.
It is rare for a truly Ax-Crazy character to be a protagonist, largely due to it being a Sub-Trope of Obviously Evil, and most Ax-Crazy characters usually are Obviously Evil. They're common as the antagonists in Superhero and Crime and Punishment Series, often serving as a Psycho for Hire. If they are a protagonist, they will most certainly be a Nominal Hero, Villain Protagonist and/or Heroic Comedic Sociopath. The difference between them and Blood Knight is this trope is all about killing while the Blood Knight is only interested in fighting. There is, of course, plenty of room for overlap.
See also Insane Equals Violent, The Berserker, The Butcher, The Dreaded, Mad Bomber, Cute and Psycho, Blood Knight, Psycho for Hire, Yandere, The Sociopath, Mad Doctor, Pyromaniac, Hair-Trigger Temper, Colonel Kilgore, General Ripper, Insane Admiral, Sociopathic Soldier, Holy Is Not Safe, Psychopathic Manchild, The Caligula, Bomb-Throwing Anarchists and Jerkass Gods. Compare and contrast Mama Bear, Papa Wolf, Big Brother Instinct, and Violently Protective Girlfriend, who may be capable of temporary Ax-Craziness when their kids, younger sibling(s) or mate are under threat, but are often played sympathetically. Compare Hot-Blooded, in which the character may have such tendencies but in a less threatening way (even if both could overlap). It can go with Drug-Crazed Savagery, which is when characters become aggressive and perform dangerous activities under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
Contrast Suicidal Pacifism, when a character never, ever resorts to violence even if it is necessary; and Extreme Doormat, when a character is a complete pushover unable to fight back.
The canonical Character Alignment for most Ax-Crazy characters is Chaotic or Neutral Evil, though a couple of Chaotic Neutral examples exist. The Ax-Crazy character's twistedness may land them comfortably in Stupid Evil or even Chaotic Stupid in more satirical works. Sometimes The Unfettered, depending on whether they feel freed or enslaved by their bloodlust. At least one or more examples are an Anti-Villain, where you kinda feel bad for them since their enemies pushed them too far with actions such as killing their family, their friends, or even the enemies trying to kill them, making them go Ax-Crazy — they may be a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds. The Heroic Comedic Sociopath is almost always Ax-Crazy, as their inability to control their madness is a good way of having a Bloody Hilarious character who is still innocent enough to be a little sympathetic.
It's very common to be Played for Drama, usually as either the Big Bad, or The Dragon to the Big Bad. It is far less common, but not unheard of, for it to be Played for Laughs; this is most likely to be seen in a Sadist Show, especially one featuring a lot of Comedic Sociopathy and/or heavy Satire, with it appearing most often in humorous comic strips, Anime, Web Original works, and the more adult-oriented Western Animation of the Renaissance and Millennium periods.
This page is about violent crazy people, not people whose preferred weapon is an axe.
Example subpages:
- Anime & Manga
- Comic Books
- Fan Works
- Films — Animation
- Films — Live-Action
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Tabletop Games
- Video Games
- Webcomics
- Western Animation
Other Examples:
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Alternate Reality Games
- Camdrome delights in watching people suffer and die thanks to the internet, and when asked what it is he wants, he replied "more". He also claimed he wouldn't mind watching someone's eyes be consumed, and that he "made a mess of himself" when covered in blood at PAX.
- It would be easier to list the characters in Dark Dream Chronicle who aren't this.
Audio Plays
- Alien Abduction Role Play: Regardless of what she says at the start of the series about wanting to eat the human protagonist, Acktreal Domma isn't evil. Just slowly going insane from hunger ever since the human test subjects came on board.
- Red Jasper (Bill Oddie) in the Big Finish Doctor Who audio adventure Doctor Who and the Pirates. A pirate captain with more than a touch of Blackbeard to his nature, Jasper has no problem doing in members of his own crew if he feels like it.
Comic Strips
- In one story arc in Bloom County, Steve Dallas, in a bid to not die in six months, tries to quit smoking. As Michael Binkley puts it, "He's a psycho even with Nicotine in his veins!" Opus ties him to a chair, but this doesn't help, as later Steve is seen hopping after Opus, still tied to said chair, holding an axe in his mouth. Later on, Milo Bloom is looking through the boarding house windows with binoculars, and sees Steve holding Opus by the throat, screaming something along the lines of "A pack of Marlboros or I'm having penguin pate for dinner!" Fortunately, Steve's withdrawal-induced insanity is alleviated when he finds a huge stash of Hostess Ding Dongs, and gorges himself into a sugar-coma.
- Another arc had Steve being the defense-lawyer for a crazed elderly female murderer who "signed" court documents by chopping at them with her axe.
- Pig's Guard Duck from Pearls Before Swine has this played for laughs.
- Snuffles, Zebra's cat, is probably even more so. As compared to Guard Duck he's completely The Unfettered.
Manhwa
- In Chonchu, most characters have their Ax Crazy moment, even non-fighters. It helps that the action happens in wartime and features many ethnic conflicts.
- Tick Tock in Dorothy of Oz could possibly count as one of these due to her tendency to cut off the arms of those who displease her or give her false information. The fact that she is nothing short of proper and polite before attempting to do this is rather disconcerting. However, she is a robot who is programmed to do whatever it takes to achieve her goals.
- A better example would perhaps be Shine, who had no qualms whatsoever about blowing up a city full of innocent people for the sole purpose of traumatizing Mara... and then grinning about it as she screams in pain.
Music
- Emilie Autumn's "I Know Where You Sleep". The title alone should tell you enough, but just take a look at the chorus:
You can lie to the papers
You can hide from the press
You can fake it on stage
Crawl from your cage
Search and destroy
You can kill and depend on it
I know your tainted flesh
I know your filthy soul
I know each trick you played
Whore you laid
Dream you stole
I know the bed in the room in the wall
In the house where you got what you wanted and ruined it all
I know the secrets that you keep
I know where you sleep - In the video to Babes in Toyland's "He's My Thing
", a Creepy Doll mutilates another Creepy Doll out of jealousy.
- The title character from The Beatles' "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", who goes around bashing people over the head with said hammer whenever something doesn't go his way. Or even when something does.
- The Villain Protagonist of the The Birthday Massacre song "Happy Birthday" murders a bunch of people at a birthday party.
I think my friend said, "Stick it in the back of her head"
I think my friend said, "Two of them are sisters"
"I'm a murder tramp, birthday boy," I think I said
"I'm gonna bash them in, bash them in," I think he said - Julie Brown's "The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun":
Debbie's smiling and waving her gun
Picking off cheerleaders one by one
Oh Buffie's pompom just blew to bits
Oh no, Mitzie's head just did the splits - In the first few lines of Cage's "Among the Sleep", he wakes up to find a dead prostitute with an ax in her back.
- At least one character in every single song off Nick Cave's Murder Ballads, but especially notably Lottie in "The Curse of Millhaven", a fourteen-year-old girl who takes the notion that everyone has to die some day a bit too literally. Bashing a little boy's head in and throwing him in the river with his pockets full of stones is just one of the atrocities she commits.
- Harry Chapin takes a turn in this direction with "Sniper". Take a guess as to what the song's about, given that title.
- The Writer from Coheed and Cambria's first Good Apollo album. By the end, he is definitely mentally unstable and has the ability to kill off any character he wants, since he wrote them into existence.
- Alice Cooper has a couple on the album, From the Inside:
- The title characters of the sweet-sounding duet "Millie and Billie" are revealed to be this when the lyrics take a dark turn:
And I liked your late husband Donald
But such torture his memory brings
All sliced up and sealed tight in baggies.
Guess love makes you do funny things - "Inmates (We're All Crazy)" quotes the Lizzy Borden verse:
Lizzy Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
* The narrator of Creature Feature's "Such Horrible Things" has been this ever since birth, and spends the song recounting various increasingly horrible acts he committed growing up, like for example burning his house down at age eight because he didn't like its colour. He even admits that he deserves to rot in Hell.
- The title characters of the sweet-sounding duet "Millie and Billie" are revealed to be this when the lyrics take a dark turn:
- Eazy-E in the song "Sorry Louie". The song describes how he sadistically kills an enemy — castrating him and leaving him completely covered in blood — and then proceeds to kill the man's wife and son.
- Eminem's character Slim Shady, a mentally ill criminal, serial killer and drunken idiot who spends most of his songs describing intricately-rhymed acts of absurd violence, as a satire of moral panics about hip-hop lyrics.
The ill type, I stab myself with a steel spike
While I blow my brain out just to see what it feels like
'Cause this is how I am in real life - Robert from Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks":
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You'd better run, better run, outrun my gun - "The Irish Ballad" from Tom Lehrer's Songs by Tom Lehrer is about a little girl who kills off her entire family one by one because they annoy her, or, in the case of the baby, just because she was bored.
- Megadeth:
- "Black Friday" is about a self-admitted sadistic maniac who massacres people with a hammer and a blade.
- "Sweating Bullets" is about a person going on a murderous rampage with an axe.
- The Megas:
- Bomb Man responded to the gift of emotion by running around blowing everything up.
You lit a fuse inside me
And now my instincts guide me through
To what I must do [cue explosion] - Heat Man in Get Equipped does not come across as particularly more stable. "Man on Fire/Heat Man" is largely a deranged rant about how he's going to burn everything.
Can you feel the fire? (The fire)
Can you see those cities burn? (Those cities burn)
From the depths of hell I call your name (Mega Man)
Can you feel the heat? - Skull Man adds either Demonic Possession by the spirits of dead Robot Masters, or, perhaps more plausibly, outright delusions of such to the cocktail. He's not quite as hamtastic about it as Bomb Man and Heat Man, but it's not a subtle theme of "Cracked Skulls" either.
It's killing we're craving
- Bomb Man responded to the gift of emotion by running around blowing everything up.
- Metallica:
- "Battery", as in "assault and", is about a person absolutely obsessed with committing the titular act.
- Their cover of Queen's "Stone Cold Crazy", about a man who dreams that he's Al Capone and then shoots people with a Tommy gun as he walks down the street.
- Unfortunately for the protagonist in Mitski's "Happy", her husband is not having an affair, he is hacking women to pieces in their basement and giving her their jewellery. Said husband is not happy when she finds out. He pulls her to the ground and starts choking her, but she manages to grab the axe in the nick of time and kill him.
- The protagonist from Pearl Jam's "Alive" has, by the time of "Once", turned into an out-of-control serial killer who kills more or less indiscriminately and is a slave to his homicidal urges.
- P!nk, in her video of "Please Don't Leave Me", goes Misery on her boyfriend, and then when he tries to get away chases him down with an ax and does the Jack Nicholson hatchet-job on the door, complete with menacing look through the opening.
- Pink Floyd:
- "One of These Days":
One of these days
I'm going to cut you into little pieces - Referenced in "One of My Turns" from The Wall. As Pink proceeds to demolish his apartment in front of a groupie, he screams the following:
Run to the bedroom
In the suitcase on the left
You'll find my favorite axe- The lines have a double-meaning, since Pink is a guitarist and would under normal circumstances simply be referring to his guitar.
- "One of These Days":
- Implied in the video for Poets of the Fall's "Lift". Taken together, Mad Dreamer Mark smiling and manifesting Black Eyes of Evil when presented with an evidence bag containing a straight pin, a photo of a woman with moth wings that figures prominently in both his psych hearing and his Happy Place, and his fixation on pinned moths all suggest that Mark has done very, very bad things to end up in Poet County Jail and deemed a "menace to society".
- The Primus song "My Name Is Mud" follows a guy who murdered someone because they were in an argument. The music video supplies a good amount of less-than-welcoming smiles.
- "Mister Psycho" by Space. He'll blow you away.
- Miles "Tails" Prower is turned into one in the Starbomb song "Sonic's Best Pal", being a drug addict who wants to kill someone just to know how it feels and threatens to break Sonic's legs if he looks at him wrong.
- The Weeknd usually plays this persona in his music videos, especially in "Blinding Lights". The music video begins with him making a Slasher Smile. Then he starts driving maniacally.
- X Japan:
- "I'll Kill You" is about a person planning to take violent revenge on the person who broke his heart, and it's implied that he's planning on killing himself as well.
- "Rose of Pain" is about Elizabeth Báthory, a Real Life Ax Crazy. (Okay, maybe not as much.)
- YAPOOS's Nikya no Youni ("Like a Butcher" in English). If the title didn't give it away:
One quick tug on the chainsaw starter
Oh please, won't someone stop me
It reverberates in the bones
The feeling of ecstasy through my body, oh no
Light the boiler coke of my murderous intent
Oh, I can't hold out any longer
I thirst for trickling lifeblood - The title character in "Excitable Boy" by Warren Zevon, who bites the usherette's leg at the movies and rapes and kills his date to Junior Prom before taking her home.
Roleplay
- Some supporting characters in Equestria Chronicles are extremely bloodthirsty for magical talking ponies.
- Kevin "Aces" Low from New Game Plus has become axe crazy due to his increasingly fragile mental state. He dispatches his planets minibosses with increasing violence, taken to using his powers to stalk his rival through a house, murdering his rivals followers as he goes, and burned out an imps eyes, all while wearing a Slasher Smile.
- Several characters from Survival of the Fittest definitely fall into this trope. Eminent examples are Cillian Crowe of V1, Mariavel Varella of V2, and Melina Frost of V3, all of which have cheerfully massacred fellow students in undoubtedly horrific and messy ways. In some instances, characters also fall under Trigger-Happy too, although given the prevalence of firearms in each game, this is only to be expected.
Theatre
- The eponymous hero of Ajax (Sophocles) goes on a murdering rampage of sheep and cattle after Athena strikes him with madness. It's pretty clear that he was intending a rampage against Odysseus and the Greek troops anyways, but it would have been slightly less humiliating.
- Jonathan Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace is indicated to be a prolific Serial Killer with a love of torture, and it's clear that he's been this way since he was a child, since his hobby then was torturing his brother by putting needles under his fingernails. He's murdered as many people as his two aunts combined, but did it far less calmly. He wants to kill again just so he can be ahead in the count.
- Just like his movie counterpart, J.D. from Heathers: The Musical is incredibly mentally unbalanced and violent, seeing killing the Alpha Bitch as the solution to all of Veronica's problems.
- 'Tis Pity She's a Whore: Giovanni loses it in the final act after being forced to Mercy Kill his incestuous lover Annabella, ripping her heart out and skewering it on a dagger so he can show it to the rest of the cast while raving about their love before stabbing her husband Soranzo to death and goading his servant into killing him.
Visual Novels
- Amnesia: Memories has Ukyo's darker, evil side. This side of him seems to pop up out of the blue, and his facial expression makes it clear that whatever is keeping his last shred of sanity around is hanging on a silken thread. He makes no secret of his vast but creepy knowledge about the heroine and the people around her, and often gives thinly-veiled lines to get the heroine into danger. He delights in telling her that he'll kill her and he succeeds in killing her in various Bad Endings.
- In BAD END THEATER, there is an early-game ending where the demonic Underling embraces their evil reputation and becomes a crazy killer. First they eat the Maiden alive, then they head to the human village and start happily slaughtering humans just to hear them scream. The Underling is killed by the Hero in the end, but they still think it was Worth It.
- While most of the murderers in the Danganronpa series acted out of desperation, there are some outliers.
- Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc:
- The Big Bad Monokuma set up the entire death game because of his obsession with despair. The Ax-Crazy doesn't really come out until The Reveal, though. After Junko reveals herself, she can't even keep her own personality straight and is clearly mentally unwell. Her obsession with despair is so deep that she is willing to kill the people she loves for the sake of cultivating her own despair.
- The Serial Killer Genocide Jack/Jill also counts, as she kills cute boys for a sexual thrill. In the final chapter, Monokuma/Junko and Jill even share a bit of crazy banter with each other.
- Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair:
- Nagito Komaeda reveals that he's willing to commit murder for the sake of hope. His completely bizarre mindset leads him to believe that anything for the sake of hope is necessary, even cultivating despair for the sake of having a powerful hope defeat it. Even as a member of Junko's Ultimate Despair, he's still just as deranged. And the fact that he's willing to kill all his classmates to stop them from becoming Ultimate Despair just for the sake of propping himself up as the Ultimate Hope shows how far gone he is even without Junko corrupting him.
- Mikan wasn't too mentally stable to begin with due to a lifetime of abuse, which made her that much easier for Junko to manipulate. When she gets her Ultimate Despair memories back, all pretenses of sanity promptly go out the window after she's outed as a double murderer.
- Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony:
- Korekiyo's general creepiness is commented on so often it that would've been more surprising if he hadn't ended up becoming a killer, although the true extent of it isn't shown until he's outed as a Serial Killer with a split personality.
- The mastermind Tsumugi is a psychopath obsessed with the Deadly Game she and her associates cultivated, and murders Rantaro solely because The Show Must Go On.
- Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc:
- Fate/stay night: When we first meet little Illyasviel von Einzbern, it's incredibly obvious that one, she's not quite all there, and two, she wants to hurt people (which given she is the Master of Berserker, one of the most powerful Servants of the Holy Grail War, she is more than capable of doing). Especially in the Fate route, Illya has no qualms about enslaving or killing Shirou gruesomely, and the Bad Ends involving her get horrifying. Much of this comes from her abandonment issues regarding her father Kiritsugu, and the Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven's Feel routes show a far more sympathetic side to little Illya.
- Higurashi: When They Cry has at least one such character at all times. They can all also be the victims at other points, too.
- Rena the "cleaver girl", who, after going off the deep end, holds her school hostage and very nearly blows it up.
- Shion, a psycho Yandere who tortured several of her True Companions to death in two arcs.
- Kumitantei: Old School Slaughter has New Nyanus, a catlike creature who takes an incredible amount of joy in revealing that the Absolutes have to kill each other and has no problem impaling a student’s hand for talking back.
- Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors has Clover in the "Axe" ending chopping up Santa, Seven, June, and Junpei, over her brother's death. The sequel invokes this again by making it look as if Clover killed Luna in a rage. Subverted, though, as it was an accident.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice: Typically in Ace Attorney, the murderers in each case are not examples of this trope, as they usually only murder once or twice at mostTrials and Tribulations spoilers and tend to have motives for their crimes (even if they are petty or selfish). Even when Professional Killers with high body counts are involved, they remain professional and only kill when necessary or when ordered to do so. This game's Big Bad, Queen Ga'ran Sigatar Khura'in, is the most openly bloodthirsty culprit in the franchise. In addition to being an insane megalomaniac, she seems to revel in having executions, specifically beheadings. She also shows no qualms about calling for the genocide of defense attorneys in the country of Khura'in. While this person is able to hide this under their polite and serene regal exterior, the gloves are off during the final case with the extent of their madness put on full display. Not only does she act more hostile as a prosecutor and openly threaten to have Phoenix and Apollo beheaded on the defense bench, she even rewrites rules mid-trial to make it easier for them to slip up and do something that will allow her to call for their executions quicker once they point the finger at her.
- Slay the Princess: Many of the alternate versions of the Princess are quite eager to fight back, but the Razor really takes the cake, as she's completely obsessed with violently killing the Hero to the point that she's beyond reason.
- By the end of the third arc of Umineko: When They Cry, Eva has gone off the deep end and shoots Battler. Probably.
Web Animation
- ATTACK on MIKA: After Himeka poisons Kotomi's dog Ron, it's revealed that she was like this since she was little; often breaking or trying to get rid of things. Ultimately, her behavior and her mom's refusal to treat her sociopathic behavior led the former to burn down the house, much to the latter's dismay.
- Bionicle Adventures has Monkeydude, whose solution to practically every problem is to burn everything and everyone nearby to a crisp.
- The Demented Cartoon Movie!: The actress playing Juliet throws a bomb at her Romeo. After being told to not do it again, she goes crazy and throws a bomb at the replacement Romeo.
- Dragon Ball Deliverance:
- As Vegeta puts it, Broly's as much a monster as ever. We first see him attacking and killing for his own sadistic amusement.
- Didger is without a doubt the most insane of Commander Daiko's crew. He's positively giddy about the idea of killing Pan and Bra.
- Dreamscape: Melinda becomes rather unhinged and bloodthirsty as Ghost Melinda.
- Gossip City: Akio, Haruka's husband, looks like a Nice Guy at first, but he also has a violent side whenever he gets mad at her. The reason for this, according to Inuzuka, was because he was a drug junkie.
- Happy Tree Friends: Flippy suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to the time he spent in the W.A.R (Weaponized Animal Regiment). His flipped-out state under PTSD, known as Fliqpy, is a serial killer who takes pleasure out of killing others.
- Even though he's not at Flippy's level of violence, Nutty also counts in a more genuine sense, as he has killed people just to get candy.
- Helluva Boss: Blitzo is as murder-happy as all get-out, but he at least limits his carnage to his assigned targets or those who attack him and his employees first. However, when his Trauma Button regarding Loona's adoption is pressed, he goes postal and starts killing people indiscriminately.
- Madness Combat: The series is called Madness for a reason. But the biggest examples by far are Hank and above everyone else Tricky the Clown. Tricky in particular takes it up to 111.
- Plan 3: Played for Laughs with Stephen in the scenarios; if murder is (or in the loosest sense possibly) a solution to a problem, he’s more than happy to pull out a knife.
- Pretty Blood: Rinny murdering and torturing her family in the first episode alone is enough to show just how psychopathic and insane she is.
- Red vs. Blue:
- O'Malley/The Omega A.I., the Arc Villain of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, is a being made of Ax Crazy.
- Seasons 9 and 10 introduce Agent Carolina. She was sane enough during Project Freelancer, but afterwards... Thankfully, once her revenge quest is solved, Carolina mellows out.
- Season 12 introduces Dr. Emily Grey, who might as well be the most psychotic person on the show despite how cheerful she is. Thank God she is one of the good guys.
- RWBY: Tyrian is very eager to be given tasks that involve hunting down people. When Salem orders him to go after Ruby, he mocks Cinder by implying he'll take Ruby's eye, giggling madly at the thought. When Salem orders him to capture Ruby alive, he's visibly disappointed. When Jaune makes it clear the gang won't let Tyrian take Ruby without a fight, he smiles and says "good". When Salem reveals she's disappointed in his failure to complete his task, he goes berserk; he leaps on a Beowulf and begins slashing it repeatedly while laughing and crying at the same time. Cinder watches him unravel in open-mouthed horror.
- SolarBalls:
- Sun, particularly in the earlier episodes, as he often has a Slasher Smile and would often threaten planets that if they leave their orbit then he’ll shoot them with solar flares.
- If you thought that The Sun was bad, Ceres is even worse as he contains all the traits of Sun in the early episodes but without any of the good qualities The Sun has, even the thumbnail of his debut episode, he has a Slasher smile and he is the only character in the entire show whose dialogue only consists of laughter, further establishing himself as crazy.
- Of Weasels And Chickens: Prima, who sings a song about the wonderful world of murder in Episode Three.
- Wolf Song: The Movie: Cobalt is highly brash and is heavily prone to violence, to the point where merely getting yelled at by him is a luxury, otherwise he will subject you to some awful fate that usually ends with your death, even if under orders not to kill. Oh and he has the Slasher Smile to go with it immediately before or after some violent acts (including breaking news of his violence to his captors). If he wasn’t cowardly, who knows the extent of the damage he could do
- DSBT InsaniT: Killer Monster really lives up to his name and loves slaughtering others.
- Tactical Noobs gives us the Crazy Burger King Guy, a Burger Fool who kills people for doing things like ordering food he cannot give them and voting for a different presidential candidate than him.
Web Original
- Protectors of the Plot Continuum Agents have to be a little... strange... in order to function. However, some snap completely; this is called going flamethrower-crazy, since the most dramatic example involved a mad Agent tearing down the corridors with a flamethrower while screaming about Mister Rogers.
Websites
- SCP Foundation:
- SCP-076-2 a.k.a. Able's mind is filled with a desire to cause violence and nothing else.
- SCP-953 ("Polymorphic Humanoid") is hostile to human life and extremely dangerous. She can penetrate a person's abdomen with her hand and extract the victim's liver, but prefers to slowly torture her prey.
- SCP-973 ("Smokey") hunts down people who are speeding and inflicts horrible painful deaths on them.
- SCP-076-2 a.k.a. Able
- In various GoAnimate videos, Caillou's dad will descend to this level in the various "Grounded" videos. It's bad enough that they punish their kids for an unreasonable length of time, but Caillou's dad will invoke "Punishment Day", which means torturing his son in painful and humiliating ways.
Web Videos
- 7-Second Riddles: Quite a few characters in this universe seem to commit murders for the sake of it. An entire subset of riddles revolves around determining which characters are actually maniacs — the clues range from things like having bloodstains in their room, to having body-parts in the vicinity, to carrying weapons or other suspicious objects.
- Autistic Communist: Much like in canon, Yuri proves to be one of the most insane characters of the cast. In one video, Yuri takes MC and Monika hostage and they are made to watch her cut herself when she felt stressed.
- The Bike: Much like in canon, Yuri has several moments of letting her sanity escape her. However, her psychotic episodes are somehow worse than her canon self. Case in point? What starts off as a normal video of Yuri teaching how to make a fruit salad devolves into Yuri happily getting carried away with cutting the fruits and then using a chainsaw to saw the kitchen counter in half.
- Channel Awesome:
- While not as bad as, say, Ask That Guy with the Glasses or Sage, The Nostalgia Chick has a habit of smiling a big, girly grin right after she's said something disturbing. It kinda gives off the impression that she has more than a few screws loose.
- And let's be honest here, while his craziness is different from Ask That Guy's stepford, sadistic brand, The Nostalgia Critic ain't exactly all there.
- Critic's Stalker with a Crush Straw Fan Hyper Fangirl. Very early on, Tamara (her actress) called her a "crazy bitch".
- Chorocojo's Let's Play of the Pokémon games has characters interpreted as being completely Ax Crazy, such as Misty (no relation to the Gym Leader) and Gatorface the Totodile starter for Pokémon Crystal.
- Dropout portrays Chris Brown like this In-Universe in "Chris Brown's Publicist". His real life violent behavior is exaggerated for comic effect: the acts he admits having committed to his publicist include beating up Nicki Minaj—by breaking into her home—driving over a whole band with his car, attacking animals and children, murdering several people (one directly over the phone line), and digging up Tupac Shakur's corpse to use it as his personal punching bag. Ironically, being "a stupid, violent, lunatic" has no effect whatsoever on his record performance or public standing.
- The Courier in Courier's Mind: Rise of New Vegas, though still the hero, really enjoys mayhem, killing, torture, and mutilating corpses. The series also plays up Boone as this, at some points even scaring the Courier.
- Rekoj from Dungeons & Drogans is not good at peaceful negotiation.
- Evan of Everyman HYBRID seems to be turning into this; some interpretations of the Slender Man also point him as this.
- Glove and Boots features Jack Woods, who educates Mario and Fafa about raising a rabbit as a pet, and then how to butcher them... and then how to deal with zombie rabbits.
- HAT Films: Ross often tends to portray himself this way when playing as the murderer in Garry's Mod (the game technically requires he kill everyone, but his persona relishes it). He often tends to shout at the top of his voice, shouting for his victims to "EAT SHIT" or some variation thereupon.
- Hero House features the Joker, who's just as crazy in this incarnation as he is in everything else.
- Hitler Rants and its spin-offs arguably has quite a few. The most extreme would have to be Mallory, who's Ax-Crazy with dynamite. The only thing that makes it worse is that he is willing to do anything if it means blowing up Hitler.
- Terrence in KateModern, after Villainous Breakdown sets in. He goes around beating up random families he meets in the park and clubbing people with golf clubs just for the hell of it.
- Matthew Santoro: Hugo in ''THE GREATEST EVAR!", in which he knocks Matthew unconscious, locks him up in a closet, and ties him up.
- The Museum:
- Raki Umberclan the Bulbous started out fairly stable, but ended up going completely insane after an incident with the Museum's exhibits.
- Moldath Mournsaints. Sometimes he'll kill a whole warband, sometimes he'll kill megabeasts, sometimes he'll kill the last living roc in the world, sometimes he'll kill allies as collateral damage, sometimes he'll kill his own worshipers, sometimes he'll kill undead... and sometimes he'll just raise undead because he feels like it. Not exactly a paragon of mental stability, that chap.
- Kosoth Salvesank gradually devolves into a crazed berserker as his mental faculties are eroded by the Obin Blight. Later turns indicate that this is the fate of anyone infected by this disease, with the host slowly becoming increasingly violent until they're little more than a wild animal.
- The host of The Music Video Show has slid into this trope since the fourth season (although there were shades of this in the previous seasons), with jokes involving pulling out knives and baseball bats, cannibalism once discovering bodies and shooting invisible guns. Lampshaded at least once, commentating that he's lost count on how many people he's killed.
- Master Zen from Noob claims to be this, but has never gone further than kidnapping in the webseries version. The comic version shows that it is not entirely a boast, as a flash-back shows his player trying to kill members of the Noob guild (who happen to never notice) in real life, but getting Hoist by His Own Petard.
- Plinkett from RedLetterMedia.
- Regular Ordinary Swedish Meal Time's chef. His attempt to chop bacon with a battleaxe resulted in the destruction of both the chopping board and the table underneath.
- Tom Grossi Comedy: "The NFC East's Reaction to Week 5" has a literal example when Gus blames Bruce for Dak Prescott'snote injury that occurred days prior when facing the Giants. He decides to cut off Bruce's leg so it will match Dak's, only to have Carl intervene for his own revenge for Bruce crashing his motorcycle.
- Venturian Tale: Jimmy Casket runs around with a knife yelling "Stab stab stab!" and tries to kill everyone.
