Angst Nuke

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A character releases bottled, superhuman rage and literally blows up.

The building they were in, as well as any buildings in a mile's radius, are leveled. Many die. But strangely, the originator of the explosion is usually unharmed.

Very rarely can be a Suicide Attack, if it is done on purpose and kills the user. Might also rarely be Why Am I Ticking?, if the detonation trigger is specifically tied to the character's rage. Compare Burning with Anger, which is seldom destructive past a few charred bits of furniture.

Not to be confused with Emotion Bomb, which induces emotion as an attack.

Examples of Angst Nuke include:

Anime & Manga

• Majin Buu (pictured above) of Dragon Ball. When we first see him, he's a misguided but omnicidal pink blob, thanks to Babidi's cruel teachings. With luck, he meets Mr. Satan and befriends him, causing him to give up killing and become kind-hearted. He gives a blind child sight for the first time, and even heals a wounded puppy. So... what went wrong, you ask? One completely ordinary guy with a gun shot his puppy, and set Buu off so horrifically, he expelled his own evil and it soon overtook him. Things got so bad everybody died and the world went kaboom. BUT... he got better. Let's just say pissing Buu off means you need a set of Dragonballs and a planet-wide Spirit Bomb on hand to fix the damage he does.
• Almost the whole plot of Akira^[context?]
• Mewtwo in Pokémon: The First Movie.^[context?]
• Lucille from Samurai Pizza Cats combines this with Macross Missile Massacre whenever she gets upset.
  • Don't forget Big Cheese! He blows up every time he gets really angry.
• Naruto, due to containing Sealed Evil in a Can - when he snaps, the explosion of power is only the first of the list of problems...
  • Deidara who kills himself by exploding to try to kill Sasuke. It fails because Sasuke teleports away.
  • The War Arc sets this Up to Eleven when Madara/Tobi sets off six Angst Nukes within a close proximity of each other. The result was 6 jinchuuriki, all in their V2 state.
• Ryouga learns an ultimate technique powered by his depression in Ranma ½. There are two forms of this. A standard Ki Attack, and the proper 'Angst Nuke'. The reason why Ryouga survives the nuke version is that the level of depression needed, combined with actually performing the technique, leave him emotionally dead for a few seconds, letting the attack pass right through him. Why it still affects inanimate matter is anyone's guess.
• Vegeta does this in the final arc of Dragon Ball Z when he self-destructs to (unsuccessfully) kill Majin Buu.
  • Majin Buu himself is an even better example - when he is really pissed, his scream of anger is enough to open dimensional rifts, literally ripping the reality around him.
• In Toward the Terra, Carina has a prolonged and destructive psychic freakout when she thinks Tony is dead. Later in the series, Matsuka does the same when he thinks Keith is dead.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Sayaka's witch transformation may counts. While it doesn't kill anyone, it sends Kyoko and objects around her flying.
• Heroic Age: Yuti La/Cervius flies into one of these when she believes Karkinos has died. In her rage she creates a black hole the size of an entire solar system, which comes very, very close to killing all remaining Nodos in existence.

Comic Books

• The Star Brand wielder has this as one of their powers.
• Variation, the Red Hulk's body is always releasing an unnatural amount of heat. His body temperature rises with rage, so much so that he can cook vast stretches of land, but spending too much time in this state will weaken him.
• In Paperinik New Adventures there's Xadhoom: according to what she says, if she ever lose control of her powers she would GO NOVA, and then she would become a black hole and swallow the entire solar system she's in. Fortunately enough, she approached that level of fury only three times (when an Evronian accidentally played with her feelings while she was apparently powerless, when the Evronians had found the last refuge of her people and destroyed it a few minutes she arrived to protect it, and when the Evronians purposefully did everything they could to provoke that after forcing her in a device that would harness the explosion), and every time she calmed herself (first time she discovered her self-control was so strong that the explosion was smaller than her usual mass-destruction attacks, second time the Evronians showed her they had the last survivors of her race in hostage (that's how they forced her in the device that could harness the explosion), and the third time she found too funny denying it to the Evronians for them to succeed in enraging her before the hostages freed themselves).

Film

• Hades incinerates a forest in a flash fire after learning that Hercules is still alive.
• Lo Pan's Storm bodyguard Thunder balloons himself in pure rage after his master is killed, then pops himself with his knife explosively to try and take out Jack and Wang in the process.

Literature

• Liquidon Ethereteel in Stationery Voyagers can create limited-range nuclear bursts, and actually uses this power to blow up a train car full of Aviatets. He also uses it to kill a Mosquatlon who was stalking Alaina. He fears the Angst Nuke, however, that will become big enough to claim him and a whole city.

Live Action TV

• Ted Sprague in Heroes.
  • Also, Sylar in the future when his son dies.
• Dr. Cox in at least one of JD's Imagine Spots in Scrubs.
  • And JD himself in another Imagine Spot.
• Done deliberately in an episode of Angel.

Video Games

• The backstory of the Bonus Boss in Cave Story is that he caused one of these while being tortured.
• In Xenogears, Fei lets off one of these in the beginning of the game, under severe stress.
• Shadow the Hedgehog's Chaos Blast in the Sonic the Hedgehog series
• In Asura's Wrath, Asura absolutely loses it and undergoes one of these when the little girl and the village he's been trying to protect are destroyed by Olga. The result is Asura literally Burning with Anger as he massacres an entire space fleet with it.

Web Original

• The final sketch in The Gmod Idiot Box episode 9. After Derrick knocks Alex's candy out of his hand, Alex literally explodes with rage, and then proceeds to scream so loud he destroys the entire Earth. Both he and Derrick survives.
  • In The Gmod Idiot Box episode 1, a man who has been arrested tries so hard to escape his cuffs he devastates the surrounding area.
• Weaponized by Lily in Dorf Quest.
• The Nostalgia Critic does not like plot holes:

Nostalgia Critic: Just! Ex! Plain! *boom*

Western Animation

• Katie Ka-Boom in Animaniacs.
• The plot of one Courage the Cowardly Dog episode involved a hair tonic which caused its users to get angry over minor things, become red with rage, and cause an explosion (which they somehow survive unscathed, but the surroundings don't).
• During one episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, protagonist and resident Person of Mass Destruction Aang looses his temper from frustration of being unable to find his animal companion, Appa. The resulting explosion can be seen for miles in every direction and bears a striking resemblence to The Deadliest Mushroom. Lucklily, he was in the middle of a desert on his own at the time so no bystanders were hurt, but Katara could still feel the backlash from miles away.
  • Ironically, Appa himself saw the explosion, but was tied down by a group of merchants and was stuck while he was desperately trying to get to Aang.
• Red Star in Teen Titans. A science experiment by Mad Scientist Dr. Chang to make him the perfect super soldier turned him into a living nuke, who once blew up and devastated a village. He had to keep draining the excess buildup of power as to not overload and do it again (which got so bad it leaked out and took a life of its own), until finally, it became too much for him and he had to fly into deep space to wait for a massive explosion to go off from the inside out as to not charbroil the Earth. He appeared to die in that episode, but he later returned minus the Power Incontinence for the Grand Finale battle: the final explosion stabilized his powers and gave him a chance to be normal again.
• Benson on Regular Show^[context?]