Ax Crazy

HERE'S JOHNNY!!!

Lizzie Borden took an axe,
 and gave her mother forty whacks.
 And when she saw what she had done,
 she gave her father forty-one.

—American Nursery Rhyme and Folk Song[1]

An "ax crazy" character is someone who is psychologically unstable and presents a clear danger to others. Ax crazies are capable of extreme violence, whether carried out with a Slasher Smile, a Creepy Monotone, 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. Also be prepared to expect them to burst out into insane laughter while undergoing the extreme violence. 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—most of them are Knife Nuts who favor straight razors or other nasty implements of gory death, with the truly crazy among them liking it Chainsaw Good (and the best of them, chainsaw axes). 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 psychopathic among psychopaths 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 if they have them.

It is rare for a truly Ax Crazy character to be a protagonist. 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 an Anti-Hero or Villain Protagonist. 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, Mad Bomber, Cute and Psycho, Hair-Trigger Temper, and Blood Knight. Many characters with a Hair-Trigger Temper are also Ax Crazy, as is the Yandere when she goes off the deep end. Also see Mama Bear, Papa Wolf, and Violently Protective Girlfriend, who are capable of temporary Axe Crazy grade fury when their kids or mate are under threat, though those characters are almost ALWAYS played sympathetically. The all but canonical Character Alignment for an Ax Crazy character is Chaotic Evil (or, sometimes, Chaotic Neutral). Sometimes The Unfettered, depending on whether they feel freed or enslaved by their bloodlust.

Examples of Ax Crazy include:

Anime and Manga

  • Many of the villains from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, like the vampire Jack the Ripper, Gray Fly, Devo the Cursed, Alessi, etc., who enjoy causing destruction, killing people, and/or creating general mayhem of varying degrees. And all of them combined aren't nearly as bad as Dio Brando. The fact that they all bow down to him just serves to highlight his evilness.
  • Witchblade: Shiori, one of the Cloneblades, becomes Ax Crazy after fighting Masane Amaha. After going off the deep end, she murders a nurse, has sex with a corpse, and tries to rape Takayama, the protagionist's boss.
  • Peacemaker Kurogane: In the manga, Suzu becomes both Ax Crazy and gay after an old man rapes him.
  • In Mirai Nikki (The Future Diary), the character Yuno Gasai uses axes (along with many other sharp weapons) to kill people that threaten her relationship with the protagonist Yukiteru Amano (this relationship is mostly one-sided as she's a Stalker with a Crush). This sums up the majority of the cast really. Even Yuki becomes this after a time.
  • In Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue, chapter 162 (volume 18) reveals that in the aftermath of the battle of Sekigahara, the future Miyamoto Musashi (then Shinmen Takezou) is arguably Ax Crazy. Otherwise though, he avoids the trope and the regular portions of the story had shown that Musashi had long grown out of this.
  • Hauenkua in Utawarerumono. He drives a giant mecha and giggles uncontrolledly while squishing innocent people with it. He encourages invading countries just for more opportunities to use said mecha and pouts like a little kid if he can't. And yet he's still one of the most influential court advisers.
  • Higurashi no Naku Koro ni has at least one such character at all times in the first season.
    • Rena, the "cleaver girl," who, after going off the deep end, holds her school hostage and very nearly blows it up. They can all also be the victims at other points, too.
    • Shion, a psycho Yandere who tortured several of her True Companions to death in two arcs.
  • Any Diclonius from Elfen Lied has the potential to be extremely Ax Crazy, although the show manages to raise a lot of sympathy for them as well. Lucy, the primary character of the series (when she's not in her cute and harmless "Nyuu" mode) is one of the most frightening characters you will ever meet. Her introduction scene has her violently slaughtering people left and right with her vectors at a lab while wearing nothing but a helmet.
  • Bleach:
    • Kenpachi Zaraki is an Ax Crazy badass who takes great pleasure in stretching fights out as long as possible for maximum bloodshed.

Kenpachi: Sanity? I never had such a useless thing in the first place.

    • Mayuri Kurotsuchi, who is very much a danger to anyone and everyone around him. The biggest difference between him and Kenpachi being that Mayuri is infinitely more sadistic and only fights when he knows he has the upper hand. That, and he's only a danger to you if you make him mad (good luck avoiding that by the way); compared to Kenpachi, who's only a danger if you're strong.
      • His arrancar counterpart, fellow Mad Scientist Szayel Aporro Granz, fits as well. He even represents 'madness' as his aspect of death among the Espada.
    • Ichigo's inner Hollow, Grimmjow, and Nnoitra. Especially Nnoitra, him being Kenpachi's Evil Counterpart and all.
    • Aizen himself gets into this trope when he throws a Villainous Breakdown before his defeat.
    • Loly shows signs of the jealousy-driven version.
    • In the Lost Substitute Shinigami arc, Yukio and Shukuro Tsukishima arguably fit as well. What qualifies them? Driving his parents to suicide and delighting at the act (in the beginning) (the former) and reducing people to vegetative state For the Evulz (the latter), for starters. And then there's those slasher smiles Tsukishima wears, which is hardly a sign of mental stability in fiction.
    • Ginjo Kugo after his memory is restored and he's revealed to be the arc's Big Bad.
  • Alucard from Hellsing. Sadistic, bloodthirsty, clearly off his rocker, and nearly godlike in power. Also one of the series' most popular characters. for some reason. Maybe it's because of his Undying Loyalty to Integra and he knows when someone goes to far.
  • Displaying once again the Clover organization's terrible hiring practices, in the Triangle Heart 3 Sweet Songs Forever OVA, they send out a Psycho for Hire named Slicer who lives for violence and blood.
  • Black Lagoon
    • Revy, a Sociopathic Hero, is usually able to keep her anger under control and her guns aimed at the right people, but in one arc that had her and Dutch storming a ship full of Neo-Nazis, the "Whitman Fever" (named for Charles Whitman, the infamous sniper who went on a mass murder spree from the top of a university tower in Texas) took hold of her, and the only thing that prevented her from killing the non-combatants aboard the ship as well as her Nazi quarry was Dutch's intervention. And in the manga version of that arc, she murdered them all before Dutch got there, with the Charles Whitman speech occurring when Dutch confronted her about it.
    • The Vampire Twins, Hansel and Gretel. Hansel even carries an ax. They make Revy seem almost normal, fer cryin' out loud. The most unfortunate part of that story arc is they seemed to fool viewers into thinking Rock might turn Gretel around...
    • Shenhua and Sawyer the Cleaner. Both of them loved to chop up victims with their kukuri knives and chainsaw respectively. In fact Sawyer loved it so much she became a professional cleaner so she could slice up all the unfortunate people that pissed off the different mafia groups in Roanapur.
      • Although amusingly enough, while characters like this have a tendency to be Complete Monsters, Shenhua and Sawyer are actually two of the only three mercenaries who are sympathetic in the Greenback Jane arc (the third being Rotten the Wizard). Sawyer herself actually becomes a bit of a Woobie once her voice box is knocked away, going into a bit of a Villainous BSOD.
    • And in the El Baile De La Muerte arc, Roberta takes this trope to a new high in the course of her Roaring Rampage of Revenge, which is seriously bad news for Roanapur in general.
  • Dr. Kazutaka Muraki from Yami no Matsuei is looking to bring back his dead older brother Saki. Not crazy enough? His brother killed both their parents. Still not crazy enough? His brother tried to kill him but was stopped (lethally) by the family butler and now keeps his bro's head in a jar till he can revive him and kill him properly. STILL not crazy enough? He's been known to remove his own major organs just to mess with people... and he's a Depraved Bisexual to boot.
  • Full Metal Panic!! - Barring Sousuke, all Lambda Driver operators appear to be Ax Crazy: Gauron is a self-destructive Psycho for Hire with an unnatural fixation on killing - or being killed by - Sousuke, Takuma, the A21 terrorist commanding the colossus, is a delusional wreck who had killed his own sister without knowing, and Gates is... Um... Completely, utterly, totally off his rocker.
  • Monster: Johan Liebert. If you associate with him, you will die. If you meet him, you will die. If you make eye contact, you will die. If you so much as think about him, you will die. And if you won't think of him, he just has to think about you, and you'll be just as dead. We think you get the point.
  • Kekkaishi gives us Kaguro, who starts out power hungry and then spirals into full-blown ax-crazy. Made even worse in his Ayakashi form since he has the ability to sprout a limitless supply of swords from his body, making him impossible to disarm without killing him.
  • MW: Michio Yuki.
  • The three brothers after Mugen in the final episodes of Samurai Champloo. Every one of the three (except possibly the eldest, Toube) is a complete maniac; Denkibou found it impossible to contain himself once Mugen was in sight, and Umanosuke is a sadistic bastard with several Kick the Dog moments in a row.
  • The title character of Chrono Crusade actually acts this way when someone presses his Berserk Button. He's usually easy-going, but when someone sets off his temper he gives in to his demonic nature and will attack those he feels responsible - as well as anyone stupid enough to get in the way. At one point, he even sets part of San Francisco ablaze and kills innocent bystanders during one of his Ax Crazy moments. In the manga, a major part of his character development is him learning to control his temper and doing so is a key part to his victory in the end.
  • Baccano!!
    • Ladd Russo and Graham Spector. Ladd is a token Psycho for Hire who takes maniacal glee in killing anyone and everyone, once beating a man to death by brutally punching him 47 times in the face, even after he died, and expressing his love for his fiancée Lua by passionately threatening to murder her. Graham is a destruction obsessed maniac who expresses himself by dismantling everything around, including people (he also holds deep admiration for the aforementioned Ladd, referring to him as an "older brother").
    • Claire Stanfield, the cheerful train conductor who has a habit of holding people outside of moving trains and grating them on the rails.
  • Code Geass
    • Luciano Bradley, the Knight of Ten, is known as the "Vampire of Britannia" in and is a self-proclaimed "homicide genius". When Zero attacks Tokyo directly, he immediately asks to be assigned to the defense just because he wants to kill people.
    • Mao the Psychopathic Manchild, who's usually looking for a chance to use his trusty chainsaw.
    • Jeremiah Gottwald spends a brief period like this near the end of season one. After hearing Zero's voice over a broadcast channel, he goes completely berserk, steals a mech, and rushes off in an Unstoppable Rage, taking out anything and everything in his way to get to the Gawain and losing his shit even more when Zero insults him. He's calmed down considerably by his next appearance, though.
  • Alan Gabriel from The Big O, who, due to him often descending into fits of insane laughter, and him wearing make-up, powdering his face white and wearing red lipstick, is a blatant nod to the Joker of Batman fame. Most of that show is a blatant nod to Batman. R-D also fits this trope.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00
  • Mobile Suit Gundam AGE has Desil Galette, a seven year old Ace Pilot who defines the Enfant Terrible trope. This young sociopathic Blood Knight is obsessed with battles and views the soldiers as toys at his disposal. And he's terrifying, especially when he's about to go to battle.
  • Drugs and abuse have made all of the Extended in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny this way as well, with Shani being perhaps the best example. Azrael reveals this side of himself during an epic Villainous Breakdown and his successor, Djibril also has shades of this at times, especially whenever he's near a Weapon of Mass Destruction. And let's not forget Rau Le Creuset, who tried to blow up the world.
  • Naruto
    • Gaara of the Desert, before he loses to Naruto.
    • Hidan is also pretty Ax Crazy. And a masochist, to boot.
    • Kakuzu when he gets mad becomes an Omnicidal Maniac.
    • Deidara is also pretty crazy as evidenced when he tried to kill both himself and Sasuke via blowing them up.
    • Orochimaru and his Sound 4 squad display various levels of this trope. Ukon and Sakon, in particular, like to play with their victims.
    • Sasuke displayed these tendencies after getting Orochimaru's curse seal and attempting to leave Konoha, but it's from chapter 480 onwards where he really falls into this trope due to Sanity Slippage and Madara's influence. As if deciding to kill every last person in Konoha wasn't enough he's been reduced to a homicidal maniac who will kill anyone if they become the least bit inconvenient to him. Danzo's Shut UP, Hannibal didn't exactly help, either.
    • Naruto himself can fall into this when he goes Kyuubi if you get him pissed off enough, usually by attacking/killing his loved ones. It appears that he's since grown better at controlling his emotions however.
  • Death Note
    • Teru "Sakujo" Mikami. He loves passing "God's judgment" on the people he kills. During the warehouse scene he had what would be hard to describe as anything but an orgasm after he wrote the SPK members' names in the Death Note. But as it turns out, Near replaced the pages of Mikami's Death Note so that he could not kill them no matter how many times he wrote their names down.
    • Misa Amane probably counts. She's a bit calmer than your usual Ax Crazy, but she believes that shinigami dying because they killed a person who would have killed their love interest is "a wonderfully romantic way to kill." Also, she was willing to kill her friend without thinking twice for a guy she just met. And unlike the series' other Villain Protagonists, she makes no effort to rationalize her actions.
  • In Mahou Sensei Negima, most evil characters were at least cold or sensible, and at the most just a bit odd. That is till Tsukiyomi, deprived of seeing her sempai Setsuna for months turned from merely fight-happy with a touch of blood-lust to a complete Psycho Lesbian for her rival swordswoman. The Subtext, Oh The Subtext.
    • Really, it's gotten a bit too blatantly obvious to still be called 'subtext'.
    • Chachazero is pretty axe crazy too.
    • Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Quartum!
    • And now we have Secundum!
  • Majin Buu from Dragon Ball is this taken to Omnicidal Maniac extremes. Every time he transforms into a new form, he becomes progressively more evil and psychopathic to the point where he just blows up planets without a second thought. While his Power Level in his final form is the subject of much debate among Dragon Ball fans, everyone can agree that said form was definitely the most Ax Crazy. To put it in perspective, the first thing he did after reverting to Kid Buu was try to blow up the planet. When he was foiled, he just made the next shot ten times bigger so he wouldn't miss.
    • There's also General Blue, seeing how he states after executing a soldier for picking his nose that he loves the sound of gunfire executing soldiers. Piccolo Daimao, too.
  • Thorkell the Tall from Vinland Saga butchers a bunch of people he's been chasing for trying to surrender. With a pair of great axes no less. He's also known for killing his own men for being either cowards, or disrespectful to his enemies.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion.
    • Shogouki ("Unit 01") itself is prone to spontaneous acts of horrific violence and cannibalism against Angels and fellow Evas.
    • There's the Dummy Plug System, which is powered by the seemingly docile Ayanami Rei.
    • Asuka is a hazard to the health of anyone or anything that isn't named "Kaji" or "Hikari". This effect is turned Up to Eleven if Shinji is the victim or if she is in Nigouki ("Unit 02"), and passes the Nightmare Fuel threshold when she has to fight 9 Evangelions at once.
      • To illustrate just how ax crazy she had become by the end, she holds an enemy Evangelion above her head, cracks it open, and bathes in its blood with a sadistic grin on her face.
    • And then there's Shinji himself whenever he gets angry, breaks down, or gets significantly stressed.
    • Asuka's mother Kyouko after piloting EVA 02 and having a part of her soul sucked into it.
  • Mayuka, in the second Tenchi Muyo movie, after Yuzuha pushes her berserk button. Sasami's love vibrations break her out of it however, and she gets better. Unfortunately, Yuzuha does not. As Tenchi's a twit.
    • Yuzuha herself also fits the bill, as the only thing that would've stopped her misaimed vengeance fueled rampage was the only thing nobody thought to give her. You'd think Ryoko at least would have figured this out with how often she surprises everyone else with Marshmallow Hell when drunk. Perhaps they should have given her a shot of whiskey before heading to Yuzuha's dimension.
  • Dilandau from The Vision of Escaflowne fits this trope to a T.
    • To get a better understanding, here's a handy little video. Halfway through his attack on Van, he just sort of forgets about Van and goes a little fire-happy.
  • Several characters (more like almost all of them!) from Getter Robo, most notably Hayato as a delinquent (or adult terrorist in some adaptations) and Ryoma, who actually does use an axe. Appropriately, Ryoma's Humongous Mecha uses a Big Fraggin' Axe too and it goes Ax Crazy as well, becoming sentient and going on a rampage that would make EVA-01 wet itself in terror
  • Genkaku, Hibana, Minatsuki, Nagi, Shiro... almost everyone from Deadman Wonderland.
  • Sekai and Kotonoha, two almost-protagonists from School Days. Especially Kotonoha (in the anime and game).
  • Gettou Mokoto from Change 123 suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder. Three of her personalities (Hibiki, Fujiko, and Mikiri) aren't actively dangerous to those around them and only fight as a defense (admittedly, Hibiki has a liberal definition of same). It's Zero, her fourth personality, that is dangerous to everyone around her, whether they be enemies, one of her fathers (long story), friends, or even her Love Interest Kosukegawa.
  • Fanon often makes the various characters of Ranma ½ into this... which is actually a fairly easy leap to make, given that Comedic Sociopathy is a common mode of humor and all of the characters are JerkAsses, with or without a golden heart to soften things. Ryoga enters the series by ambushing Ranma from out of nowhere, apparently intent on viciously hurting Ranma... over bread. Shampoo chases Ranma across China seeking to kill "her" in order to avenge her lost honor, then is willing to consider killing her rivals for his hand. Mousse not only routinely tries to kill Ranma because Shampoo isn't in love with Mousse, but has no qualms about hurling volleys of bladed objects in all directions... in the middle of crowds and on public streets. Ranma's mother, Nodoka Saotome, wants desperately to meet the child who grew up without her... yet is so dedicated to upholding an immorally vague Seppuku contract that she carries a sword with her wherever she goes, and is almost frightening in her eagerness to pull it out.
  • In Angel Densetsu, while Ryoko and Ikuno usually aren't that dangerous, being always around Kitano is not a good comparison for them. There's even a nice Lampshade Hanging, in which Ryoko ends up beating up several times the same guys: she tries to calm them, they get even more scared, she gets annoyed, and then she 1-hit KO's them again.
  • Most of the main cast in Dorohedoro is, but hammercrazy Shin and Knife Nut Cayman take the cake.
  • Chiri Kitsu from Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei has been Flanderized into this. Originally she'd get extremely annoyed and occasionally violent if things weren't done properly, then in the later episodes she would regularly beat people with a shovel for doing things improperly, and in the latest season seem to have dropped all pretexts and become generally Ax Crazy.
  • By the end of the third arc of Umineko no Naku Koro ni, Eva has gone off the deep end and shoots Battler. Probably.
  • Mizuki Asahina and Hiruko in Nightmare Inspector say that dangerous sleepwalkers running into Ginseikan is a common occurrence.
  • Soul Eater has a quick way of making people at least briefly Ax Crazy. The first occasion Maka and Soul used the black blood, Maka made a very good attempt at beating Crona by, amongst other acts, ramming hir into/across a wall, and 'sharpening' Soul's blade by running Crona's face across it. The other main example would be Franken Stein, who - having given into his insanity - gleefully lashes out at Medusa with his Sinister Scythe until eventually managing to slice her in two, cut her limbs off, and when that doesn't stop the witch from biting him, finally sticking the scythe blade in her head.
  • Grell Sutcliff from Black Butler is Ax Crazy, although somewhat manageable.
    • Alois Trancy from the second season. Oh GOD.
    • Baron Kelvin is a genuine psychopath.
  • Claire Leonelli, from Heat Guy J, is a 19-year-old mafia don with severe mental issues, and an unnerving love of hand grenades (or as he calls them; "fireworks). He even decides to give his father a "fireworks show" at his funeral, by chucking a grenade into his father's grave, saying "papa! It's fireworks! You like them, right?" He then found this extremely amusing.
  • All over the place in One Piece, starting with a minor case in the appropriately themed and appropriately named Axe-Hand Morgan. Some examples:
    • Kuro won't think twice about killing to further his plans, and tried to kill his pirate crew and a young Ill Girl to wipe out any trace of his old life.
    • Shilew of the Rain was once a guard at Impel Down, but his love of killing prisoners eventually leads him into jail himself. The first thing he does when he gets out after Magellan authorizes his release to deal with Blackbeard is to kill all guards that come his way.
    • Eneru wants to knock his entire Floating Continent homeland out of the sky, and already did this to the island of his birth.
    • Probably the worst of the lot is Rob Lucci, who was sent in at age 13 to deal with a hostage situation where 500 soldiers were captured by pirates. He kills everybody involved.
    • Roronoa Zoro. He's admitted to being crazy!
    • No, no. In a series loaded with violent psychopaths, Akainu stands out among them all. His first real onscreen appearance has him ordering the destruction of a ship full of innocents because there might be a couple pirates aboard; from there, he only gets crazier and crazier, responding to every single threat with absolutely staggering force, regardless of the collateral damage it causes. We finally get to see just how truly nuts he is, however, when he responds to Coby's call for the violence to stop by immediately trying to kill him.
  • From Axis Powers Hetalia, there are Russia and Belarus, although this is debatable.
    • Lithuania is generally the victim of the cruelty, as he is Russia's "favorite." Russia certainly does count, but truthfully only when the true side of his bipolarity shows, as he is generally quite docile.
    • Belarus and her knives... and her Brother-Sister Incest marriage complex with Russia.
    • Uhm, well... if you look at history, there's a time when practically every country has been a little ax crazy. Too bad fandom likes it a little too much and makes everyone a crazy asshole/bitch for the sake of ~art~
  • Fullmetal Alchemist:
    • Barry the Chopper is a butcher turned serial killer who enjoyed chopping up flesh, but grew bored of just doing it to meat and started hunting humans instead. His eventual execution by hanging was well-publicized, but in truth, like many other Death Row inmates, he was instead used in human alchemical experiments where his soul was ripped from his still-living body and bound to a suit of armor.
    • Wrath in the first anime. Though to be fair, most of his madness stems from his rage and feelings of abandonment towards Izumi.
    • Zolf J. Kimbley in the first anime. His manga and Brotherhood counterpart likely qualifies as well, but manages to keep it hidden far more effectively through a facade of politeness.
  • Psyren has Yusuka, Sakurako's Super-Powered Evil Side, and Eiji Kise.
  • Wolf Guy Wolfen Crest: The Kuroda brothers, several gang members, Haguro, and his girlfriend Ryuuko.
  • Perfect Blue: Me-Mania, Mima at one point and Rumi.
  • Yami Marik and Yami Bakura in Yu-Gi-Oh. Even our hero Yami Yugi can become Ax Crazy if you get him mad enough.
    • Yubel in Yu-Gi-Oh GX.
      • Kiryu and the other Dark Signers from Yu-Gi-Oh 5 Ds as well as Luccanio and his fusion form Aporia.
  • 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.
  • Gennai Doma from Black Lion is extremely murderous; he'll slaughter any ninja in his path. This is because a group of them killed his wife and he got cyborgenetic implants that gave him super strength and other powers.
  • Beyblade has Brooklyn. He gets better.
  • Kevin of Karate Shoukoushi Kohinata Minoru.
  • Captain Continental of Legend of the Blue Wolves. He tries to sexually subdue subordinates that take his fancy and if they happen to refuse him he whips them and beats them half to death unless they submit. And if even that doesn't work he just rapes them, beats them, and forces them to participate in various sexual activities with absolutely no remorse. In fact, he seems to get sexual pleasure (if his constant Slasher Smile is any indication) out of breaking, beating up, and raping people. And at one point, he ran at Leonard, all the while screaming like a savage when Leonard tried to stop him from continuing his No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Jonathan.
  • Ryuuhei Sawamura and especially Bryan Hawk from Hajime no Ippo.
    • Takamura and Ryo Mashiba have their moments too. Mashiba himself goes mad when he fight Sawamura, which results in one of the dirtiest matches in the whole series.
  • Hibari (more Tonfa Crazy though), Mukuro, Byakuran, Birds, Belphegor, Rasiel, Glo, Xinia, Xanxus, and Daemon Spade from Katekyo Hitman Reborn.
  • All the members of Noah clan from D.Gray-man are less-than-stable. For example, Road once stabbed the protagonist in the eye with a candle For the Evulz, Tyki enjoys ripping organs out of their bodies because he thinks it's fun, Jasdevi once shut one character in iron maiden, Skinn Bolic gets into murderous rage if something he eats isn't sweet... Then there's 14th...who wants to kill and replace the Big Bad. Exorcist general Winters Socalo might also be one.
  • Eyeshield 21
    • Agon Kongo was implied to be this early on in the series. After being defeated by Deimon, his earlier axe craziness evolves into him simply being incredibly selfish and willing to use violence to further his goals if he can get away with it. His later characterization of just being a major prick means his earlier actions could be seen as him just being a ridiculously petty Jerkass.
    • Hiruma purposely builds his image off of being seen as one. Once you get to know him, you realize there's actually meaning to his madness.
    • Similarly, Gao seems Ax Crazy, but he's actually capable of controlling himself, which just makes him even more frightening as he can't be manipulated.
  • Suikotsu's evil side from Inuyasha. The title character himself can also be this whenever he goes into his youkai form.
    • Also Jakotsu, the local Depraved Homosexual. He has an attraction to Inuyasha and in his sadistic version of love tries to torture him to death because of it.
  • Kirika from Puella Magi Oriko Magica. She's an Ax Crazy Dark Magical Girl Psycho Lesbian Serial Killer. Wow.
    • From the main series: Homura, Kyouko, and Sayaka have various shades of Ax-Craziness at various points in the story. Sayaka especially goes psycho as the series goes on, eventually becoming a witch and having to be put down. Yeah, it's that kind of story.
      • The manga makes it worse, just with some of the facial expressions at some points. Probably helps that the manga was released alongside the anime and so the artist knew little more than the audience at the time of drawing it, so not knowing who was really good and who was really bad, he apparently just decided to make everyone insane... which isn't such a bad thing, really.
  • Kalia from El-Hazard: The Magnificent World becomes this after she turns into a Demon God.
  • Sakon Daimaru from Gamaran when he fights seriously. Partially justified by the massive trauma caused by his ambitious big brother Ryuugo.
  • Cowboy Bebop had two characters who shared this trait. The first and most obvious is Pierre Le Fou who is a complete sociopathic serial killer who just...kills. And has the mind of a 4-year old to boot. The second is, to a lesser extent, Vicious. His megalomania and quest for power leads him sacrifice everyone from his pet bird to old friends with whom he shared many memories. Both share the characteristic of killing for the sake of killing more people.
  • Fairy Tail has Zancrow and Zero and both the eyes are Red Eyes, Take Warning.
  • Rune of Karakuridouji Ultimo is definitely heading this way. And then there's Ultimo...
  • Routier of chapter 47 of part 2 of Rosario + Vampire. She attacks Fong Fong with a chainsaw while smiling and blushing. Eventually delves into Combat Sadomasochist territory when she has an ahegao-inducing orgasm from it.
    • Tsukune's Ghoul form definitely counts, what with all the bloodshed, insane laughter, and repeated use of the word 'kill'.
  • After he realizes that Ichigo loves Masaya and not him, Kisshu from Tokyo Mew Mew becomes this way via Love Makes You Crazy. In episode 45, after Ichigo refuses to leave Earth with him, he goes into a rage and tells Ichigo that if he can't have her then he'll kill her. He even employs the usage of a Slasher Smile.
  • Many a character in Pandora Hearts falls into this at one point or another.
  • Shira from Blade of the Immortal.
  • Harry of Outlaw Star. He gets better...sort of.
  • Many a villain on Trigun like Rowan and Legato is this.
  • Akito of Fruits Basket. He (anime)/She (manga) gets better.
  • Big Order: Kurenai Rin.
  • Saionji and Nanami fall into this during their respective duels with the titular Utena of Revolutionary Girl Utena.
  • Under Grand Hotel: Swordfish, on account of him being such a Yandere for Sen. He threatens anyone who expresses an interest in Sen with death, has sex with Sen to the point where it nearly kills Sen, tries to strangle him, kills the guys who raped Sen saying that he did it for Sen's sake even after Sen told him not to kill them, moves out of Sen's room and lets a rapist move in when angry with Sen, and slices the throat of another one of Sen's rapists right in front of him while saying "I love you, Sen." This being after he tried to get Sen to kill the guy himself but Sen refused.
  • Sakurako and sometimes Katsuragi from Sakura Gari.
  • Many a villain from Berserk such as Femto ( or Griffith), and Guts evil side.


Comic Books

  • The most famous are Batman and his Rogues Gallery. Batman is frequently considered to be nuts by some authorities, and some villains have sympathetic origins. The cutoff point is when they resort to murderous intent - and the one line Batman will not cross is killing. Except in the early Batman comics, where he killed bad guys left right and centre without a second thought.
    • The first three movie adaptations sort of skirt this issue. He might not shoot them or otherwise use explicitly lethal weaponry, but he seems more than willing to kill people. One moment that is in the first movie, where he presumably kills a thug by bashing his head into a large bell, then letting him drop down about a dozen stories. Mooks don't count as people, perhaps.
      • In the first movie he makes the Batmobile drop a bomb between a mook's feet which blows up a factory shown to be thriving with people. Granted, the factory was being used to mass produce Smilex nerve gas...
    • In Batman Returns, during the Red Triangle Gangs' initial assault, he activates a central "foot" that allows the Batmobile to rotate 180 degrees, just so he can use the backfire from the exhaust to set a Flame-Eater on fire. Karmic Death considering he just set fire to a toy store. During their second rampage, a circus Strong Man dares him to hit him, with little effect. Instead, Batman stuffs a few sticks of dynamite he had just lifted off a Human Bomb into his cummerbund, and then knocks him into an open sewer.
    • Batman used to be quite willing to kill people though that may have been changed one of the times they retconned the entire DC universe. It's been established that he'll kill if it's a matter of multiversal importance (Darkseid), or if you really, really, really piss him off (Joker, Alex Luthor).
  • Superman also has his share of crazies.
  • The Tick was rife with them.
    • Subverted in the same series with the Chainsaw Vigilante, who was Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Except he always fought to wound rather than kill, and was skilled enough with his weapon of choice to actually pull it off.
  • The Badger by Mike Baron featured a Badass Normal superhero... except that Norbert Sykes was in fact batshit insane with multiple personalities, one of which was his heroic alter ego, the Badger.
  • Deeply subverted by Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. Johnny, who is a Serial Killer and Anti-Hero, knows he is crazy and thinks of himself as the villain, but he's treated sympathetically by his creator. You get the feeling that he would be shocked by the positive light usually put on him, if he knew about it.

Johnny: I've been talking to dead rabbits and feeding bloody walls. I've done horrifying things with salad tongs. It's really eaten into my social life.

  • The title character of Roman Dirge's comic Lenore the Cute Little Dead Girl is either Ax Crazy or a particularly dark and dangerous variation of a Cloudcuckoolander, depending on how generous one feels in their evaluation of her - although if one does consider her Ax Crazy, she's a very, very sympathetic portrayal of it.
    • Lenore, every time she wants to kill Mr.Gosh for stalking her.
  • "The Female" and "The Frenchman" from The Boys and Wolverine from X-Men - all "good" guys!
    • Don't forget Sabretooth, the psychopathic bestial assassin who, unlike his "good" counterpart Wolverine, fully embraces his murderous and feral instincts.
  • Carnage from Spider-Man. He's the definition of an Ax Crazy, killing people and destroying things not because of any grand master plan on his part, but simply because he can. He's so much of an Ax Crazy that one of the most common manifestations of his ability to reform his arms into weapons is literally an ax.
  • The villainous Psyko, one of Sleepwalker's most dangerous adversaries, more than lives up to his name. He was a Serial Killer before being transformed into a demonic creature, and after that using his powers to make everyone else around him Brainwashed and Crazy, including Sleepwalker himself.
  • Galvatron, of Transformers, is frequently thought of as Ax Crazy. This is perhaps unfair. He is certainly insane--think Megatron, but (more?) operatic. He is not Ax Crazy, though...at first. His sanity degenerates markedly, seemingly after the destruction of Unicron, however; a popular Fanon theory wasn't quite made canon in Simon Furman's run on the G1 comics. By the end of the series (more accurately, the penultimate issue)...well, when you have a particle cannon that can blow apart even other creations of Unicron in a single shot, but think of this as a good battlefield tactic, you have a good idea of how Galvatron thinks at this point...
    • One third season episode of the '80s cartoon centered on second-in-command Cyclonus taking Galvatron to a psychiatrist. When the Decepticon army decides you need therapy, that's about the definition of Ax Crazy. And it only gets better: his crazy was too much for therapy planet to handle, causing it to essentially shut down, leaving Galvatron the opening to blast it to pieces, as needing "only centuries" to rebuild wasn't enough.
      • The above episode also cemented it as canon that Galvatron is legitimately unhinged, unlike his previous form. The stated reason is that the time spent lying in a pool of raw plasma has corroded his "logic circuits" (in other words, his brain has literally rotted), hence why he acts in such random fits.
    • Then you have Straxus. The Decepticon warlord left in charge of Cybertron in the Marvel Comics, he's almost as insane as Galvatron.
    • His TFA counterpart is even MORE crazy - however, thanks to his Derrick-sanctioned Formspring, TFA Straxus is more Laughably Evil
  • Warren Ellis' newuniversal has John Tensen, a serial killer with psychic powers. His ability to see people's sins has led him to believe that he's dead and in hell, and that practically everyone deserves to die; and his ability to create blades of Hard Light has allowed him to embark on an endless killing spree.
  • Rosy the Rascal, the Mirror Universe version of Amy Rose, is Hammer crazy.
    • From the same universe, "Super Scourge". While regular Scourge is just a more arrogant and cruel Sonic, Super Scourge is just non-stop violence and gleefully plans to destroy TWO whole planets. Because he CAN.
      • Similar things could be said of the incarnation of Super Sonic seen in the Fleetway (UK) Sonic the Comic. Except for the short period of time he had amnesia.
  • Played around with in Punisher War Journal Annual #1 (2008)... the Big Bad's plot to siphon Frank Castle's psychosis and mind for sale as an intoxicant in gaseous form backfires when everyone exposed ends up "tripping" on the Punisher's mind... and the sheer messed-up-ness. The difference is that he is used to it even after he inhales his own psychosis and can still function, whereas the "super" wannabes that would have been barring his way become incapacitated, babbling wrecks. In general, some writers make him lean in this direction, and the Punisher War Journal series has recently hinted at this.
  • Deadpool demands to know why he is not on this page, seeing as he effectively combines this trope with Bunny Ears Lawyer, Sociopathic Hero, Breaking the Fourth Wall, and many more.
  • Evil Ernie of Chaos Comics is not only Ax-Crazy, he's that way for good reasons. His childhood is Nightmare Fuel and the only people who try to "help" him are Mad Scientists. He eventually gets to pull the Ultimate Ax-Crazy Moment and kill the entire world..
  • Sin, the Red Skull's daughter.
    • And her equally psychopathic boyfriend Crossbones. In modern Marvel the two are basically Mickey and Mallory Knox as supervillains, with all that entails. In their first story arc they go on a non stop killing spree across America: Because they CAN.
  • Marvel Comics's Ares fits this trope to a T. So much so that he was one of the first members considered for Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers team. Though I suppose it should be expected considering the guy is the God of War. While Ares has shown affinity for all weapons, from spears to bazookas, his weapon of choice is his enormous ax.
    • DC Comics's Ares is slightly less ax crazy, since Wonder Woman pointed out to him that destroying the human race, including his own worshipers, would effectively lead to his own disappearance. Now instead of trying to start World War III, Ares sticks to smaller goals such as trying to overthrow his fellow gods on Mount Olympus.
    • Speaking of the Dark Avengers, most of the team is nuts. Bullseye is wildly murderous. Venom can barely keep himself from eating everyone he meets. Even Osborn is constantly trying to hold back the crazy goblin voices in his head.
  • All the villains in Hack Slash. The essential concept of the series is that you can become undead just by being Ax Crazy enough, and it makes you worse.
  • Every single member of the Secret Six is this trope save maybe Ragdoll, though he will cross into this territory if you push his Berserk Button. Out of all of them, Scandal is probably the most kill-happy, but Deadshot also has a pretty massive body count and is quite a fan of Talk to the Fist or, in this case, gun.
  • Bullseye is this and then some.
  • Rorschach and the Comedian from Watchmen. While both have different motivations (The Comedian is a sadist who enjoys the harm he inflicts, Rorschach is a moral absolutist who exterminates anyone and anything that he views as evil), both are vicious and not above torture or murder.
  • Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist. And bomb crazy, knife crazy, grenade crazy, baseball bat crazy, aerosol spray crazy...
  • Troy Grenzer in Shade the Changing Man, the man who kills Kathy's parents. Subverted when Shade takes over his body at the point of his execution in the first issue. So the hero of the comic has the face and body of a convicted killer! Though Troy dies in the first issue, his influence is felt throughout the series.
  • Cain from Echo is genuinely insane, complete with religious delusions and messianic fantasies, and that only adds to the terror of his violent rampages. When a man is already mentally unstable things become worse when you add in the ability to literally fillet you with his mind.
  • Father Hector Redondo from Welcome Back Frank is literally Ax Crazy. Residing in Spanish Harlem, he tends to get terrible thugs and criminals entering the confessional to get a clear conscience so that they can go out and sin some more. Redondo always flies into a rage and hacks them to death with an axe.
  • Andrea Mouse in Horndog.
  • It would probably be easier to ask who isn't Ax Crazy in some way, shape or form in Sin City.
  • In American Vampire, you have Skinner Sweet...and quite a few of the more "traditional vampires," and Hattie's getting there in a hurry, if she isn't already there.
  • Superboy Prime from Infinite Crisis and Countdown to Final Crisis. Whenever he isn't whining about how "Everything was better on my Earth!", he's brutally killing and torturing anyone who gets in his way.
  • Many of Darkseid's minions qualify
  • Massacre, Batwing's archenemy. Batwing describes him as "a man who worships death"—and that might be a little too kind.


Fan Works


Film

  • As almost everyone knows, Jack Torrance in The Shining. "HEEEEEEEERE'S JOHNNY!"
  • "*Mrs.* X" (Rose Michaels) in So I Married an Axe Murderer is a very literal example.
  • So is a particular scene from Donnie Darko—though the character is Ax Crazy throughout.
  • Captain Nero from Star Trek. Quite literally, he wakes up in the morning looking for new shit to blow up. And with advanced tech from the future, he can actually accomplish this. Sometimes he switches it up a little and becomes a Bladed Romulan Sceptre Crazy, instead.
  • Trigger Happy Lola from The Transporter 2 "Actually, my problem's not medical. It's psychological." (shoots the nurse.) And a few moments later: "What seems to be the problem?" "Me." (yet another burst of gunfire.)
  • Geaer Grimsrud from Fargo. In fact, in one scene he actually uses an ax.
  • John Ryder in The Hitcher is one of the most chilling and disturbing examples.
  • Chip Douglas in The Cable Guy.
  • Mark Collins in Twisted.
  • J.D. from Heathers.
  • David Allen Griffin in The Watcher.
  • Arthur Burns from The Proposition is a well read and very deep Warrior Poet...who just happens to have a penchant for gang-rape and mass murder.
  • Max Cady (especially De Niro's version) from both versions of the film Cape Fear.
  • Detective Norman Stansfield from Léon: The Professional has the habit of murdering entire families while humming Beethoven, in fits of drug-induced lunacy (though it doesn't help that he is also a death-obsessed psychopath).
  • Mr. Blonde/Vic Vega from Reservoir Dogs while certainly being the embodiment of cool, is a sadistic monster who nonchalantly murders and tortures innocent people for the hell of it while dancing to catchy tunes on the radio. Let's just say, the scene he is most famous for is a classic case of crossing the Moral Event Horizon.
  • Elle Driver and Gogo Yubari (as well as the main cast) of Kill Bill are excellent examples. Elle is a venomous, hateful, Rival Turned Evil who distinguishes herself from the other ruthless killers of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad by being the only member who is genuinely evil and malicious, while Gogo is simply a violent, sadistic sociopath who, quoting The Bride, "Makes up for her young age with madness."
  • Harry Powell from The Night of the Hunter.
  • The Joker in The Dark Knight Saga and Batman.
  • Norman Bates in Psycho.
  • Sarah turns into this over the course of The Descent. Differs from many examples in that it wasn't a random attack so much as the Ax Crazy making her act on her motivations. Alternately, the movie purposely left open the possibility that she had imagined the creatures and it was really just her slaughtering all her friends. Which would make her much more Ax Crazy, and throughout the whole movie.
    • Only in the Revised Ending. In the original ending, there's an additional scene which shows her about to be killed by the very-much-not-imaginary creatures while hallucinating that she's back with her dead daughter.
  • Frank Booth from Blue Velvet. One of the most memorably profane and sadistic psychopaths ever put to film.
  • Jonathan Brewster in the play and movie Arsenic and Old Lace. 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.
    • Arguably the old ladies are even worse, having killed 11 old men, and making it to the end of the story still convinced that what they've done is a form of charity.
  • Repo! The Genetic Opera has Luigi Largo. He's been described as walking around with a flask and a knife, drinking and stabbing anything that gets in his way, including his own employees. He's also tried to strangle his brother in 'Mark It Up'.

I'm the smartest and the toughest!
 I will find a hole and fuck it!
 If there ain't one, I will make one!
 Luigi don't take shit from no one!

  • Heddy from Single White Female. From the number of people she kills and impersonates she certainly seems to fall under the Axe Crazy heading.
  • Kazuo Kiriyama from Battle Royale: He shoots down several unarmed girls, grabs their megaphone and puts it to one girl's mouth so everyone within hearing distance can hear the sounds she makes as she dies.
  • Wooley from Dawn of the Dead. The guy just runs around the apartment building in the beginning of the movie shooting everybody in sight, whether they were zombified or not. He was so out of control, the SWAT had no choice but to kill him.
  • The Rocky Horror Picture Show - Never steal Dr. Frank N Furter's spotlight while he's holding a pickaxe. It may be the last thing you do. Meat loaf, anyone? He can also be pretty intimidating with an electric carving knife.
  • Morrell in A Room for Romeo Brass appears to be just a lonely eccentric, but he soon reveals his true colours when he threatens a disabled boy with a knife for a harmless practical joke that made him appear foolish in front of the woman he is obsessively fixated upon, threatens to kill the boy's family, and then threatens to kill the boy's best friend (and brother of the object of his lust) when the woman rejects him. However, compared to several of the others on this list he's an unusually laughable and ultimately rather pathetic example; his attempt to make good on his threats is put in its place when the best friend's estranged father -- who hasn't taken any of Morrell's shit throughout the entire movie -- charges in, gives Morrell a damn good kicking and sends him skulking away with his tail between his legs and the promise that, if the boy's father ever sets eyes on him again, he'll be the one who ends up dead.
  • Sleepaway Camp movies - The almost perpetually chipper and cheerful Angela Baker . Originally a kind of puritanical killer she just degenerated into killing for the sake of killing after a while.

Angela Baker: "I've never chopped wood before, but I've chopped other things!"

  • The eponymous killer from The Stepfather films whose sanity is shaky at the best of times, going from perfect All-American dad to a ranting attacker who beats people to death with a wooden board or stabs them in them in the face with a rake at the drop of a hat.
  • Bonecrusher hates axes. They're nice for hurting things he hates more, though.
  • Ripper, a fairly generic ax-murderer, is one of the antagonists in Last Action Hero. The fact that he's a hulking, semicoherent clone of every other Ax Crazy slasher on film is surely deliberate, as he's a fictional character from a rather trite series of lowbrow action flicks.
  • Matilda adds a good dose of Ax Crazy to The Trunchbull in addition to her cruel treatment of her students. The first thing she does when she suspects intruders in her house? She bull-charges from room to room, leaps down from the second floor, bringing down her chandelier in the process, and eventually starts swinging an Olympic hammer around and randomly smashing it into her possessions.
  • Cemetery Man. When the Grim Reaper tells you to kill people, you kill people.
  • Travis Bickle slides into this throughout Taxi Driver. No, no sir. I am not looking at you.
  • Played for laughs in Babes in Toyland:

Barnaby: Item 1: Kidnap Tom.
Roderigo: * Makes throat-slitting gesture*
Gorganzolo: No, just kidnap him.
Barnaby: Item 2: Throw him in the sea.
Roderigo: * Repeats gesture*
Gorganzolo: No, just throw him in the sea!
Barnaby: Item 3: Steal the sheep.
Roderigo: * Stabbing motions*
Barnaby: No, just steal them!

  • In Inglourious Basterds, Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz, a German soldier who murdered thirteen Gestapo officers for no explained reason combines this trope with The Quiet One. He is also considered Crazy Awesome.
    • There was a reason. They were Gestapo officers. He's implied to have a moral objection to the Nazis (and also to just enjoy a challenge).
    • Probably the entirety of the Basterds also qualify, although to a lesser extent than Stiglitz. For one thing, their second scene had them brutally beating down a German officer who chose death over betraying his comrades, and mocking him and berating him cruelly. In addition, when he refused to supply the info and insulted them, they laughed at him instead of reacting angrily, to which Lt. Raine even admitted that watching the Bear Jew bludgeon the German officer was the closest they'll ever get to watching movies. Their treatment of German prisoners when letting them go is also not much different: They carve a swastika onto the forehead of the German prisoners in order to ensure that they cannot take off their affiliations to the Nazis, and Raine even remarks at least twice that his actions are art.
  • Shrek
    • Rumpelstiltskin. Don't be fooled by the trickster shell. Deep down, he's really a homicidal sociopath.
    • Prince Charming in the Scared Shrekless story "Boots Motel", (a parody of Psycho's Bates Motel) which Donkey and Puss in Boots make up.
  • Bobby Thompson of Targets
  • Chester of D.O.A. enjoys hurting people. He especially relishes the gutshot, since it kills people nice...and slow.
  • The Yakuza with the Green Shirt (Kenji Mastuda) from Kitamura's Versus is a clear example of Ax Crazy. In fact, he seems to be utterly and completely unable to be entirely serious or show any signs of normalcy through the entire movie; he constantly makes faces and sounds, laughs like a maniac, screams and overall draws attention to himself by simply being a nutjob in every scene where he's present.
  • Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, when he escapes from his cage, bludgeons his captors to death with a cool, detached expression on his face.

"A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and A Glass of Chianti. *hisses*"

    • From the same film, Buffalo Bill, who tries to build a suit out of the skin of the women he murders.
  • Fouchet, in Bad Boys. His plan seemed to involve killing everyone he encountered. His first reaction when the cops arrive at the end? Shoot his partner.
  • Okay, he's not human or anything close to it, but Godzilla adversary Gigan is the poster boy for this. A forty-storey Psycho for Hire, Gigan is best remembered by the fanbase for looking Badass, having scythes—and subsequently chainsaws—for hands, and his clear enjoyment in slowly carving chunks off of his opponents. In a series defined by giant monsters stomping all over Japan, Gigan is one of the few who is obviously getting a kick out of it, and his very deliberate sadism makes his sanity rather questionable, even by this franchise's standards. Plus, anyone who puts a buzzsaw in their chest has got to be a lunatic.
  • Sykes and Don Lino from Shark Tale.
  • King Malbert from Igor.
  • The killer in 7eventy 5ive is both crazy and literally uses an axe to kill people.
  • Indio from For a Few Dollars More.
  • The title character from Caligula. Tiberius also gets a couple of moments.

Tiberius: Do you think this boy has drunk enough wine?
Caligula: I think he's drunk enough, Lord.
Tiberius: So do I! *kills drunk man* Now he is happy.

  • Rourke of Atlantis the Lost Empire during his Villainous Breakdown when he attacks Milo with an ax as the hot air balloon transport is crashing. He himself admits that Milo has done what few people have, which is royally piss him off.
  • Up. Muntz. Polite and reserved... but for the love of god, don't make him think for one second you're going to 'steal' Kevin, or else you'll find out just how off his rocker he really is.
  • Esther (or better said, Leena Klammer) from Orphan.
  • The Great Mouse Detective: Ratigan towards the climax, when he's enraged.
  • The Adventure Of Tom Thumb & Thumbelina: The Mole King towards the end when he chases down Tom and Thumbelina.
  • Stinky Pete in Toy Story 2 towards the climax when he tries to attack Woody with a pick axe.
  • Pooh-Bear in The Salton Sea is both crazy and extremelly dangerous.
  • Frank in The Departed truly embodies this trope.
  • Beauty and the Beast: Gaston during the final showdown with the Beast.
  • Lord Barkis Bittern from Corpse Bride after finding out that Victoria is poor after he married her. He murders Emily so that he can get her fortune and it is implied that he plans to do the same to Victoria. He also attempts to kill Victor.
  • Ursula of The Little Mermaid. When she transforms into Vanessa, its implied that she lost quite a bit of sanity (to the point of becoming borderline Ax Crazy) when turning into her, as she talks to her mirror in a manner similar to a schizophrenic, emits a psychotic grin when throwing a pin at a mirror's head with enough velocity to knock the mirror back, and most certainly kill a person had that been a human being, and then her cackling. She's most certainly Ax Crazy when she has her Villainous Breakdown after Ariel destroys her eel pets though.
    • Actually its hinted that she was never entirely sane to begin with...if you take notice of the fact that she has former mermaids as a polyp garden in the entrance to her cave...
  • Alex of Fatal Attraction although she doesn't seem like it at first is this taken Up to Eleven.
  • Hopper and Thumper of A Bug's Life, the latter even moreso.
  • Zira from The Lion King 2. She's much less composed and self-controlled than her predecessor Scar.
    • The Hyenas from the previous film also qualify. They are known to crack jokes relating to eating their victims when they find prey, as evidenced by how they behaved in the previous film when they trapped Nala, Simba, and Zazu.
  • Lord Shen from Kung Fu Panda 2.
  • Lola of The Loved Ones.
  • Debbie of Devil In The Flesh. She an Ax Crazy Yandere who kills numerous people and tries to kill her teacher's wife (she has an intense crush on her teacher).
  • Mrs. Tweedy in Chicken Run takes this trope literally when she sees the chickens escaping and suffers a breakdown.
  • Rippner in Red Eye following Lisa stabbing a pen through his neck.
  • Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Judge Doom. For the most part, a calm, cool, and collected version. Then after he gets flattened he loses it.
  • Loki, the main villain of The Avengers, announces his arrival on Earth by killing a bunch of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents with the evil spear of doom that the Chitauri gave him. He then proceeds to kill a lot more people over the course of the movie. A lot more.
  • Hexina from the 1993 film Hexed.


Literature

  • Patrick Bateman, title character of American Psycho. And Rachel Newman, of the female-centric sequel to the Film of the Book.
  • According to the narrator of Hell's Children by Andrew Boland, Acheri is one of these. In that moment, when survival is the only thing worth thinking about, only a fool would tax there mind with grievances of the past and Acheri was no fool, axe crazy as hell, yes, but no fool.
  • The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett often has these as villains.
    • Jonathan Teatime the assassin in Hogfather
    • Carcer, a sadistic sociopath in Night Watch
    • Mr. Tulip and Mr. Pin, aka The New Firm, in The Truth
    • Wolfgang from The Fifth Elephant is the prototype for the later character of Carcer.
    • Thief of Time has multiple ax-crazy moments, such as Jeremy Clockson's behavior when he hasn't had his medicine, and Mr. White's mental breakdown while holding an actual ax.
    • Discworld's greatest example of a hero who has the potential to go Ax Crazy is Samuel Vimes, Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. All who know him are very afraid to make him too angry for fear that he'll snap and (to use the British term) "go spare". His most notable instance of rage, as seen in Thud, made a group of dwarves, normally trained to fight to the death, flee in terror. To his credit, Vimes remains able to escape his rages before going beyond the point of forgiveness.
    • Andy Shank, football hooligan and general sociopath, from Unseen Academicals.
  • The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - If Edward Hyde isn't Ax Crazy I don't know who is. He does pretty horrible things throughout the book, but the most gruesome of his deeds is the murder of one of the leaders of parliament. He has completely no reason for it, no provocation, and bashing in the face of old gentleman isn't really anything that sane men would do. As described in the book:

The spirits of Hell woke up in me to their full rage. I hit the defenceless body within intoxicating ecstasy and I enjoyed every single hit. Then I ran along the lit street still full of this amphibious euphoria, gloating about my crime and at the same time planning lightheadedly new ones, although listening carefully in case for the steps of chasing avenger. With a song on his lips Hyde mixed the potion, and upon drinking it he drank the toast of dead man.

  • Jack Torrance from Stephen King's The Shining, especially the Jack Nicholson version, who uses an actual ax instead of a croquet mallet when he finally goes over the edge. "Heeeeeere's Johnny!"
  • No female fits this description better than Annie Wilkes of the Stephen King novel Misery. She has a habit of amputating a person's foot and cauterizing the wound with a blowtorch when she doesn't get her way.
  • Patrick Hockstetter and Henry Bowers from the Stephen King novel IT. Played sickeningly straight with Claude Heroux.
  • Dwayne Hoover in Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions winds up going on an insane rampage, which the author/narrator attributes to the influence of "bad chemicals."
  • Francis Begbie from the book (and The Film of the Book) Trainspotting, despite being one of the few members of his group to not use drugs, is the token berserker psychopath of the story, once casually injuring a random woman by throwing his beer mug off of a balcony and hitting her in the head, just so he could start a massive Bar Brawl.
  • Anton Chigurh from the novel No Country for Old Men is Ax Crazy personified. He has almost no personality other than pure murderous evil, which is made abundantly clear throughout the book.
  • Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar, in the novel (and BBC miniseries) Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.
  • Holloway Roberts becomes Ax Crazy in House of Leaves as a result of ever more dire circumstances while trying to explore the house's labyrinthine halls.
  • Rodya Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment, like Annie Wilkes, is literally ax crazy at least once. Although that was because he flipped out in the middle of a murder he'd already premeditated.
  • Lijah Cuu from the Warhammer 40,000: Gaunt's Ghosts series.

A casebook sociopath, if ever he'd seen one.
People called Larkin mad, but he wasn't mad like Cuu. Cuu was a cold killer. A psycho.

  • Bellatrix Lestrange from Harry Potter, a Complete Monster whose love of Cold-Blooded Torture exceeds even Voldemort's. In fact, there are numerous occasions where Voldemort decides he has to stop Bellatrix from killing anyone (admittedly because killing them would ruin some plan of his, rather than out of any actual mercy, but even so...)
  • William Hamleigh from The Pillars of the Earth has elements of this.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire's Gregor Clegane. You know you're insane when even The Hound is scared of you.
    • Interestingly enough, Arya Stark (a survivor of one of Gregor's murderous rampages through south-central Westeros) seems headed in this direction. She's one of the good guys, though. It's a real pity that she never got the chance to give Gregor a taste of valar morghulis ( High Valyrian for "Everyone Dies") before his death.
  • In Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, the murderer is obviously Ax Crazy material as they are more than willing to kill nine people for the sake of making sure they don't escape justice considering they killed people and all. Interestingly enough, one other character qualifies who is not the murderer: Vera Claythorne, after being forced to endure four straight days of pure psychological torture including looking back on her murder of a little boy so her lover could inherit his estate, completely snaps and kills Philip Lombard minutes before committing suicide.
  • Malus Darkblade from the Warhammer Fantasy Battle: Deamons Curse series is a shining example of Ax Crazy. He eats the heart of a previous captor, makes his oldest brothers face into a mask, and murders his father for a knife. And that's before the deamon stole his soul.
    • Note that this is not in any way unusual in Druchii culture, for example, that father of his tortured him for about a week for some reason. And he really, really needed the magic knife, and didn't know who had it until he barged in and started killing people about it. The others had also tried/succeeding in doing rather nasty things to him in the past.
  • Iida Sadamu from Tales of the Otori:

When those bright eyes met mine, I at once knew two things about him: first, that he was afraid of nothing in heaven or on earth; second, that he loved to kill merely for the sake of killing.

  • Sallie Declan, the Villain Protagonist of A. N. Wilson's A Jealous Ghost, has longstanding...issues. While babysitting a six-year-old boy, she loses her temper and hits him on the side of the head, hard, sending him smashing into a faucet. Later on, in college, she loses her temper again and nails a fellow student with an iron. And, making the third time the charm, when Sallie is dismissed from her job as a nanny, she murders a young girl by smashing her skull in and slashing her face to bits.
  • Zane of Mistborn is a self-admitted lunatic who hears a voice in his head every time he sees someone except for the heroine telling him to kill them. Normally he does his best to ignore it, but every so often he will kill or maim someone (or just cut himself) to keep the voice under control. He's also psychotic in other, more subtle ways and in fact his violent insanity was what allowed the voice, actually that of the literal god of destruction to speak to him in the first place. The Inquisitors from the same series are also decidedly unstable, because they draw their power from the same god.
    • Not quite. Zane had a hemalurgic spike which enabled him to hear the god. No one can hear the god without one, no matter how insane they are. When Zane dies Ruin finally informs him that he was never really insane at all.
  • Odiana, a recurring antagonist in Codex Alera, is a powerful watercrafter driven mad by being raped just as The Empath part of her watercrafting was coming in. She is quite nonplussed about physical violence, at the very least.

Odiana: If you go and kill the ugly little girl right now, won't the steadholder object? And then you'd have to kill him as well. And anyone else upstairs. And all these people here... Why shouldn't we do this again?

    • Phyrgiar Navaris, an antagonist in the fifth book Captain's Fury, is obsessed with becoming known as the greatest blade in Alera and has an official kill record in the three-digit range (potentially four if you include "self-defense" and suspected killings).
  • Margaret White from Carrie could be diagnosed with at least six psychological disorders, and the religious craziness does not help.
    • And let's not forget Carrie herself when she finally goes over the edge and starts killing people after one cruel prank too many. There's a reason that one should Beware the Nice Ones, dammit!
  • TKKG: Tim/Tiger shows some tendencies.
  • FBI Agent Pynebox in The Adventures of Fox Tayle does this after he breaks off from the rest of his team. He uses a gun, a knife, his fists, and a switchblade.
  • Roger and Jack of Lord of the Flies eventually become this during their stay on the island. Early on Roger was tormenting the "littluns" for fun, throwing rocks at them. In the end, Roger pushed Piggy to his death by rolling a massive boulder on him. Jack used him as a torturer, and he even made a stick sharp at both ends in order to impale Ralph and roast him over a fire.
  • Drake Merwin from the Gone (novel) series, especially once Sam burns his arm off and gets it replaced by a snake-esque whip arm.
    • Also Caine after his visit with the Darkness in Hunger.
  • Quinton from Zane's Addicted. Add Dempse as well.
  • Colt Regan - Johnny Nobody's reaction to Colt stealing a job from him is this.
  • Dread - Steve becomes ax crazy at the end of Clive Barker's short story. After enduring psychological torture that causes his mind to snap, he takes a fire axe from the homeless shelter where he was dropped off, tracks down Quaid, and proceeds to slowly hack him to death over the course of the entire night.
  • Belgariad: Taur Urgas, King of Cthol Murgos. Whoo boy. This is a man who beats his wives, Bad Bosses his underlings, tortures his enemies slowly, encourages his children to murder one another in order to become his heir, froths at the mouth in battle, chews the furniture during fits of madness, and dies screaming for his opponent to "come back and fight!"
  • The Elenium: Adus, an ape-faced, frighteningly stupid thug and Psycho for Hire, who commits rape and murder for kicks, slides into Unstoppable Rage in battle, and cuts through his own men to get to The Hero and The Lancer, all while "bellowing like an enraged bull". Jeez.
  • Erik from The Phantom of the Opera certainly has more than a few Ax-Crazy moments. His unfortunate habit of garroting anyone that sees him, aside from Christine, is certainly proof of this.
  • Mapleshade and Hollyleaf in Warrior Cats. Mapleshade is so messed in fact that the other villains are scared of her.
  • In Death: A number of the murderers Eve pursues certainly qualify as this. However, other murderers prove to be perfectly sane.
  • Time Scout gives us Jack the Ripper. Twice.
  • In The Wheel of Time, all male Channelers eventually either go Ax Crazy or die of a hideously disfiguring disease, thanks to a curse levelled on them by the Dark One (and the ones who do go crazy still die eventually- it's a toss-up what order the symptoms manifest in, how strong they are, and when). From the same series, recurring villain Padan Fain is also like this- being an imperfect merge of the original Fain and the ancient, malevolent spirit Mordeth he's about as far from stable as you get and is prone to lashing out violently at anyone unfortunate enough to be in his vicinity, though his real target is Rand. Scarily, he can still be charming (in an oily sort of way) when he wants to be, and has even shown the ability to supernaturally infect those he spends time around wit his own Ax Crazy.
  • Richard Lopez of Ship Breaker, a drug-addicted nut who tries to kill his own son.
  • The Composer of the web-novel Domina considers it an act of admirable willpower when he doesn't murder a prisoner just because he can. His larger motives remain unclear, but its looking like he doesn't care for anything besides For the Evulz.
  • Lydia of Caught In The Act by Peter Moore.
  • Brinkley, the replacement Bertie hires when Jeeves quits in Thank You, Jeeves, is a Battle Butler Gone Horribly Wrong. Ordinarily he's merely unpleasant and creepy, but when he gets drunk, he chases everyone relentlessly with carving knives, choppers and potatoes. And, since Bertie never actually gets near enough to fire him, there's some Fridge Horror inherent in the fact that he's still on the loose, and may at any moment decide to take a stab at being Bertie's valet again.
  • When Jack, the main character of The Chronicles of Professor Jack Baling, gets his hands on a Disintegrator Ray capable of converting tables or people into a pile of dust, it doesn’t work out well.


Live Action TV

  • There have been many episodes of Law & Order dealing with ax crazies.
  • In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this Trope is not something a Slayer wants to see applied to a vampire, but unfortunately, there are a few:
    • Drusilla. Drusilla's craziness is a result of the mental trauma she experienced as Angelus tortured her and made her watch while he tortured and killed her family.
    • Angelus, who liked to recreate the slaughter of his own family whenever he got bored.
    • Darla wreaked some very bloody havoc of her own.
    • Faith. She later does a Heel Face Turn, and both reforms and becomes more stable.
    • Connor ends up Ax Crazy after killing his godlike daughter Jasmine, snapping completely after learning a man he stopped from committing suicide would have left his family alone, holding a mall hostage and rigging it with explosives, insisting that a man stop holding his daughter wrong (because Connor broke his arm). Connor had some problems with his family.
  • iCarly: Nora. Literally, since she also held a medieval hatchet that scared off the trio back to their incarceration.
  • Firefly:
    • River Tam is an example of someone who has gone through Ax Crazy moments while still retaining her protagonist (and woobie) status. Her main violence has been against bad guys, but she's attacked fellow crewmates in the past, but has not done so with enough force to kill. Still, it's enough to freak out more than a few people who are not familiar with her history and motivations for violence.
      • Particularly memorable is the scene in "Ariel" where she slashes Jayne's chest with a butcher knife because he was wearing a Blue Sun T-shirt, and because he would later try to turn her and her brother Simon in to the Alliance for the reward money. With her psychic abilities, she most likely sensed something stabworthy about him.
      • In The Movie, she singlehandedly slaughtered an army of Reavers in a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
    • Ax Craziness is the hat of the Reavers. As Zoe puts it in the pilot episode, these cannibalistic once-human horrors will "rape you to death, eat your flesh, and sew your skin to their clothing -- and if you're very, very lucky, they'll do it in that order."
  • Dexter had "the Ice Truck Killer" and the Trinity Killer. Dexter himself is not Ax Crazy. He's very particular and methodical about who, how, and when he kills, and limits his victims to murderers who have evaded justice (He does do in a couple of child molesters, as well).
    • Though far less dangerous than the other Big Bads Miguel Prado's descent into vicious insanity is probably the most spectacular so far.
  • In the last season of Red Dwarf there's an inmate named KillCrazy. Ironically, at the first chance to actually kill something, he runs headlong into a doorframe and knocks himself out cold.
    • The Dwarfers used to occasionally run into Simulants, Ax Crazy robots who were bred for a war that never happened, and bent on destroying all life.
    • Plus the one time they were sent a replacement for Kryten, Hudzen, it turned out to be Ax Crazy as well!
  • Heroes: Gabriel Gray, better known as Sylar. Take one case of validation issues and compound with superpowers and murder, and you have a doozy.
  • From Scrubs:

"Heh, Hooch is crazy."
"Who the HELL... put bouillon cubes in the shower head!?! Huh? Hm, did you do it? Hm? Did you? If it happens again... I will wait in my SUV, blast me some speed metal -- five point one surround sound, heavy on the bass -- and someone... will be getting... mowed... down."
"... Hooch is crazy!"

  • In Pizza Bobo is... well insane. He keeps a chainsaw under the counter for when he deals with customers.
    • He once shoved a man into a pizza oven because he asked for a raise. This killed him.
    • The Axe Murderer, who shows up from time to time.
  • Doctor Who has numerous examples.
    • The Daleks. Ex-ter-min-ate! Extra credit to the Special Weapons Dalek. Basically, a Dalek with a BFG strapped to the front. The only problem is that the radiation drives the Dalek insane, and as liable to destroy its own Dalek comrades as the enemy. The Daleks keep it chained up and call it "The Abomination".
    • Their creator, Davros who kill off his own race when they tried to stop him from make the Daleks, told the Doctor that if he were giving the power to end all life he would do it just to prove that he could and later on made a bomb that would DESTROY! REALITY! ITSELF!
    • The Master; he likes to kill whether it helps his plans or not.
    • The Silurians of the double-episode "The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood", though it's the military caste due to an unintentional incursion. This apparently gives them the excuse to attempt to start a war despite numerous protests that they don't need to.
    • Hindle from "Kinda." It's clear pretty early on that he's not very mentally stable, but then he gets worse...and then he rigs up those explosives...
  • Xena: Warrior Princess has Callisto.
  • 01 Boxer in Charlie Jade.
    • Only in the Betaverse, and arguably the Alphaverse. He seems to manifest a different personality in each world; in the Gammaverse he's a loving husband who is horrified at what he becomes in the other two universes.
  • Wiseguy. Vinnie Terranova stumbles across a corrupt toxic waste-disposal company, whose boss ends up beating a woman to death with a golf club. He later turns out to be suffering from mercury poisoning ?- he was "as mad as a hatter".
  • Lost: Keamy is already not a nice guy, but like several people on the freighter it appears that the Island has made him unstable. Extremely unstable. To the point where he casually kills the captain of the ship just to prove a point and intentionally puts the entire crew (well, the ones he hasn't killed yet) at risk...just so he can complete his mission of getting Ben. He also saves his own life by kicking a grenade at his second-in-command when it lands at his feet.
    • In season 6, a clearly-not-all-there Claire embodies this trope very literally.
  • Jamie McDonald manages a rare verbal Ax Crazy. The usual display of Hair-Trigger Temper looks amateurish compared to this guy.

Jamie: You mimsy bastard, Quisling leak fuck! ...Okay, okay, okay. You, Julius Nicholson, being of sound mind but with a body that looks like a giant sex toy, did knowingly do us up the shithole by passing confidential information to the enemy! And I am gonna have your guts as a skipping rope, and your lungs sun-dried and turned into a little fucking waistcoat!

  • DAAS Kapital: Psycho Bob, a psychopathic American Serial Killer with a fixation on Tim.
  • Aaron Echolls of Veronica Mars may not have used an axe in the show, but his eyes in the rear-view mirror scene in the season 1 finale, locking the title character in a fridge and setting it on fire (intending to burn her alive because she refused to give him back tapes proving he had murdered another teenage girl by bashing her skull in with an ash tray (also for refusing to return incriminating tapes)), (as well as the frequent abuse of his son and the beating-almost-to-death of his daughter's boyfriend,) qualify him as a member of the Ax Crazy group.
    • Aaron's son Logan Echolls has been shown to possess similar tendencies and was described as 'psychotic' in the first episode, during which he bashed in the headlights of Veronica's car because she had inadvertently caused his own to be taken away by getting him arrested. He is shown to have a short fuse throughout the series, although the show ended before he could properly follow in his father's footsteps.
  • Parodied in the "Mega Movie Myths" episode of MythBusters. In the silent film-esque intro, Jamie is chasing Tory with a pickaxe after Tory forgot to put away his drill. "Heeeeeeeeeeere's Jamie!!"
  • Tuco from Breaking Bad.

Jesse:"Are you basing that on he's got like a normal, healthy brain or something?! Did you not see him beat a dude to death for, like nothing?!"

Michael: "If I let him out of my sight, that's when he starts killing everybody."

  • Most of the killers in Criminal Minds, as the show tends to only deal with the most extreme criminals. They range from the technically-sane but extremely sadistic and heartless to people with almost no grip on reality whatsoever.
  • Centauri Emperor Cartagia of Babylon 5, epically ax crazy and in charge of a planet. Prone to laughing and doing a merry jig with you one second and casually having you executed the next. Planned to have his world blown up by the bad guys in exchange for his ascent to godhood (or so he believes.)
  • Smallville: Many Meteor Freaks. Bruno Mannheim, a gangster who appeared in Season 8's "Stiletto" was also visibly nuts, twitching in every one of his appearances, and gleefully killing his boss for wanting to go straight. And then there's LX-3, an utterly murderous clone of Lex Luthor, who tries to kill or hurt every single person we see him speak too. He burns the other clones to death while ranting about how "There Can Be Only One", attacks Tess, kills the whole staff at Cadmus Labs, and, to top it off, ties Lois to a scarecrow and sets the field around her alight after placing a bomb in the Daily Planet. All this so he can force a Sadistic Choice on Clark and have a few laughs before The Last Dance claims him.
    • Major Zod is another example of an Ax Crazy Smallville villain. He spends most of his onscreen time in Season 9 slowly deconstructing, as stress and his own constant failures eat away at his sanity. He suffers repeated breakdowns, during which his inner lunatic strains to get out; during the Season Finale, he undergoes a massive Villainous Breakdown and finally snaps for good, charging The Hero while ranting about how the entire world will Kneel Before Zod!
  • Chang from Community, particularly in episode English as a Second Language where he takes a key-tar to a former students car.
  • N'udu from InSecurity is a more restrained version of this; he knows how to kill people using anything and once cleared a long check out line at the grocery store by describing how he would kill the other occupants of the line using the contents of their basket. Like everything in this show, it's Played for Laughs.
  • Captain ("LORD!") Garth from the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Whom Gods Destroy", especially apparent when he nonchalantly tosses a planet-destroying bomb to one of his henchmen for amusement. Not helped by his delusions of becoming "Master Of The Universe".
  • Many a inmate on Oz is this. Beecher becomes this after taking a level in badass, and some of the guards show these tendencies.
  • In Young Dracula Boris ends up like this after merging with his vampiric reflection, appalling even the vampires around him with his willingness to ignore their few moral codes, culminating in him murdering the Grand High Vampire so he can steal his crown.
    • In the season 3 finale Sethius quickly proves utterly insane, killing the vampires around him purely because he can. He intends to replace humanity with vampires because he wants them to run out of food and descend into violent chaos. He's bad enough that Ingrid and the Count actually follow the plan instead of scheming so they can take him down.
  • Rizzoli and Isles features Hoyt.

Music

  • P!nk, in her video of "Please Don't Leave Me" here 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.
  • Referenced in Pink Floyd's "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.
    • Also, there's their early song "Careful With That Axe, Eugene".
    • And why not mention "One of These Days": "One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces"
  • The protagonist of the The Birthday Massacre song "Happy Birthday".
  • Name a heavy metal band from the late 70s-early 80s, they have at least one song about someone being Ax Crazy.
    • "Sweating Bullets" by Megadeth.
    • "Axes of Evil" by 3 Inches of Blood, literally.
    • Metallica's (quite good actually) cover of Queen's "Stone Cold Crazy". Also, "Battery", as in 'assault and'.
    • X Japan's "ILLKILLYOU," "Kurenai," "Week End" (alongside a nightmarish and over the top PV) and "Rose of Pain." "Rose of Pain" is about Elizabeth Bathory, a Real Life Ax Crazy. (Okay, MAYBE not as much.)
    • Jaguar actually has a song named "Axe Crazy".
  • "Hey everybody, did the news get around/About a guy named Butcher Pete?"
  • 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
 God, my best friend's on a shooting spree
 Stop it, Debbie! You're embarrassing me!

  • The narrator of Creature Feature's "Such Horrible Things" even admits that he deserves to rot in Hell. }}
  • At least one character in every single song off Nick Cave's Murder Ballads, but especially notably Lottie in the Curse Of Millhaven
  • In the video to Babes in Toyland's "He's My Thing," a Creepy Doll mutilates another Creepy Doll out of jealousy.
  • Slim Shady, hands down. Here's the latest proof.[when?]
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Mr Psycho. He'll blow you away.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Malcolm from the song of the same name by The Arrogant Worms:

Malcolm solves his problems with a chainsaw
 And he never has the same problem twice!


Newspaper Comics

  • 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.


Tabletop Games

  • The Wayward creed in Hunter: The Reckoning are all Ax Crazy. Every Hunter is imbued by the Powers That Be, but most are left to their own devices afterward. The Waywards, however, get to experience the Powers up close and personal all the time; this being the (old) World of Darkness, that's not a good thing. Furthermore, other Hunters show a preference to protect humanity from unruly supernatural forces; Waywards, on the other hand, are more likely to blow up any supernatural creature they encounter (no matter how harmless), and shrug their shoulders if any humans die as a result of "collateral damage." The biggest Ax Crazy is Joshua, AKA "God45," who is implied to have stolen a nuclear weapon during the Time of Judgement. He becomes a player character in the video game Hunter: the Reckoning: Wayward, where Fanatic656 displays the traditional Wayward traits.
    • Hunter: The Vigil, Reckoning's New World of Darkness counterpart, features slashers as antagonists, humans who are driven to kill. Some become mortal serial killers; others, however, begin to manifest supernatural powers to 'help' in their pursuit...
  • Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000 both feature Khorne, Chaos God of mindless violence and senseless bloodshed. His mortal followers try to kill something every day, and have been known to take their own lives if no other targets present themselves - after all, Khorne cares not from where the blood flows, so long as it flows. Daemons of Khorne are literally the embodiments of rage and bloodlust, and number among the most terrifyingly effective warriors in the game.
    • Khorne's favorite daemonic servant is the Bloodthirster known as Skarbrand, who was manipulated by rival god Tzeentch into attacking Khorne himself. This ended with a furious Khorne grabbing him by the throat and hurling Skarbrand from his citadel so that he fell for seven days and lost his wings in the crash-landing. The experience left Skarbrand with no other emotion than pure, undistilled hatred and fury, and a mission to roam the mortal and immaterial universe and kill anything he finds in a vain attempt to appease his god - for Khorne is so impressed with Skarbrand's work that he prefers his rampage across reality. Skarbrand is so contagiously Ax Crazy, in fact, that any creatures nearby are also overcome by insatiable bloodlust, compelling them to tear apart their enemies in hand to hand combat.
    • Khorne's greatest mortal servants in the 41st millennium are the Chaos Space Marines of the World Eaters legion, chainaxe-wielding berzerkers who voluntarily undergo lobotimization to become more effective killers. The most famous and Axe Craziest of their number is Kharn the Betrayer, so named because he has a one in six chance of attacking any friendly models in close combat. Kharn is singlehandedly responsible for breaking the World Eaters as a coherent fighting force; when a battle against rival Chaos Marines ground to a halt due to an otherworldly blizzard, Kharn grabbed a flamethrower and torched every shelter, then went about taking the skulls of any soldier he found. As for Angron, the Primarch-turned-Daemon Prince of the World Eaters, Kharn was considered a calming influence on him.
    • On the subject of Chaos Space Marines, Dreadnoughts have a special Crazed! table they must roll on each turn, giving them a chance to lunge into close combat or unload their ranged weapons on the nearest squad, friend or foe. They're such demented killers that outside of combat, even after the pilot's sarcophagus has been removed, the empty war machine is kept chained to a wall, just to be safe.
    • Orks (and Orcs) are Choppa Krazy as a species, violent brutes who live only to wage war on anything around them or, failing that, each other.
    • Even heroic factions are subject to this. The Blood Angels' Death Company consists of Battle-Brothers who have fully succumbed to the chapter's flawed gene-seed, hallucinating themselves as their lost Primarch during the final battle of the Horus Heresy. Not only are they so consumed by bloodlust that they must charge into close combat, but their minds are so far gone that they Feel No Pain as well. They're not expected to survive their battle, and any that do are mercy killed by the chapter's Chaplains.
    • Eldar Exarchs are warrior-priests of Kaela Mensha Khaine, their bloody-handed god of war. Though the Eldar Path leads each member of the race to foster multiple personalities as they master one occupation at a time, the Exarchs are those who have become trapped on one of the Warrior Paths. Forsaking their past identities, they take up the mantle of the last to wear their armor and live only to wage battle on the Eldar's enemies. Biel-Tan craftworld is ruled by a council of such Exarchs, and known for its zealous and xenocidal campaigns to rebuild the ancient Eldar empire.
  • The Iron Kingdoms: Kommander Orsus Zoktavir, The Butcher of Khardov, is a very literal case of ax crazy. Its name is Lola.
  • Cyborgs who get too many implants, in settings where Cybernetics Eat Your Soul. They're known as "cyberpsychos" in Cyberpunk 2020 and C-SWAT's special Psycho Squad gets called in when one goes on the loose.
  • Anything Exclusively Evil in Dungeons & Dragons. Especially the Demons.
    • In the fourth edition of the game, Gruumsh is changed from the axe crazy god of the orcs, to simply being the god of axe crazy-ness.
    • In addition to Gruumsh, Forgotten Realms has Garagos, a practically nonsentient deity of bloodlust and destruction.
    • Surprisingly rare among darklords of Ravenloft, as most aren't truly insane, and hence are wholly responsible for their own evil actions. The Hive Queen, Tristessa, Malken, and Duke Gundar have all shown strong Ax Crazy tendencies, however, as do quite a few non-darklord villains like the Midnight Slasher.
    • "Madman" actually had its own entry in the 2nd Edition Ravenloft Monster Compendium.
  • In Talislanta, any Ahazu in the throes of "shan-ya" counts. Actually, most Ahazu are pretty edgy to begin with.
  • Even going beyond the Great Curse, it's possible for the Exalted to reach these lofty heights. Take Raksi, Queen of Fangs, who Exalted in her pre-teen years and was forced to flee into the Wyld during the Usurpation. She came out changed in several ways. Way number one? She took the city of Speremin by force and renamed it "The City of a Thousand Golden Delights," bred an army of ape-men herself, ran up a reputation as a cannibal sorceress queen among the local tribes, decided to cement it by making babies her favorite meal, and now spends her days desperately trying to learn the secrets of a style of sorcery way beyond her means and willing to do anything that will get her closer to revelation. The other way? Her fingers now bend backwards.
    • Among the Yozis, Adorjan may be the model of Ax Crazy. She views silence as a gift and loves everyone, so she wants to kill them all to show her love. Her Charm set for her Infernal subjects reflect this, including such options as "Social Influence attempts are blocked by all noise turning into a wretched discord that makes you want to kill" and "you can only verbalize laughter, but gain telepathic communication with allies."
  • Orcs in Pathfinder. Half-orcs, however, are not necessarily so; in fact, the one half-orc iconic (so far) is Neutral Good.
  • The Rifts RPG's Crazys are just as easily Ax Crazy as they are batshit insane.
  • Arkham Horror's maniacs. In particular, while most Ancient Ones have rules changing how the cultist enemies function, Azathoth's cultists are completely insane and count as maniacs.
  • In The Dark Eye the men and women who form a pact with Belhalhar, the demon of Bloodlust and Murder tend to become this, if they weren't like this before, after a while because of the effects of the pact. The priests of the demi-god Kor act the same way, but they won't attack anyone who surrenders or is unarmed.
    • Almost all demons under the rule of Belhalhar act the same way, to the extent that getting them to stop fighting is quite hard.
    • The Maru a race of crocodile people almost all act the same way as directed by their god Kr'Thon'Chh he and Kor are one and the same god, despite many humans fear that the Maru follow a demon


Theatre

  • The eponymous hero of Sophocles' Ajax 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.


Video Games

  • Xenogears has Id, also known as the Demon of Elru. Whenever he pops up, he goes around killing everything in sight, committing genocide, crashing a "space station" (killing all the people living inside), or just behaving like a "normal" serial killer, and murdering people one by one. In reality, Id is actually Fei's Split Personality. The guy has a lot of issues.
  • The Prophet of Truth, Halo's own ax crazy madman. He finally gets to almost use his weapons (seven rings that will kill all life in the Milky Way) in Halo 3. The Arbiter in Halo Wars is a clear example.
    • In canon, Truth was driven to madness after the events of halo 2, beliving his own lies about the halo array that was first preprtarrted in Conact Harvest. Though it's also hinted that he may have found out something about the halos that nobody else knew at the end of First Strike.
      • Outside of canon, his change in mental stability is due to Joseph Staten not playing him in 3. Staten had protrayed him as a calculating, heavy headed leader in Contact Harvest and Halo 2, which is a stark contrast to how he is shown in 3.
  • Sapphire of Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice qualifies. Not as dangerous as some here, but still quite violent.
  • Fritz from Brain Dead 13, whose deranged methods of killing involve eggbeaters, harpoons, and a blender. Combine that with him being a Determinator, and, well... you're screwed.
  • Drakengard
    • Arioch is an Ax Crazy Elven Action Girl. Due to the loss of her children (presumably right in front of her eyes and in some gruesome way), she's now a cannibal, and has a preference for small children. She's also on the player's side.
    • Caim, our "hero", also qualifies.
  • In Dwarf Fortress, every now and then one of your dwarfs may snap and start killing anything and everything in sight. The usual cause for this is their happiness falling too low, although there are others. Often from having seen/being attacked by another dwarf that had this happen to them.
    • Memorably, in the Something Awful Let's Play fortress of Boatmurdered, the fortress deteriorated to a level where it was in a constant state of anarchy, with dwarfs becoming so annoyed by the smoke and miasma that they snapped and went on a rampage, invariably killing a dwarf that was the relative of another dwarf, driving that dwarf into a homicidal rage, and so on. Probably the best individual moment of this was when one of the former governors of the fortress, who was possessing of insane strength, managed to beat several other dwarfs to death incredibly messily. DID I MENTION HE IS ON FUCKING FIRE!??
      • A (rather appropriate) meta example from that very Let's Play comes in the form of StarkRavingMad, one of the appointed overseers of the fortress, who devises a plan to finally end the seige of elephants that was threatening to kill them all:

StarkRavingMad: I've started project 'Fuck The World,' a top secret attempt to funnel magma to the outside. I'll kill those elephants. I'll kill all those fucking elephants.

  • Sheogorath, the Daedric Lord of Madness in The Elder Scrolls series (appearing in the flesh in the expansion pack of Oblivion) is an Anthropomorphic Personification of this trope.
    • For someone who ends all his conversations with "Visit again or I'll pluck out your eyes!", he is surprisingly nonviolent. Even if you attack him, he doesn't attack back directly, just scolds you and teleports you into the sky, causing you to fall to your death. Just don't make him too happy or talk to him while he's contemplating on having Brain Pie for lunch.
    • Glarthir, from Oblivion. He has a quest that has you follow people all day and they are not, in any way, conspiring against him. If you tell him no one is working against him, he goes home and equips his battle axe, so he may kill the people. That's about as literal as it gets, considering the townsfolk know full well he is completely insane.
  • Kefka from Final Fantasy VI. This is a man who reduced the planet to a burned-out shell because he could, and then randomly took out the remaining pockets of civilization with a Wave Motion Gun whenever he got bored. That's during his encounter with the Warring Triad. Beforehand, he was, while relatively normal, a man prone to breaking into fits of hysterical laughter when doing atrocious crimes, had brainwashed Terra and ordered her to torch fifty soldiers alive, attempted to burn Figaro, poisoned Doma (and in that particular case, he also mused maniacally about his joy about listening to "music" revolving around hundreds of people screaming in unison), brutalized various Espers in the Magitek research facility while maniacally declaring himself to be a god, massacreing various Espers at Thamasa as well as burning Thamasa to the ground.
    • His backstory reveals that he was the first Magitek Knight, but the process was imperfect, and that he became insane after the process, which is heavily implied to involve brain surgery, meaning that the Empire literally broke his brain.
  • And in a vein rather similar to Kefka, there's BlazBlue's own Hazama/Terumi Yuki. He trapped the world in over 170 time loops of 100 years each through which the world, during just the first 10 years, got ravaged by an enormous, hydra-like monster, seemingly because it amused him to do so. This is also arguably one of the less horrifying acts he has done for simple lulz, soley because the result of it was a continuously repeated impersonal and indiscriminate mass-slaughter on over 50% of the human race... Y'see, it's not until Hazama gets personal with people that his maniacal depravity really shines through.
    • Jin Kisaragi also counts. Whenever he sees Ragna, he enters twisted Yandere mode and his dialogue has some disturbing implications, even though he's trying to kill him. Also, whenever he sees Noel or Nu, the guy goes absolutely batshit insane, screaming death threats and taunts while trying to kill them. Thanks to some mentoring sessions with Jubei at the end of the second game, he seems to have gotten rid of his Ax Crazy tendencies and pulled a Heel Face Turn, although he's still a colossal prick.

You'll never get your hands on my brother ever again, you bitch! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

  • Jade Empire's Black Whirlwind is a hot-headed hulking brute who carries twin axes, has murdered innocent noblewomen, burned down temples, and more, most if not all while drunk, but he's on your side.
  • Ignus, a fire mage, from Planescape: Torment, who nearly burned down the entire city of Sigil before being stopped, can join your party. Ravel Puzzlewell, who almost destroyed the city of Sigil before the Lady intervened, is connected with your character. The Xaosects/Chaosmen, represented mainly by the insane Starved Dogs Barking thugs, prowl The Hive (though you can speak to one, Barking-Wilder, and turn him briefly sane). Acaste, the Ghoul Queen, hungers for flesh, though that's pretty standard procedure for a ghoul. One of your own past incarnations was quite ax crazy and damn near impossible to kill, to boot. You can use a fossilized arm of his as a weapon.
  • The crown king of all Ax Crazy RPG villains is Luca Blight from Suikoden II, hands down. Nothing is safe from his wrath...not even small children. In fact, Luca rewrites the book on Badass, as it eventually takes as many as eighteen of your party members, several volleys of arrows (each one shown capable of immediately killing one of his soldiers), and after all this, a duel to the death with the main character to bring him down in a suitably epic Climax Boss battle.
  • Albedo from the Xenosaga series. The particularly disturbing "Ma-Peche" scene gives testament to this, especially when he tears his own head off to prove a point about how he can not die.
    • In the Japanese version, he cuts it off, but the edited scene in the English release actually manages to be more disturbing than the original.
  • Omega from the Mega Man Zero series is a mechanical embodiment of this trope. His sole purpose is simply to kill. His bloodthirsty nature rivals even a Khorne Berserker.
    • Who may actually be Zero's Super-Powered Evil Side and/or Evil Counterpart inhabiting a separate body.
      • Worse than that, he's exactly what Dr. Wily had intended the real Zero to be. In fact, Zero is indeed Ax Crazy, before his Heel Face Turn.
    • Omega's own creator, Dr. Weil, also qualifies. Destroying a whole neighborhood just to capture the Dark Elf? Check. Making humans' lives completely miserable, with the choice of either dying or living under his rule? Check. Setting a Kill Sat to destroy a human encampment? Check. Plus, going completely nuts after the Kill Sat is set and fired against himself, initiating a Colony Drop with him inside the satellite, believing himself to survive the crash...
      • And before all that, the fact that Weil's schemes in the Elf Wars caused The End of the World as We Know It and claimed the lives of 60% of all humans, and 90% of all Reploids. Sheesh...
        • He's such an incredibly dangerous person to have around that even after his bodily death, his sheer loathing and insanity leached into the surrounding wreckage, giving inanimate material the ability to feel hatred and desire complete obliteration of all sentient life on the planet. Even so killed and diffused, he's still so thoroughly evil that mere proximity to fragments of this wreckage can drive a person to insanity, which eventually becomes a major plot point in the sequel series Mega Man ZX.
    • Vile from Mega Man X. Similar to Galvatron, an accident regarding his brain led to him developing a disturbing relish in not only terminating Mavericks, but also causing as much collateral damage as he can while destroying the maverick in question. He also has a sociopathic hatred of X, and he revolts against authority namely to cause destruction.
  • Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors has Clover in the "Axe" ending chopping up Santa, Seven, June, and Junpei, over her brother's death. Even worse is the fact that they are all innocent.
    • Didn't find out that Snake is alive? Hopefully, you didn't go through Door 1...
  • Super Paper Mario has Dimentio. It's not obvious at first, but about three-quarters of the way through the game he starts killing characters left and right, all the while cracking jokes and delivering lines like "It won't be so bad, I promise", in addition to being The Starscream. He's also referred to as being psychotic at least once in the game.
  • The Beauty and the Beast Unit from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is an Amazon Brigade full of Ax Crazy women driven insane by horrific war-time atrocities. They also have Powered Armor, so that's cool too.
  • Daniella the maid from Haunting Ground. She is a homunculus created to be the "perfect woman" by her master. However, she cannot feel pain or pleasure, which drives her to scream at her reflection because she feels she is not "complete". She becomes even crazier and hateful towards Fiona, who can feel what Daniella cannot. Daniella comes to a logical conclusion - she must obtain the vital essence known as Azoth, which Fiona possesses, in order to become complete. She plans on tearing the Azoth right out of Fiona, and pursues her relentlessly throughout part of the game. She is prone to fits of maniacal laughter (her head often spasms violently when she does so) and will shriek at random.
  • In the first Mechwarrior game, you can get pilots to help you in your group, each comes with a picture and a quote along with their stats, before you hire them. One of them is Killer, wearing a ski mask, with the quote "I want to burn villages and eat dead, burnt bodies, kill, kill, kill!"
    • He gets an homage in Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries in the form of Jake "Killer" Ives, a cheerful psychopath who was also a cheap, effective pilot, noted in his hiring profile to be a sadist bar none, with Humongous Mecha as his tool of choice for hurting other people.
  • Many of the bosses in No More Heroes, and more so in its sequel. Special mention goes to Bad Girl, who bats blindfolded gimps at you and beats you with a burning baseball bat, the insane superhero Destroyman, the pig-tail wearing Yandere Kimmy Howell, the damned soul of Matt Helms, and Jasper Batt Jr. after taking some Psycho Serum. In fact, most of the remaining assassins come off as Retired Monsters who got Bored with Insanity.
  • From The Mark of Kri we have Tati. This deserves special mention because her older brother Rau is the one with the ax, but he's remarkably calm and level headed. And he never speaks in anything except battle cries. Unless Tati turns to The Dark Side, in which he will utter her name once before Tati and the forces of darkness slaughter him. Tati, on the other hand, is very vocal and has moments of exceeding maliciousness. The way she slaughters single enemies with her knives looks more painful than anything Rao does with his ax, and considering the body count Rao racks up with it, that's saying something.
  • Barbatos Goetia of Tales of Destiny 2 is also an example of Ax Crazy trying to prove that he's the strongest out there, which caused him to be written out of history in the first place. It's not just his personality that is insane, his power is also insane that he can even be invulnerable against magic whenever someone tries to cast one. He also wields an ax. If you want more of his Ax Crazy stuffs, just listen him pull an Evil Laugh or his Kiai.
  • The main reason Jade Curtiss from Tales of the Abyss banned relicating living creatures was that when he attempted to revive his mentor who he accidentally killed through it, the resulting clone was an ultra-powerful Bonus Boss with a sociopathic personality. No wonder he was a bit apprehensive about using it again.
  • Zagi from Tales of Vesperia, who, at about 3/4 through the game seems to have no reason for wanting to kill Yuri other than that he wants to kill Yuri. His Ax Crazy status is lampshaded by his one eye that's smaller than the other possibly because he's so insane that he can't be bothered to hold them both open. In one of the boss battles against him, he casts poison on HIMSELF! Most battles consist of him spouting random crap about wanting to kill Yuri.
  • The Tales series loves this trope. Way back in Tales of Eternia, there's Hyades. In Tales of Innocence, there's Hasta, who loves to disorientate the party and players alike with his creepy manner of speaking.
  • Jerme, the Black Fang assassin nicknamed Death Kite from Fire Emblem, fits this one like a glove. He says to Lyn: "You! Woman! You have beautiful skin. If I sliced you into lovely red ribbons with this, would the pieces be as soft and delicate as silk?"
  • Several of the playable characters from Team Fortress 2, particularly Scout, Soldier, Heavy and possibly Pyro. Surprisingly, not Sniper.

No, I'm not a crazed gunman, Dad; I'm an assassin. The difference being that one is a job, and the other is mental sickness.

    • And there's the ax-wielding Horseless Headless Horsemann, the NPC from the Scream Fortress update, who attempts to hunt down and behead every player he encounters.
  • Needles Kane the driver of Sweet Tooth in the Twisted Metal series, especially his Twisted Metal Black incarnation.
    • The cast of Twisted Metal Black is made up of delusional priests, hillbilly psychos and doll faced murderers. The sanest characters in the whole thing are Calypso, Agent Stone, and John Doe. The last two are genuinely good and sane people, who are in it for just reasons, and were institutionalized for severe PTSD and amnesia-related conditions. Still, the fact that the Big Bad is saner than most of the cast is somewhat... disturbing.
  • Aran Ryan from the Wii version of Punch-Out!!!! Most of the other characters emit grunts of pain or anger when you've landed a massive combo on them. Him? Deranged laughter.
    • In between rounds, he shouts to Mac, "Keep hitting me! I love it!!" Then, when he gets back in the ring, he punches himself several times, then makes an insane smile at the camera. His fighting style involves him running around the ring and attacking from the side, as well as jumping off the wires and trying to punch. This guy was perfectly normal in his first appearance.
      • "Your wimpy little punches won't even faze me." There's taking a hit and then there's getting your jollies from it.
  • HK-47 from Knights of the Old Republic is a sadistic killing machine who enjoys nothing more than the slaughter of anything and everything around him. Fortunately, he's on your side.
    • Twitch, a Rodian arena fighter on Taris, seems to be this.
  • Meria from Knights in The Nightmare is a lovable example.
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum has Quincy Sharp, who is by all appearances normal when you speak to him except in the Spirit of Arkham, where it can be seen that he is an absolutely insane Knight Templar.
    • Let's not forget the main villains of the plot, some of the absolute craziest of Batman's rogues gallery. Zsasz, Joker, Killer Croc...
  • Catalina of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Cesar, her cousin, describes her as "really intense, holmes." As C.J. soon finds out, "intense" doesn't even begin to describe her. In addition to being a hair-trigger violent adrenaline junkie, she's also quite the Yandere to boot.
    • Her Grand Theft Auto III incarnation is just as crazy and Yandere, but has traded in the adrenaline junkie streak for a treacherous streak a mile wide.
  • The Burning Blade clan in Warcraft II and World of Warcraft deserve a mention, as a clan of Ax Crazies that were held in check by a large group of ogre enforcers. The Horde "was not willing to employ them except in the most extreme cases, for fear that they might turn on other clans or even each other".

Guns don't kill people, I do! (cackles insanely)

    • Though decidedly one of the less maniacal cases of insanity, it is heavily implied that the Ghosts in the StarCraft universe would've liquidated the universe if it weren't for the inhabiting implants in their brains.

Whenever I see a world untouched by war, a world of innocence, a world of lush forests and clear rivers... I really just wanna nuke the crap out of it!

Penny: "Hee hee! Penny likes you...but Mr. Bear HATES YOU!"
Will: "Why are you helping me?"
Penny: "...Because Mr. Bear told me to."

  • In Soul Nomad and The World Eaters, the Omnicidal Maniac Gig is a good example of this. Absolutely everyone on your side is Ax Crazy in the Demon Path.
  • Both the game and manga of World Destruction has the heroine, Morte, who is more than happy to blow up a city. The anime version, however, gives us the resident chick Rhi'a, who has no qualms to pull out her guns when she is pissed.
  • The Darkspawn of Dragon Age are an entire race of Ax Crazy Blood Knights. Being the embodiment of The Maker's condemnation of mortals (according to The Chantry), the Darkspawn exist to kill and do horrible things to the entire world. They will do their best to kill anything and everything they come across that isn't also Tainted; if they can't find anything nontainted nearby to kill they will readily try to kill each other. Only an Archdemon has the power and will to unite the murderous bastards and keep them from killing each other when they get bored. Unfortunately, Archdemons, being Tainted dragon gods, are also Ax Crazy. That's why Blights happen. Even some of the "freed" Darkspawn in Awakening are Ax Crazy.
  • Sandal from Dragon Age. Enchantment? Enchantment!
  • Jack from Mass Effect 2.
    • Legion has a moment, if you take him on Jacob's loyalty mission:

Legion: Organic creativity increases with anger. It will be amusing to watch their efforts.

  • Lt. Carter Blake in Heavy Rain. See the quote from above.
  • Vanitas from Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep. Justified given that he is the pure incarnation of Ven's darkness.
  • GLaDOS from Portal is less ax crazy than she is coldly and calculatedly crazy, but it ends up having the same net effect on the people she murders. Supplemental material for Portal 2 indicates that, at first, the researchers were only able to turn her on for a few fractions of a picosecond before she tried to kill everyone. So, calculated murder is actually an improvement.

"It was a morality core they installed after I flooded the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin, to make me stop flooding the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin."

  • Adele in Arc Rise Fantasia is an Unlucky Childhood Friend. She did not take it well.
  • Snow White from Fairytale Fights.
  • The pyromaniac Tastuya Sudou in Persona 2. A schizophrenic, psychotic Serial Killer, with his own Room Full of Crazy.
  • In the Touhou fangame Koumajou Densetsu, Flandre Scarlet is portrayed this way with a pretty twisted sence of "playing".
    • And Yuuka Kazami was this in the PC-98 games. Genocide was just a game to her... It's been dialed back quite a bit for the 9th game in the series... Though she is still able to worry some characters, including Cirno of all of them. And there's very little that worries that ice fairy even slightly.
    • And now from Word of God, Kisume has been confirmed as this much to the fans surprise. This also makes her somewhat unusual for this trope as she is also a Shrinking Violet.
  • The Evil Twins from Crash Twinsanity.
  • Marx from Kirby Super Star and Ultra.
  • False Peach and False Zelda from Super Smash Bros.. Brawl.
  • In The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile, Yuki starts out killing enemies with her teeth, and doesn't see much reason to stop.
  • In Double Switch, Eddie is revealed to be this.
  • The Legend of Zelda series has a few noteworthy Ax Crazies:
    • Majora from Majora's Mask. Unlike most of the other villains in the franchise, it's main motivation for killing/tormenting/etc. its victims is for sheer fun and attempts to take it to its logical extreme by crashing the Moon into Termina.
    • Zant from Twilight Princess, as shown with him killing the queen of the Zoras, enslaving the Twili against their will, and his unnerving confrontation with Link and Midna at Lake Hylia, where he tries to kill the latter. By the end of the game, the craziness fully manifests itself as he's reduced to a screaming, maniacal wreck.
    • Ghirahim from Skyward Sword. He has unabashed bloodlust, first promising to beat Link within an inch of his life, then burn him alive, and then finally torture him until he's deafened by his own screams.
  • The main enemies in the final level of Deus Ex Human Revolution.
  • The Assault Bomber in Bomberman Generations is both a Mad Bomber and Trigger Happy.
  • Big Bad Mordred from the Black Mirror games.
  • Nikolai Diavolo in James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing. Though he never shows this trait within the game, M reveals that even the KGB tried to kill him. To make matters worse, his mentor was the very ax-crazy Max Zorin.
  • Saints Row: Johnny Gat in 2, the Boss him/herself in 3.
  • Lilarcor the talking sword in Baldur's Gate II. It's a fairly powerful sword that houses the soul of a bloodthirsty idiot. Every bit of Lilarcor's dialogue consists of it whining about how its not killing anyone at the moment and asking you to hurry up and kill someone with it.
  • Dark Souls has Lautrec, who is a loner vagabond who uses and kills Anastacia, the fire keeper of Firelink Shrine. The Darkwraiths you meet in game became Ax Crazy after becoming Drunk with Power and undead that have lost all their remaining humanity are insane, violent shells of who they once were. That said, some hollows you find are docile and often huddle themselves into corners, crying.


Web Comics

Mr. Kite: Whatever. Nothing else left to burn, I'm bored, let's get out of here.

"I AM A SEXY SHOELESS GOD OF WAR!!!"
"Yes, run, my little chunks of XP!"

  • The Continentals: The escaped mental patient known as The Mangler, the sinister and psychotic Mr. Qwist (hired man of the equally bent Dr. Daniel Abbeline).
  • The Infernomancer (TIM for short) from Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire.
  • Red of No Rest for The Wicked, even if she is one of the protagonists.
  • Bangladesh DuPree from Girl Genius, and very cheerful at that. Although Baron Wulfenbach and his son Gilgamesh have some control over her... usually.

Klaus: DuPree. When I say the words Alive and Unharmed -- do any neurons actually fire in that brain of yours?
Bang: Um--No Sir!
Klaus: I thought not.

    • In fairness, that time wasn't her fault. Skewering Zulenna, one of the students on Castle Wulfenbach, when it was very much not necessary and a potential political problem for the Baron, now, that was all her.
  • Kamekaze Kate is a car racing Ax Crazy in Misfile.
    • At first at least after she was freed from her sister's influence she got a lot better. And her race with Ash ended in a traditional Defeat Means Friendship moment, that is Ash's defeat by Kate
  • Richard from Looking for Group sums himself up in song.
  • Electric Retard is full of them. One even happens to be a naked guy with an axe.
  • Axel of the Ansem Retort seems to go out of his way to inflict grievous bodily harm on his "friends", and generally murders anyone who happens to exist anywhere within a hundred mile radius of himself.

Namine: You couldn't go 10 seconds of diplomatic immunity before murdering someone?!
Axel: I wasn't even listening to you. I just wanted to murder a dude.

    • Larxene is, arguably, even crazier having destroyed Disney Land and everyone/thing inside it just because she wanted funnel cake.
  • Cousin Dougal from Platinum Grit, a psychopathic immortal Scotsman who lives to stab.
  • Oasis moves in and out of this in Sluggy Freelance. Her mental state is in tatters, and each apparent resurrection shifts it. Even in her more lucid moments, though, she realizes how close she is to violent mayhem. And heaven help anyone nearby if she activates Override B-1.
  • David Willis, author of It's Walky!, ventures into this from time to time.
  • Il'haress Kharla'ggen Vloz'rezz from Drowtales is the personification off Ax Crazy. And considering that the Woman Behind The Woman that was the only thing capable of keeping her in check and from going on an unstoppable killing spree was beheaded in a recent chapter, she will most likely become further Ax Crazy still as the story progresses. Or, considering that it was this woman who originally drove her Ax Crazy, it's within the realm of possibility that she might calm down to just plain crazy.
  • Butch from Chopping Block.
  • Lothar Hex from Exterminatus Now is psychopathic enough that he regularly attempts to cause harm to next door's dog for no reason, but in order to really get him riled up, all you have to do is ruin his hat. At which point, don't expect too many of your limbs to still be attached.
  • Mal from Head Trip.
  • Mel Kelly from Narbonic. Very.
  • Galen from Wiglaf and Mordred. Her favorite "patients" seem to be her fellow teammates (or her daughters teammates, much to her daughters annoyance).
  • Rowasu of Juathuur. And when he is lucid, he is even scarier.
  • Nina from Venus Envy - starts out as a Sociopathic Hero of sorts who constantly threatens / injures people and is played mostly for laughs. Then she stabs the main character.
  • Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Just imagine...
  • In Homestuck: Gamzee singlehandedly turned the Troll's side of the story into a Slasher Flick when he goes off the deep end. Karkat eventually manages to hug the crazy out of him though.
    • Also, Eridan goes off the deep end too, murdering two of his friends in cold blood and single-handedly destroying any hope of his species long-term survival.
    • undyingUmbrage. He apparently wants to kill everyone and wants to kill uranianUmbra for no practical reason.
    • Jack Noir. At one point, he's stuck in jail with nothing but a pumpkin full of knives. He then proceeds to murder everyone around him, even when he's trying to keep at least one of them alive to open his cell.
    • Meenah, also. to the point where she greets people by trying to kill them, and blew up herself and all her freinds, as well
  • Axe Cop is pretty violent and armed with an Axe most of the time, but this is usually just bad news if you are a bad guy. However in this strip he goes pretty Ax Crazy after the wrong candles are put on his cake and kills indiscriminately.
  • Chelsea Grinn from Chimneyspeak, full stop. She has been on a ten year long bloody carnage across the world all because she got bumped into and got a small scar on her nose.
  • Karate Bears are pretty fond of axes.
  • A Broken Winter introduces us very early on to Kuroda's wife, who killed their son (according to Word of God) as a protest against killing children. In their words, "Logic at its finest". She also killed the family dog and tried to kill her husband too.


Web Original

  • Terrence in Kate Modern, 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.
  • 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.
  • 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, as the most dramatic example involved a mad Agent tearing down the corridors with a flamethrower, looking to kill Mister Rogers, and anyone who got in his [the mad Agent's] way.
  • 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.
  • The protagonist Elsdon in Dusk Peterson's fantasy series The Eternal Dungeon.
  • The Ice Climbers in There Will Be Brawl. Okay, hammer crazy.
  • O'Malley/The Omega A.I., the Big Bad of the original Red vs. Blue The Blood Gulch Chronicles, was a being made of Ax Crazy.
  • Umbridge in A Very Potter Sequel at the beginning of the second act. Literally.
  • Evan of Everyman HYBRID seems to be turning into this; some interpretations of the Slender Man also point him as this.
  • The serial killer in The Masked Girl.
  • Chorocojo's Let's Play of the Pokémon games has characters interpreted as being completely Ax Crazy, such as Misty (no relation to the second gym leader from Pokémon Red and Blue/Yellow) and Gatorface the totodile starter for Pokémon Crystal.
  • 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.
  • Regular Ordinary Swedish Meal Time‍'‍s chef.
  • The actress playing Juliet in The Demented Cartoon Movie 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.
  • In the fan-made Zelda film Sage of Shadows, the True Villain, Davik, is fiendishly intelligent, and yet also a complete psychopath, poisoning his own sister and also gleefully murdering Link's parents in a very brutal fashion, as well as showcasing even after he lost his hand, and he plans on destroying the Cycle of Eternity due to psychopathic hatred of it. His voice actor, Michael Stevenson, has even stated that Davik is a villain comparable to The Joker in terms of mysteriousness and insanity.
  • Kevin "Aces" Low from New Game Plus the Rpg 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.
  • It would be easier to list the characters in Dark Dream Chronicle that aren't.
  • Some supporting characters in Equestria Chronicles are extremely bloodthrsty for magical talking ponies.
  • Rekoj from Dungeons and Drogans is not good at peaceful negotiation.
  • The SCP Foundation has SCP-076, SCP-953 and SCP-973.
  • Plinkett from RedLetterMedia.[context?]


Western Animation

  • Disney's classic Mickey and the Beanstalk features Donald Duck near the start, almost delusional from hunger. It's one of his funniest moments; see it here.
  • Ren from The Ren and Stimpy Show is probably one of the most infamous examples of this trope.
    • The Fire Chief, Haggis McHaggis, and Jerry The Bellybutton Elf as well.
  • Katz from Courage the Cowardly Dog is a genuine psychopath.
  • Wendell from Frisky Dingo is very definitely this. He randomly kills people for no conceivable reason, offers to abort a baby with a machete, then when said baby is born and revealed as a gigantic ant larvae monster, he rides it to the location of a doomsday device to destroy the earth... just because.
    • With his pants off no less, commenting throughout on how wrong it is but how he's going to continue to do it.
  • Who could ever forget Flippy from Happy Tree Friends? Over the course of the show, he has brutally murdered around 53 innocent characters in a variety of ways that are as creative as they are gruesome.
  • Stewie from Family Guy. Particularly when Brian owes him money, or when he is rejected.
    • Peter has shown multiple signs of being this in the later episodes.
    • Meg too, out of a desperation for love and affection.
    • Lois, when they ran out of paper towels on Christmas.
  • The Mirage Turtles in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles TV Movie Turtles Forever.
  • Groundskeeper Willy from The Simpsons is just one Hair-Trigger Temper away from becoming this trope.
    • Sideshow Bob started to qualify for this when his attempts to kill Bart included trying to have him cremated alive and when he visibly removed his cell mate's face and cut off his own.
    • There was also a one-shot (well, technically, two-shot) character employed at the power plant in "Marge Gets A Job." This guy was shown polishing a shotgun and talking to himself:

Crazy Dude: I am the Angel of Death. The time of purification is at hand.

    • Homer himself went on a murderous rampage in a Treehouse of Horror episode when the cable wasn't working and when they ran out of beer.
  • The eponymous character of Invader Zim: Ax Crazy, Psycho for Hire, and Mad Scientist, all rolled into one. Which would make him a Magnificent Bastard Badass, if he wasn't also hyper-incompetent, incredibly narcissistic, and a frequent Chew Toy, as well.
    • Gaz also counts given she once happily used a device that could destroy the world and was disappointed when it failed to work. And then there's what she did to Iggins...poor Iggins. He really should have listened to Gaz's warnings.
  • Darkwing Duck's foe Negaduck is about as close to a kid-safe Ax Crazy as you can get, especially considering it's a Disney show. Negaduck's favored weapon, for example, was a chainsaw, and he takes great delight in attempting to blast cute fuzzy bunnies with a shotgun. This may or may not be a case of being a product of his environment.
    • Negaverse Launchpad? Happy with firing a bazooka at cute little girls. The Muddlefoot family? Tank's OK as a Non Evil Twin, but Herb, Binky, and Honker were shown with a row of severed duck heads on a pole in their yard. With their beaks sewn shut. Fun for the whole family, that Disney!
  • Disney one-upped itself in Gargoyles, with Demona. During the City of Stone arc, she manages to turn all the humans in New York City to stone, and then is seen roaming the streets, casually destroying humans-turned-to-stone with a huge mace. This one didn't so much bypass the radar as tore the radar a new a-hole. And since it's Disney, nobody called them on it.
  • Around the end of Avatar: The Last Airbender Azula definitely qualifies, having absolutely lost it after Mai and Ty Lee betrayed her. She has an absolute breakdown before her final battle with Zuko and Katara.
  • Eva and Izzy from Total Drama Island. Izzy does appear as a lovable goofball but she shows signs of this.
  • Danny Phantom has Danny's evil future self as this. The first thing he did upon "reawakening"? Steal the ghostly half of Big Bad Vlad Masters (Our Ghosts Are Different is in full force here) and then kill his human half in front of Vlad, who viewed Danny as a surrogate son. In his first scenes, he kills at least a dozen people as well and spends much of the episode killing or planning to kill some more. The fact that even Vlad refuses to tell Danny how his human half died speaks volumes.
  • Rampage of Beast Wars flips between this and the Blood Knight. Originally, he attempted to kill anything in sight, no matter whether they were Maximals or Predacons. In fact the only reason he joined the Predacons after his first appearance was because Megatron held his life in his hands by removing his spark and keeping it for torture/incentive for Rampage to serve him, otherwise he'd probably attempt to kill them all. The fact he's one of the most heavily armed Transformers in the entire series doesn't help. He even mentions being a cannibal!

"Burn in the fires of Inferno!!!"

  • Futurama features Roberto, the dangerously insane, psychopathic robot whose literal function is to stab others (there's a reason he resembles a tombstone). His many insane acts includes robbing the same bank three times in a row, killing other robots to provide a disguise for himself, and "practicin' my stabbin"!

Roberto: I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10. Guess it, and you die first.
Bender: Uh....56?
Roberto: 56?? 56?! Now that's all I can think about! I'LL KILL YOU!

    • He's not crazy - he is just not user friendly!
    • Then there's Robot Santa.
    • Zoidberg's race go Ax Crazy during their mating season.
  • From The Venture Brothers, Tim-Tom and Kevin, Dr. Girlfriend/Mrs Monarch's aptly named Murderous Moppets.
    • Also Brock Samson when he goes on one of his killing rampages. The Monarch accurately describes him as a "Swedish Murder Machine".
  • Rico from The Penguins of Madagascar. Lampshaded by Skipper.
  • Vicky on The Fairly OddParents.
    • Also, Princess Mandie.
    • And Trixie in the episode "Just The Two Of Us".
    • MUST CHOP WOOD!
  • Heloise on Jimmy Two-Shoes is a malicious Enfant Terrible who loves spreading misery as much as her boss. The only person she doesn't want to hurt is Jimmy, and he's not completely safe from her wrath. Also, Saffi gets this way around statues.
  • Eric Cartman on South Park. He kills Scott Tenorman's parents and feeds them to him in the form of chili. Why? Because Scott scammed him out of $16.
    • On his page on the official South Park wiki, it has a detailed paragraph on his mental health. Apparently, Eric Cartman shows signs of sadism, Schizophrenia, identity issues, gender confusion, psychosis, psychopathic nature, narcissism, and possibly even insanity.
  • Lamilton Taeshawn. Holy shit. His extreme sociopathy actually manages to scare the shit out of Riley, which should say a lot.
  • A good portion of Superjail's cast. Especially Jailbot.
  • The Monkey King from Jackie Chan Adventures. At first, he seems like a Crazy Awesome prankster, but before long he's going after Jackie and Jade with an actual axe.
  • Galvatron from Transformers Generation 1 was so violently nuts, the Exclusively Evil Decepticons actually took him into therapy. Naturally, he blew up the therapy planet.

Therapist: Just say whatever comes to mind.
Galvatron: Kill! Smash! Destroy!
Therapist: Continue.
Galvatron: Rend! Mangle! Distort!

  • From The Amazing World of Gumball comes Banana Joe, a character who redefines the meaning of the term Ax Crazy. In "The Kiss", he plays it straight, chopping down a tree filled with his classmates with an axe. All to prevent a kiss which he fails to do. Sort of.
  • Curly from Hey Arnold! is hinted to being this at times.
  • Rocko's Modern Life: Rocko and Heffer are on a bus tour of Paris with a bus driver who is determined to keep his passengers on the bus at all costs, so much so that he chases them around the city after they escape.
  • The early version of Daffy Duck was usually a fairly harmless nutcase, but in "The Daffy Doc" he loses his job as a doctor's assistant and proceeds to knock Porky Pig out, smuggle him into the hospital, and attempt "surgery" on him with a saw to prove how capable he is.

"Where's a patient? Where's a patient? I gotta find a patient. I gotta find a patient."

Kaynar: At least I'll have the voices in my head to talk to.


Real Life

  • Socrates argued that not all good-faith promises should be kept. His example is a scenario where an ax is borrowed from a man who then goes crazy. It would be immoral, Socrates notes, to return the ax. This may be the origin of the ax as the weapon of choice for a fictional homicidal maniac, and qualifies this trope as Older Than Feudalism.
    • On a practical note, an axe (an instrument used in many tasks around the Iron Age home, such as splitting firewood and roughing-in carpentry) would likely be the largest and most fearsome handheld potential instrument of destruction found lying around the home of your average working man in Socrates' day. Where a housewife-gone-crazy may opt for a kitchen knife or rolling pin, the man of the house would likely reach for his favorite logsplitter when he decided it was time to split heads instead.
  • The real-life incident involving a Japanese high school girl who beat her father to death with a hammer, that led to the cancellation/preemption of select episodes of Higurashi Kai and School Days, i.e. the infamous "Nice Boat" incident.
  • The page quote poem refers to an incident in Massachusetts in 1892, where Lizzie Borden's father and stepmother died mysteriously with over a dozen hatchet wounds each.
  • The guy on the bus who stabbed and beheaded a fellow passenger sleeping beside him. Then ate some.
  • What's scarier than Ax Crazy? Ax Crazy in charge of a country. How about a list of some deranged dictators?
  • German actor Klaus Kinski was famous for playing many complete psychos, and equally infamous for acting the same way outside of movies as well. To this day, most people are not really sure if he actually was that crazy or just an incredibly firm believer of True Artists Must Be Offensive and simply loved to scare and Troll the shit out of everyone near him. During interviews and life performances, he's constantly shouting at and insulting the interviewers and his audience.
    • Special mention goes to his behavior when working with Werner Herzog. There's a photo where Kinski is holding a knife to Herzog's throat, looking thoroughly unhinged. Herzog himself seems unconcerned. This was on the first of six movies they made together.
  • Joshua "General Butt Naked" Blahyi of Liberia, infamous for entering combat in the nude.
    • Nah, he was just fighting in the spirit of Terry Goodkind. He had the right Moral Fiber to run around naked in battle!
  • Foday Sankoh who fought in the civil war in Sierra Leone. His best-known military campaign bore the charming title: Operation Kill Every Living Thing.
  • Not even wealth and beauty can curtail the destructive power of Ax Crazy. Laurie Dann, born into a rich but aloof family, was always a little odd...but she really started going off the deep end after her husband divorced her. Thus began a saga of bizarre and unsettling activity which included harassing phone calls to practically everyone she'd ever known, a false rape report that nearly ruined a prominent doctor's reputation, attacking her ex-husband with an ice pick while he slept, and scores of obsessive-compulsive rituals that included riding elevators for hours on end and leaving rotting meat in sofa cushions. Laurie's instability hit its climax on May 20, 1988, when she went on a murderous rampage, sending juice boxes and Rice Krispy treats laced with arsenic to people she felt had slighted her, trying to detonate a fire bomb at a school, setting a house on fire with people inside, gunning down children at an elementary school, and finally holding a family hostage at gun point, before killing herself.
  • Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army. Viewing himself as a spokesperson to God, he abducts children and forces boys to kill their own families.
  • Lewis Powell, the Confederate Army veteran tasked by John Wilkes Booth to assassinate the US Secretary of State William Seward. After failing to gain access to Seward's room by pretending to be a pharmacist's messenger, Powell pulled a revolver on Seward's son Frederick. The revolver misfired, so Powell smashed Seward's head in with the pistol, irreversibly jamming it. He then burst into Seward's room with a 14-inch long Bowie knife, grievously injured Seward's other son Augustus and daughter Fannie and a Union Army nurse, and stabbed Seward so badly that he was at first given up for dead. One of his stabs ripped open Seward's entire left cheek, exposing his teeth. The only thing that saved Seward's life was the fact that he was had been injured in a carriage accident several weeks prior, and was wearing a brace around his jaw that prevented Powell from cutting his throat. After stabbing a messenger who had heard the commotion and come to help, Powell threw down his knife and ran into the street screaming "I'm mad! I'm mad!". He was arrested several days later, and hanged with three other conspirators in Lincoln's assassination.
  • From Wikipedia's entry on "Strange Piece of Paradise": "Terri Jentz and her friend Shayna Weiss are Yale students cycling across America in 1977. After stopping to camp at Cline Falls State Park in Oregon, they are brutally attacked when a man runs over their tent with a pick-up truck and assaults them with an ax. Despite their injuries, both survive. Weiss suffers partial blindness and memory loss. Jentz, her body scarred, bears her injuries mostly in guilt, anger, and fear." Moreover, when she went back to investigate the incident, Jentz discovered a) hardly any investigation had taken place, despite b) most people in town having a fairly good idea who did it, a man locally notorious for violent acts, most recently having put his girlfriend in the hospital the previous week. And he was still on the loose. Have a good night, children.
  • Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. He was considered Ax Crazy by Al-Qaeda standards. Shortly before his death by airstrike, US intelligence intercepted messages from Al-Qaeda leadership essentially telling Zarqawi to tone it down, as his penchant for decapitations was turning other insurgents against Al-Qaeda and pushing them into the US camp.
  • Zhang Xianzhong, arguably the only Omnicidal Maniac in world history. To quote the Seven Kill Stele, a massive stone he is said to have erected and upon which he "explained" his actions:

Heaven Brings forth endless things to benefit man.
Man has nothing with which to repay Heaven.
Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill.

The extent to which he was actually Ax Crazy is open to debate, and may have been exaggerated by his enemies and accounts composed long after his death.

I get it now! It's a play on the phrase "acts crazy"!


  1. ↑ For the record, Ms. Borden was acquitted, but never lived it down anyway.
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