Shower of Angst

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?

Spencer: She takes really long showers when she gets depressed.
Sam: Well, when do you think she's going to come out?
Spencer: I don't know. She took a chair in there.

—iCarly

A character (usually a female) has had a rough day. She's suffered some sort of physical or emotional trauma that makes her want to run home and curl up into a ball.

Naturally, the first thing the woman wants to do is go home and take a nice, long, hot shower. This is not surprising; many people find the best way to relax after a hard day is to take that shower, put on fluffy pajamas and just let it all go. Water is also an archetypal purifier in general, capable of symbolically washing away sins or past events—though that doesn't mean it'll work.

Of course, when it comes to Fan Service, these showers of angst are solid gold (and no, not that kind of shower). You can't argue with the titillation provided by seeing a hot-bodied person nude, soaking wet, and in desperate need of support. However, in some cases, this can border on creepy, such as when the Shower of Angst lingers on a woman who was recently raped. That particular version of the trope is common in soap operas. This is also a good opportunity to use a Toplessness From the Back shot to prevent things from getting too explicit.

The post-rape shower also has ramifications in a Crime and Punishment Series scenario—if the victim takes a shower before a SAE kit has been collected, then vital forensic evidence is lost. Unfortunately Truth in Television.

Men are not in the least exempt from this trope, since every shower scene is also a Shirtless Scene. This male variant often features a hunky male leaning towards the wall, with the running water falling on his back.

Contrast Redemption in the Rain—a joyful, liberating shower in the rain. Can also be an instance of Out, Damned Spot! if the showering becomes a compulsion.

Examples of Shower of Angst include:

Advertising

• The "Shower" ad from the Montana Meth Project.

Anime & Manga

• Black Lagoon: Roberta has one after her master, Diego Lovelace, is killed by a bomb at a political rally in the first chapter of El Baile de Muerte. She also shatters the bathroom mirror in anger.
• Ai no Kusabi: In the OVA after Riki's gang is attacked Riki takes one, reminiscing about all that has happened.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion has many. Most notable is the one Asuka took after her Mind Rape at the hands of an Angel.
• Henry from Digimon Tamers after Terriermon digivolves, where he reflects on his duties as a Tamer and his pacifist beliefs
• Higurashi has a few of these too. Keiichi finds a depressed Satoko passed out in the bathtub from being in the hot water for too long.
  • It's more complicated than that: She was hallucinating that her abusive uncle had told her to stand under the boiling hot water and count to 10,000, since moving into his house meant she stopped getting treatment for her Hinamizawa Syndrome. She went along with all of the horrible things he did to her because of a combination of guilt (blaming herself for Satochi's disappearance), blackmail (he constantly threatened to burn down Satoshi's room), and plain old fear. Yeah, Satoko has it rough.
• Kaede Fuyou in SHUFFLE! goes Yandere on her friend Asa when the boy they both love, Rin, shows interest in her. She has one of these before climbing into Rin's bed naked to cuddle with him.
• Elfen Lied: Lucy has one after she snaps and murders the cruel kids who beat her puppy to death.
• Perfect Blue: After Mima endures a good deal of disturbing hardships, she partakes in a hot bath which she screams into as she hugs herself underwater.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: During the aftermath of his traumatic loss to Edo and being demoted in the pro leagues, Kaiser Ryo Marufuji takes a shower after losing yet another duel, while reminiscing about being fired by his sponsor. He's freaked out by the end of the episode.
• In Zeiram: The Animation, bounty-hunting heroine Iria takes two in a six-episode OAV.
• Kozue Izumi from Infinite Ryvius is found taking one of these after she was assaulted by the other girls at the end of episode 18.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Yoko takes a surprisingly Fan Service-free Shower of Angst after Kamina dies.
  • Averted in the manga, when the cartoonist behind it, Kotaro Mori, gives you a complete view of her naked body, with boobies clearly visible. Yeah, Mori, a good time to see a woman naked is when she's just had her heart BROKEN.
• Berserk: After being raped by a newly-demonic Griffith, Casca is seen sitting fully-clothed under a waterfall. Also Griffith, after he becomes a prostitute to make money, complete with a wonderfully disturbing scene of him angsting while clawing at his arms until they bleed when washing himself. He only stops when Casca tearfully embraces him from behind.
• Done by Asagami Fujino in Kara no Kyoukai; in her case, she actually was raped. The value of this scene jumps to eleven when the film adaptation came out. Then again, she becomes a psychotic murderer who is simultaneously terrified of her powers and unconsciously leering at the horrid violence.
• Juri from Revolutionary Girl Utena indulges in this.
  • Utena has one in episode 37, after finding out about Anthy and Akio.
• Mr. Magnificent Bastard Lelouch Lamperouge from Code Geass did this once, after Shirley's father's death really made him confront the consequences of his actions. It actually managed to humanize him after all the killing he did. (Of course, by the end of the shower he decided that the best way to ease his troubled conscience was more killing.)
  • You can also count Milly in as well, when she was in a depressed state for a while after Nina told her off in R2 (while everyone else during bath time were happy and giddy with their upcoming date with Lelouch). This happened near the beginning of episode 12.
    • Milly seemed more upset that so many girls had a date with Lelouch and she didn't as the Unlucky Childhood Friend.
• Rin from Mnemosyne does this in episode 5 after her first genuine lover in centuries (she is an ever-young immortal, by the way) dies.
• Setsuna Sakurazaki of Mahou Sensei Negima after her humiliating defeat by Tsukiyomi.
  • Later on, Ako Izumi has one after she finds out that the boy she loves doesn't actually exist.
• Souichi from The Tyrant Falls in Love after every time he has sex with Morinaga.
• Happens twice in Re: Cutie Honey (once after a shouting match with Natsuko and once after losing it in a battle aganst Black Claw). The first one turns into a Shower of Awkward when Seiji decides to tag along with Natsuko in pulling her out of her rut.
• Lucia angsted in the shower once in Venus Versus Virus.
• In the manga version of Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl, Tomari angsted in the shower in one chapter after hearing that her crush, her best friend Hazumu, is said to die within a month.
• Tony from Toward the Terra had one of these while in My God, What Have I Done? mode after he killed Matsuka.
• Nodoka of Saki had one of these in the second episode of the anime after her loss and subsequent argument with Saki.
• Faye Valentine of Cowboy Bebop has a Shower Of Angst scene after she recovers her lost memories.
• Tsuzuki in Yami no Matsuei has a private Shower of Angst after being possessed by the demon Sargantanas in the Devil's Trill Arc.
  • Double points for the shower drowning out his vocalizations of misery while losing to the Enemy Within.
• In the newest Captain Tsubasa series, Koujirou Hyuga has a shower of rage after clashing with Willem violently in his first training session in Italy.
• Fushigi Yuugi doesn't actually feature Miaka in a shower (she's in a lake), but it still has that same effect as she furiously scrubs herself with twigs to the point of bleeding in the hopes that it would purify her after Nakago had raped her. Of course, he didn't really get to do that.
• How Esther is introduced in Trinity Blood, with touches of Out, Damned Spot!.
• Gundam Seed was fond of these, providing shower scenes for Kira, Athrun and Cagalli (if memory serves). Oddly enough, the TV episodes had Cagalli moping in a bathtub, while the movie compilations changed it into a shower scene for no apparent reason other than to show a little more skin.
• Sora Naegino of Kaleido Star has several showers of angst.
• More a Shower of Painful Memories than of Angst, but Riza Hawkeye is shown doing this in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, complete with a very significant Toplessness From the Back shot.
• Erza has one in the 23rd episode of Fairy Tail after retreating in a battle against Phantom Lord.
  • Lucy has one after losing her fight against Flare Corona.
• In RahXephon, Elvy has one after one of her fellow pilots is killed. Ayato also evokes this trope by stumbling into a bathroom during one very angsty scene and getting wet by breaking the shower faucet.
• Simoun likes this trope a lot. Paraietta had an attack of guilt or two in the shower while reflecting on her attempted rape of Neveril.
• Occurs in Real Drive. For a male character, even.
• Ichise from Texhnolyze takes one in the first episode.
• Occurs several times in the yaoi manga Under Grand Hotel mostly because whenever someone's taking a shower there's a chance they'll either end up getting raped or beaten up and then left there for a bit under the running shower.
• Sukisho: Sora takes one in the first episode.
• Occurs in Strawberry Panic as a result of rampant unrequited love and general Fan Service.
• Happiness!: Yuuma after he almost kills Sumomo.
• Great Teacher Onizuka: Miyabi, after being "betrayed" by her teacher.
• Yuya of Samurai Deeper Kyo has a few of these.
• Gankutsuou: Albert takes one in episode 8. (Sitting in the tub while the shower is running with his head bowed.)
  • He takes another one in episode 14, musing over the threat "disaster will befall your house as well!" Peppo even states "you've been in there for a while."
• Legend of the Blue Wolves has a particularly chilling example. Jonathan is shoved fully clothed under a running shower for a moment before being approached by a nude Captain Continental who intends to rape him.
• A variation exists in Naruto. Orochimaru is desperately waiting for Sasuke to arrive and provide a new body but his arms have finally reached their breaking point. As he stands in a shower, they begin to flake off and crumble. Despite his agony, Orochimaru is driven to rage when he must finally accept he needs a new body now and can't wait for Sasuke.
• D.Gray-man: Lenalee takes one on the ship to Japan, highly upset by Allen's "death".
• In Future GPX Cyber Formula, Miki Jounouchi has one in an episode of Double-One when she thinks that Clair is a better worker in the Sugo team than her. In fact, this is a recurring theme in the OVA series, as evidenced by Asuka Sugo in SAGA and Kyoko Aoi in SIN.
• In Noir, Mireille takes a shower when she decides to kill her uncle, who raised her after her parents were killed in order to protect Kirika.
• Tira takes one in one of the Sorcerer Hunters side novels after a big fight with Carrot.
• Akiko Aoshika from Wolf Guy Wolfen Crest is seen more than once taking showers. Then again, considering the Crapsack World she lives in, no wonder she does so.
• In Angel Links, Meifon Li has one while she bangs her head against the wall.
• Haou Airen: Kurumi, after she has sex with Fuuron and then learns about Reilan's Thanatos Gambit.
• Karakuridouji Ultimo: Yamato has one in chapter 4 when Sayama mistakes him for being a child molester.
• Skip Beat! gives us Fuwa Sho at one point, angsting when he learns that Kyouko is dating a rival of his. Turns out to be untrue though.
• In Oniisama e..., Mariko doesn't necessarily take a shower, but she does have a bath (and it has the same effect of this trope) after the incident with Nanako. Rei also has her moments of these more than once. Considering that she is a Broken Bird, it's pretty understandable.
• In Teacher's Pet Misuzu takes a Shower of Angst after she's raped by Masahiro.
• In Tokyo Ghoul Kaneki takes one in episode 7 angsting about how he was unable to help Hinami.

Comics

• After a story in which Green Arrow was tortured, his girlfriend Black Canary found him huddled in the bathtub, half-dressed, with the shower on full blast.
• In one Liberty Meadows strip, Dean the Pig takes one, after he hit on Ralph by mistake (he even sings "the crying game"). Ralph was in drag at the time, to catch an unruly beaver that was causing trouble at the santuary. Said beaver ends up with his own shower scene afterwards.

Fan Works

• In the Death Note fanfic titled "Broken" by SekushiAi Light starts taking these to an obsessive extent after being raped.
• In AKK's Galaxy Rangers fanfic "The Lie," the fact that Zachary spent longer than usual in the shower after being rescued from the Queen was one of the factors that tipped off Goose to the fact that, contrary to the official report, the Queen didn't toss Zach in the Psychocrypt right away.
• Also from iCarly in the fanfiction "iFind and Keep You", a wedded Carly and Freddie steps into this (along with Shower of Love) after Carly goes into an emotional meltdown in reliving her childhood memories with their late best friend.
• In the Glee fanfic Hunting the Unicorn, Blaine takes a lot of cold showers to deal with his Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality.

Films

• This is all there is to know about The Crying Game.
• Harriet the Spy: After being ruthlessly bullied by everyone in class (including her former friends), and having paint dumped on her, Harriet runs home upset and dives into the bathtub fully clothed, scrubbing furiously at a tattoo signifying the friendship she had with her friends.
• In both the 1976 version and remake of Carrie the titular character is seen in the openings taking a shower after gym and freaking out after getting her first period and not knowing what it is, and having the other girls tease her for it. Her abusive mother Margaret does not help matters later on either, rather she yells at Carrie and throws her into a closet convinced that she sinned. Also, at the end of both movies, when Carrie finally returns home after going on a rampage around town she climbs into the tub, sobbing while she scrubs the pig's blood off her, quickly turning the water pink.
• The female protagonist takes one of these in Punk Love after being raped by a cab driver. Its worth noting that she does not take a shower after she is raped by her step-father (at least not on screen).
• Spider-Man 3: Peter goes home and takes a steaming shower after managing to free himself of the symbiote.
• Vesper, the Bond girl of Casino Royale, has a minor nervous breakdown after helping Bond kill an assailant, and sits under a running shower with her clothes on. Bond joins her in the shower, also completely clothed showing her he knows exactly how she feels. The original script called for her to be in her underdrawers, but Daniel Craig convinced them that it didn't make character sense, so she kept her dress on. Weird, but probably more dramatically effective.
• In this same vein, an unrelated shower scene in Saw III' (more like Shower Of Pain, honestly) shows Danica naked in the Ice Shower trap because the directors were concerned that the original idea of filming her in a wet t-shirt and panties would be seen as "too sexual".
• Brandon Teena of Boys Don't Cry takes a shower after he has been raped by men who discovered his birth sex, with the camera lingering on shots of his female body.
• In The Puppet Masters, the male lead showers after being freed from the control of an alien parasite; he breaks down completely and is comforted by the female lead whilst still naked. Oddly touching, but uncomfortably voyeuristic.
• American Beauty: "Look at me, masturbating in the shower. This is the high point of my day. It's all downhill from here."
• Naomi Watts has one in the American remake of The Ring.
• In Apt Pupil, the protagonist finds himself showering with holocaust victims.
• Ace Ventura, after realizing the woman he kissed is a man. He also chews an enormous wad of gum. And burns all his clothes, uses a toilet plunger on his face, and vomits his entire stomach contents.
• Nick takes one after he commits his first murder in Death Sentence.
• In Knowing Nicolas Cage's character, John, takes one of these after he witnesses a plane crash that was predicted by the list of numbers that predict all the major tragedies from 1959 on.
• One of the deleted scenes of Unbreakable featured Dunn taking a shower after the train crash, but it was removed from the final cut because the director deemed it too emotional for the beginning of the movie.
• In a deleted scene from Hostel II, two of the protagonists parody this after a night of drinking when one asks the other to act out a scene from a movie. When one girl asks what scene to act out, the other girl says, "Rape shower!"
• Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins' character in Brit crime flick The Long Good Friday) appears in a shower scene washing the blood off himself after he inadvertently kills his right-hand man Jeff in a fit of rage during a heated argument.
• Marion Crane in Psycho. She takes one after deciding to return to Phoenix, but it is horribly subverted.
• Grace in Once Were Warriors has one of these after she is raped by her uncle. She later commits suicide.
• Sgt. James gets one of these two-thirds of the way through The Hurt Locker in full uniform after getting Eldrige shot.
• Requiem for a Dream: After Marion has prostituted herself for a drug fix, she's seen serenely holding her head underwater and then starts screaming.
  • This shot was taken from Perfect Blue; filmmaker Darren Aronofsky bought the rights to the film purely to use that visual.
• Gus Maitland, played by Jeremy Renner in 12 & Holding has a particularly heart-wrenching one.
• In "The Cook the Thief His Wife And Her Lover", we see two. At the beginning of the movie, the Thief humiliates a man in front of the restaurant by stripping him and wiping dog excrement on him. The Cook hoses him off and pours a glass of wine for him in a scene that is both surreal and sad. Later, the Wife and Lover escape the Thief by hiding naked in the back of a truck filled with spoiled meat (they were making love and had to hightail it out of there). After they get out and reach safety, they are hosed down in much the same manner.
• In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Roy Neary fears he's cracking up - he's found by his wife fully clothed in the shower, curled up and crying (but his watch still works).
• Heathers - the day after Veronica kills Heather #1 and makes it look like a suicide, she hears other girls in the locker room buzzing about how her death has raised her status even higher. Veronica staggers, still clothed, into the shower. It may look to the others that she's stunned by the news, but it's more because her plan backfired.
• Glenn Close's character in The Big Chill.
  • And her character in the film Jagged Edge, after realizing that she just slept with a murderer—a man who she had successfully defended on charges of killing his wife.
• Daredevil does a pretty exceptional one of these—not only is he brooding, but he pulls out a cracked tooth, broken in a fight, and tosses it down the drain.
• Bill does one of these in Beautiful Boy, very understandably, as his son has just murdered 20-odd people on a college campus and then killed himself.
• Elizabeth Shue's character Sera in Leaving Las Vegas takes one of these after being gang-raped.

Literature

• In Memory, when Miles Vorkosigan begins to realize who he is as Lord Vorkosigan (he'd shunted all of his energies into Admiral Naismith for years), one of his first actions is to take a hot shower, "to scrub out the unpleasant, lingering scent of shame." He even explicitly compares it to a baptism. He then dresses, for the first time, in full Vor Lord regalia, and begins on the path that would become his future. It's practically Redemption in the Shower.
• In The Other Boleyn Girl, following her bloody and painful miscarriage of the King's son (basically the main reason she's Queen), Anne orders a bath be drawn up for herself, making the water so hot her skin flushes red. Her sister Mary (the narrator) remarks on the usual similarities to baptism. After this thorough cleaning, Anne puts on a dazzling silver and white gown to emphasize her innocence and purity.
• When Harry asks after Quidditch team captain Wood after the Gryffindor team loses their first match in Prisoner of Azkaban, the twins admit that he is still in the showers, and joke (we hope) that they think he's trying to drown himself. Add to this that they'd been playing in a thunderstorm, and were all already soaked.
• After the disastrous ball at Bianca's Micheal finds Harry Dresden huddled under the spray of his unheated shower suffering from angst and the early stages of hypothermia.

Live Action TV

• In the Lifetime Movie of the Week, No One Would Tell Stacy is seen taking a hot steaming shower in order to soothe her aches and bruises she got at the hands of her abusive boyfriend.
• Occurs a good number of times among the inmates in Oz and Prison Break.
• Tobias Fünke has three of these in one episode after his wife Lindsey gets the first acting part he tries out for. Unfortunately he also missed the call telling him that Lindsay hadn't shown up and he had got the part because he was in the shower at the time.
  • He also received a bad review from the school paper for the high school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream he directed. Cut to Tobias weeping in the shower wearing cut-off jean shorts. It isn't the only time.
• General Hospital: Liz Webber is shown crying in the shower after Lucky brings her to his house to comfort her post-rape.
• Grey's Anatomy: At the conclusion of "As We Know It," the main character and her two co-workers all shower (full-clothed) her off.
• iCarly: Carly takes showers that can be one or two hours long when she is unhappy.
• One Life to Live: Marty Saybrooke is shown in the shower crying and reliving her gang-rape.
  • A year later, Max Holden has a similar scene, horrified and disgusted with himself for having cheated on his wife.
  • Not to mention the fan-favorite "Gay Shower of Angst" cutting between Rex/Gigi and Brody.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Buffy takes a particularly hard fall on patrol and goes to take a shower to soothe away her aches and pains. This plan goes awry when Spike accosts and (depending on who you ask) tries to rape her.
  • Willow after the first time she visits the magic dealer.
  • "I Only Have Eyes For You". Angelus is possessed by a ghost and forced to act out a tragic love affair with a similarly-possessed Buffy. He's seen afterwards vigorously scrubbing his body in cold water and complaining about having been violated.
• Angel: After Faith gets the crap beaten out of her, she showers off to clean up the blood. Then she vents her frustrations on the shower tiles.
• Lana on Smallville is shown taking a shower after a hard day at school caused by the Monster of the Week. Again.
  • Male version: Shirtless Scene ALERT! Davis does this in season 8.. to show to the audience that he's an indestructible monster or something... (which would possibly make it a Draco in Leather Pants moment but that's a different story)
• Law and Order Special Victims Unit: Several rape victims are introduced crying in the shower after the ordeal.
• X Files: Scully finds Mulder huddles in a shower in a sleezy hotel room after he wakes up, disoriented, suffering amnesia and covered in blood.
• Ronnie did this a couple of times a season on Veronica Mars. Especially when she broke up with Logan.
• Star Trek: Voyager: B'Elanna has one of these in the sonic shower after having to kill an insane alien in "Juggernaut".
• The Sarah Connor Chronicles has one of these involving Sarah herself.
• Dark Angel has one of these with Max, in the episode "meow", after she has sex with a random guy to sate her literal "cat heat" and afterwards cries in the shower because she wanted it to be Logan. Considering Jessica Alba is involved, it is surprisingly tastefully done, mostly focused on the shoulders up.
• A male example happens in Dollhouse, after Ballard has sex with Mellie/November one last time.
  • Adelle DeWitt takes one of these in episode 2x09 in an attempt to sober up and regain control.
• Cracker. DS Penhaligon takes a bath after she's been raped, but makes sure to wrap her hand in plastic first to preserve evidence from when she scratched her attacker.
• Jay Leno played this for laughs in his version of The Tonight Show. Leno mentions something Squicky in a monologue—cut to a (mercifully) tight shot of him in the shower frantically scrubbing his chest and saying "EwEwEwEwEwEw".
• Carrie does this in Sex and the City in the episode when she turns 35 and everything is going wrong—even to the point where she drops her own $60 birthday cake in fresh tar, in front of a couple of fat construction workers screaming at her to move herself out of the way. I'd probably head straight for the shower, too—to drown myself.
  • One of Miranda's guys-of-the-week does this after sex with her, which kinda bums her out. When she attempts to empathise with him, her assumptions about his Catholicism offend him and he storms out. Carrie muses that the dialogue of this fight finds its way into a play he was writing.
• The Scrubs episode "My Cold Shower" has a recurring gag of showing the characters taking cold showers, although these are moreso caused by sexual frustration and played for laughs. But JD's last cold shower in the episode's final scene acts as a true Shower of Angst, as he realizes that he still has feelings for Elliot right after she accepted Keith's marriage proposal, with JD realizing "It should have been me." and then he looks at the camera
• An episode of CSI features Catherine Willows waking up half-dressed and disoriented in a cheap motel. She takes a shower--after improvising a SAE kit to run on herself. It wouldn't be admissible in court, but she just wants to know, one way or the other.
• An episode of The Drew Carey Show has Drew taking one of these after realizing the woman he just had cybersex with was Mimi. He was fully clothed, though.
• Flight of the Conchords: In the episode "Girlfriends" after having painfully awkward sex with his girlfriend, Bret goes home and sits in the tub under the running shower, fully clothed and silently crying.
• Naomi has one of these in Skins while struggling to cope with her relationship with Emily. Effy later has a Bath Of Angst over splitting Katie's head open with a rock.
• Bette of The L Word has a Shower of Angst in the episode "Limb from Limb".
• Lampshaded somewhat on Friends when Joey gets an acting gig as Al Pacino's 'butt double' in a shower scene in a movie, and manages to overact the moment:

Director: And cut. Hey, Butt Guy, what the hell are you doing?
Joey: Well, I'm--I'm showering.
Director: No, that was clenching.
Joey: Oh. Well, the way I see it, the guy's upset here, y'know? I mean, his wife's dead, his brother's missing... I think his butt would be angry here.
Director: I think his butt would like to get this shot before lunch. Once again, rolling... water working... and action... (Joey does the scene again) ...and cut. What was that?
Joey: I was going for quiet desperation. But if you have to ask...

• Overlaps with Shower Of Gayngst in ER: Kerry Weaver, pre- and post-date with Kim Legaspi.
• Played for laughs on The Colbert Report where a reporter was promoting "Voter Abstinence" (a promise not to vote) and was pretty much doing a sexual abstinence PSA only using "voting" as an Unusual Euphemism. He said that he'd been "tricked" into voting for a candidate that he thought had his best interests in mind, but once he was elected, he abandoned those who'd elected him. He was then shown crying in the shower as if he'd been raped and was trying to get himself clean.
• The first season finale of The Walking Dead has the survivors find temporary shelter, complete with hot showers. Most of them enjoy it, but Shane carries a wine bottle in there with him and breaks down sobbing. Of course, he's carrying a lot of angst by this point. Andrea is in a fetal position, since she had recently mercy killed her zombified younger sister.
• In the second episode of Spartacus Gods of the Arena, Melitta has the ancient Roman slave equivalent, tearfully scrubbing herself with a washcloth and bucket in the wake of Gannicus and her being forced to put on a live sex show.
• Chandler of Whitechapel is seen sitting down in the shower, fully clothed and having a serious Heroic BSOD, after Cazenove commits suicide so close to him that his blood and brains splatter onto him.

Music

• Toni Braxton does this in the video for "Unbreak My Heart," as she mourns her boyfriend who had been killed in a motorcycle accident.
  • Overlaps with Shower of Love as she also recalls how they used to frolic in the same shower stall.
• As does Amy Lee in the video "Everybody's Fool". Complete with a shot of her underwater in the tub with her eyes wide open.
• P!nk in her music video Nobody Knows.

Theater

• A Streetcar Named Desire: Blanche frequently takes a hot bath to "calm her nerves." Later on, after her rape at the hands of Stanley she takes a really long one. Only at this point she's too permanently traumatized for the bath to be much help.
  • Earlier, Stanley's friends shove him under a shower spray fully clothed in an attempt to sober him up after he got drunk, subsequently lost his self control and hit Stella.

Video Games

• Norman Jayden from Heavy Rain technically does have a shower scene, but considering that he's hallucinating and suffering from painful withdrawal symptoms at the time, it's not really meant to be Fan Service.

Web Comics

• In Misfile, after the latest setback in getting back to normal, Ash soaks herself in the shower for over an hour, unwilling to leave the bathroom and face the world. Emily has to go in and snap her out of it.
• Played for Laughs in this VG Cats strip.
• Same in these two pages of F@NB0Y$. It ends...um...happily.
• This is used in A Girl and Her Fed to show that the titular girl is not nearly as confident in the outcome of a situation as she appears.
• Living with Insanity has one at the start of its Vendetta arc.

Web Original

• Parodied in The Guild when a fully-clothed Vork takes one of these in someone else's shower after learning that Clara had betrayed his trust (i.e. corpse-camped him in World of Warcraft.)
• The Nostalgia Critic suffered an absolutely epic psychotic meltdown when he reviewed the third live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film. He tells us all to sit back and enjoy it. Five minutes later, he's having a Shower of Angst, as pictured above, spews Angrish and yells a long stream of psychotic screams and grunts.
  • Sean Fausz, of Epic Fail, has crying in shower to Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" as a Running Gag.
    • And in reference, Paw Dugan did the same thing in his review of Total Distortion with it being a music game that is devoid of good music.
      • The game over music would like to have a word with you.
  • Also from Channel Awesome is Brad 'The Cinema Snob' Jones' meltdown halfway through his synopsis of Sadomania when he discovers the attractive warden is played by a Transsexualism. Cue shower scene and frantic phone-call to his girlfriend:

Snob: "Honey we need to have sex. Right. Now. I'm very, very confused..."

• • • The The Fan Fiction Critic will occasionally announce after reading a filthy or horrible fanction that she needs to take a shower, bordering on Out, Damned Spot! when she does this several times per review.
  • Phelous does this during his review of A Serbian Film ... after a particularly horrifying scene.
  • Mike J also does this after waking up from a dream sequence which ends with him kissing Film Brain.
• In Dept Heaven Apocrypha, this is Meria's first reaction to having been cheated on by Seth the day after they first slept together. (Given the character, her breakdown picked up speed quickly, but...) The example is a little unusual in that we never actually see her in the shower—it's just mentioned by another character that she's been crying in there for hours.
• Parodied hilariously in Kyle Riabko and Trevor Jackson Are... .
• Parodied in Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series where Tristan is washing him self up in a lake, he's muttering "Must.. wash.. away.. the sin"
• Parodied, like nearly every other breakup trope in Manwhores, with Kevin having a shower with his clothes still on during his post-breakup montage.

Western Animation

• Occurs in The Simpsons with Homer sitting in a tub, looking traumatized with wide eyes as he crazily scrubs at his skin repeating, "Still not clean, stink of failure still on me! Still not clean, Still not clean!" after the newspaper editor rejected his first draft of his food review.
• In the Drawn Together episode "Requiem for a Reality Show", after Captain Hero degrades himself sexually to Foxxy Love in exchange for food, we see him sitting in the Shower of Angst eating cookies.
• Parodied in a Family Guy cutaway, where Darth Vader showers in a depressed manner after a hard day at his job as a meter maid, and just before he resolves to apply for a loan to build the Death Star. On the commentary, Seth MacFarlane refers to the trope, saying every pretentious independent film needs to have an obligatory scene where the character "showers the pain away".
  • Parodied again when Peter the Strawberry took one after being "violated" by a worm.
  • Stewie sits fully clothed under the shower spray crying as he washes Rupert after learning that New Brian humped Rupert.
  • Brian does this when he finds out that the women he slept with the prior night was Ida, Quagmire's post-op dad.
• Murderface does this in an episode of Metalocalypse after a gay doctor accidentally (or not) jerks Murderface off in his face and he goes into a state of paranoia about his own sexuality. Later mirrored in a still-shower-based Redemption in the Rain moment when Murderface finds out that it was the doctor, not him, who was gay.
• In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Squid's Day Off", Squidward goes crazy from paranoia after leaving Spongebob at the Krusty Krab by himself and tries to take a bubble bath to calm himself down. He ends up hallucinating while in the bath and seeing Spongebob everywhere.
• In The Ren and Stimpy Show Ren who is exhausted from work, and Stimpy's nonsense, takes a bath in very dirty water, while wearing lipstick.
• In the Regular Show Episode Muscle Woman, Muscleman, who is distraught after breaking up with his girlfriend, spends a lot of time crying in the shower.