History Main / RageAgainstTheReflection

* In the short movie ''BindingSilence'', the protagonist suffers an abstinence from reading a cursed book, then, destroys his bedroom until he looks himself in the mirror for some seconds and punching it.

* Happens in a deleted scene of ''BadCountry'' where [[spoiler:after the death of Jesse Weiland's wife and baby, Detective Bud Carter is drunk and goes into a bar fight by injuring most of the people present there, then, he shoots a mirror with his pistol while shouting random curses]].

* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E8LetsKillHitler Let's Kill Hitler]]", the Doctor is badly poisoned and activates the TARDIS voice interface because he can't work the controls anymore. The interface uses a holographic image of the Doctor himself to communicate. The Doctor tells the TARDIS to shut it off and show him [[TheWoobie someone he likes]] instead.

** In "Caught in the Act", a college girl named Hannah is possessed by an alien and goes around seducing people, then ''eating'' them after sex. In the girl's bathroom, Hannah loses her temper after the alien tries to seduce her roommate and punches the mirror. She then picks up a shard and attempts suicide, but the alien regains control and makes her drop it and continue its mission.
** In "Skin Deep", Sid Camden, who hates himself, punches the mirror after he deactivates the HolographicDisguise that made him look like Chad Warner.

** In "[[{{Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS03E05SecondSkin}} Second Skin]]", Kira is held on Cardassia, surgically altered to resemble a Cardassian spy and is told she actually is her. This is her reaction as she looks at her altered face in the mirror, uncertain if it's true.

* ''Series/Titans2018''. In "Origins", the orphanage nuns lock Rachel up in a cell to stop her SuperpoweredEvilSide escaping. When her DarkSide self appears in the mirror, Rachel smashes it but Evil-Rachel continues to taunt her, with the broken shards even levitating out of the frame to speak to her when she's not facing the mirror.
* In ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' episode "The Mirror", a Fidel Castro-like dictator acquires a mirror that shows him images of his enemies and those destined to betray him. After killing most of his allies after seeing them in the mirror, the dictator sees an image of himself. He goes crazy and smashes the mirror before [[DrivenToSuicide committing suicide]].

* In the ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'' novel "Literature/DeathStar" Darth Vader punches out a mirror in his quarters.

* ''Manga/DGrayman'' takes this to a whole new level. The Earl of Millennium [[spoiler: is driven mad by his two new split personalites that conflict with first and are an obstacle to his holy mission. Torn apart he looks at the mirror and first plays the trope rather straigth by tearing it appeart not by punching it but by scratching to shattering ''till his finders bleed''! But then he decides to go even further and to blow up not the reflection but the real source of the problem: that is to say''' his own face''' ]].

* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'', Patrick is [[MirrorMonologue talking to his reflection]] about going on the "Fiery Fist o' Pain" roller coaster. It calls him a coward, causing Patrick to punch it out -- not the mirror, the reflection.
** "I thought we'd settled this the last time!"

[[quoteright:302:[[ComicBook/TheKillingJoke https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rageagainsthereflection_copy_2045.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:302:[-The perfect end to ComicBook/TheJoker's one bad day.-] ]]

* In ''Film/HomeSweetHome'', Cham Yim-hung, the deformed woman who kidnaps May's son for mistaking him as her deceased son, immediately smashes the glass door of an electrical grid upon seeing her reflection, causing a blackout throughout the entire apartments complex.

* One ''Series/{{CSINY}}'' episode had a woman insist that her brother was killed by an intruder who has broken into their apartment despite there being no evidence of anyone else in the room. It turns out a car accident she had been in several months ago caused her to develop Capgras delusion, which prevents her from recognizing her own reflection, and she had accidentally killed her brother while trying to fight off the "intruder" (a mirror in the room). In the police station, she denies this and after glancing at the two-way mirror in the interrogation room, she attacks it, yelling that it's the killer.

* In ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13823122/1/Crushed-Spirit Crushed Spirit]]'', while [[WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriends Percy]] doesn't smash the Steamworks mirror, he does say some rather nasty things about himself upon seeing his reflection.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLionGuard'': Like his future brother-in-law, Kion, fearing that he's becoming more like his evil great-uncle now that (among other things) he has a matching scar, slaps a pool of water when his reflection turns into Scar.

* ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'' villain ComicBook/TwoFace does this in his Golden Age origin, where he throws a flowerpot against the mirror. This becomes a recurring theme of adaptations of the character inevitably trashing a mirror when he finally gets a look at himself after his scarring.
** Starting in the 1980s, this was added to ComicBook/TheJoker's backstory as well starting with Creator/AlanMoore and ''Comicbook/TheKillingJoke.'' In this version, after the man that would become the Joker suffers his worst day ever, it's topped by him looking at seeing his disfigured face in a puddle as he starts ''[[FreakOut laughing]].'' While the Joker himself even admits he might be making this up and he's retold many different stories about his past, this particular detail tends to repeat itself.
*** One of the more famous adaptations of this story is in Creator/TimBurton's ''Film/Batman1989'', which also used ''The Killing Joke'' as an inspiration for the film. In this version, it comes complete with pitiful, horrified whimpering at the first glance he gets at his new face, [[GoMadFromTheRevelation then crazed laughter shortly after that]].

* For one more obscure, try Alias the Blur from Creator/GrantMorrison's ''Comicbook/DoomPatrol'', of the Brotherhood of Dada group. The story goes that a beautiful actress fell in love with her reflection in the mirror. As she grew older and her face grew less pretty, she thought her mirror lover had been replaced by an impostor and attacked it with acid. The sight of her distorted reflection in the melted glass terrified her so much she shot herself in the head and was left in a coma. The love and devotion the actress put in the mirror, now mutilated and warped, became Alias the Blur, The Ghost Who Eats Time. [[spoiler: When Alias the Blur is ultimately destroyed, the comatose actress finally died.]]
* ''Comicbook/FantasticFour'' villain Doctor Doom smashes anything reflective when not wearing his mask.
** The shot of Doom hunched over, fist in a smashed mirror is re-used during one story arc for Reed, after Doom burns his face.
* ''Comicbook/TheFlash'' villain Mirror Master slightly subverts this in his origin story. After realizing he had killed his father (whom he had never met before due to being given up into foster care as a baby), Evan [=McCulloch=] checks on his mother. Evan sees she has committed suicide over the loss by smashing the mirror in the bathroom and using a piece to slit her wrists. Evan then stares at the smashed mirror for 12 hours afterwards.
* When Michael Myers in ''Comicbook/HalloweenNightdance'' starts seeing visions of his past as a child in the reflections of a hall of mirrors, he stabs the nearest one with his knife.

* In ''ComicBook/{{Morbius}}'''s 90s solo series, Michael uses Spider-Man's blood to develop a serum that changes him back into a human. While out on the street, he is attacked by a gang who beat him up. Crawling out of the gutter they left him lying in, he makes his way across the sidewalk to look into a shop window and sees he has reverted back to his vampire self. He runs off after punching a hole in the shop window.
* In the first volume of the third series of the Italian comic book ''ComicBook/{{Orfani}}'' (Orphans, in Italian language), there's a scene where the VillainProtagonist Jsana Juric accuses her stepfather Sàndor Kozma by ignoring her and focusing solely on his job as the EMR's President, and then, she takes a perfume gift and she throws it into a mirror and smashing it.
* In Creator/NeilGaiman's ''Comicbook/TheSandman'' "The Kindly Ones", Hippolyta Hall does this in her hallucination journey.
* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman''
** ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'': When Priscilla Rich sees her alter ego ComicBook/{{Cheetah}} as her reflection talking to and taunting her her reaction is to punch the mirror until it cracks.

--> '''Cornfed''': Ow.

* In ''Film/AhLaBarbe'' a man sees a series of grotesque faces in the mirror when he apparently starts hallucinating after eating shaving cream. Eventually he smashes the mirror with his razor.

* Happens in a deleted scene of ''Film/BadCountry'' where [[spoiler:after the death of Jesse Weiland's wife and baby, Detective Bud Carter is drunk and goes into a bar fight by injuring most of the people present there, then, he shoots a mirror with his pistol while shouting random curses]].

* In the short movie ''Film/BindingSilence'', the protagonist suffers an abstinence from reading a cursed book, then, destroys his bedroom until he looks himself in the mirror for some seconds and punching it.

* Played for Laughs in ''Film/ItalianoMedio'' (Average Italian Man, in Italian language). While Giulio Verme is preparing to participate to Master VIP (a parody of Reality Televisions like X-Factor and Got Talent), his inner sane personality talks to him to come back to his senses through a mirror, then, Verme smashes it with a very light punch.

* A mirror smash is done by the woman criminal with a disfigured face, played by Creator/IngridBergman, in a 1938 Swedish film ''[[FilmAWomansFace1938 En kvinnas ansikte]]'' (''A Woman's Face''), and in a [[Film/AWomansFace 1941 Hollywood remake]] starring Creator/JoanCrawford.

* Happens in the 1999 movie adaptation of ''Film/TheModSquad'' when Julie Barnes discovers that Billy Waites is [[spoiler: a pimp and lied to her all the time]]. Then, [[spoiler: after drinking his wine and destroying his car]], she smashes the mirror of her bathroom by punching it.

* In the RagsToRiches caper film ''Film/PAndB'', the main character is tipsy and laughing at his reflection in a bathroom mirror. We see him gradually sober up, put out his cigarette in the eye of his reflection, and begin to cry.

* In the Italian crime movie ''Film/RomanzoCriminale'' (Criminal Novel, in Italian Language), Ciro Buffoni, one of the main characters, gets out of jail and returns home, mourning about [[spoiler: his brother Aldo's death]], then, he smashes a mirror with a heavy punch.

* In a [[TearJerker particularly hard-to-watch]] scene from the film ''Film/{{Vulgar}}'', the main character returns home after being brutally gang-raped by an insane father and his sons. He demolishes his house and smashes his mirror with a wrench while screaming at his reflection, after which he uses a shard of glass to [[SelfHarm cut his hand]].''

* At one point during the music video for "Symphony" by Music/CleanBandit, the protagonist, a man whose boyfriend [[TearJerker died in a traffic accident]], screams at his own reflection and attacks his bathroom mirror with a conductor's baton.

* In ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'', Magma shatters a reflective computer panel over how some kids looked at him as if he was a monster, [[DudeWheresMyRespect despite having rescued them]].

* Pulled by [[spoiler: Misaki Touno]] in ''Manga/PrivateActress'', right after she crosses the DespairEventHorizon. What follows is her using her own blood to [[CreepyCoolCrosses draw a cross on the wall]] [[spoiler: and her pulling a BathSuicide.]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'' episode "Jungle Moon", Stevonnie experiences [[spoiler: Pink Diamond's]] memories in a dream, of her demanding her own colony to Yellow Diamond. Stevonnie wakes up after witnessing [[spoiler: Pink]] smash a reflection of herself through her own eyes.

* ''Series/Titan2018''. In "Origins", the orphanage nuns lock Rachael up in a cell to stop her SuperpoweredEvilSide escaping. When her DarkSide self appears in the mirror, Rachel smashes it but Evil-Rachael continues to taunt her, with the broken shards even levitating out of the frame to speak to her when she's not facing the mirror.