"I want you to change the world, and I don’t think that this is going to happen peacefully, or you can do it alone. We need to Kill the Rich! You get out there, you use your weapons, you rip Washington apart!"
— Bill's message to the viewer.
Rampage is a 2009 independent film directed by Uwe Boll, and starring Brendan Fletcher in the lead role. The plot concerns a young man named Bill Williamson posting vlog rants about how the world is overpopulated and society's going down the drain, while building a suit of body armor and stocking up on weapons, leading up to a bloodthirsty rampage through his town. Amazingly, given the poor reputation of its director, it's actually a pretty good movie. The sequels are about Bill trying to rile up others through the Internet or television to join in on his rampage.
A sequel, Rampage: Capital Punishment, was released in 2014. The third and final film, Rampage: President Down was later released in 2016, which served as Boll's last film as a director. It was to be funded on Kickstarter but failed to make its goal. Because of this, Uwe Boll decided to retire from filmmaking after President Down and will no longer be making any movies...at least until he acquires enough funding to resume making movies.
In April 2020, Uwe Boll announced he is developing a Rampage video game for Steam tentatively titled "President Evil" where you play as Bill Williamson and shoot down the President of the U.S. The game supposedly occurs between the second and third movie.
Despite its name and the fact that it's made by a director most infamous for their prior video game adaptations, it is not connected to Midway's series. For that, see the 2018 Dwayne Johnson film.
(High-pitched voice): Trope, trope, trope.. trope, trope, trope, trope.
- An Aesop:
- When you neglect to take a more active, adamant role in politics and simply allow economic inequality to grow, anarchy and social unrest can break out at any time because there will always be someone like Bill Williamson who can and will choose to become a killer.
- There's one about gun control: Bill even spoon-feeds the viewers the moral importance of gun control in the second movie, claiming that his own shootings and rampages were made possible by the government's greed because the gun industry pays senators. Bill points out that gun purchases don't even mandate background checks (although he's not right about that either), but this is somewhat of a
Broken Aesop because 1) Bill outright encourages people to use violence to overthrow the government thus meaning that guns in the hands of citizens are essential in the scenario of ending political corruption, 2) guns and explosives can be obtained through black markets instead of solely gun stores (the United States even has its own Dark Web of guns) and 3) criminals such as Bill could have intentions to use guns to shoot innocent people even before committing their first crime, allowing them to have clean records before purchasing guns such as in the case of Dylann Roof. Also see Hollywood Law below because Bill's explanation of gun laws in the United States has been pointed out by viewers to be inaccurate and not as lax as he thinks.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us:
- This is the main plot of the second movie Capital Punishment, where Bill seizes command of a national television news station and forces them to play his agenda there enticing and appealing to the public to revolt and arm themselves to overthrow the government and the wealthy elite and take back power of the country by ripping apart Washington DC.
- The end of the third movie President Down has Bill's followers storming Washington D.C. and wiping out the security there by force to take power away from the wealthy elite and decision makers who only intend to serve the elite while Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street and the US military's outposts are also facing similar lethal revolutions.
- Arc Words: Bill telling the homeless guy in Capital Punishment, "When are you going to get off your ass and do something?" motivates the latter to become a mass shooter and robber just like Bill.
- Asshole Victim: Out of Bill's victims in all three movies combined, the coffee barista indubitably deserved it the most.
- Author Tract: Bill often calls a lot of people "retarded", has liberal-leaning views, and chastises mega-blockbuster Hollywood movies such as Marvel's Avengers and Iron Man just as Uwe Boll does. Also, Bill and Boll are only one letter off.
- Avenging the Villain: After Bill is shot down by the FBI and dies at the end of President Down, his viral followers revolt by attacking the FBI headquarters in Washington DC. Not only the FBI, but the angry revolters also extend their revolts towards all government agencies, go after several politicians such as former president George W. Bush, police forces throughout the nation and attack various U.S. military outposts.
- Ax-Crazy: Bill is outright gleeful when he starts slaughtering people.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Every movie ends with Bill succeeding in what he accomplished:
- In the first movie, he gets away with killing close to a hundred civilians, robbing a bank for its cash, escaping his dead-end job and break free from his parents' support. He also framed his best friend Evan for all the crimes that happened, especially by dressing Evan in his suit of armor and planting some cash onto Evan. Bill happily counts his money as Evan's father is arrested as a POI, before he packs his things and move out on his own.
- In the second movie, he gets his anti-corruption message across the nation in hopes of more violent uprisings then escapes the SWAT team that surrounded him at the TV news station he hijacked. And lastly, he arms a little girl to go on a murder-suicide rampage where she kills her family and herself last.
- The third movie is this trope from start to finish. Bill succeeds in killing the U.S. President and Vice President undetected, kills off the FBI squadron that hunted him down (but he also dies in the process), and thousands of followers who took inspiration from Bill's video messages and actions brings the United States into a second civil war between the poor and middle-class all up in arms against the elite rich and decision-makers. Washington D.C. falls under domestic attack yet again and its government may collapse from the coup d'etat.
- Bank Robbery: Bill pulls one off not only for the money, but to make a point; he burns the money outside in a garbage can to show that it's meaningless to him. This is actually a ruse, if you watch earlier in the film, Bill is printing counterfeit money, and that is what he burns in front of the bank. The entire movie just turned out to be an elaborate bank robbery, as Bill leaves some of the money at Evan's dead body in order to frame him for the killing spree, and keeps the rest for himself.
- Big Brother Is Watching: Bill in his video messages protests that the NSA should not be recording and keeping track of every phone call, email and text message sent by American citizens because that is an infringement on personal privacy and rights. Bill hails the efforts of Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden in exposing these secrets and asserts that they are hunted down and (except for Snowden, who fled to Russia) prosecuted by the US Government for providing information needed to protect democracy.
- Booby Trap: In the second and third movies Bill Williamson starts to use booby traps against the authorities pursuing him, primarily bombs and mines.
- Bloodless Carnage: Though not completely bloodless, the injuries Bill inflicts result in much less blood than is realistic. Though completely inverted with the women at the hair salon.
- Bottomless Magazines: Bill fires countless rounds from his submachine guns and is only ever clearly seen reloading once. However, by the end of the movie he’s using a handgun, a knife, and bombs instead, suggesting that he really did run out of ammo for the submachine guns.
- Bulletproof Vest: Bill's suit of steel-plate armor makes him effectively invincible.
- Bullying a Dragon: The coffee barista and the SWAT Team leader both learned the hard way why Bill is not to be challenged in any capacity.
- The coffee barista when he refused to accurately fulfill Bill's orders for either a correct coffee with lots of foam in it, or a refund, and then throwing a roll at Bill. The next day, Bill comes back in his Kevlar suit with machine guns and asks the barista "Remember me?". You can tell what happens next.
- In Capital Punishment, the SWAT Team leader conspired to send in an agent to shoot Bill between the eyes while he's distracted talking to his dad on the phone and forced Chip to go with this plan. Bill saw what they were doing using a cam he discreetly installed in the hallway, then Bill shoots the agent dead, blows up two-thirds of the SWAT men, and threatens to kill the hostages out of spite for the agent.
- But for Me, It Was Tuesday: In the second film Bill is confronted by a young woman who says he killed her twin sister. He remarks that she will have to be a bit more specific, as he's killed too many to remember their faces. Turns out it was the waitress at the fast food restaurant from the previous film, whom Bill killed for merely spilling some food on him.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: In Capital Punishment, Chip accidentally breaks the CD that Bill instructed him to play nationwide when he ran and slipped on a recently waxed floor. As the disc was cracked in half, he begs the SWAT Team Leader what to do, who then instructs him to return to Bill and ask for a second copy, assuring Chip that Bill still needs him and won't shoot him for that. As it turns out, Bill did have a second copy but doesn't give it to Chip right away, instead he pretends to threaten Chip and act like there isn't another copy. Though when Chip does follow through with all of Bill's orders, Bill decides to pull off You Have Outlived Your Usefulness.
- Cessation of Existence: Bill is a firm believer that there is no afterlife, which is first brought up in the second film Rampage: Capital Punishment, where he shoots one of his hostages dead and points out that no soul or spirit is rising from her remains, then later goes on a rant that religion is just a scam because God does not exist and there's nothing more to dying other than your corpse being put into the ground.
- Chekhov's Gun: The first Rampage film is full of these, containing Chekhov's Guns leading to bigger Chekhov's Guns. One good example is Evan's angry rant in the fast food shop. The scene becomes relevant later on, as his angry rant could be viewed as evidence of motive. Bill takes advantage of this, using it to further frame Evan. The Chicken Den is paid a visit, and the waitress is executed with the same handgun used in Evan's 'suicide'.
- Covers Always Lie: The poster for the sequel shows Bill detonating Capitol Hill, despite no such thing happening in the movie. Though that's not to say that Bill doesn't want such a thing to happen.
- Create Your Own Villain: Bill at the beginning was shown to be a jerkass yet harmless bully who enjoyed picking fights with people for his own amusement. But then getting badgered by his parents to move out of their house soon and being harassed, even kicked, by his boss at the car repair shop only exacerbated his mentality and led to him becoming an anarchic sociopath who randomly shoots civilians. In the sequel, Bill's father comes to admit that kicking out his son so soon was a backfiring decision and begs for Bill to stop the killings and return home.
- Creator Cameo: Director Uwe Boll has a small role in Capital Punishment as Andy, the head of the news company. Bill jokingly refers to him as "Baldy", even though Bill himself just shaved off his own hair merely hours ago.
- Deadline News:
- In the second film, Bill carries out a massacre at a news station and takes the survivors hostage, arguing that they're spreading glorified propaganda for the powers that be and demanding an interview with his primary hostage, famed anchor Chip Parker, whom he later kills as well.
- At the end of the third film, the homeless person who was inspired by Bill interrupts a live broadcast at a news station to kill the hosts and their crew.
- Disproportionate Retribution: The Chicken Den waitress who spilled food on Bill and Evan, and the Gelato server who wouldn't complete Bill's order are both killed during Bill's rampage. They are each the only ones in their respective restaurants to die, and the Gelato server is even given a chance to try to make Bill's order again but fails to do so.
- Driven to Suicide: In the third film, it is revealed that Bill's father Alan killed himself out of guilt over the innocent lives Bill took from the TV news station back in the second film.
- Double Meaning: When Bill is going to kill Evan and has to convince him to stay (ostensibly for a paintball match), Evan asks for a good reason to stay. He's given one.
- Downer Ending:
- The first film ends with Bill completing his killing spree by killing his friend Evan, framing him for said killing spree and his father getting arrested meanwhile Bill disappears to start a new massacre.
- Despite Bill getting shot by Vincent in the third film, by now Bill has already amassed thousands of devoted followers who took his word to continue his legacy of executing innocent people to achieve Bill's delusional quest that doing so can curb political corruption, poverty and wealth inequality.
- Eat the Rich: Bill's professed solution to political and financial corruption is to incite common citizens to start picking up guns and killing the rich and powerful en masse. His videos go viral, and by the end of the third film, it's indicated that he has unleashed a full-scale Civil War where angry armed anarchists are shooting Wall Street bankers, government officials and even celebrities in the music industry.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: In Capital Punishment, Bill is utterly devastated to hear that his mother passed away when his father breaks down the news on the phone. What makes it an even bigger Tear Jerker is that Bill indirectly caused his mother's death - his running away from home without even saying goodbye broke his mother's heart to the point she started taking an antidepressant that contributed to her car crash.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Bill is a politically motivated mass murderer, but when Chip presses him on what his mother would have thought of his actions, Bill says that his rampage doesn't negate his affection for her. The third movie also shows Bill with Crystal, his German-American girlfriend, and their baby.
- Evil Laugh: Bill lets one out after forcing the coffee barista to make his order again (with extra foam).
- Facial Recognition Software: In the third movie brand new facial recognition software is used to scan all the cameras in Washington D.C. to track down the shooter of the U.S. President.
- Frame-Up: Bill pulls one on Evan and his dad, implicating them for his crimes. It works, at least initially, as Bill just returns home and goes about his day. In the sequels the police have long figured out that Bill was the actual shooter.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: At the beginning of the second movie, Bill sees a homeless man on the streets and encourages him to go out and rob a bank as a means of surviving (just like Bill did in the first movie). Bill mocks the bum that he might as well be in jail where you get a warm bed and food, but the bum feels he has more freedom on the streets. Bill then mocks him for not choosing to do anything, asking him, "When are you going to get off your ass and do something?". At the end of the third movie, the bum becomes a literal Chekhov's Gunman partaking in the anti-establishment revolution that Bill started where we see that he has now become a successful robber, shaved off his excessive hair and got clean clothes and executes news anchors live on TV to continue Bill's legacy.
- Gender Is No Object: At least one female police officer joins the fight against Bill in the forest at the climactic battle of President Down.
- The Ghost: In the third movie Bill Williamson assassinates the U.S. President and several other high-ranking politicians with a sniper rifle from a mile distance. Neither the assassination nor the President him(?)self are shown or identified, only the aftermath of the authorities tracking down the shooter. In real life, Uwe Boll did state that he strongly hates Donald Trump calling him a retard multiple times so that could be a hint.
- Gladiator Games: In the second movie, Bill forced his hostages to put on a show fighting each other for his own amusement where a male hostage has to senselessly beat up a female hostage. Bill eggs him on with, "Pretend she's your wife, and she just cheated on you!"
- Global Warming: Bill insists it's real, being exacerbated by human activities like burning fossil fuels and deforestation, and details in his interview to Chip that given the current yet growing rate of global warming's damage done to the environment, the earth will be irreversibly uninhabitable by 2100.
- Going Postal: Zigzagged Trope. While Bill is an ordinary American worker (albeit a Basement-Dweller, reflecting the economic climate of the time period) who initiates a killing spree, it's less because of frustration with his job or life as is it for various sociopolitical reasons he espouses, making Bill just a straight-up terrorist. Also, rather than simply snapping, he puts an enormous amount of effort into preparing his rampage, allowing him to carry it out without the authorities being able to stop or capture him. However, he still targets various people out of revenge for assorted petty reasons like a waitress who accidentally spilled coffee on him in a diner.
- Go Out with a Smile: At the end of President Down, Bill is satisfied that he slaughtered every single policeman, FBI agent and SWAT officer sent to go assassinate him. He goes to sit down next to a tree and peacefully dies with a smile.
- Gullible Lemmings: Bill sees working-class Americans (lower and middle class, the latter he says is rapidly diminishing) as nothing more than cattle being lied to and milked for money by the rich, the heavily biased media and the politicians while also being slaughtered by foreign terrorists (i.e. September 11th, 2001 attacks) and homegrown criminals (monthly mass shootings especially in schools). Bill complains that American consumers buy gas from Saudi Arabia which has funded al-Qaeda to commit the 9/11 attacks.
- Guns Akimbo:
- Done with a pair of submachine guns.
- Taken up a level with a pair of M-16s in the second film.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Chip manages to save the hostages in the second film through a long and complicated process of following through on Bill's demands at the cost of his own life.
- He Who Fights Monsters:
- In the second movie, Bill protests that gun control is necessary for keeping civilians, especially children, safe. Right at the end, Bill spots a little girl walking by with a book, dents a sense of anti-establishment and anti-media into her skull then GIVES HER A GUN and orders her to shoot her family, then herself. The little girl doesn't know what's happening other than this man is angrily ordering her to do something, and she's certainly too afraid to oppose his orders so her fate doesn't look too bright.
- In the third movie, FBI Agent Molokai complains that in America, "Our freedom is already gone". But to track down who shot the U.S. President, Molokai hires software engineer Murray to create a Facial Recognition Software to scan through the faces of every civilian who was in Washington D.C. at the time of the shooting.
- Hollywood Atheist: Bill, a vicious mass murderer, declares there is no God and views religions as just one among many scams, with death being the end. Bill being an atheist is also very pro-science and urges that global warming is real.
- Hollywood Law: In one of his political rants, Bill claims that firearms purchases do not mandate background checks, and cites this as proof of the gun industry's greed making mass murderers such as himself possible. In truth, this gets complicated. Licensed firearms businesses (where, obviously, the overwhelming majority of gun sales take place) or "FFLs" are obligated under federal law to perform background checks on ALL their customers. No matter the location—there is no such thing as an internet or gun show "loophole" for any lawful purchase. Private purchases, where one person might decide to sell a gun to one of their friends living in the same state, do not. If it's across state lines, an FFL will have to act as a middle-man. Oft-repeated talking points such as "universal background checks" effectively just amounts to taxing private individuals who probably cannot afford such a burden, in addition to possibly trespassing on privacy rights. In other words, Bill's statement is technically (kind of) correct, but highly misleading.
- Hypocrite: Bill claims that the U.S. government denies basic human rights to their citizens such as health care, freedom of speech and fair, equal income distribution yet he claims that citizens shouldn't be allowed to have guns at all, implying that Bill actually is in favor of implementing a system that strictly monitors and regulates citizens. Not to mention he himself is a mass murderer who shoots random innocent civilians and police. In the third movie, Bill releases a video asking the viewer to overlook his own murders and instead focus on his urgent messages about America's slipping grip on freedom.
- I Have a Family:
- In the beauty salon scene, one of the employees tries to reason with Bill by mentioning that she's got a husband and two kids at home. It doesn't faze Bill for a second, and he does end up killing her.
- In the second film, Chip begs for mercy to Bill to forgive him for accidentally breaking the CD that contained Bill's message. When Bill lashes out, Chip pleads he has a wife and children to which Bill replies "I don't give a fuck!" before handing him a back-up CD copy.
- I Have Your Wife: In the third film, Bill sends video messages to Vincent Jones and Molokai ordering them to come fight him in the forest where they caught him through a spy drone or else he'll expose the addresses of their families to his online followers so they can kill Vincent's wife and daughter and Molokai's grandmother.
- Karma Houdini: Bill kills his friend Evan and frames him for his killing spree, and winds up getting Evan's dad sent to jail. All the while, he returns to his normal life as though nothing had happened and prepares to go on another rampage as soon as he has the money. However, the sequels make it clear that Bill has had to go into hiding after his role in the massacre was exposed.
- Killed Offscreen: The third film opens with Bill being pursued by the authorities for pulling off a political assassination on the sitting U.S. President, which occurs entirely offscreen. The President isn't even named.
- Leave No Witnesses: The reason why Bill kills everyone in the beauty salon — he took his mask off to have some water, then realized that they had seen his face, ruining his plan to get away with his crimes.
- Malevolent Masked Men: Bill wears a gas mask as part of his DIY armored suit.
- Manchild:
- According to Bill, all American adults are on the same brain level of children because of the heavy censorship, propaganda and bias that the government and wealthy people force upon the press and media.
- Bill himself can count as one. In the first movie, he lazily relied on his parents to keep supporting him and refused to go to college. He has the same mentality of an angry, anti-social teenager (calling people "fucks", "assholes" and "retards") and he thoroughly enjoys picking fights with people.
- Mean Boss: Bill used to work as a mechanic for Jim, who was an abrasive boss and paid Bill a meager salary. Bill doesn't kill him on-screen, indicating that Bill didn't have time to go after him or Jim could have a personal office for himself with a locked door and Bill decided going through that trouble's not worth killing Jim.
- Mid-Battle Tea Break: Happens in the middle of the first movie when Bill is going on his titular rampage attacking civilians. He stops for a bite to eat at a senior citizens' bingo hall. The clerk is intimidated enough to let him have a sandwich and drink for free. Bill then interferes with the bingo game by taking away the ball from the announcer ("I-27!") before leaving. He leaves peacefully without shooting anyone, deciding they'll all die soon enough.
- Militaries Are Useless: Bill does acknowledge that the United States Armed Forces are the most powerful military in the world thanks to technology handed to them by Silicon Valley geniuses to the point no enemy would ever dare invade America. But he protests the U.S. Army soldiers are nothing more than puppets of the nation's richest 1 percent who, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks which Bill claims was funded by Saudi Arabia, attacked Iraq instead and that hundreds of US soldiers died for nothing fighting countries that didn't commit terror attacks. In the epilogue of President Down, anarchists who sympathize with Bill rain hellfire down on military outposts.
- My Death Is Just the Beginning: Mass murderer/terrorist Bill Williamson orchestrates several massacres while releasing viral videos urging people to cause violence all over the world. He's finally killed by the end of the third movie after a massive manhunt, but more chaos erupts after his death since more people are shown committing massacres.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: When Bill goes to rob a bank, he gets tackled by a civilian. Bill slits his throat and executes bank-goers as retribution for that civilian playing hero. Bill points out this trope was in play by asking "Anyone else wanna play hero?"
- Nothing Is Scarier: The scene where Bill is in the bingo hall full of old people, all of them too engrossed in their game to notice a guy in full body armor and tactical getup walking around. The tension of the scene comes from the anticipation that Bill is just going to lay into the defenseless crowd with his machine guns. And it never happens.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Bill initially claims that he wants to help the world by fighting overpopulation, but the fact that his motive keeps changing film to film and his sheer cruelty, sadism and pettiness he displays shows that he isn't doing what he does for any reason other than because he enjoys it, with whatever he spouts simply being excuses or means to get people on his side.
- Overpopulation Crisis: Bill's Casus belli for shooting innocent people on the streets in the first film (he adopts other justifications in the sequels).
- Parental Sexuality Squick: This conversation between Bill and his dad Alan:Alan: I don't want to do this on a rush, because it's an important thing. But your mother and I were talking last night. We didn't get a lot of sleep, and not for the reason you think.
Bill: (eats a croissant with orange juice) That's gross. - The Pessimist: Bill, who is very concerned about environmental degradation, global warming, water and air pollution and increasing wealth gaps where only the poor get poorer and the rich richer. He surmises Earth will not survive into the next century given just how squalid it already is at the beginning of the 21st century.
- Police Are Useless:
- Justified. Bill's first act is to take out the police station so that there's nobody to stop his rampage. 2 cops intervene on his rampage as they try shooting Bill, but his Kevlar armor deflects their bullets and he returns fire on them.
- Played completely straight in the sequel. At this point Bill takes out entire SWAT teams and anti-terrorist units because he's The Chessmaster.
- The third film continues this, though this time with the FBI. They successfully track down Bill and identify him as the shooter of the U.S. President, but prove utterly incompetent when entering the forest to go find him as he planted surprise attacks and they have no idea who they're going up against.
- Police Brutality: Real-life footage of a black man being repeatedly punched by police and of Walter Scottnote fleeing from his car play in President Down.
- Pyrrhic Victory: At the end of "President Down", Bill as a One-Man Army succeeds in killing every single FBI agent and policeman who were out to get him. The bad news for Bill is he was also shot too, in a weak-spot his Kevlar armor could not deflect and he goes to die next to a tree. His wife and son now have to go on without him.
- Reality Is Unrealistic: There was a big thread
on the film's IMDb message board saying how this movie was entirely unrealistic and could just never happen in real life. And then the Utoya summer camp massacre, which played out almost exactly like Bill's killing spree (a bombing to distract the cops, followed by a run-and-gun massacre). To quote one of the posters:Look at your thread. Look at the news about Norway. Look back at your thread. Slap yourself, because you have been owned. - "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Plenty of these in the second movie.
- Even without the whole story of him hijacking that news station to air his left-wing agenda, Bill does have a lot to say about just how flawed American culture and politics is.
- In the climax, Bill delivers a pungent one towards Chip for helping spew propaganda lies on air.
- At the end, Bill sees a little girl walking by reading a book and denigrates her for this, claiming she's been brainwashed by both her parents and teachers and that she should be more like him: an anarchic terrorist before handing her a Beretta 92.
- Redemption Rejection: Near the end of the second movie, Bill's dad calls him pleading him to drop everything (the agenda, the shootings, taking people hostage) and just come home. Bill refuses and proceeds to off the mole agent sent to terminate him then hangs up the phone before he activates his planted explosives upon the SWAT men converging on him.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: During Bill's titular rampage in the first movie, he gets revenge on the rude coffee barista for refusing to give him extra foam on his coffee, by shooting him in the back with a Heckler & Koch MP7A1.
- Rule of Symbolism: The chair in the second movie (the one Bill forces Chip to sit in) is a metaphor. While taking the news crew hostage, Bill forces everyone except Chip to sit on the floor while giving Chip a chair on wheels to sit in. Chip isn't comfortable having a chair when nobody else gets one. Bill is forcing him to sit on the chair to make him truly know what it's like to be a largely wealthy news reporter while the rest of the hostages (who happen to be Chip's employees) are low-paid and under-appreciated.
- She Knows Too Much: Bill slaughters the female patrons of a hair salon when he realizes that because he took his mask off, they know what his face looks like and also what his voice sounds like since he spoke to them and he doesn't need anyone reporting him to the police.
- Soapbox Sadie: Bill is a villainous male example, particularly in the second movie, which features several long monologues about government corruption and fixing the world. Evan counts, too.
- The Social Darwinist: Bill blames overpopulation for the world's ills in the first movie, claiming that he must "cleanse" people. This is later retconned starting with the second film which has him instead emphasize blame on wealth inequality and cries for the people to overthrow their country's banks, conglomerate CEOs and government. However, Rampage 3 acknowledges Bill's Social Darwinist past and makes a brief explanation of his political change during a filmed rant.
- The Sociopath: Bill. Whether he is truly trying to help the world or just doing everything for kicks, he takes a very chilling satisfaction from his crimes, goes out of his way to be as sadistic as possible to his victims in his killing spree and feels no remorse for any of it. In the sequel, Bill's calls for action against the nation's wealthiest can be considered another ruse since inciting more people into killing is likely just him wreaking havoc by proxy.
- Spree Killer: The film centers on a domestic terrorist named Bill Williamson who plans out a shooting spree in great detail, including building a suit of armor and how to dispose of the local cops first so his mass murder can be carried out unperturbed. His first massacre was mainly to cover up a Bank Robbery, but he also initially openly advocates Social Darwinism and then violent anarchism as well when he initiates another shooting spree in a television station, before attacking the government itself while calling for a revolt.
- Straw Nihilist: Bill often rants about how there is no God, people are all slaves to their leaders, modern life in general is meaningless without violence, and humanity is doomed to extinction by the year 2100 when planet Earth is devastated from pollution and depletion of clean air and water.
- Take That!:
- In the second movie, Bill denigrates Steven Spielberg and his film Lincoln for making it out like Abraham Lincoln wanted to free the slaves. Bill asserts the purpose of the Civil War was to re-unify the Union and Confederacy under one centralized government and that the North and South fought each other over money and the stronghold slavery had on all means of economic production in the United States, not necessarily slavery itself. Not only is Bill angry that Lincoln is whitewashing history, it's constantly being played in schools and TV non-stop.
- In the third movie, Bill calls out America's richest celebrities such as Jennifer Aniston, Jay-Z, Tom Cruise and Michael Bay for being mansion-owning millionaires who have forgotten what it means to be human being oblivious to the financial situation in America where the middle class is vanishing and the poor only get poorer.
- In the third movie, FBI Agent Molokai blames George W. Bush for the rise of ISIS to power. While ISIS formed in 1999, it was the 2003 invasion of Iraq authorized by Bush that helped catapult ISIS into a position of power.
- They Really Do Love Each Other: In Capital Punishment, Chip when he first appeared on-screen is verbally berating that his broadcasting news employees are "incompetent assholes" who never really do their jobs and he wishes to have them all fired and replaced. After Bill arrives and kills off most of the news station's workforce, Chip heroically struggles to convince Bill to spare their lives. Bill actually expected Chip to outright abandon his entire news crew to save his own skin when the latter was instructed to run back upstairs and play Bill's DVD. Instead, Chip does exactly as Bill told him to.
- This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: Bill to the gelato server. Bill gives him five seconds to run, and gets rather... enthusiastic about the countdown.Bill: RUN FORREST! NOW YOU'RE GETTING IT! FIVE BITCH!
- Title Drop: An alternate title for the second movie was "You End Now" which Bill did say in the movie.
- Too Dumb to Live: A lot of the civilians Bill shot in the first movie.
- The coffee barista from the first movie. He works at a coffee shop that is open to the public so that anyone can find him, and yet he chooses to be an asshole.
- The women in the nail salon definitely count. When Bill went to their salon to take a break from his rampage and drink some water, he decides to leave in peace after having rounded them up and doesn't shoot them. The women don't run out the back door but instead just angrily grumble to themselves about being taken hostage, before Bill comes back.
- While Bill is going on his rampage on the streets, he corners one woman but his Ruger MP9 is out of ammo. The woman rather than notice he needs reloading and run off instead chooses to stay cornered, allowing Bill to reload.
- Tropey, Come Home: In the first movie, Bill was pressured by his dad Alan to move out and find his own apartment. In Capital Punishment, Alan begs his son to come home and stop killing (not in-person but on the phone as the SWAT Team Leader reached out to Alan to appeal to Bill). When Bill asks for his mom, Alan breaks down the news that Sarah died in a car crash (because of an anti-depressant she took to relieve her depression of Bill running away from home permanently and never talking to her again for 5 years now). Upon hearing this, Bill decides not to come home and hangs up.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight:
- Nobody at the bingo hall seems to mind Bill. Bill figures this must be because their old age has hindered their senses. They actually pay more attention to Bill leaving than interfering with their bingo game.
- Also at the end of the second movie, Bill gives a firearm (Beretta 92FS Inox) to a little girl walking by, ordering her to shoot her parents (in addition to any siblings or other relatives in that house) then shoot herself last. She walks off home barely concealing the weapon but nobody around her does anything.
- Villain Has a Point: Bill makes points many people would agree with. Of course, it's detracted from by his being a sociopathic mass murderer not unlike those he rants about in the sequel.
- Villain Protagonist: Bill is the main character and a domestic terrorist. Despite his verbal protests that he's actually doing the right thing, there is hardly any good inside him. He even wants a little girl to shoot herself with a gun just to very slightly resolve the overpopulated planet issue.
- Western Terrorists: Bill Williamson and later on at the end of the third movie, the legion of radical anarchists he inspired to overthrow the oppressive system imposed by the US Government.
- Winged Soul Flies Off at Death: Bill sarcastically claims that the girl that he shot who wore yoga pants did not end up going this way. He then complains over why are people stupid enough to believe and give money to religion which he considers superstition and a hoax.
- Would Harm a Senior: Subverted. Elderly civilians are the only ones exempt from Bill's wrath. Bill figures that it would seem pointless to kill them because they don't have much time left anyways and so won't consume as much natural resources.Bill: Yes... you don't need my help at all!
- Would Hit a Girl: Bill absolutely indulges in this trope for the first two movies. Also in the second movie, Bill orders a male hostage to beat up another female hostage though the former refuses because it goes against his principles. When Bill asserts that means he'll just shoot both of them if he doesn't, the male hostage reluctantly proceeds with the abuse.
- Would Hurt a Child: The second film concludes with Bill, after successfully orchestrating another rampage and getting away with it, giving a gun to a random little girl and telling her to kill her parents and then herself.
