If you can't like him at his mehoy, you won't love him at his minoy.
"Prepare to meet... Mr. Angry Eyes!"
— Mr. Potato Head, Toy Story 2
A normally peaceful or serene character wears a serious frown after getting quite a pummeling. Or maybe a fighter stops the common trash-talking chitchat.
If an enemy is unlucky, the camera will focus on the character's expression changing in a significant way, indicating they're about to go all out on them or die trying. If it's accompanying a physical transformation or costume change, it pretty much indicates the enemy is about to get owned.
Named after the very noticeable and atypical angry contorted face on an otherwise-normal character when this occurs.
See also American Kirby Is Hardcore.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
- Natsumi from Sgt. Frog sometimes does the Angry Eyebrows.
- Dragon Ball: Goku. It Runs in the Family apparently, as he expands it to his sons, Gohan and Goten.
- Rurouni Kenshin: He even gets his face stuck in the "Angry" position because he'd been Obfuscating Stupidity and hadn't had the chance to glare at people for a while.
- Luffy from One Piece plays this trope completely straight in his fight with Bellamy.
- In the not very well known anime Shin Hakkenden the main character, and for that matter all the jewel bearers, aren't noted so much for their facial expressions, but when one of their jewels glow...um...run away and you MIGHT survive.
- In Flame of Recca when Recca fights the monk with the "Oni" artifact. "Hit me three times." After the third hit, mister placid buddha-face becomes mister I own your ass.
- Fist of the North Star:
- Kenshiro has Big Ol' Eyebrows to begin with, but when he gets mad and glares, you know someone isn't walking away from the next fight.
- Heaven help you if his Aloof Older Brother Raoh does it. He might just punch your head clean off, and that's being merciful.
- In Monster, we get to see Grimmer's typically calm, placid face devolve to sheer rage after the assassins he was trying to talk to gun down an innocent woman running to him. And it is magnificent.
Arts
- The Japanese depicted Samurai as excessively angry scowlers in their woodblock prints, possibly influenced by face-paints of the same in Kabuki theater or the real-life tendency for brows to stay stuck in that position after years of looking grumpy/worried.
Films — Animation
- A rare example in Toy Story 2, with Mr. Potato Head. When they encounter the other Woody's Roundup Toys,
Mr. Potato Head: Prepare to meet... MR. ANGRY EYES! AAAAAH!
- Subverted in that he actually puts on his spare shoes by mistake.
- In Turning Red, Mei gives Tyler a very angry glare right before she hurls a dodgeball at his head.
Films — Live-Action
- Red Cliff: Gan Xing's give him a perpetual scowl similar to Japanese woodblock prints of ancient samurai (appropriate since his actor is Japanese).
Live-Action TV
- Sylar of Heroes. Whenever he's especially annoyed or pissed off, his Big Ol' Eyebrows take on a life of their own and makes him look even more terrifying.
- Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor, whose first canonical appearance in anything once served as the page image. Hell, the first thing he points out when he sees his new face for the first time was that his eyebrows look really cross.
- In an episode of Seinfeld Uncle Leo's eyebrows are burnt off when his stove explodes. Elaine tries to draw them back on but does so badly, leading everyone to think that Leo is angry about something.
Pinball
- Appears on Williams Electronics' No Fear: Dangerous Sports, both on the backglass and on the playfield immediately beneath the flippers.
- Buzz the gofer has these on the backglass for No Good Gofers.
Video Games
- Ryu of Street Fighter and the anime film Street Fighter Zero Generation does it before going Satsui no Hadou Metameza Ryu after Gouki(Akuma) deals him a critical blow.
- In Project Justice, the sequel to Rival Schools, there is an unlockable alternate version of Batsu called Burning Batsu, complete with powered-up attacks, ripped abs and Angry Eyebrows. You wouldn't like him when he gets angry.
- Ryu in the NES Ninja Gaiden games would always sport Angry Eyebrows when he was ready to kick some ass during a cut scene.
- Ristar originally only had angry eyebrows for boss fights; in the American version, they're present all the time.
- Narcis Prince of Punch-Out!! will not let you touch his "beautiful, beautiful" face, so doing so is obviously his weakness, right? Yeah, except you just turned him into a British brawler, his "beautiful" face now has a growling sneer, and you better be quick on your feet if you want to beat him. That, or wait until he calms down ("Stay calm, matey!"). Luckily, his anger leaves his face exposed, allowing you to sock him in the face even more until he's knocked down.
- Worms - the angry eyebrows are so iconic that when Team Fortress 2 cross-promoted it by offering a Worms-style helmet as a pre-order bonus, said helmet came with said eyebrows.
- In Yoshi's Island, the Gargantua Blarggs and Nep-Enuts have this as their most distinguishing feature - you see the eyebrows before you see the enemy itself.
- In Kirbys Return To Dreamland, while most of the bosses simply get a Palette Swap in Extra Mode to indicate their increased power, Mr. Dooter gains these and a mustache to go along with his new red color scheme.
- The protagonist of Penny-Punching Princess always sports these. Her butler, Sebastian, remarks that she wasn't always like this — she used to have a most beautiful smile.
Web Animation
- Strong Bad from Homestar Runner specifically added Angry Eyebrows to his dragon creation Trogdor to heighten his "majesty".
- When Little Runmo punches the Dring King holding him in his grasp, a metal hand places a rectangular brow over the King's eye.
- Characters in Oversimplified are always given a tiny pair of eyebrows when they are mad.
Web Comics
- El Goonish Shive: This comic, last panel.
Who knew Tedd could look so frightening?
- Kavonn of Charby the Vampirate has some truly impressive angry eyebrows due to a combination of Prehensile Hair and Expressive Hair which have been the focus of several panels.
- The last panel of this Everyday Heroes strip, when Jane is sparring with Wrecking Paul and actually manages to hit him.
- In a guest comic on Horse Wife, Brownie puts on a pair of huge, artificial eyebrows "for emphasis" when she's mad.
- Gunnerkrigg Court: In chapter "The Torn Sea", the "robot king" draws a pair of big angry eyebrows on its face.
Western Animation
- Western example: Aang◊ in Avatar: The Last Airbender
- Inverted with Zuko, whose usual expression is angry eyebrows. You know something's amiss when he has the eyebrow of mild worry.
- Samurai Jack was a master of Angry Eyebrows, but they weren't always angry. Sometimes, they were just resolved, and always, always shown in close up. In addition, the eyebrows were sometimes shown after his gi had been shredded once again, combining the eyebrows with a costume change. Followed by ass-kicking.
- Often used in South Park to express anger given the limitations of the animation.
- Parodied in The Fairly Oddparents. Timmy's Dad is mad at DINKLEBERG as a kid and wants to glare. Crocker comes by and pushes his eyebrows down into an angry face for him.
- Ben 10: Alien Force - Ben does this right before transforming into some alien form to own whoever poses a significant danger to his friends and comrades.
- An episode of Blue's Clues had Blue wanting to express an emotion (anger). One of the clues was a pair of "angry" eyebrows, and since the clues sing starting in mid-Season 5, it lead to the hilarious image of some cartoon eyebrows singing enthusiastically, "I'm scrunched-up eyebrows~".
- Angry Eyebrows serve as Mooks in an episode of The Cartoon Adventures of Larry-Boy. Seriously.
- In Batman: The Animated Series, during Two-Face's origin story, they present Harvey Dent getting pushed to the brink by a mob boss... and then entering a Tranquil Fury as his Split Personality, Big Bad Harv, comes out to play.
- In Wallace & Gromit, Gromit does all his emoting with his eyebrows and ears, so it's a given he can pull off angry eyebrows like a champ.
- The characters on Kaeloo when they get angry or annoyed.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: Pictured above is DoodleBob, SpongeBob's drawing of himself come to life from the episode "Frankendoodle", drawing Angry Eyebrows on himself to show SpongeBob he means business.
- In Transformers: Cyberverse, Shockwave, unlike his previous incarnations, has been given a perpetually angry eyelid, which allows him to emote.
- This is pretty much Dick Dastardly's default expression when he's not worried, kissing up to the General or having an Oh, Crap! expression.
- Buttercup of The Powerpuff Girls wears Angry Eyebrows like a queen's crown. It's been like that since her creation and was the Professor's reason for naming her Buttercup.
