Angst Coma

"Dryden explained that Van had gone into something called an 'angst coma,' which is what happens when the brain shuts down as it rapidly approaches the Sasuke Limit."

— Hitomi Kanzaki, Vision of Escaflowne Abridged

Sometimes called Post-Traumatic Catatonia, this refers to a situation in which a character enters a comatose or catatonic state that is either directly caused by their personal problems, or cured by dealing with their personal problems, or both. Often, the cure comes when the character confronts their demons in a hallucinatory Vision Quest, sometimes accompanied by one or more friends or loved ones who take a Journey to the Center of the Mind. Upon awakening, the victim of the coma may behave in a surprisingly happy and upbeat manner. For some reason, this condition is often associated with / exacerbated by Giant Mecha.

A Sub-Trope of the more general Heroic BSoD, this refers specifically to a comatose state to the exclusion of other forms of mental breakdown. Milder forms are Deep Sleep and Sleepy Depressive.

Compare Vision Quest and Journey to the Center of the Mind, which don't have to include the coma part or necessarily any angst. May overlap with Convenient Coma, which serves the plot rather than the character. When done poorly see: Wangst. Also see Faint in Shock.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Aim for the Ace! Hiromi goes into one after Coach Munakata dies. Made worse because Munakata died when she was in the USA, some of her friends knew but kept her Locked Out of the Loop so she wouldn't mentally splinter and lose her matches (like it happened to one of them when he found out), and she only learned about it when she came back home.
• In Attack on Titan, this can happen to a user of the Power of the Titans when crossing the Despair Event Horizon.
  • Moments before being captured, Annie Leonhart recalls the promise made to their father and chooses to enter this state to avoid interrogation. Bonus for being sealed inside a Crystal Prison while weeping.
  • Reiner Braun falls into an unconscious state after using their powers to protect Falco. The boy provides exposition of the situation, explaining that the Power of the Titans cannot heal a user that lacks the will to live. Because of their desire to die, Reiner remains fused to their Titan flesh in an unconscious state.
• The Big O: In the first episode of the second season, the main character goes introspectively catatonic as he struggles to figure out just who—and what—he is.
• Blast of Tempest: Yoshino tells Hakaze that when he heard his girlfriend Aika died over the phone, he went into shock.
• CLAMP uses this trope more than once:
  • Subaru has experience in this, as in Tokyo Babylon he pulled his childhood friend Midori from the one she fell in after being brutally raped. And he fell into one almost at the end of the manga, after Seishirou revealed that he was the Sakurazukamori: he went catatonic until his twin sister Hokuto pulled a gambit to plan her own death and perished at the hands of Seishirou. And in the X TV series Subaru again has one of these few after he kills Seishirou, but with a push from Hokuto's soul he recovers right before the end, and right on time to help Kamui in his last battle with Fuuma.
  • Kamui in X1999 ends up in one after his former best friend Fuuma violently assaults him and kills Kotori right in front of him. It takes Subaru going on a Journey to the Center of the Mind to get him out of it.
  • Also in the X TV series Kotori herself suffered one shortly before dying, as a consequence of Tokiko's death which triggered her memories of her mother's very similar death. She spends the rest of her screen time with her body in a coma and her subconscious hanging out in Kakyou's dream space, thanks to her dream weaver powers, until Fuuma kills her. One could say that she had one in the old movie as well, when her dream weaver ability kicks in right after Kanoe gets a hold of her, and she spends a good part of the movie in a troubled fetal position while getting glimpses of her status as a person who has a weapon inside of her... until Fuuma also kills her there.
• In the manga Chrono Crusade, after the carnival battle in volume 5, Chrono forces himself into a Convenient Coma to keep from hurting Rosette. It takes her going into his mind and digging around in his memories before he's prepared to continue on his quest.
• In Death Note, this happens to Sayu after being kidnapped by Mello. Although she is physically unharmed, she is so traumatized by the experience that she ends up in a wheelchair, unable to move or speak, basically an Empty Shell. Towards the end of the manga, she is well enough to stand on her own two feet, but still has Dull Eyes of Unhappiness.
• In a filler case from Case Closed, a young man named Tamanosuke Itou is injured and briefly falls into unconsciousness after two members from his acting troupe are murdered. Kogoro and Conan believe the coma comes less from his injuries and more from the terrible mental fatigue he's been through. As he's unconscious, the culprit of the case tries to kill him but he's saved since the police counted on the killer's return and staged countermeasures. By the end of the case, Tamanosuke wakes up and is more or less okay.
• In D.Gray-Man, after spending three months running away from akumas and trying to subjugate the Enemy Within, Allen finally breaks and sinks in a deep coma.
  Johnny: I don't think he's sleeping.
• Ken Ichijouji from Digimon Adventure 02 slept for several days when he returned home after his defeat in the Digital World, his realization that the Digital World is real after all and the death of his partner. In this sleep, he recalled memories of his deceased brother and resolved his feelings of abandonment and neglect; when he woke up, he went to his parents and hugged them before starting to work on his Heel–Face Turn.
• In Elfen Lied, Kouta, the male lead, suffers amnesia and spends an entire year in a coma after watching his little sister Kanae and his father get slaughtered right in front of him by Lucy.
• Played for Laughs in Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu. After Tessa's very overt advances become too much for him (after her XO and father-figure informs Sousuke that if anything "happens between them" he'll fire Sousuke out a torpedo tube), Sousuke faints from the stress. Well, that and the exhaustion of going four days straight without sleep.
• Clair Leonelli in Heat Guy J goes into one after he is deposed from his position as Mafia leader and loses his home and two Mooks/friends all in one day, in addition to his extant issues with his father.
• Higurashi: When They Cry: Satoko enters one after seeing her entire village massacred by a gas leak which she escaped by falling into a river. The aforementioned was inspired at least in part by the ending of Tatarigoroshi-hen (that was cut in the anime), where it's Keiichi who does this in a similar situation. It's also inspired in part by a scene from the PS2-only Taraimawashi-hen, where Mion enters this after having been rescued from events largely comparable to Watanagashi-hen/Meakashi-hen.
• I"s: Ichitaka manages to defeat the Marionette King, but falls into a coma from a head injury he sustained while fighting him. While his body is immobile, his mind has taken him back to the beginning of the series and given him another chance of courting Iori better and sooner than before. His friends are concerned about him not waking up, despite his injuries not being so bad, and Tertani and Jun surmise that Ichitaka must prefer wherever his mind is to reality. It takes Iori's voice to help Ichitaka wake up again.
• Inuyasha: Sango falls into one when she first joins Inuyasha's group, not waking up for ten days. While a big part of it is due to the wounds she suffered beforehand, Miroku believes that at least part of it is because, thanks to Naraku, Sango has literally lost everything she loved and cared for.
• Fate Testarossa from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha faints when her mother makes it clear beyond any terms that she rejects her and tells her that she's a clone. Fate herself comes back when she realizes she is not alone.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, after the return to Earth, Kira Yamato goes into a coma (more like a nap though) partly from the stress of re-entry, and partly because he failed to prevent the destruction of a shuttle full of refugees.
• Naruto:
  • In Chapter 476, Naruto goes into one of these when he can't come to terms with how hopeless Sasuke's situation is. Downplayed because it only lasted a couple of hours and ended without any mental journey, so it was more of an Angst Nap.
  • Played Straight in the Canon movie The Last. After Hinata "rejects" Naruto and leaves with Toneri, Naruto passes out for three days. According to Sai, Naruto spent those three days repeatedly mumbling Hinata's name, along with "other embarrassing things", while he was sleeping/comatose.
• In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Asuka suffers her infamous Mind Rape by the fifteenth Angel (not to mention that her life was already going down the drain before that). That puts her in an increasingly severe State of Heroic BSoD for the reminder of the series. She ends up catatonic by Episode 24, though in a variation of this trope it's mentioned she's being sedated for her own safety. She gets better. For about five minutes.
  • At the end of Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo, Shinji pretty much ceases to function due to sheer trauma overload (watch the movie and you'll understand why).
• Luffy from One Piece suffers from this after his attempted rescue of his beloved older brother, Ace, ends with Ace sacrificing himself to save Luffy from Akainu and dying in Luffy's arms.
  • Sabo also goes into one when presented with the news of Ace's death, he regains his memories and then suddenly cries due to the sheer amount of sadness and the fact that Ace died. The shock is enough to send him into a coma for three days.
• In Please Teacher!, it was revealed that the reason for Kei's "standstill" coma was him witnessing his sister's suicide. Not only does this psychically inhibit his aging (although he is legally 18 after a three-year coma), modern science in his universe has cataloged and recognized it.
• In Pokémon Adventures, Blue falls into one when she sees her long-lost parents vanish right before her eyes. Considering her rather crappy circumstances and everything she put into getting over it, it's understandable. Props to her for managing to get back on her feet to keep fighting and save them.
  • Black also goes through one, when his Musharna leaves him. It takes a while for him to pick himself up from the ordeal.
• Rurouni Kenshin has Kenshin go into one when Kaoru gets killed by Enishi. Or so he's led to believe.
• Margery Daw from Shakugan no Shana goes into this after discovering that the demon she was chasing for all her life was in fact a piece of herself.
• Fumika of Shigofumi, after shooting her father.
• Star Driver: The coma Shingo was trapped in for about sixteen years is implied to have been this, somehow caused by or in connection with his mark and first phase.
• Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro has its titular character sttruggle with a curse that's been slowly taking over her body since childhood, but she's managed to live with it. When she learns that a man she recently met on her travels died as a casualty in war and was heavily implied to be her long-lost father, the curse advances on her and puts her out for over a year.
• In Sword Art Online, about halfway through the Alicization arc, A power surge on the Ocean Turtle and Eugeo's death in Underworld causes Kirito to fall into this.
• The finale of Tokyo Ghoul sees Shuu Tsukiyama fall into one after failing to stop Ken Kaneki from going on an apparent suicide mission. The sequel reveals that he has barely recovered during the two year Time Skip, having become weak as a result of his grief and depression.
• In The Vision of Escaflowne, Van goes into an Angst Coma after going berserk and killing a number of minor villains. Hitomi enters his mind to try to bring him out of it, but it is ultimately Merle's heartfelt pleas that do the job.
• Aki Izayoi from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds suffers from this after watching Divine falling to his (supposed) death.
• Keiko Yukimura from YuYu Hakusho suffered a brief but very through one while watching Yusuke being beaten up to almost death by Younger Toguro.

Comic Books

• InvestiGators: Near the end of Off The Hook, Brash is in a coma after almost dying inside Crackerdile/Waffledile and is sent to the hospital. He is in perfectly healthy condition but there is something blocking his mind from waking up. He then has to be replaced by a robotic copy. In Ants in Our P.A.N.T.S., Mango helps Brash wake up from his coma by overcoming his fears and forgiving himself.
• The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers introduced "zero point," a rare affliction that occurs when a Cybertronian's spark energy is unable to fully travel the course of the robot's body due to microscopic gaps caused by severe injury. The patient goes into a coma-like state of living death until their body fails and shuts down completely. Autobot psychiatrist Rung has theorized that talking to patients can trigger an emotional response that encourages the brain to force the spark to travel over the gap and revive the afflicted. This treatment has succeeded at least twice so far (in Last Stand of the Wreckers and More Than Meet the Eye).

Fan Works

• Vision of Escaflowne Abridged is the trope namer (see Escaflowne example above). The characters have a technical discussion of the precise number of mega-shinjis (the series' standard base unit for measuring angst) Van must have accumulated in order to enter his Angst Coma.
• "Half-Empty" looks at the characters of Brooklyn Nine-Nine coping with the aftermath of the Snap (Avengers: Infinity War). When the survivors of the Snap who were at the precinct- Jake, Amy, Terry, and Rosa- gather the kids of those lost and go to Captain Holt's house, they find that Kevin has apparently been completely catatonic from shock since seeing Holt turn to dust, to the extent that he thinks the team came straight there even though it took them over thirty hours to deal with everything else.
• The Firefly fic "A Safe Place In the Mind" sees Mal shut down completely due to being tortured. He’s catatonic and River tells the crew Inara can reach him. They take Mal to her, and reaching him takes weeks, with the initial signs of progress being small and gradual. Mal gets more comfortable with Inara touching him, massaging him and just holding him, and he later starts doing a few things on his own, like using the bathroom, and letting Inara feed him. Only then does he finally have a breakthrough and begin speaking and waking up again as Inara reassures him it’s not a dream and he won’t be hurt again.
• Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars Legends fic Whisper Your Weakness after being tortured nearly to death. He sees his father while he's out, and Anakin convices him to wake up.

Films — Live-Action

• Rosa Wasserstein in Der letzte Zug, after her husband is shot in front of her.
• Ferris Bueller's Day Off: Cameron goes into one after his dad's precious car gets wrecked.
• Guyana: Crime of the Century: Tony Thompson reaches a state of catatonia after a severe long-term punishment. When his mother goes to Johnsontown to see him, she breaks into tears due to the state of his son.
• In Henry & Verlin, Verlin falls into one after Henry is institutionalized. He falls asleep and doesn't wake up until he hears Henry's voice.
• In Metropolis, Freder falls into one after seeing his father with a robotic replica of Maria.
• In Shock, Janet Stewart witnesses a murder being committed in a hotel suite from her balcony. The next morning, her husband Paul arrives and attempts to surprise Janet. Instead, he discovers her sitting on the couch, staring into space. She has gone into a state of shock as a result of seeing the murder.
• In Star Wars: The Force Awakens, R2D2 has apparently been in the robotic equivalent of one for several years, ever since Luke Skywalker disappeared.
• Happens to Anne Wiazemsky's character in the highly stylized Pasolini film Teorema.
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2: The opening narration describes the fate of the original movie's Final Girl:
  "The girl babbled a mad tale: A cannibal family in an isolated farmhouse... chainsawed fingers and bones... her brother, her friends hacked up for barbecue... chairs made of human skeletons... then she sank into catatonia."
• In Thor, Odin goes into one when he is forced to tell Loki about his real heritage and his son subsequently berates him for hiding this. The fact that this coma is called "Odinsleep" indicates that something like it happens to him on a somewhat regular basis.
• In What About Bob?, Leo Marvin slips into one when he accidentally gets his house blown up. He ends up shaking out of this upon attending the wedding of Bob and his sister, which causes him to let out a Big "NO!".

Literature

• Happens to Martini in The Alien Series a lot, as whenever his empathetic abilities overload, his body shuts down in self-defense.
• Rebecca Morgan in Catherine Anderson's Cherish goes into one that nearly kills her after the outlaws who slaughtered her entire family return to finish her off.
• Túrin has one in The Children of Húrin, after he finds out the princess he promised to protect is dead. He collapses on her grave and takes several days to be nursed back to health.
• Played for Laughs in Dinoverse. Candayce is so deeply dismayed at turning into a dinosaur and being stuck in the past with people she doesn't like that she briefly shuts down and has to be carried around, glassy-eyed and drooling. She comes out of it on her own after getting something to eat, but the dismay stays.
• Subverted in the Dragonlance novel, Dragons of Spring Dawning. The captive Golden General, Laurana seems to go catatonic after hearing that she is going to be tortured to death and have her soul given to a death knight and seeing her Love Interest Tanis Half-Elven serving her Arch-Enemy, the Dragon Highlord Kitiara. In fact Laurana is just luring her enemies into a false sense of security and, as soon as Kitiara has completely disregarded her as a threat, she breaks free, curbstomps Kitiara, and makes her escape.
• Ender enters one for a few days near the end of Ender's Game when he discovers that he unwittingly committed mass genocide against the buggers while believing he was only undergoing training for it. Possibly justified in that he was physically and mentally exhausted at the time: the angst was just what pushed him over the edge. Not to mention that he was psychically/spiritually/emotionally connected to the Bugger Queens at the moment he killed them all. They had been trying to reach out to the mind of their enemy in order to understand him and try to communicate in some way.
• In The Golden Hamster Saga, Freddy the hamster sinks into an apathetic state when he's upset. When his cage is moved into Mr. John's apartment in I, Freddy, he realized that Mr. John's cat will make it impossible for him to safely sneak out of his cage, like he used to when he lived with Sophie. Freddy is so upset about the loss of freedom that he enters a hibernating state. Luckily, Sir William turns out to be a civilized cat who doesn't believe in eating pets.
• Honor Harrington in Field of Dishonor upon learning of the death of Paul Tankersley.
• About a billion times in Frankenstein. Any time something bad happens, Victor seems to keel over into a months-long coma/sleep. And since it's Frankenstein, bad things happen a LOT.
• Heralds of Valdemar: Talia of the Arrows trilogy lapses into a self-induced coma after being tortured nearly to death. Naturally, The Power of Love brings her back. The coma was more due to an overdose of smuggled-in poison. Not that the torture didn't help, it meant that none of the Healers could convince her she wasn't being revived for another session or 15 with Ancar.
• In Maiden Crown, Sophie falls into a version of this after her newborn son dies, becoming withdrawn and sickly while bedridden. She only recovers when she begins to go outside again and goes to Gavngaard, the castle that her husband Valdemar ordered built for her prior to their marriage.
• Malazan Book of the Fallen has Clip, who slips into a coma after his confrontation with the Dying God in Morsko. On their way to Bastion the other Andii in his group have to care for him, as he is completely unresponsive to any kind of outside stimulus.
• Seen in French Sci-Fi novel Malevil. The cast barely survives World War III inside a castle cellar. The next day everyone mopes around in a silent daze. When one staggers to his feet to leave, convinced his wife is waiting for him, Emmanuel is angry that he has to leave his comfortable Angst Coma to stop his friend from killing himself.
• The Merman's Children: Father Tomislav's late wife Sena was an orphan raised by relatives who mistreated her. During her marriage to Tomislav she had more miscarriages than live births, and their three oldest surviving children all eventually rebelled and left for distant lands. After the birth of her youngest child Nada, she withdrew into silence and spent ten years in bed, barely moving, until she died.
• In Nory Ryans Song, Nory essentially falls into this after the food she bought and the package from Maggie are stolen from her by a thief who attacked her when she left the post office. She's ill and unconscious for several days and has to be nursed back to health by Anna.
• In Shadow of the Conqueror, after meeting Lyrah at the Fallton and agreeing to let her join the group, Daylen immediately goes to his room, sinking in and out of consciousness for the next several hours. When he finally wakes up and gets to his feet (with extreme difficulty), he speculates that the Light is providing Divine Intervention to make sure he's strong enough to face more emotional torture. This is an excellent example of how Daylen acts in his darker moods.
• In Where Are the Children?, the combined shock of seeing a headline exposing her dark past and realising her children are missing causes Nancy to collapse. Ray and Dorothy have to carry her back to the house and she passes out again while trying to explain what happened. It takes a while for her to regain conciousness and become responsive, with Dr Lendon Miles saying she's displaying clear signs of shock.
• In Wicked, Elphaba goes into one of these for a year when Fiyero dies. Because of this, she is unsure whether or not Liir is her son, as she may have given birth and been unaware of it.
• Happens to Myn Donos in the X-Wing Series. He'd led a squadron of X-Wings into a trap. He, and his astromech, were the only survivors; after that he was emotionally dead but functional. Until his astromech was destroyed — the last Talon. His failure became complete. There's mention that his squadmates tried to talk to him, but he wouldn't respond. Myn "...just lies there, staring off into nowhere. He'll eat if you put food in his hand, drink if you put the cup to his lips. But he's gone somewhere." His squadmates eventually pull him out of it by putting him through a simulation of that same trap. He's understandably quite pissed, but this hair-of-the-dog technique forces him to deal with his emotions - after he gets through the anger, he can feel other things again. Not that he's fully healed, or anything; the trauma comes back to bite him later in the series.

Live-Action TV

• Arrested Development has a comedic example: The stress of having to testify at his father's trial causes him to enter "a light to no coma", or in layman's terms "a heavy nap".
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Buffy spends most of "The Weight of the World" catatonic over her failure to protect Dawn. Willow performs a Journey to the Center of the Mind to snap her out of it.
• In Carnivàle, Apollonia is in a vegetative state through which she can only communicate telepathically after giving birth to Sofie who was conceived via rape at the hands of Justin Crowe, thus bequeathing Sofie an avataric nature, which means her birth is traumatic to her mother, as per the show's mythology. Whew!.
• Gibbs from NCIS plunges into one of them after his wife and daughter are killed. He actually does this twice—because of an explosion/head wound/flashback. Well, it made sense in context. Sort of.
• In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Dark Page", Counselor Troi enlists the aid of a powerful alien telepath to enter the mind of her comatose mother and help her deal with her first daughter's death.
• Supernatural:
  • This happens to Sam after the "wall" in his mind is broken, which causes all of his memories of being tortured by Michael and Lucifer back, after having regained his damaged soul.
  • When Castiel absorbs all of Sam's hell memories in order to save Sam's life, he goes catatonic and the Winchesters stash him in a mental hospital with Meg as a caretaker. When he does wake up, he's a Cloud Cuckoolander who babbles about evolution and bees.
• Warehouse 13: Artie after his Enemy Within kills Leena.
• In Meteor Garden, the Taiwanese adaptation of Boys over Flowers, the protagonist Shan-Ts'ai is invited to enjoy a bath in the hot springs at the estate of the current love interest of the man she has feelings for. Having to put up a façade of courtesy in such a stress-inducing situation leads her to silently reminisce about all the pain and strife that her life has put her through up until this point, and the flashbacks ultimately prove too much for her to bear. Her limp body ends up needing to be carried out of the bath naked and brought into her bedroom, where she finally wakes up after many long hours of extremely deep unconsciousness. Everyone present mistakenly believes her to have simply passed out from staying too long in the hot springs.

Mythology and Religion

• In The Book of Mormon, Alma the Younger got up to a lot of anti-church antics as a kid. After an angel appeared to chastise him for this behavior, Alma fell into a deep sleep that lasted two days and during which he faced his sins and was forgiven.

Tabletop Games

• In Eclipse Phase a really bad Stress roll can put a character in a permanent one, and it's harder to fix than mere death. On the other hand the "Downtime" psi-sleight allows a character to willingly enter a catatonic state and regain sanity at an accelerated rate, of course you need to start out with at least one psychiatric disorder to have psi in the first place.
• This is a game mechanic in Exalted. Solar Exalts with high Compassion can take Heart of Tears as their virtue flaw, leaving them totally unable to do anything but weep (and flee from combat if attacked) for several days, once they've seen enough innocents suffer.
• Several games with a Sanity Meter or a fear system can cause this to happen. Ravenloft, Dark Heresy, and Call of Cthulhu can each have this occur in different ways. Likewise, some of the most extreme possible results from a failed "Fright Check" in GURPS can put the character into a coma.

Video Games

• American McGee's Alice: The main plot is built through this trope as an adaptation of the classic Alice in Wonderland story.
• Desmond is stuck in one of these during the events of Assassin's Creed: Revelations after the end of the previous game when he was forced to kill Lucy by Juno.
• Glenn, the protagonist of Chained Echoes spends essentially an entire year in bed out of overwhelming guilt from accidentally causing the deaths of ten thousand people when he unwittingly activates a Grimoire, essentially a Fantastic Nuke that annihilates everything in the radius of a small country except for those right next to the device. It is only learning that the Grimoire is still out there and in one piece that motivates him to do something to make sure it never gets used again.
• In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud's coma midway through the game may have been caused by Mako poisoning, but it's not until he deals with his amnesia and other psychological disorders that he's cured, with the help of Tifa.
• Happens twice in Last Scenario. First, Ethan collapses the moment he remembers that Castor is his brother. The second time it happens to Castor, after his first defeat by the party leads to a Villainous Breakdown. Apparently, It Runs in the Family.
• In Tales of the Abyss, main character Luke falls into one of these due to the shear amount of trauma brought about by The Reveal.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles 1, Sharla sinks into unconsciousness after her younger brother Juju is kidnapped by Xord. She remains out cold for four hours, and is even haunted by a nightmare right before waking up.
• In the "Commander Lilith and the Fight for Sanctuary" DLC of Borderlands 2, a sidequest reveals that Butt-Stallion, Handsome Jack's diamond pony, went into this after the death of Jack at the end of the main story (which in it's case means becoming a statue). Said sidequest deals with trying to wake her out of this for Tina's sake.
• In Rimworld this is one of the mental break that can happen to your colonists if things are going particularly badly.
• Rudy Roughnight from Wild ARMs falls into one of these when he discovers he's made of the same metal as the demons after losing his left arm to Zeikfried. Unfortunately, it turns out there is a dream demon keeping him in his angst coma to feed on him until Cecilia enters his dreams and defeats her.

Visual Novels

• Katawa Shoujo:
  • A milder version happens to Hanako Ikezawa, after hearing that her would-be boyfriend Hisao and her best friend Lilly are planning a birthday party for her, not knowing that birthdays are a trigger for her. This happens in the middle of class, so the teacher has to stop the lesson and have her taken to the infirmary by Shizune. When Hisao sees her again, Hanako is in bed and a little bit more coherent, but extremely shaken.
  • In the unreleased beta, Shizune Hakamichi would've fallen into this if the player-as-Hisao took the sex for solace option with Misha, since it would've been followed by Misha being driven to commit suicide in front of Shizune herself. The trauma would've driven her to catatonia, and optionally to a Death by Despair.

Web Animation

• In My Jungle Book, Your Year, Ribonista goes into one of these after Cones leaves.

Webcomics

• In Goblins, Fumbles falls into one of these after his torture by Goblin Slayer. Big Ears states that his mind is broken beyond his ability to restore. He ends up taking on bits of other peoples' personalities to fill the gap and wake up. Unfortunately, he just has to take most of it from Minmax.

Web Original

• Vision of Escaflowne Abridged:' The Trope Namer, in which characters discuss Van falling into an "Angst Coma" due to his angsting for the fangirls reaching the Sasuke Limit, then later when Dilandau slips in and out of an angst coma losing his men.
• The Nostalgia Chick succumbs to a "bad movie coma" in her review of Armageddon (part 2?), which is this in all but name.

Western Animation

• In Avatar: The Last Airbender "The Earth King", Zuko undergoes a severe fever and enters a coma in which he has vivid dreams in which his uncle and sister appear as dragons and argue over his life choices and another in which he seems to awaken only to look in the mirror and see himself as the Avatar (Zukotar?). Iroh says that this is "not a natural illness" and the whole thing is apparently caused solely by Zuko's self-conflict. The cause of all this? He freed Appa from the Dai Lee and gave up his Secret Identity as the Blue Spirit When Zuko wakes up he is... uncharacteristically calm and upbeat.
• Darkwing Duck:
  • When she runs into the resurrected Taurus Bulba, Gosalyn goes catatonic for a minute, forcing Honker to take control of the vehicle they're both in. Considering what he did to her grandfather, it's perfectly understandable.
  • In the episode Time and Punishment", Darkwing lapses into catatonia when Gosalyn disappears.
• In the Dexter's Laboratory episode "Down in the Dumps", when Dee Dee loses her beloved teddy bear Mr. Fuzzems thanks to Dexter, she goes into one of these and acts like a zombie while repeating "Fuzzems, Uzzems, Fuzzems..."
• Toki, from Metalocalypse, enters this whenever his parents are around, due to his Hilariously Abusive Childhood.
• Peter is in one of these when Venom is trying to bond with him in The Spectacular Spider-Man.

Real Life

• Word on the street in Egypt these days is that the reason that former President Hosni Mubarak fell ill and became incredibly reclusive shortly after his resignation was shock from the realization that the country was nothing like the way he pictured it.
• Frederick the Great of Prussia is said to have fallen in a three-day-long one after his escape to England was foiled and, as punishment, he was Forced to Watch the execution of his best friend/prospect lover Hans Hermann von Katte.

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