Killer Gorilla

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Gorillas, orangutans, and sometimes chimpanzees: about the same size and shape as humans (normally), but tougher, hairier and generally meaner. Don't incite them to gorilla warfare, because the things they throw tend to hurt. They may also may like to squeeze people to death, claw their faces off, or even eat them. And of course, that's assuming the big apes don't just beat them until they're dead.

In a nutshell, Killer Gorillas and other similar great apes (excluding humans) are the result of portraying them as belligerent, pugnacious creatures, contrary to their real-life usual behaviour. For the longest time, great apes were thought to be savage monsters, with gorillas in particular getting a bad rap for this thanks to their imposing appearances, hulking stature, and the ferocious way a silverback will protect his troop from foreign threats. But as time and science marched on, we gained a greater understanding of primates and learned that for the most part, they're rather placid creatures that will leave people alone if they leave them alone. Orangutans and gorillas have since embraced a new stereotype as Gentle Giants, while chimpanzees are usually silly and goofy.

But of course, that doesn't stop gorillas and other intimidating primates from serving as monsters or dangerous animals in fiction. At the end of the day, a surly, beefy ape still makes for an imposing physical threat, as many a pulp serial, adventure novel, or giant monster movie would show. And even when they're portrayed as friendly, Beware the Nice Ones is fully in effect when they or their loved ones are threatened.

This is a subtrope of Maniac Monkeys. For the Lighter and Softer relative of this trope, see Everything's Better with Monkeys.

Examples of Killer Gorilla include:

Anime and Manga

• Gorillamon from Digimon Adventure 02 and Digimon Tamers. It's a gorilla, with an Arm Cannon.
• In the Dragon Ball franchise, any Saiyan can quickly become this when assuming his Great Ape form; most of the main cast have their children's tails amputated to prevent this, but they tend to grow back, often at the most inopportune times...
• Attack on Titan: The Beast Titan a.k.a Zeke Yeager is a frightening anomaly among the Titans... and given that every Titan is already scary, that's saying something. He's not only one of very few that can talk, but he does so quite eloquently. And his fancy manner of speaking coming from a towering sasquatch-looking abomination is just so utterly wrong that it freaks out a soldier that he captures.

Comic Books

• In The Black Island, the villains keep a gorilla named Ranko to attack anyone who trespasses on the island of the title.
• DC Comics supervillains Gorilla Grodd and Monsieur Mallah. In Grodd's case, this trope is actually given the Hand-Wave of him being an Uplifted Animal; while the majority of the gorillas given superior intelligence are peaceful and developed their own city, Grodd is a deviant among his own kind.
  • Mallah, on the other hand, was a creation of the brilliant scientist who would later become the Doom Patrol villain The Brain. Initially, this scientist experimented on animals in attempts to make them smarter; Mallah was clearly his greatest success, and for most of the villain's history, has been The Dragon, his partner and assistant, and likely his only friend.
• The second arc of The Incredibles comic series starts with an attack on the mall by the Ungorilla, a Captain Ersatz of Grodd.
• Don Martin drew a comic around the self-created holiday National Gorilla Suit Day (that's January 31). In it, recurring character Fester Bestertester is visited by several wearers of gorilla suits, many of them being actual killer gorillas who creatively mangle him several times.
• The Red Ghost's Super Apes. Ivan Kragoff was a Cold War Russian scientist who tried to replicate the accident that created The Fantastic Four, using himself and three trained primates (loyal to him, but dangerous to anyone else) as test subjects. He had limited success: Miklho (a gorilla) became super-strong, Peotor (an orangutan) gained telekinetic powers, and Igor (a chimpanzee) gained the ability to shapeshift. Kragoff himself gained intangibility powers, and until his death in 2016, was a recurring enemy of both the Fantastic Four and Captain America.

Film

• King Kong - who is no ordinary gorilla, but a member of a giant prehistoric species.
• In the Star Wars universe, Wookiees, despite being a fantastic sapient species, look and act this part. As Han says, they're known to rip people's arms out of their sockets.
• In the original Planet of the Apes and sequels, gorillas are the soldier class and are the only meat-eaters. Science Marches On, though, and it's now known that gorillas generally don't eat meat, but chimpanzees do.
  • Which makes the scene in the book where Zira frowns at the gorillas, calling them "meat-eaters", quite ironic.
  • Definitely applies to the prequel Rise of the Planet of the Apes, where modern-day apes are made smarter by a drug. One prominent example, Buck, is a subversion, as he first acts like this at the Ape reserve, but only because he is stuck in an uncomfortable concrete cell all day while other apes were allowed to walk around. When Caesar opens his cell for him, he is much friendlier and even nervous when he first feels the grass beneath his feet.
  • Other gorillas in the prequel trilogy are primarily supporting units for the other apes, and the most villainous ape seen is a Bonobo named Koba, the main antagonist of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.
• In Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, both Long Haul and Devastator have designs influenced by gorillas, and are very violent to boot.
• Mighty Joe Young (1949). The title giant gorilla is fed liquor and goes on a drunken rampage, turning lions loose and causing tremendous damage.
• The film Congo has a pack of hyper-territorial gorillas guarding the city of Zinj.
• In Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, the Ink&Paint Club had a Toon gorilla named Bongo as the doorman/bouncer.
• The Three Stooges were alternately terrorized by and befriended by a gorilla.
• Dario Argento's Phenomena features a razor-wielding chimpanzee on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• In Kung Fu Panda 2, the henchmen working for Lord Shen that are not wolves are actually gorillas, which are native to Africa despite the film's Asian setting.
• Subverted in Disney's Tarzan: Kerchak is a very aggressive silverback, but he's just overprotective of his family. He's much Lighter and Softer than his book counterpart, who was the one that killed Tarzan's father - his personality is based on a much kinder ape from the books, named Tublat.

Literature

• In The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Edgar Allan Poe's first tale of Detective Dupin, the murderer is an escaped orangutan.
• The Librarian of the Unseen University from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels is an orangutan, prone to violently correcting anyone who calls him a monkey.
• Animorphs Played with but mostly averted. Marco goes on quite a few rampages in gorilla morph, but it's the bad guys he's usually throwing around. The play-it-straight version may exist in the later part of the war, when the Yeerks got the morphing cube.
• Tarzan of the Apes and the other Tarzan books have the Mangani (Frazetta Man - like humanoid apes) and the Bolgani (actual gorillas).
  • Also from Edgar Rice Burroughs, the John Carter of Mars series feature the white apes - gigantic, carnivorous white Martian gorillas with six limbs.

Live-Action TV

• Bruno from Misfits.

Newspaper Comics

• The Femme Fatale Sleet from Dick Tracy is nearly done in by one and has to be rescued by Tracy.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons and Dragons has dire apes and carnivorous apes; the latter, as the illustration shows, is not only more aggressive than a normal gorilla, but smarter, having a rudimentary language and the ability to use primitive tools. Downplayed with blood apes; they're as likely to attack humans as any other gorilla (as in, not likely), but if humans threaten them (especially their mates or their young), they can be much more dangerous.
• Berserk Gorilla from the Yu-Gi-Oh! game. This angry-looking Beast-Type has 2,000 ATK, which is more than most Level 4 monsters without built-in drawbacks have, but it has two drawbacks of its own - it must attack during its controller's Battle Phase if it is able, and switching it to Defense Mode immediately destroys it.

Theatre

• In Eugene O'Neill's play The Hairy Ape, the protagonist goes to the zoo to talk to a gorilla and releases it from its cage, whereupon it crushes him to death.

Video Games

• Golden Sun has gorillas as part of the Random Encounters. Infamously, The Lost Age‍'‍s first boss is a trio of gorillas named "Chestbeaters" that attack you because they happened to be at the end of the dungeon.
• The titular antagonist of the original 1981 Donkey Kong (which had a clone on the BBC Micro actually named Killer Gorilla), who kidnapped Pauline (the girlfriend of Mario/Jumpman) and would pelt the carpenter with barrels and other objects as he tried to save her. The Donkey Kong we know and love today is actually his descendant (either son or grandson), at least according to portrayals in the early Donkey Kong Country games, with the original becoming the wise-cracking Cranky Kong.
• The modern Donkey Kong is more fun-loving than threatening, but plays this somewhat straight whenever he takes up the antagonist role, as he does in the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series (which is essentially a spin-off from Donkey Kong '94 and a homage to the original Donkey Kong).
  • The first Donkey Kong Country has Manky Kongs, barrel-tossing foes that are explicitly described as "Kong reject orangutans" by the game's instruction booklet.
  • The four Kong bosses from Donkey Kong Jungle Beat are examples: Dread Kong, Karate Kong, Ninja Kong, and Sumo Kong. Thanks to the game's vague and nearly-nonexistent story, how evil they are is left up in the air, but they're still menacing, red-eyed gorillas who oppose Donkey Kong.
    • There's also the Cactus King, a downright demonic-looking gorilla who serves as the game's Final Boss in his Ghastly King form; after defeating him, the four boss Kongs join Donkey Kong in the Ending Ceremony celebration. The Nintendo Wii Updated Rerelease adds one last Boss Rush against all 5 Kongs.
  • Starting with the second game, the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series also features various toy robot Kongs that obstruct and antagonize the Mini Marios.
• In the "proper" Super Mario franchise, Super Mario RPG has the Guerillas and Chained Kongs, who look like Donkey Kong if he was forced to serve a lengthy prison sentence, thanks to the shackles and ball-and-chains attached to their wrists.
  • Yoshi's Island has an unused, Donkey Kong-like Grinder that clearly references the 1981 game.
  • Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle has Rabbid Kong, a Kong-ified Rabbid that acts the boss of Ancient Gardens. The Donkey Kong Adventure expansion features him as the main antagonist, where he takes on a "Mega" form by eating a Bad Banana to serve as the final boss.
• Heavy Weapon has the boss "Kommie Kong", renamed "Gorillazilla" in the Play Station 3/Xbox 360 release, which is a giant communist mecha gorilla that throws exploding rockets and tries to stomp the player.
• In World of Warcraft, most gorilla mobs are are aggressive and will attack on sight. In typical Blizzard fashion, there are lots of Shout-Outs: a giant gorilla living on an island and holding a woman captive (who throws barrels at the player), a (robotic) gorilla called A-ME trained to communicate with humans and gorilla mobs dropping barrels on death.
• Winston from Overwatch is usually a subversion of this trope, being a friendly goofball of a gorilla with a love of science and peanut butter. But to those who try to hurt him or his friends, he's this trope played straight: not only is he willing to burn Reaper to ashes in order to stop him from hunting down and killing the remaining members of Overwatch, but he has the ability to tap into a huge reserve of rage that renders him a nearly unstoppable juggernaut.
  • According to the lore, Winston is one of many intelligent gorillas hailing from Horizon Lunar Colony. Unlike Winston, all of them are bloodthirsty brutes who play this trope dead-straight.
• While the tail technically makes it a monkey instead of a great ape, the Rajang of Monster Hunter has a build and size meant to evoke the image of a bloodthirsty, horned, Super Saiyan gorilla that will brutalize anything that earns its ire. It's one of the strongest non-Elder Dragon monsters in the franchise, and gets multiple Turf Wars in Monster Hunter World and Monster Hunter Rise that show it being able to match a few of these living calamities blow-for-blow. They even hunt Kirin, a species of Elder Dragon with horns that they like to snack on.
• One of Crash Bandicoot's earliest enemies is Koala Kong from the first game, a somewhat obscure henchman of Neo Cortex's who has the head of a koala and the ridiculously muscular body of a gorilla. And he puts those muscles to good use by hurling boulders at Crash during his boss fight.
• NetHack has an entire class of neutral-aligned apelike creatures, including actual apes that can be tamed with bananas as well as the carnivorous apes borrowed from Dungeons & Dragons.
• George, the giant gorilla in Rampage.
• Soldier Stonekong from Mega Man X7 is a gorilla Maverick who serves as one of the game's obligatory eight Maverick bosses, and wields a huge stone sword as his Weapon of Choice.
• In Mother 3, one of late game bosses is the Steel Mechorilla, a gorilla cyborg with wrecking balls for hands. It's as durable as you'd expect a gorilla cyborg to be, and hits as hard as you'd expect a gorilla with wrecking ball hands would hit: the answer to both being "very". It is weak to Thunder, but if you follow the game's advice by electrocuting it, you end up driving it haywire and giving it a huge boost in power, making it one of the most frustrating boss fights in the game.

Western Animation

• 1944 animated short Donald Duck and the Gorilla has Ajax, the titular antagonist.
• Tublat from The Legend of Tarzan. While Tublat's personality from the books were used to make Disney's Kerchak a much gentler character, Kerchak's personality from the books were consequently used to make Disney's Tublat more violent.
• In an episode of the animated Clerks, Jay announces that they have "decided we need more gorillas in our empty lives", and they free the gorillas from the fair across the road from the QuikStop. The gorillas proceed to attack everyone in sight. ("Oh no! Caitlyn!" "Except Caitlyn Bree and Dan Whiffler who are ****** *** in a car!")
• In The Venture Brothers, one of the many supervillain Captain Ersatzes is King Gorilla, a Manly Gay supervillain gorilla who spent some time in prison with the Monarch. He got thrown into prison for murder and rape (yes, in that order). He was later let out of prison, since he was dying of lung cancer.
• SpongeBob SquarePants has the episode "I Had An Accident" where Patrick dresses up as one of these and "attacks" Sandy to cure Spongebob of his agoraphobia. Spongebob sees through the ploy, but a real gorilla appears and captures both of them which cures Spongebob's phobia but gives all three a new phobia of gorillas. Then Spongebob wonders how a gorilla could be underwater to begin with. Cue the Gainax Ending.
• Johnny Test has Susan and Mary accidentally turn Gil into one of these in "Johnny X" after an attempt at making a Love Potion goes awry.
• In Codename: Kids Next Door, the living Rainbow Monkeys that the toys are based on are usually friendly, but can turn ferocious quickly if someone makes them angry. Most of them are, as the name implies, monkeys, but some episodes show larger specimens that are more like gorillas, and one that is giant-sized.
• The Powerpuff Girls' arch-foe Mojo Jojo has been called a "monkey", but is, in fact, a chimpanzee, and while he rarely acts like a typical chimp, given his artificially enhanced supra-genius level intelligence, he is clearly dangerous. In the climax of the movie, he ODs on Chemical X to turn himself into a Kaiju-sized gorilla.
• Monkian from Thundercats, one of a race of ape-like mutants from Plundarr and the Dumb Muscle among the bad guys.

Real Life

• This trope especially comes into play when misguided humans, charmed by how much a baby chimpanzee resembles a human child, try to take one as a pet. The problem comes when this cute little chimp hits puberty and becomes a very aggressive primate easily strong enough to rip your arm off and beat you to death with it. Or if you're lucky they'll stop at merely ripping your face off.
• Subverted Trope with real life gorillas, which fall into the Gentle Giant category - for the most part. They will normally try to fend off intruders with bluff attacks rather than actually hurting them, but silverback gorillas are not to be trifled with: they are very protective of their family, and will viciously attack you should you make them believe you're a threat.
• The infamous, highly publicized shooting of Harambe, a silverback gorilla living in the Cincinnati Zoo in 2016, made headlines thanks to the debate on whether or not he was dangerous to the young boy that fell into his enclosure, and if lethal force was justified.