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, this trope is when gorillas and other great apes (excluding humans) are, contrary to their real-life usual behaviour, treated as belligerent, pugnacious creatures. 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.

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.

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.
• 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.

Film

• King Kong, 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 Rise of the Planet of the Apes, even though those apes are modern-day apes, they're made smarter by a drug. Prominent example: Buck, who launches himself onto a helicopter to take it out.
• 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 often terrorized by, and sometimes befriended by, a gorilla.
• Dario Argento's Phenomena featured 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 killing Tarzan's father...
  • That was because 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.

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.
• Donkey Kong in the original Donkey Kong (which had a clone on the BBC Micro actually named Killer Gorilla). In most later games, however, Donkey Kong (who's actually the son or grandson of the original 1981 DK) is more fun-loving than threatening.
• Heavy Weapon has the boss "Kommie Kong", which is a giant communist mecha gorilla that throws exploding rockets and tries to stomp the player. Renamed "Gorillazilla" in the Play Station 3/Xbox360 release.
• In World of Warcraft, most gorilla mobs are are aggressive and will attack on sight. In a typical Blizzard manner, there are lots of ShoutOuts: a giant gorilla living on an island and holding a woman captive, 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. And unlike Winston, all of them are bloodthirsty brutes who play this trope dead-straight.

Western Animation

• In Donald Duck and the Gorilla (1944), 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 Clerks the Animated Series, 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.

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 strong, 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.
• Averted Trope with real life gorillas though, which fall into the Gentle Giant category. They will normally try to fend off intruders with bluff attacks rather than actually hurting them.