"That's no ordinary rabbit! That's the most foul, cruel and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on! It's got a vicious streak a mile wide, it's a killer! It's got huge sharp... it can leap about... look at the bones!"
— Tim the Enchanter, Monty Python and the Holy Grail on the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog
Ah, rabbits. Who could possibly think of a more cute, cuddly, and harmless creature? With their wriggling noses, comically long ears, and fuzzy little tails, they're just so adorable!
Except, of course, when they aren't.
Twisting the easily-recognized and almost universally-beloved form of the rabbit into something terrifying is a common type of subverted cuteness, because we all have the expectation of rabbits as sweet and innocent. Sometimes this is done by making the rabbit carnivorous or otherwise extremely dangerous, but just making it look or act scary is enough to have it fall into this trope. Also, anything that plays the rabbit for horror falls in this trope, which means that stuffed animals and people in costumes all apply.
Of course, in Real Life, rabbits aren't always harmless. As wild animals, they can be pretty vicious when they need to be, particularly around mating season when fighting off rival suitors. Those big goofy teeth aren't just there to look cute and chop vegetables. They can really do some damage. Pet rabbits may also bite if you bug them enough, or accidentally hurt or frighten them, especially if you're not its owner.
The Trope Namer is the 1946 Bugs Bunny Merrie Melodies cartoon short of the same name, though the short itself doesn't really produce any examples.
Subtrope of Species Subversives. See also Grotesque Cute, Killer Rabbit (which, despite its name, covers all cute but deadly animals, not just rabbits), Rascally Rabbit (where the rabbits use their wits, rather than violence, to overcome their enemies), as well as Cats Are Mean and Devious Dolphins (for other instances of normally cute animals getting this treatment). Contrast Righteous Rabbit.
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Anime & Manga
- Inverted by Rukia of Bleach's illustrations of the hollow as meaner versions of the same bunnies that depict regular souls. Despite depicting soul-eating monsters, they're ridiculously cute. It is also justified because hollows are created from them.
- Delicious in Dungeon: Dungeon Rabbits. They first appear like normal rabbits but are only found in the deepest level of the dungeon. As it turns out, they earned their place there, being ruthless killing machines. Their main strategy is to destroy someone's throat and is agile enough to do it quickly, some do it using a hidden claw on their leg to slash throats, while others give kicks on the neck powerful enough to result in Blood from the Mouth and death. Because they're so small, fast, and attack in large groups, it's extremely hard to deal with them.
- Digimon:
- Cherubimon Vice combines this with Fallen Angel, being a corrupted, evil monster. Versions of him appears as the Big Bad in the third part of the movie and Frontier, As the Disc-One Final Boss of the latter.
- The Gazimon are also sort of this but wind up being too much Ugly Cute comic reliefs to be a major threat.
- Kokomon's evolved forms in the first Adventure 02 movie (and Digimon: The Movie) are rabbit-like Humanoid Abomination. He first appears as Wendigomon, a hulking brute with borderline Lovecraftian Superpowers and a rabbit's ears, eyes, and nose. His evolution is Antylamon, a lanky, rabbit-headed figure that backflips and Flash Steps every which way while chattering. His final evolution? The aforementioned Cherubimon Vice, here depicted as an insane and malevolent Reality Warper. All of his forms shimmer around the edges when agitated.
- Subverted with Antylamon's Good Counterpart in Digimon Tamers, who looks nearly identical but is friendly and capable of human speech.
- Digimon Ghost Game:
- Angoramon's Ultimate form Lamortmon is a massive feral beast resembling a cross between an owl, a rabbit, and a werewolf. When he first awakens to this form he nearly mauls the Monster of the Week Manticoremon to death before being stopped.
- The Monster of the Week in Episode 44 are three Antylamon who craft items from buildings using their life energy, causing them to weaken and potentially collapse. Actually subverted; they might be the same Virus-type as the one in the first Adventure 02 movie, but they are Digimon who don't realize how much damage they're causing.
- Doraemon: Nobita's Chronicles of the Moon Exploration have a giant rabbit monster terrorizing the Moonbit community, until it was tamed by Shizuka using the Forgetting Flower. Said monster later becomes one of the good guys and saves the heroes from certain death in the climax, and is seen becoming the protector of the Moonbit town at the end of the film.
- The manga Doubt is about a murder game called "Rabbit Doubt", and creepy rabbit masks are a common theme throughout.
- In Eyeshield 21, for the school sports festival, everyone had to dress in costume. Hiruma chose to dress as a rabbit. While wielding an AK-47.
- The children's horror anime Ghost Stories naturally has a couple of terrifying rabbits.
- Datto is the ghost of a little boy who ran on the track team, who now lobs off the feet of runners in the fourth lane of the track. While normally looking like a cute (if pale and red-eyed) kid, he attacks in the form of a rabbit's shadow with his ears being used as scythes. Fortunately he has a change of heart after befriending the main character's little brother, and doesn't go through with dismembering him.
- Shirotabi was the pet of a student at a school, whose owner resurrected it via black magic. Unforunately for her, he Came Back Wrong, transformed into a monstrous killer every night, and had to be vanquished by the Kid Hero main protagonists.
- In Juni Taisen: Zodiac War, the appropriately named Usagi is a psychotic man in a male version Playboy Bunny outfit. As a fighter, he's fast, he's efficient, and he enjoys killing a bit too much. He also has the ability to control the movements of the corpses of the people he's killed and landed the first two kills of the 12th Zodiac War.
- My Hero Academia gives us the Rabbit Hero, Mirko, real name Rumi Usagiyama. Her Quirk is "Rabbit" and all that it implies, similar to Tsuyu's "Frog" Quirk. Mirko's also the number 5 hero, behind the likes of Endeavor and Hawks, and she goes on to show that she's more than earned her spot in the top 10.
- Naruto: Kaguya Otsutsuki used to be worshiped as the "Rabbit Goddess" before she turned evil and became known as "Demon". Her One-Winged Angel form, that is, the true form of the Ten Tails, is a gargantuan rabbit-like abomination.
- One Piece gives us Lapahn, a breed of giant, carnivorous, incredibly unpleasant rabbit-monster, as well as a sea monsters that looks like a Lapahn with the back end of a very large shark.
- One-Punch Man features Apex Rabbit, a Dragon-level massive rabbit with multiple hinges.
- PandoraHearts: the Bloody Black Rabbit will mess you up. The White Rabbit is worse.
- The black bunnies in Penguindrum.
- The first episode of Pet Shop of Horrors has a rich couple who lost a daughter visiting Count D's shop and taking home a very rare species of rabbit that looks exactly like said daughter. Unfortunately, their love for their daughter leads them to break one of the rules of Count D's contract, and much horrificness with flesh-eating Killer Rabbits ensues.
- The Oousagi from Re:Zero, cute little unicorn-horned rabbits that are quite capable of swarming you and eating you alive, as poor Subaru finds out in the most gruesome way possible.
- Laplace's Demon from Rozen Maiden manifests as an extremely creepy humanoid albino rabbit in tuxedo.
- King Kazma, Kazuma's avatar in Summer Wars, is a six-foot anthropomorphic rabbit that can kick some serious digital ass with his bare hands and looks pretty intimidating.
- In Tokyo Ghoul, Touka dons a cute rabbit mask when she goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and ends up murdering two Ghoul Investigators. Later on, there's a mysterious Ghoul going around Tokyo murdering Investigators that is called "Black Rabbit" because of their rabbit mask. It's her brother, Ayato, trying to direct attention away from her. By the sequel, Rabbit is considered a terrifying foe and commands Aogiri's troops from the front lines.
- Usavich gives us Kirenenko, although he's only dangerous if provoked.
- In YⱯIBA we have Princess Kaguya's True form, which looks like a freaky hydra-bunny with fangs and Eye Beams.
Art
- Russian surrealist painter Vasya Lozhkin frequently includes examples of this in his paintings.
Comic Books
- Albedo: Erma Felna EDF has the Independent Lepine Republic, a nation of rabbits who are engaged in a ruthlessly sophisticated military plan to conquer the opposing Interstellar Confederacy. In the course of their goal, those rabbits are guilty of massive and grotesque atrocities to anyone who opposes them, including any rabbits whom they brand as "race traitors" for daring to disagree with them.
- Julie's wounded rabbit in The Maxx could easily be described as this.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW) features a species called the "vampiric jackalope". Cute, colorful bunny-like creatures with deer antlers... who swarm their prey (including ponies) in packs to drain them dry of blood through their razor-sharp incisors.
- The National Lampoon did a comic-book format version of Harvey as a scary, malicious type who goads Dowd into all sorts of bad behavior.
- Max from Sam & Max: Freelance Police is an adorable rabbity creature (he prefers the term 'lagomorph', which is the taxonomic family containing rabbits, hares and pikas), but he has razor-sharp, serrated carnivore teeth and 'dead, sharklike eyes'
◊. He's also a Psychopathic Manchild who is referred to in his own series as a sociopath. The games suggest he has obscenely powerful psychic potential and show him as having an inherent connection to monsters. He also exploits his own cuteness to gain favours from other characters, or get them to let their guard down for an attack. The 25th Anniversary version of the Max logo shows more jaggedly overlapping teeth.◊
- "Clarence" a.k.a. "Green Jet" from TRON: Ghost in the Machine (part of the Alternate Continuity from TRON 2.0) is a malicious trickster, trying to derail and distract Jet from his mission at every turn and ends up in a heated battle with Jet at the end of the comic. It turns out that he doesn't much care if the system goes down around their ears because the only way to save it would be to have all three "Jet" Programs merge, wiping out his existence.
- Issue #202 of DC Comics' The Unexpected features a story titled "Hopping Down the Bunny Trail", in which an evil Easter Bunny kidnaps several children and dips them in chocolate with the intent of eating them in revenge for every chocolate rabbit that was eaten on Easter.
Fairy Tales
- Alexander Afanasyev's "Kolobok": One hungry rabbit tries to eat the main character.
Fan Works
- Killer rabbits, inspired by a cryptozoological creature in Islamic legend called the al'miraj,and enhanced with a liberal dose of Caerbannog, appear in the Discworld of A.A. Pessimal. Travellers in the Klatchian desert have to fight off a pack of them in Gap Year Adventures.
- Angel Bunny in Divided Rainbow is nothing short of merciless, uniting all his fellow animals against Rainbow Dash in a nonstop campaign of torment.
- Mirko in Locked In Digital shares some personality traits with Izuku, including his terror aura, which is part of why he interns with her. Plus, her experience as a Pro means she is one of the few opponents to actually defeat Izuku in a straight fight, and the two bond over their shared personality traits.
- All of the Bonnie variants in Something Always Remains, particularly the current one In-Universe and the once-human Bonnie who currently haunts the Spring Bonnie suit.
Films — Animated
- Subverted in Bands on the Run. The bands are terrified of a giant (from their perspective) rabbit, but it just leaves them alone after sniffing them and determining that they're not edible.
- Despicable Me 2: The Anti-Villain League shows Gru a video of the PX-41 drug being tested on a cute white bunny. The drug makes it turn purple and grow instantly to more than double its original size. It also turns vicious and attacks the scientist who injected the drug; it's implied that the attack was fatal. Finally, the mutated rabbit attacks the camera and destroys it.
Gru: You don't usually see that in bunnies.
- Blue, the nazi biker junkie bunny from Fritz the Cat. He has a Creepy Monotone voice, is constantly strung out and twitching, and he has no qualms against domestic abuse.
- In Hoodwinked!, Boingo is a pink rabbit who is also the Goody Bandit. He's implied to be an Easter Bunny given that he writes a map on such an egg.
- Ice Age: Continental Drift had Squint, a rabbit pirate who is insane and extremely bloodthirsty. Mention his cute wiggly nose and you're bunny chow.
- Downplayed with Scamper from Igor. He's a zombie bunny, but he's not at all physically intimidating, and while he is kind of a snide jerk, he wants to end his own life rather than hurt anyone else.
- The rabbit in the film The Illusionist (2010) likes to bite people and snarls like a raving monster, though isn't as deadly and terrible as it believes it is.
- Kung Fu Panda 4: The Den of Thieves includes three young rabbits who look cute, but have a strong penchant for violence.
"Violence makes our tummies tingle!"
- Rise of the Guardians has E. Aster Bunnymund, a six foot tall Easter Bunny who will kick your ass if you dare harm the children he is sworn to protect.
- Snowball is a rabbit in The Secret Life of Pets who runs a vicious gang of abandoned pets (whose actions border on terrorism) and behaves how one would expect a gang leader to behave. He doesn't look the part physically, but he can still be incredibly intimidating through his hare-trigger temper, his total lack of fear, and his willingness to kill anyone who gets in his way.
- In the Wallace & Gromit film The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, the duo set up a pest control company after a swarm of rabbits invade their hometown and start devouring everyone's vegetable crops days before the annual giant vegetable contest, which they have success at keeping under control at first (with high-tech security systems guarding everyone's crops and all). Unfortunately, things go wrong when a supposed Were-Rabbit is spotted at night, bypassing the systems and savagely eating every crop in sight. Just to make matters worse, it turns out the Were-Rabbit is Wallace, who becomes the title beast after an experiment to brainwash the captured rabbits into hating vegetables went wrong, though he manages to gain control of himself later on.
- General Woundwort of the animated adaptation of Watership Down, who is the trope picture.
- In Zootopia, the trope is referenced: Judy's parents tell her about her uncle Terry, who once ate a Night Howler flower, which made him turn savage and bite his sister Bonnie.
Judy: A bunny can go savage!
Films — Live-Action
- The White Rabbit in Jan Švankmajer's Alice is represented as a bug-eyed taxidermy rabbit animated in stop-motion who bleeds sawdust from a hole in his chest. He's also responsible for actually carrying out the Queen's executions.
- Both the White Rabbit and the March Hare in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010) are rather creepy-looking, but what else could we expect from Master Burton?
- In Ant-Man Scott gives his daughter a truly hideous stuffed bunny for her birthday, which would be scary to any normal kid. Good thing she's not a normal kid.
Cassie: He's so UGLY! I love him!
- The killer in the South Korean slasher film Bloody Reunion wears a bunny mask.
- Cool World has an unnamed grey bunny character seen gambling with Holli's goons. It mostly acts innocent and cute until he tries reporting to the doodle police about getting cheated by the goons. He cries but then goes completely berserk by climbing up on to one cop's head and tells them to rip their faces apart then quickly goes back to his cute self by saying "Pretty Please" which convinces the cops to chase after them.
- Frank from Donnie Darko, a schizophreniac's imaginary friend who is not really imaginary and looks like a man in a rabbit suit with a metal skull face.
- In Dreamchild, the elderly Alice thinks of the March Hare this way.
- The killer in Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill! wears a rather demented-looking Easter Bunny mask.
- Kottentail and Peter Rottentail both feature humanoid rabbit monsters as antagonists.
- The Killer Rabbit of Caerbanog from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. LOOK AT THE BONES!
- The Claymation bunny in Moonwalker unnerves some viewers, but this wasn't exactly the intention...
- Night of the Lepus was an attempt to make a serious horror movie from this trope, with giant rabbits. Not only are the effects poor (regular bunnies hopping through fake-looking miniatures so they'd look oversized), but there is a lack of a visual attempt to make the Giant Killer Bunny Rabbits look anything but the cute critters they are.
- One Crazy Summer: The Warner Bros. Logo Joke isn't intended as horror but is somewhat unnerving. A crazed cartoon rabbit in a propeller beanie opens up the logo, screams and then "swallows" the viewer.
- Rabbits by David Lynch. "In a nameless city deluged by a continuous rain... three rabbits live with a fearful mystery." Originally web-based video, it was released as a film and features as a Show Within a Show in the film Inland Empire. In true Lynchian fashion, Rabbits is more quietly unsettling than outright terrifying.
- In Sexy Beast, the main character has a nightmare that a giant rabbit with a gun is coming to kill him.
- Twilight Zone: The Movie. In the updated version of "It's a Good Life", the local Reality Warper asks his uncle to pull a rabbit out of a hat as a magic trick, then the rabbit turns into a hairless, hulking, snarling monstrosity before it goes back into the hat.
- The opening credits of Jordan Peele's Us features some creepy rabbit imagery, which you later find out the reason for.
- An unintentional example in Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny. The uncanny nature of the Ice Cream Bunny's Goofy Suit and the curiously dilapidated amusement park in which he makes his jarring first appearance ends up making him a lot less charming and a lot more terrifying than the filmmakers intended.
- The Witch has a rather unsettling hare, which lures young Caleb into the deep woods where he meets the title character. It's implied to be one of her familiars.
Literature
- Tends to be in a lot of Darker and Edgier incarnations of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The original character is merely manic and unsettling.
- Bunnicula: Half rabbit, half-vampire, all terror! He sucks the juice out of carrots. The funny thing is, he's something of a subversion in that he seems to be a pretty ordinary rabbit other than that. The paranoid cat Chester is nonetheless convinced that he's a danger to man and beast.
- Clockwork Boys by Ursula Vernon has a short and extremely unnerving scene with a cute talking rabbit... who sits up in the middle of the path, informs Brenner, "You'll die laughing, you know," and vanishes. As it turns out, it isn't wrong — and it's even worse than it sounds.
- In Dolores Claiborne, Vera Donovan is tormented in her old age by visions of 'dust bunnies', which terrify her but that Dolores Claiborne herself can't see.
- In Fangirl, Cath's version of the moon rabbit is rather murderous.
- Robert Rankin's book The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse.
- The Goosebumps book "Bad Hare Day". Or at least the cover.
- The Magician King introduces the Seeing Hare, a hare with precognitive powers. It achieves hair-raising status by prophesying doom and despair for the protagonists.
- Islamic/Arabian poetry has the Miraj (or Al-mi'raj, or numerous other variations on the two), a one-horned, carnivorous yellow hare capable of killing and eating much larger prey, including humans. Also features in Dungeons & Dragons and Dragon Quest.
- The Lapinduce from Monster Blood Tattoo. He's over seven feet tall — almost nine feet, with the ears — and is introduced picking a man up by the face and shaking him until his neck snaps. However, he's also a True Neutral Cultured Badass who offers aid to the protagonist.
- Redwall has the Long Patrol, a faction of soldier hares who are seen as some of the best fighters in the whole setting (and usually quite amiable when off-duty). Rabbits, by contrast, are usually nonviolent Upper Class Twits.
- The rabies outbreak of Scary Stories For Young Foxes: The City, which leads to Dusty and many dogs becoming infected, and very nearly kills Oleo, was all started by a white rabbit who seemed...off.
- Son of Spellsinger features a cult of psychotic rabbits who are tired of being seen as "cute", and want to take revenge on, well, everyone. Their first victims are a society of marsupials, which has some interesting real world resonances.
- In Warrior Cats, though rabbits are considered prey, they can put up a fight: in Firestar's Quest, Longtail is permanently blinded when a rabbit scratches his eyes, and in Leafpool's Wish, Whitepaw is injured by one that she's trying to catch.
- Watership Down, in which ninety percent of the characters are rabbits, naturally houses a couple. The heroes' group include three rabbits of the 'Owsla' or warrior caste, while the book's final adversary is a General Ripper in rabbit form. And their mythology includes a Grim Reaper, the Black Rabbit of Inle, who is both a) a rabbit and b) inexorable, inevitable and invincible.
- What Moves the Dead: The hares around the tarn are...weird. The village is full of stories about how they’re shapeshifted witches or possessed by the devil, and given how they all have a zombie-esque shuffle and tend to just stare at people, it’s not hard to see why. It gets worse when Alex shoots one for Denton to study, and the hare, with its half its head blown off, gets up and goes on with its business like nothing happened.
- In That is All, one of the Ancient and Unspeakable Ones who tie into the Mayan Doomsday is Oester-Rah, "the ragged, fertile rabbit-god whose dung will cover the world". Her faithful cult hope to be eaten by her, excreted, and then eaten again. When she takes too long to hatch from her gigantic egg, they give up and stew themselves into a hasenpfeffer.
Live-Action TV
- In the Syfy miniseries Alice, the Red Queen's henchmen wear white face masks designed to look like rabbit heads◊. The rabbit heads become even creepier once you realize their true purpose: those "masks" have replaced their actual heads, and have hidden nozzles that they use to gas the Queen's chosen victims (or "Oysters") so they can abduct them (or kill them, if need be).
- The Amazing Extraordinary Friends: The most dangerous of the Carnival of Killers Renfield hired to take out Captain X in "Quality Time" turns out to be the Easter Bunny; a man in a rather sorry-looking rabbit costume.
- This would appear to what Sardo's pet rabbit is turned into in the Are You Afraid of the Dark? episode "The Tale of the Dark Dragon" when the main character tests a magic potion on him without Sardo's knowledge.
- In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Anya has a pathological fear of bunnies. In the scene set during her mortal life, she shows no such fear (and in fact breeds rabbits), indicating something had happened in the intervening time.
- It's strongly hinted that she developed her fear as a result of her rabbits breeding excessively, to the point of her house being full of rabbits.
- HBO had a special program once called Bun-Bun, which had possibly the most terrifying plush rabbit ever made, even though it didn't do anything directly; any child that ran into it became obsessed with having it, to the point of near killing themselves.
- Played for laughs in Hannah Montana when Jackson eats too much chocolate and he has nightmares about a Godzilla chocolate bunny.
- On Misfits, a giant serial killer acid-induced rabbit in a suit carrying a golf club goes after the crew. It's scarier than it sounds.
- There was 70s kids' show in Britain called Pipkins which starred a puppet named Hartley Hare. Not meant to be a scary character, but it was such a freaking ugly thing it was probably scary for younger kids.
- One 70's-era Sesame Street sketch created by Swiss artist Etienne Delessert (seen here) was that of three kids being chased by a giant rabbit.
- Tomorrow's Pioneers was a children's show created by the Palestinian governing authority and terrorist organization Hamas, seeking to groom their kids into warriors against Israel. The third Creepy Mascot Suit cohost was "Assud the Martyrdom Rabbit", whose Establishing Character Moment was promising to "eat up the Jews" in a Creepy High-Pitched Voice and encouraging their five-year-old target audience to become Inspirational Martyrs.
- Xena: Warrior Princess, Xena warned Gabriel to be careful of the rabbits, and Gabby didn't listen so ended up battling the rabbit in the background.
- Ultraman Ace: Lunaticks is the Kaiju, or rather Choju equivalent. A Lunar Rabbit monster who destroyed a civilisation on the Moon before the events of the series, only to then be sicced by Yapool on Earth, Lunaticks looks a bit like Frank from Donnie Darko. Lunaticks has a fearsome array of techniques, being no slouch in a physical fight, and he can also breathe fire, smoke, and even fire off his eyes in the form of grenades, which regenerate near-instantly for the next use!
- The later series, Ultraman Tiga, has a more benevolent version, a rabbit-based monster called King Molerat, who spends most of the episode hibernating. It does eventually goes on a rampage because of hunger, but Tiga ultimately spares its life and shrinks it into the form of a regular rabbit.
Music
- The rabbits in Alice Human Sacrifice.
- The electronica/darkwave band The Birthday Massacre practically live and breathe this trope. Every album art features at least one Franken-bunny. Usually feature several.
- The artwork from ETHS' 4th album, Teratologie, features dead rabbits. Flayed dead rabbits.
- Echo & the Bunnymen is the name of a creepy, dark post-punk band.
- The music video to song Voracity by japanese pop rock band MYTH & ROID shows a rabbit mask wearing Humanoid Abomination haunting creepy woods and stalking a young girl.
- The mascot for digital hardcore band Rabbit Junk is a grinning rabbit with razor-sharp teeth and a sutured forehead.
- The music video for the song "Sour Girl" by the Stone Temple Pilots features some Teletubby-esque rabbits that are pretty scary - or at least, creepy.
- Voltaire's song Bunnypocalypse in which hordes of undead rabbits overrun the world.
Mythology & Folklore
- In the Popul Vuh, a Maya epic story, the evil gods of the underworld have a rabbit scribe. Depictions of the court of the underworld usually include it.
- The al'miraj of Islamic/Arabic legend inhabits a remote island and is said to resemble a rabbit, but with insane red eyes and a lethal spiked horn on its head. It is also so dangerous and territorial that sorcery is the recommended way to deal with it. Please note that the Qu`ran strictly forbids all forms of sorcery.
- In some stories, the jackalope is a savage and aggressive creature.
- The Bunny Man is a local boogieman found in the folklore around Fairfax, Virginia, about an axe-wielding maniac in a rabbit suit, usually lurking under the Colchester Overpass and scaring people who are looking for a place to make out.
- In European folklore, it was believed that hares and rabbits were the familiars of witches, or that witches could transform themselves into these animals to travel long distances quickly, steal from people and lead travellers astray.
Pinball
- The Enchanted Hares of Magic Girl are anything but cute and fluffy.
Tabletop Games
- Deadlands had Clovis the Devil Bunny, a demonic entity possessing the favored toy of young Lucifer Whateley.
- Jackalopes look like cute rabbits with antlers, but are carnivorous scavengers who use their ability to induce lethal bad luck to get humans killed in fatal accidents, so they can feed on their corpses.
- Devil Bunny Hates the Earth!: the Bunny is attempting to use taffy to destroy the world.
- Devil Bunny Needs a Ham: the same Bunny takes out his unresolved desires on acrobatic sous-chefs.
- Although uncommon, rabbit-like monsters have appeared in Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder on occasion.
- The Al'miraj is the most well-known of the rabbit monsters. Appearing as a rabbit with a unicorn-like horn, it's a predatory (or at least omnivorous) creature that can gore victims with its horn. The very first version had no depth beyond this and was more or less a joke creature — it would return to this format in 4th and 5th edition. In 2nd and 3rd edition, al'miraji were commonly nicknamed "blink bunnies" due to their innate ability to teleport short distances... but, 1 in 10 had psionic abilities, with a lethal combination of telekinetic powers that earned them the nickname "Bunnies of the Abyss". In Pathfinder, the Al'miraj's horn petrifies what it stabs, so it disables its prey's limbs first and then eats them alive.
- The notorious Wolf-in-Sheep's-Clothing is an alien monster that pretends to be a bunny (or other small animal) sitting on a stump, only to reveal its true nature as a tentacled, shapeless abomination when prey gets close.
- Visit scenic Gamma World! But don't visit the Hoops: your skull will become a rabbit's plaything.
- The card Vizzerdrix and its predecessor Kezzerdrix from Magic: The Gathering. Also the Unhinged card When Fluffy Bunnies Attack.
- Although most of the the anthropomorphic rabbits and hares portrayed in the Realms of Pugmire Squeaks in the Deep Companion are cautious but resilient figures that are just trying to live peacefully in the Underneath, there is a cult of cruelty run by lagomorphs known as the Painted Faces. In lagomorph culture, Man are considered cruel tyrants who tortured and ate their unevolved lapine ancestors, so the fact that the Painted Faces actively follow Man while believing this to be true shows how ruthless they are. They are extremely sadistic towards anyone unconverted to the cult, and higher members willingly allow their bodies to be twisted by the demonic forces of the Unseen, or as they call them, the Emissaries of Man. There are also the more beastly Wolpertingers, werewolf-like lagomorphs who turn into bear-sized, carnivorous, winged rabbits that spread their influence through bites.
- In the Red Dwarf role-playing game, the Rabbit civilization are a fascist, militaristic species obsessed with ethnic purity and perfection. This being Red Dwarf, it's Played for Laughs as their stats are actually pretty bad.
- The Theans in Strike Legion are humanoid rabbit-like creatures known for two things: being incredibly precognitive and thus able to predict their enemies' actions to the minutes, and piloting skyscraper-sized Humongous Mecha with stealth systems that let them sneak inside entire enemy space fleets and destroy them in seconds without warning. Yeah, precognitive mecha-driving ninja rabbits.
- In Zombicide Black Plague, one of the available Abominations is the Abominabunny, a zombie Homage to the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which can only be destroyed with the Holy Hand Grenade.
Theater
- Before a significant Retool dropped them, Cirque du Soleil's magic show effort Criss Angel BeLIEve had tons of these once the action shifted to Angel's mind when he was "injured" in a stunt gone wrong.
Toys
- One kit in Aurora's Monster Scenes line of models, entitled "Gruesome Goodies," was a kind of Mad Scientist Laboratory set which featured among other thing a fierce-looking rabbit in a big jar. Although most of the stuff in the kit was intended to be used with Monster Scenes' Dr. Deadly, some promotional materials suggested the rabbit was apparently supposed to be used as an accessory for the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde kit (which was only released in Canada for some reason); the idea being that the rabbit had been given some of the "Jekyll juice" as a test.
TV Tropes
- The Easter Bunny image◊ on Accidental Nightmare Fuel. To hammer the point in even further, there appears to be a severed leg with a child's sneaker below the table beside him.
Webcomics
- Angel Moxie: "This is my servant, Cottontail. Cute, furry,... and evil."
- Axe Cop features a rabbit gun that shoots rabbits that attack the user. Axe Cop says it was the worst weapon he ever tried.
- Weasel Queen's Lapinomorphs from Girl Genius.
- The hare from The Hare's Bride is a menacing figure who tries to force the girl into marrying him and eventually becomes violent. And that's not even getting into the implications of his words about the wedding guests being "hungry" coupled with his bared teeth.
- Just like there are nice rabbits in Kevin & Kell, there can be some definitely villainous ones: the Rabbit Council was rather shady until Kevin dragged them into a more open and benevolent regime, the terrorist group Rabbit's Revenge had no qualm trying to assassinate predators and planned on breeding the half-rabbit, half-wolf Coney to make more carnivorous rabbits to take over the world, and the only reason Angelique, the Corrupt Corporate Executive that sold out her own species at least a couple times over, doesn't count as a Hair Raising Hare is because legally, she isn't one anymore (her rabbit license was stripped from her following her first betrayal, and she now poses as a rat).
- The first arc of Melvina's Therapy features a woman terrified of rabbits who experiences traumatic flashbacks to an encounter with some kind of rabbit-eared creature when she was a child.
- Ruby from Ruby Quest is usually a Righteous Rabbit, but in the backstory (when she was under the mental influence of Cjopaze), she killed both Stitches and Tom and gave Red a Glasgow Grin.
- The French Easter Bunny from Scary Go Round who is actually a Wendigo in a costume. And from Canada.
- Furthermore, there is the giant rabbit who is an associate of Bob Crowley. His scariness leaves a lot to be desired, though. He even lets himself get caught by two school kids.
- Sluggy Freelance: Early on, Torg decides the strip needs a cute talking animal, so he buys a mini-lop rabbit called Bun-bun. Bun-bun refuses to talk at first, but when he does, it's to start insulting people and getting Torg into trouble by saying things to other people they think Torg did. ("It was the rabbit" never really works as an explanation.) That's only the start, though, as Bun-bun turns out to be psychopathically sadistic, an intelligent Manipulative Bastard, and an incredibly badass switchblade-wielding Pintsized Powerhouse capable of defeating vampires and demons. Basically, Torg is stuck with an exceptionally vicious and powerful villain as a pet (as Bun-bun has no intention of giving up the free food and lodgings). He still grows fond of his pet. He gets used to living with him:
Demon Lord Horribus of the Dimension of Pain: Electrocution, stretched limbs, and whipping! Is your will broken yet?
Torg: No, but it's starting to really tick me off!
Lord Horribus: You must have had serious military training.
Torg: Nope. Pet bunny. - Headon from Tower of God [1]◊, a humanoid being who looks kind of like a rabbit. Brutally honest, unless he is withholding information that you don't know you need, has his own unknowable plans and ungodly Slasher Smile with… wait… are his eyes inside his mouth?
- Vegfolk Fables: Rabbit attacks are viewed with horror in universe as the world is populated with sentient vegetables.
- The episode "Now you see her" of The Wotch, involves a stage magician's rabbit getting trapped in the hat's pocket dimension, growing to enormous proportions and kidnapping magicians' assistants.
- Zebra Girl features Black Betty and Pooka Zin, who are members of an entire species of these, the Vorpal Pook. Betty claimed once that they were also the Centzon Totochtin of Aztec myth.
Web Animation
- The Amazing Digital Circus has Jax, a talking purple rabbit in overalls who is an apathetic jerkass towards the other characters, playing mean tricks on them for his own amusement.
- Animation vs. Minecraft: In Episode 12, TNT Land, the Monster of the Week is a killer rabbit. It even has tons of rabbit corpses piled on the dinner table at first. TSC ends up luring it away by throwing one of the rabbit corpses in the other direction.
- Chikn Nuggit: Iscream is a demonic entity taking on the form of a White Bunny, who sometimes participates in blood rituals and other nightmarish activities.
Web Original
- Fuwa Fuwa Foof: The titular Foof attempts to subvert this, being an ex-criminal rabbit with a notorious career who's been trying to do good ever since she was arrested once. Her former cohorts Giri Giri and Kiri Kiri, on the other hand, play the trope entirely straight, since they're still involved in crime in the present and are trying to get Foof back as their gang leader.
- Sketchy Bunnies is a new section of the Cheezburger Network dedicated entirely to pictures of terrifying Easter Bunnies. Most examples are people in rabbit suits that descend right through the depths of Unintentional Uncanny Valley and come out via the realm of Eldritch Abominations.
- In the same vein, a darker rendition of the Easter Bunny by a Deviantart member portrays it as an evil abomination with two tumorous appendages on its head which its potential victims mistake for ears—before it mutilates them and feasts on their organs. Then there's the buck rabbit...
- Inverted with Everyman HYBRID's spectral serial killer HABIT, who often refers to his victims as "rabbits". Played straight with his Twitter avatar, which features a sinister-looking, red-eyed rabbit, and in Fan Art (much of which depicts "Mr. H" as either an evil anthropomorphic rabbit or a human with rabbit-like features).
- Gaia Online's Grunny, a fast-reproducing mutant zombie rabbit. One memorable Halloween event had a number of them escape the G-Corps labs and attack Gaians to feed on their gooey brains. As of zOMG!, Grunnies are also apparently sapient and capable of piloting Humongous Mecha submarines.
- A recent new character, Diedrich, claims to be a Grunny, but is so far from Grunny norms that many fans think he's something else completely. Nonetheless, Diedrich is disturbing enough on his own terms to qualify for this trope.
- Played for Laughs in the subreddit r/murderbuns, which primarily showcases pictures of actual pet rabbits in poses that look menacing (such as giving a Death Glare towards the camera).
- SCP Foundation:
- SCP-1903 is a Playboy Bunny escort who was cursed into becoming a Humanoid Abomination with a bloody paper mâché-styled rabbit mask replacing her face.
- One component of SCP-2999. The desktop that SCP-2999-A uses prominently features an illustration of some kind of disturbing rabbit girl staring into your soul with a toothy, bloodied smile. Clicking to enlarge the image doesn't do much, except that it reveals the image to be animated, showing the desktop very quickly change to a horrifying image of a skeletal, rabbit-like, metallic-limbed Humanoid Abomination standing in a darkened room soaked in blood, before reverting back to the original desktop image.
- SCP-1903
- Till from the creepypastas of Proyecto Cabra is an Animalistic Abomination shapped like a rabbit as a twisted joke by his creator, he also happens to be his Mythos's God of Evil, a more complete info "here at post 1" if you can understand Spanish.
- Zoofights VI's Hare Metal AKA Black Rabbath AKA Thumperstruck.
- "Hare Metal is an eldritch blend of British steel and forbidden rural energies that, frankly, we do not understand."
Real Life
- Bunnies have attacked parked cars at a Denver Airport.
- A swamp rabbit - a species of large cottontail rabbit that is a very strong swimmer - once tried to climb onto then-President Jimmy Carter's fishing boat. Contrary to popular belief, Carter shooed it away using an oar before it got the chance to actually attack him. The White House Press Office tried to keep the pictures out of press view, for fear that the image of the President trying to defend himself from a rabbit would be fodder for late-night comedians to ridicule the President. Instead, when the photos did leak, the press ended up portraying Carter as heroically defending himself against a "killer rabbit" (Monty Python and the Holy Grail had recently been released stateside, incidentally).
- There was one time when Napoleon won a major victory, and he ordered a rabbit hunt in celebration. Depending on the source, there were either several hundred or up to three thousand rabbits brought to the grounds and set loose, but what they all agree happen was that they made a beeline for the Emperor and continued to mob him despite bullets, riding crops and horsewhips being used by his hunting party to dissuade them. Eventually, the scourge of Europe was forced to jump in his coach and hightail it out of there. The problem was that instead of capturing wild rabbits, the man who organised the hunt used farm-raised animals who, far from being scared of humans, expected to be fed when they saw them and were quite happy to approach en masse.
- Arctic hares have occasionally been sighted feeding on the eviscerated remains of caribou. Subverted in that the caribou in question had been killed by wolves or bears, and the hares were merely scrounging plant matter spilled out from the dead animals' torn-open guts.