- "That's Anger. He cares very deeply about things being fair."
- —Joy, opening narration
Get to Know your "Inside Out" Emotions Anger
Anger is a character in Inside Out. He is the red Emotion and one of the five Emotions inside the mind of Riley, along with Joy, Fear, Disgust and Sadness.
Lewis Black describes Anger as follows: "He's angry. He knows the group is well-meaning and they try hard, but they don't get how things should work as well as he does. So he has to stay on top of everything, and the only way he knows how to get their attention, keep it, and make sure they get things done right is by getting angry. He is comfortable with his anger. It makes him happy. But when pushed too far, the top of his head bursts into flames."[1]
Official Bio
"Anger feels very passionately about making sure things are fair for Riley. He has a fiery spirit and tends to explode (literally) when things don’t go as planned. He is quick to overreact and has little patience for life’s imperfections."[2]
Inside Out
Anger is an avid reader of The Mind Reader, a newspaper which he seems to have the ability to generate instantly as relevant events happen in Riley's life. He also has a tendency to advocate for the use of the only curse word Riley knows, and is the Emotion that reacts the most to the TripleDent Gum commercial.
During Riley's childhood, Anger stayed fairly in check as Joy was Riley's dominant emotion. When Riley turns 11 and her family moves to San Francisco, however, the Emotions are confused by the new situation. All of a sudden, Anger, along with Fear and Disgust, is much more present and generates much more memories.
When Joy and Sadness with all the core memories accidentally get expelled out of Headquarters, Anger, Fear and Disgust are left alone at the commands. Anger gets out of control much more frequently, despite Fear's efforts to calm him down. His tantrums precipitate the fall of Friendship and Hockey Island.
After one day of this madness, Anger has enough of it. He reasons that since all Riley's happy core memories were made in Minnesota, they should go back there to make some new ones; though he calls it the "happy core memory redevelopment", he is effectively asking that Riley runs away. Disgust and Fear are unsure about it, but end up agreeing. Anger plants the corresponding idea bulb in the console, and Riley accepts the idea. Declaring there is now no turning back, Anger pushes Riley to steal her mother's credit card, precipitating the fall of Honesty Island. As Riley runs away, Family Island, the last island standing, crumbles down, and Anger abruptly realises how bad his idea was. The three emotions try to change Riley's mind, but the idea bulb remains stuck in the console, which begins to shut down. Fortunately, Joy and Sadness come back to Headquarters and are able to solve the problem. As Joy and Sadness were stuck outside of the windows of Headquarters, Disgust proceeded to make him angry by insulting him, causing his head to explode with fire as he does when angry. The fire was used to melt the glass so Joy and Sadness could get into Headquarters.
Sometime later, as Riley turns 12, Anger is excited to find out that the newly installed upgraded console grants him access to a complete library of curse words.
Personality
Anger is very serious, short, somewhat antagonistic, very closed to express sadness or happiness, bitter and hoarse. It has a fiery spirit and tends to explode (literally) when things do not go as planned. As explained by Joy, he really cares that things are fair and differs from Fear, as Joy differs from Sadness. Despite their function just fix things, sometimes acts impulsively and does things his own way, like Joy did.
When Riley turned 11, he and the other opposite emotions are more imposing in his mind, making Joy try to keep things positive with peers, so that the day goes well as in the past, but in vain. After Joy and sadness were driven out of the barracks, he took control of the console, causing the collapse of four of the five Personality Islands of Riley (that of Goffball collapsed when Riley's father tries to cheer her up).
Because of his impulsive and unfair behavior and his lack of control at all, he was responsible for carrying Riley to depression, because when he tried Riley tried to run away from home for an idea that occurred to him, this made things worse and Islands of Honesty and Family crumbled, and the other emotions he realized that this was a bad idea and try to remove the bulb idea, but in vain. Finally, Sadness manages to get the idea to away to Minnesota, and, together with Joy, create a new Core Memory.
Appearance
Anger is the lowest in stature than other emotions. He has the crimson skin, is bald and has tan oval eyes. Wearing a white shirt, gray tie with red triangles separated in the middle by a zigzagging line of yellow, brown belt, red trousers and gray shoes. You may be able to throw flames over his head when he gets angry or upset when they do, acting like a volcano.
Trivia
- According to Pete Docter, his appearance is based on a brick.
- When Anger gets infuriated enough, flames come out of his head like Hades from Hercules.
- Anger is notably the only Emotion that does not have a visible nose.
- Anger claimed, that before this pizzeria in San Francisco served broccoli pizza, the Hawaiians ruined pizza by inventing the Hawaiian pizza, which is not true, since the Hawaiian Pizza was actually invented in Ontario, Canada.
- Even though Anger is ultimately a good person, since he just wants everything to be fair for Riley, he arguably causes the majority of the problems since he is responsible for Riley running away back to Minnesota, when he thought it would make more happy memories (and unintentionally almost having all of her Personality Islands destroyed). However, Anger tried to save Riley and realized his mistake in the end.
- During a stage where the Emotions all had human names, Anger was originally named Ira, short for Irate.
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