From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishall hell broke looseall hell broke looseinformal not politeANGRYLOUD/NOISY used to say that people suddenly become very noisy or angryJournalists woke him with the news and all hell broke loose. → hell
Examples from the Corpus
all hell broke loose• A sparrow hawk appeared - and all hell broke loose!• What actually happened was that I was as drunk as anybody in the barracks the night all hell broke loose.• She started to strip off, all hell broke loose and he bolted while plain-clothes officers moved in to stage a cover-up.• When the story was leaked to the press, all hell broke loose.• When a fan jumped onto the stage, all hell broke loose.• Journalists woke him up in his bed with the news and, as I suspected, all hell broke loose.• Not at all bad considering that all hell broke loose in September and the City was rocked by events outside its control.• Debbie told him to shut up, he slapped her, and then all hell broke loose.• And then, all hell broke loose.• But then all hell broke loose, geologically speaking, as increasing numbers of sources for the rock were discovered. 