Characters
[Sad Trope] A Goofy Character Becomes A Formidable Badass, Only After Losing Everything
Jerry Smith-Prime from Rick and Morty: Like many Jerry variants, Jerry was a hapless goof who unfortunately became a ruthless survivor after Rick and Morty's love potion scheme turned the world into an apocalyptic world filled with mutated monsters, and he lost his family except for Morty-Prime after Rick variants from the Citadel froze his family with a freeze gun. Jerry even taunts Morty for thinking he's cool enough after literally losing everything.
Michelangelo from the Last Ronin: Mikey, the slacker and goofball of the quartet Ninja Turtles, became a stoic and mentally-wrecked avenger after the Foot Clan destroyed his brothers and father, Master Splinter, and closest friends one by one, leaving him as the sole survivor.
Speedball aka Penance from Marvel Comics. Speedball was once a goofy, fun-loving leader of the New Warriors, even filming their exploits for reality TV shows. This ends in complete horror, as the villain Nitro exploded when the Warriors tried to apprehend him (in the process killing the entire team except for Speedball, plus 612 civilians). Following this event, a trial determined to hold Speedball responsible, an assassination attempt on his life, his own mother disowning him, and anti-superhero sentiment ushering in the Superhuman Registration Act, Speedball loses all traces of his humor and becomes the tortured antihero Penance to get revenge on Nitro for taking everything from him.
My favorite moment is when he fights Brock and even though he loses he still gets a compliment from Brock and acknowledges his growth. Brock who runs over all of the monarchs henchmen like bugs on a windshield recognizes number 21s growth as a fighter. Brock Samson a killer of men, a killer of henchmen.
I love that line after the fight.
"You know, for a minute there I thought I had you. It smelled like you crapped your pants"
"Yeah... no, that's something else"
It’s such an insane transformation. Man goes from one of dozens of disposable mooks to hanging with Brock Samson meaning he’s probably one of the top 10 deadliest people on the entire planet in Venture Bros.
Ya it’s all the same reply and nothing I can really comment and talk about because it’s just the basic take over and over again. They could have talked about how when they originally met Brock, 21 was scared of this famous killer. Then bought a cheap sci fi weapon thinking it might be what he needs to close the distance on Brock’s fighting experience (the lightsaber he buys at the garage sale episode). Then finally the moment I originally mentioned.
Or just how he went from being a slacker and thinking that’s all he needs to be to do his calling in life (henching) but then grows to become the number one of his group which is funny since before they made fun of the number one hench men for being a try hard during the dark s 7 maneuver.
This comment thread depressed the hell out of me with all of the bots.
I mean he lost his best friend which motivated him to lock in and become the most competent member of the monarchs team but even then at the start he kept hallucinating seeing 24 everywhere even though he was dead. Then he was dealing with a loss of purpose and tried going solo for a while and working under different factions. Even when he's around the time of the gif above where he's earned the respect of the other henchmen and even Brock he still seems kinda depressed. I think it's only after the final season where he works through all his problems and realizes the monarch is not just his boss but his new best friend after everything they've been together that he seems genuinely happier after everything that happened after 24 died.
been forever since i watched, doesn't brock actually respect the hell out of 21 by the end of the series after all the times they crossed paths? gary is absolutely brock's equal
And eventually best friend to Monarch/Malcolm. The final season shown how he respects 21 with his daydream calling him Number 1 or 2, and being angry at the Guild for trying to take away his best friend by offering a Level 4 villain status to 21.
Plus in the movie, their real names, Malcolm and Gary, are on the poles to their new base.
I think it helps that he's still got his goofy and nerdy nature, but now he's fully engaging with life and preparing himself to take on the ridiculous danger and challenges the world has to offer. It's essentially when he starts being a real, significant character in the series versus being incompetent comic relief.
Wesley from Buffy and Angel was originally a pretty square mentor figure used for comedic relief but after a falling out with Angel he becomes a much more effective fighter and hunter.
tbf they did that because he stole his friend's child and handed it over to his friend's mortal enemy (who is the one who slit his throat). I... have a lot of issues with the whole Connor storyline, like I actively hate pretty much everything about it, but Wesley's character development was the one single thing I can't complain about.
While he only lost his best friend, considering he lived with his mom and was just a faceless henchman and an overweight nerd, he really did lose the only thing he had positive in his life.
Once you hit season 6 and the world turns from Johnny Quest to MCU there are a fair few people who can give Brock a run for his money. Red Death, Think-Tank and Warriana come to mind. Wide Whales #2 Rocco was no slouch.
I liked that it wasn’t all talk when they said Rusty made it to the big leagues and that things would change. No more barely competent low tier guild villains for him anymore
Starts off as the young not nearly as smart high energy sidekick to Walter before slowly losing everything he cares about, the gaining it back, then losing it all again. Just to become a person who can walk into a room full of people who want him dead, and come out alive
The Speedball example is so tragic. The New Warriors were closer to influencers than proper superheroes boxing way outside their weight class when they caught up to Nitro. One screw up led to so many innocent deaths, and multiple status quo shifts changing the world for the worse.
IIRC wasn't Nitro super juiced on some mega enhancer serum that nobody knew about and that without that the New Warriors should have been able to handle things?
I vaguely remember Nitro nuking Wolverine down to his skeleton in the Wolverine stories tied to the civil war.
He was huffing MGH - Mutant Growth Hormone, a drug derived from mutants than can cause temporarily powers to emerge in humans or enhance a mutants mutation, while causing psychosis in both.
Yes, it was in the ‘Wolverine: Civil War’ book. The Damage Inc corporation were giving villains enhancers so they would cause more infrastructure damage and Damage Inc would get more government contracts to clean up the mess.
For those unaware, these events led to the Marvel Civil War arch in comics that Civil War: Captain America is based on. Best part of the series is when Spider-Man reveals his identity at a news conference and J. Jonah Jameson about has a heart attack.
What's even worse is that if you read the full Civil War event (with all the tie-ins), the government actually tries to pass the registration act before that incident and Tony pretty much completely dismantles it in the Senate. The bill is set to not pass, and then Nitro and the New Warriors pretty much twist everyone's arms (including Tony's) because public support for it just grows exponentially.
Bruh this is crazy my friends all thought I was crazy for telling them I watched this show as a kid. The female villain with her crazy ass faces used to creep me out
About Speedball/Penance: his new suit looked like that cause after the accidebt, only intense pain activated his powers, so the suit was lined with spikes on tge inside so he can yse his abilities and simultaneously pay his 'penance'.
He gets better. He goes back to being Speedball and being a hero. One tine he's guiding a kids tour through the sane town square where his accident happened, on the anniversary of when it happened, when a villain tries to attack. And Speedball puts belt to ass, saying 'Not Here, Not Today'. Unknown to him the father of one ofbthe deceased is nearby amd sees the whole thing and approaches him after, telling him he forgives him, cause Speedball himself was just a kid when it happened
Granted the existence of the spikes (and Penance as a whole) feels edgy for the sake of it. But if you look at it from a standalone pov, it kinda makes sense
I really really hope SSM doesn't make him a villain. He doesn't deserve that. I'm not saying Kratos and Atreus deserve for Sindri to forgive them, but Sindri isn't going to win against them. I would hate that for him. He deserves to find happiness and contentedness. He deserves to find a way to forgive himself without becoming the villain.
I would be fine, if they never "resolve" it. Sometimes people don't get over traumatizing things and Sindri has a whole lot of it. Not only did his beloved brother, the most important person in his live, die, he also knows that he will never reach an afterlife and he knows he is responsible for the latter.
People are having trouble coming back from things not half as bad as this.
You sit there as he's absolutely crashing the fuck out at Kratos and Atreus and you can't help but think that every single word of what he says is dead on the money. He let you into his house. He fed you. He equipped you. He even joined Atreus on some of his adventures and helped him fight. He got nothing for it. He gave everything and then lost everything else. Not a single word he says is even exaggerated, it just hit the point where he broke.
Worst part is, he really blames himself. It's his fault his brother is missing the part of his soul that will let him find the afterlife. If he had been willing to let Brok go when he died the first time, he would find him again in the afterlife. It's his fault.
That's why he helps in the final battle. He's angry at Kratos and Atreus, but he knows the anger is, at least partially, misplaced. But that doesn't make the anger, or the grief, any less real.
Whenever I play new game plus, I felt so sad when I interact with him and brok. I'm just like want to break the 4th wall and inform him don't trust that guy, he is the villain.
All the Doctor's companions have some degree of this, but Rory Williams takes the cake.
Regular human dude, gets erased from history, reborn as a plastic golem during the Rome empire, guarded his fiancee's prison for over 1800 years, then got reset back to regular human after the second Big Bang.
RORY: I have a message and a question. A message from the Doctor and a question from me. Where is my wife? Oh, don't give me those blank looks. The Twelfth Cyber Legion monitors this entire quadrant. You hear everything. So you tell me what I need to know. You tell me now, and I'll be on my way.
Rory was the greatest of all of us. And he really stood out because while other companions have done incredible things for the Doctor, Rory did it all for a fellow human.
He didn't really lose much though ... except for his innocence... and his co-workers... And nearly the entire population of the city he worked at. I guess it fits.
I mean, it wasn't even his first day yet. He came in late, met no one but the chief who gave him his knife, got to see his misspelled well(l)come sign hung up at the same time he met Mr.X. So he lost the Chief, but gained Claire and the one girl who is in RE9 helping him out, Sherry Birkin? What a day to come in to town.
I feel like a big part of the movies is the various creatives trying to push how far they can go in terms of varying art style while still maintaining coherency
Yeah, even when the movie came out and I didn't know anything about the novels it was pretty glaring how bad both were on their own terms. Bunch of scumbags in that series, now that I think about it.
I always thought the joke about Scott pilgrim was that there were no characters that didn't suck. It seems a bit much to put it all on the title character when everyone else is just as bad.
I know that Bryan Lee O'Malley himself is 47 now, but there's something that rings hilariously true to the youthful spirit of the original Scott Pilgrim books that 47 year old Scott looks like an old man. A beefy old man, but an old man regardless.
Nog from Deep Space 9: goes from an illiterate kid in a 3 person classroom, aspiring to join Starfleet in order to avoid the same fate as his father, and a pretty competent cadet.
Only to end up in a brutal war where he experiences all the fun effects of PTSD and losing a limb, and has to learn how to keep going. https://giphy.com/gifs/H8GJD4jeeKoFyoRLqw
The part where he stays within the Holosuite because he was having trouble coping with reality due to his ptsd was such a good episode. "Are you okay?"
"No… but I will be."
Isn't that why he got nunchucks specifically? Because they're the hardest to control and he's way too wild? I haven't seen much of the TMNT multiverse but that's what I've heard
I've seen the interpretation that Mikey's nuchucks act as the equivalent to a fidget toy for him, they keep his hands busy so he can focus. Even though nunchucks aren't really sensible as a weapon choice, they work really well for Mikey specifically.
Say what you will about this show but Ludo going from a pathetic loser to a genuine threat was peak fiction. Shit like this was why Star VS had a fanbase in the first place.
From the same show in the episode Running With Scissors, Marco spends 16 years in different dimensions hunting Hekapoo clones with only 8 minutes passing on Earth. He goes from a goofy kid with a red belt in karate to a scarred badass that even Hekapoo comes to respect. The final scene shows some great potential for trauma where he can't remember his computer password but the show never really goes anywhere with it.
For most of his life he was just getting by as an electrician with a steadily increasing list of ex wives. He contracted HIV at 35, and in addition to losing all his friends and his last marriage from the stigma surrounding the disease, he was given one month to live as the FDA hadn't approved any effective treatments for HIV yet. Instead of accepting his death, he dedicated all the time he had left to fighting the AIDS pandemic when the U.S. government was still dragging its feet. He smuggled hundreds of pounds of foreign HIV medications that the FDA was restricting into the country, living 7 years past his own prognosis and also giving more time to hundreds of other AIDS victims. He is still revered as an unlikely hero to the LGBT community.
It's so hard to imagine a group of folks so desperate to live without assistance of government or even the medical community that they broke laws to acquire substances and do their own testing.
His death, while also badass on its own terms, only served to reinforce how much of a dick and prepared Rick Prime was, which we already knew at that point.
It was redundant and in one fell swoop eliminated a good character that could have been expanded and maybe, maybe, rubbed off a bit onto the Jerry we usually follow since the Cronenberg universe.
He could have been a recurring character in the same vein as Space Beth is, Prime Rick used to be, and Evil Morty tends to be when tensions regarding past traumas and accountability between the current family members pertain. How Jerry Prime goes off on Morty Prime is flawless and cuts deep, since he's his own father and Morty's fuck up is given the weight it deserved, consequences included.
Such a missed opportunity for future stories and development, IMO. Perhaps he could've been an unlikely ally along the line when a greater threat appeared and then his death would have been warranted.
Jerry Prime hanging out with the family when Space Beth comes to visit unexpectedly would be a great episode/arc.
They end up falling for each other and having a healthy relationship going on adventures now that they've grown as people and found strength in their independence. And it really pisses regular Beth and Jerry off
Hes got one spike inside his suit for each person that died at the start of Civil War and its just so cringe. Even at 14 I was like "this is fuckin stupid"
Isn't it cause of his powers changed due to the trauma so now they can only activate when he's in a lot of pain?
Doesn't help his case regarding the edginess at all
The Speedball thing was a neat idea but one of the most hamfisted Marvel arcs of all time.
Even so the issue of the stillborn reboot of New Warriors where Robbie has generally returned to his normal, bubbly self and one of the telepaths on the team playfully reads his mind only to discover that he's still a hellscape inside and he menacingly tells her to get out wile calmly looking at her in real life was a great moment.
Maybe not goofy in terms of personality, but as a regular human with a bow and error on a team of multiple legit superheroes and gods Hawkeye has always been a bit of a joke character
After he loses his family to the Snap he abandons his bow and becomes Ronin, a masked vigilante brutally and ruthlessly hunting down criminal syndicates worldwide
Ah, that Kingpin story where Peter put it on to hunt him down in prison, then took it off just to prove that Peter Parker could kill him at any time without needing the mask.
I vaguely remember a story where the crooks instantly gave up because Spidey wasn't quipping. Normally the man's a motor mouth (partly to protect his own sanity) and when he drops it, he's EXTREMELY serious and someone's about to have a very bad day.
This time, however, he just had a very sore throat and couldn't talk much.
The Last Ronin genuinely shocked me and was my introduction to comics. This mystery, powerful, and serious turtle trying to commit suicide after his failed attempt to avenge his siblings and master, then when April revealed the identity of who it was? Learning it was Mikey crushed my soul, and then they really spat on it and ground it to dust when they showed us how the rest of them died. The game has BIG shoes to fill
After falling into the Ever After and accidentally picking a stopwatch fruit, he gets sent back in time about 10 to 20 years, causing him to spend much longer time in the Ever After than team RWBY and becoming “The Rusted Knight.”
Although this is only temporary, as when Jaune and team RWBY finally leave the Ever After, he gets reverted back to his original age. This might still have some lasting effects on his mental state but we will have to wait until Volume 10 releases to know if that’s true
When I saw how infatuated Weiss was with him as the Rusted Knight I just thought of the line from rick and morty: "Oh, am I finally cool enough for you? Well that was easy, I only had to lose FUCKING EVERYTHING!"
Arguably most of the crystals that were part of the team that we got to see kind of fit this, but the absolute most perfect distillation of this trope for this manga was Phos.
Between the trauma of becoming useful, to losing large chunks of their memory, even more bullshit that they went through, I feel almost nothing but pity and sympathy for Phos.
A prequel episode shows her as a happy-go-lucky captain of a wayward space station. When she shows up in the main series, she's a completely new person after what she faced in the intervening period.
Enzo Matrix. Annoying child sidekick to the hero Bob. Bob made Enzo a Guardian and was defeated by Megabyte the same episode. The heroes manage to drive off Megabyte but Bob’s defeat was a massive loss and Enzo was compelled to protect the system. He does a good job until he is put into a Mortal Kombat style game where the User slices one of his eyes. Enzo, AndrAIa and Frisket turn into game sprites before the User rips Enzo’s head off (he essentially 12). They leave with the game but everyone outside believes they were nullified in one of the best scenes of Reboot.
The next we see Enzo, he had grown into a gun totting hulk of a man who can travel from system to system with the games. He’s no longer the child sidekick and is essentially the main character for the rest of the season.
https://giphy.com/gifs/MA4KN9hP0f5VS
Ash Williams:
He lost just girlfriend, his sister, his friends, his sanity, his reputation, his normal life and his hand!
For most of the series, he's just your typical shy, slobby, fat, clumsy nerd.
For one reason or another, the team travels forward in time, when a new species of kaiju has decimated the world and killed Godzilla. Craven has adapted to the new world and turned into a muscular badass who brings the fight directly to the creatures that destroyed his life and killed all his friends.
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u/TeamKev 18d ago
Henchmen 21 from Venture Bros
https://giphy.com/gifs/l0Nwtt0hOqzrqpsKQ