History YMMV / Kane

** Hilariously [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] by [[{{Wrestling/Edge}} Edge]] during a feud (see AbortedArc.)

* FoeYay: With Wrestling/TheBigShow, ("You complete me"), Wrestling/RobVanDam, [[Wrestling/ReyMysterioJr Rey Mysterio]], [[Wrestling/BryanDanielson Daniel Bryan]]...Kane's an intense guy, and when he's teaming with them, he has straight up HoYay.

* FromNobodyToNightmare:
** TheUnfavorite son of a Death Valley mortician to psychotic WrestlingMonster with demonic powers.
** In a meta sense, Glenn Jacobs went from playing a wrestling dentist to one of the WWE's top Heels.
* HilariousInHindsight: In re the Hurricane item above: On the September 23, 2002 ''Raw,'' Kane and the Hurricane teamed up to defeat the Un-Americans (Wrestling/LanceStorm and Wrestling/{{Christian}}) for the [[http://www.wrestling-titles.com/wwe/wwe-world-t.html WWE World Tag Team Titles]].
** Mayoral Candidate assaults US Cabinet Member[[labelnote:*]]Linda [=McMahon=][[/labelnote]].

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: granted, it was probably through [[AuthorExistenceFailure no fault of]] Karl Edward Wagner himself but still, it'd be awesome to see more of Klesst.

* MagnificentBastard: Revealed himself to be this after using both the feuds and times he teamed up with Wrestling/TheUndertaker for over a decade as a way to exploit his weaknesses and then playing the role of the avenging brother in 2010 all the way to the World Heavyweight Championship. (see GambitRoulette on the main page)
** Is possibly this again in his 2015 run as both Corporate Kane & Demon Kane. All signs point to him playing mind games with Seth Rollins for revenge, alternating between his Corporate persona when he needs to use the power to setup anything or feign innocence and The Demon persona to personally attack Rollins.

** "Cold Light": [[PsychoForHire Mollyl]] is the one member of Gaethaa the Avenger's band that lacks either a KnightTemplar conviction or reason for {{Revenge}}. A sadistic SerialRapist and TortureTechnician combination, Mollyl with a long history of murdering people in the name of Gaethaa's deranged justice, sometimes dozens at a time. Mollyl demonstrates his cruelty dragging off a blind woman named Rehhaile off to have her gang-raped, all to give himself and his men something to amuse himself with. Mollyl later publicly tortures the innocent mayor of the town Gaethaa in order to extort the location of Gaethaa's target, Kane, and gleefully proposes torturing Rehhaile the second he realizes Kane may have an attachment to her.

* [[AwesomeMusic/ProfessionalWrestling Crowning Music of Awesome]]: "Slow Chemical", Kane's entrance theme for years after he'd gotten unmasked (and for a while prior to the unmasking).

** "Cold Light": [[PsychoForHire Mollyl]] is the one member of Gaethaa the Avenger's band that lacks either a KnightTemplar conviction or a loved one. A sadistic SerialRapist and TortureTechnician combination, Mollyl with a long history of murdering people in the name of Gaethaa's deranged justice, sometimes dozens at a time. Mollyl demonstrates his cruelty dragging off a blind woman named Rehhaile off to have her gang-raped, all to give himself and his men something to amuse himself with. Mollyl later publicly tortures the innocent mayor of the town Gaethaa in order to extort the location of Gaethaa's target, Kane, and gleefully proposes torturing Rehhaile the second he realizes Kane may have an attachment to her.

* DesignatedHero: Kane often turns face by default only because the person he's feuding with just happens to be an even bigger heel. Certainly the most prominent (and questionable) example is his feud with Edge over Lita, in which his characterization would be summarized as "Vengeful, jilted rapist." And he was the hero...if [[RealLifeWritesThePlot real life didn't]] [[YourCheatingHeart write the plot]], WWE even coming up with this would've backfired unless the intention was to double-turn Edge and Kane rather than make Wrestling/{{Lita}} heel. Lita turned into something of a DesignatedVillain for walking out on her abusive rapist husband.

** "Lynotris Reprise": [[EvilOverlord King Masale of Westvin]] attempted to conquer Lynotris in his dream of empire. Wiping out all villages and towns in the vicinity, Masale subjected the city to a years-long siege where countless people died, with Masale even using [[DeadlyGas poison gas]] on the city. Throwing his own men in as cannon fodder, Masale later boasted he left not a living soul, taking only the ruler's daughter Princess Reallis as a [[SexSlave tortured concubine]]. Later returning to claim Reallis's supposedly lost treasure from his and Reallis's daughter Sesi, Masale attempts to have Sesi tortured to gain the gold, intending to kill her after.

** "Reflections for the Winter of my Soul": The seemingly-inconspicuous albino minstrel [[ManipulativeBastard Evingolis]] uses his gentle, charismatic exterior to belie a [[SerialKiller predatory nature]]. Evingolis travels from area to area, blending in seamlessly with large groups of people who slowly find themselves cut away from civilization. When bodies begin to drop, Evingolis is there in the background, pitting friends against each other in their fear before he reveals the terrible truth: [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent Evingolis]] is the alpha of a monstrous werewolf pack. Evingolis [[{{Sadist}} delights in murdering vast swathes of people at a time]], [[EvilGloating gloating]] about how much he revels in manipulating the terror of his victims before slaughtering them all and moving on to repeat it all over again.

** Most fans consider Kane's third theme "Slow Chemical" (by Finger Eleven of all people) to be Kane's best entrance theme and one of the best entrance songs in the entire business. So when it was changed to "Man on Fire" in 2008, this pissed off a lot of fans big time. His next theme, "Veil of Fire", mixes the guitar riffs from "Slow Chemical" into "Man on Fire", but it's still not enough for the fans.

* [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks They Changed Him, Now He Sucks]][=/=]BadassDecay: How people felt about Kane after his unmasking.

** Some will point to the Katie Vick angle as an example of this - and it certainly counts - but most will point to a single moment: when Kane lost his mask. Many fans feel he's never recovered from this. Ironically, the unmasking was initially Kane taking a few levels in badass; after several years of being comedy fodder, the unmasking led to Kane becoming genuinely terrifying again (doing things such as setting Wrestling/JimRoss on fire and electrocuting Wrestling/ShaneMcMahon's testicles). It was only after the novelty wore off that Kane lost his relevance and became a glorified jobber-to-the-stars.

** Some will point to the Katie Vick angle as an example of this - and it certainly counts - but most will point to a single moment: when Kane lost his mask. Many fans feel he's never recovered from this. The moment itself is being treated as CanonDiscontinuity by Wrestling/{{WWE}} these days. In a recent storyline Kane stated that he was unmasked by Wrestling/TheUndertaker (though he ''was'' unmasked by the Undertaker at Summerslam 2000 before his permanent unmasking, he put the mask back on afterwards).

* ShoutOut: Kane's costume seems to run the gamut of American popular culture, evoking various "dark" or Gothic" things. The red-and-black mask he wore (and never took off) between 1997 and 2003 looked eerily familiar to the bondage mask that was the unofficial logo of metal band Music/QuietRiot during the 1980s, while the iron mask he wore during his entrances during his 2011-2012 heel run had a vibe of either [[Franchise/StarWars Darth Vader]] or [[Franchise/FridayThe13th Jason Voorhees]], depending on which color you imagined it to be. Meanwhile, the black tights with red stitches across them that have been part of his costume for the majority of his career look remarkably similar to those donned by Creator/MichellePfeiffer for her role as Catwoman in ''BatmanReturns''; others might be reminded of [[Film/EdwardScissorhands Edward Scissorhands]], or Brandon Lee in ''Film/TheCrow''.

** Why does Kane hate Pete Rose so much? Pete Rose was part of the Cincinnati Reds at a time when the baseball team was referred to as "The Big Red Machine". The Big Red Machine is a RedBaron of Kane.

* BadassDecay: Some will point to the Katie Vick angle as an example of this - and it certainly counts - but most will point to a single moment: when Kane lost his mask. Many fans feel he's never recovered from this.
** The moment itself is being treated as CanonDiscontinuity by Wrestling/{{WWE}} these days. In a recent storyline Kane stated that he was unmasked by Wrestling/TheUndertaker (though he ''was'' unmasked by the Undertaker at Summerslam 2000 before his permanent unmasking, he put the mask back on afterwards).
*** Remember, the person who said Undertaker had unmasked Kane was Kane himself, and in kayfabe, Kane's always been a little...unbalanced. So Kane could have convinced himself that it was Undertaker who caused him to permanently unmasked, even though it was actually Wrestling/TripleH who was the mastermind behind the unmasking, because he hates Undertaker that much.
** In an interview, Glen Jacobs claimed that the only people 100% behind the unmasking were [[{{Wrestling/VinceMcMahon}} Vince [=McMahon=]]]...and himself. He felt that they had taken the character as far as they could behind the mask, and that the addition of facial expression allowed him to add more depth to the performance. He also noted that it was becoming increasingly uncomfortable and difficult to wrestle with the mask on, and that removing it was a relief.
** Really, aside from the SpecialEffectsFailure, the unmasking itself wasn't a problem. In the months immediately following the unmasking, Kane committed such acts as throwing Wrestling/RobVanDam (his friend at the time) through a steel cage, setting [[Wrestling/JimRoss Good Old J.R.]] on fire, tombstoning Linda [=McMahon=], electrotorturing [[{{Wrestling/ShaneMcMahon}} Shane O'Mac]]'s testicles with a car battery, beating Shane in the first ambulance match by tombstoning him on the concrete floor, and burying the Undertaker alive. He sent the whole faction of Evolution running scared from him when he made his entrances. The problems started when they put him in the world title picture for all of a month so he could destroy Wrestling/{{Goldberg}} so that Triple H could beat him; after that, they didn't have anything for him to do up until the Royal Rumble where they started teasing the Undertaker's return, and from that point it was only a matter of time until he was used to worf to the returned Deadman. Once that storyline was out of the way, they didn't have any idea what to do with him, and it all went down hill from there.

** His first theme went well with how his character debuted, and his newest theme sounds a bit like his first theme without the guitar riff. Both are awesome.
*** His latest theme since remasking is an awesome [[ThemeMusicPowerUp mix of the two]] which actually fits his [[CompositeCharacter persona]].
* [[DesignatedHero Designated Face]]: Kane often turns face by default only because the person he's feuding with just happens to be an even bigger heel. Certainly the most prominent (and questionable) example is his feud with Edge over Lita, in which his characterization would be summarized as "Vengeful, jilted rapist." And he was the hero...if [[RealLifeWritesThePlot real life didn't]] [[YourCheatingHeart write the plot]], WWE even coming up with this would've backfired unless the intention was to double-turn Edge and Kane rather than make Wrestling/{{Lita}} heel. Lita turned into something of a DesignatedVillain for walking out on her abusive rapist husband.
* [[DesignatedVillain Designated Heel]]: [[FaceHeelTurn Turned heel]] on the Undertaker right before ''[=SummerSlam=] 2000'', since UT's original intended opponent, Wrestling/TheBigShow, had been [[PutOnABus shipped off to]] WWE's then-developmental league Ohio Valley Wrestling in hopes that he could lose some weight. While the turn was a surprise as far as Kane's character direction at the time, if you need someone to go heel on UT at a moment's notice...

* FromNobodyToNightmare: TheUnfavorite son of a Death Valley mortician to psychotic WrestlingMonster with demonic powers.

** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8uSWvOBlMg This]] malfunction, in which Kane's pyro doesn't go off, doubles as a [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments Crowning Moment of Funny]].
*** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkJ8et4IYQM This]] one is even funnier because they eventually DID go off.
** This inevitably happens in the Inferno matches. When someone finally gets lit aflame, it never looks convincing. May be a big reason why WWE never really uses the match type.
*** On the other hand, the matches themselves tend to be pretty cool, if only for the fact that it's hard to beat the visual effect of [[SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome two men beating the shit out of each other while surrounded by a ring of fire]].

*** Worth nothing that it was Kane's decision to lose the mask, as he said it was becoming more difficult to wrestle with it on and that he felt limited with the character since he had to convey emotion with just his body. According to reports, only [[{{Wrestling/VinceMcMahon}} Vince [=McMahon=]]] was fully on-board with the change, but if there's one guy you need to sign off on an idea...
*** Also worth noting is that while even though it was incredibly unpopular even at the time, the unmasking did a lot to undo his BadassDecay; it wasn't until the Royal Rumble the following year where they started building up the return of the Undertaker, who Kane would eventually job to at Wrestlemania XX, that the decay began to set in again. For several months before that, Kane was nothing but an unstoppable monster.
** Just when he was becoming a Badass again, the recent storyline in which Wrestling/PaulBearer is abducted by Wrestling/{{Edge}} has managed to decay it all over again, with Kane insisting he's a human being with feelings, and that he loves the holidays and just wants his dad back.
*** It also just smacked of desperation, since he was beginning to sense Edge was just continuously one step ahead of him.

* ShoutOut: Kane's costume seems to run the gamut of American popular culture, evoking various "dark" or Gothic" things. The red-and-black mask he wore (and never took off) between 1997 and 2003 looked eerily familiar to the bondage mask that was the unofficial logo of metal band Music/QuietRiot during the 1980s, while the iron mask he wore during his entrances during his 2011-2012 heel run had a vibe of either [[Franchise/StarWars Darth Vader]] or [[Franchise/FridayThe13th Jason Voorhees]], depending on which color you imagined it to be. Meanwhile, the black tights with red stitches across them that have been part of his costume for the majority of his career look remarkably similar to those donned by Creator/MichellePfeiffer for her role as Catwoman in ''BatmanReturns''; others might be reminded of [[EdwardScissorhands Edward Scissorhands]], or Brandon Lee in ''Film/TheCrow''.

* ShoutOut: Kane's costume seems to run the gamut of American popular culture, evoking various "dark" or Gothic" things. The red-and-black mask he wore (and never took off) between 1997 and 2003 looked eerily familiar to the bondage mask that was the unofficial logo of metal band Music/QuietRiot during the 1980s, while the iron mask he wore during his entrances during his 2011-2012 heel run had a vibe of either [[Franchise/StarWars Darth Vader]] or [[Franchies/FridayThe13th Jason Voorhees]], depending on which color you imagined it to be. Meanwhile, the black tights with red stitches across them that have been part of his costume for the majority of his career look remarkably similar to those donned by Creator/MichellePfeiffer for her role as Catwoman in ''BatmanReturns''; others might be reminded of [[EdwardScissorhands Edward Scissorhands]], or Brandon Lee in ''Film/TheCrow''.

* ShoutOut: Kane's costume seems to run the gamut of American popular culture, evoking various "dark" or Gothic" things. The red-and-black mask he wore (and never took off) between 1997 and 2003 looked eerily familiar to the bondage mask that was the unofficial logo of metal band Music/QuietRiot during the 1980s, while the iron mask he wore during his entrances during his 2011-2012 heel run had a vibe of either [[StarWars Darth Vader]] or [[FridayThe13th Jason Voorhees]], depending on which color you imagined it to be. Meanwhile, the black tights with red stitches across them that have been part of his costume for the majority of his career look remarkably similar to those donned by Creator/MichellePfeiffer for her role as Catwoman in ''BatmanReturns''; others might be reminded of [[EdwardScissorhands Edward Scissorhands]], or Brandon Lee in ''Film/TheCrow''.