Adaptational Badass / Video Games

Adaptational Badass in Video Games.

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Videogames with their own pages:

• Black Mesa
• Pokémon GO

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Other videogames

• Alien: Isolation: Enforced by plot, thanks to the addition of non-xenomorph enemies and actual weapons combined with the retention of the originally planned "sneak and hide focused" Survival Horror gameplay. In the movie continuities, xenomorphs are dangerous, but of a "Glass Cannon with acidic blood" flavor, being difficult to kill only when they can't be allowed to bleed or the humans have no weapons. In the game, the lone xenomorph is, by demands of the plot, an Implacable Man, which can't be more than staggered by any weapons the player has. This can be handwaved to an extent (the flamethrower is a jury-rigged piece of junk, the pistol and shotgun are deliberately low-velocity to avoid hull-breaches, the technology in general is less advanced than that in the second film), but when pipe bombs detonated right at the alien's feet merely scare it off, and it's immune to the bolt gun, which can oneshot kill Working Joes. This has led to backlash.
• Arm Joe: Les Misérables by Victor Hugo is a classic work of Historical Fiction of a philosophical and dramatic nature that follows the struggles of average people in a changing and turbulent France during the early Nineteenth century. However, in 1998 an individual developer going by the name of "Takase" made it the basis of a flashy Street Fighter style fighting game logically enough. ^{In Fairness}it should be noted that Arm Joe is also an Affectionate Parody of the Fighting game genre The likes of Jean Valjean, Javert, and other characters from Hugo's novel go from being ordinary people to being fighters who can perform Shoryukens and other stylistic attacks and even go toe to toe with a robot called "Robojean" and an overpowered personification of Judgement itself.
• Azumanga Fighter is a doujin Fighting Game based on the popular manga and anime Azumanga Daioh, which is not precisely remembered for having anything to do with combat, and here they are, as powerful combatants in a fighting game which doesn't take itself too seriously, as expected from anything based on a comedy manga, the characters sports comedic moves and styles, while throwing the occasional Shout-Out to the manga series.
• Baldur's Gate III:
  • Cambions as presented in the 5th Edition Monster Manual are generally low-level soldiers and attendants for greater fiendish powers; dangerous for a level 1-4 party, certainly, but still very much grunts. The cambions in this game, Raphael and Mizora, are beings whose powers far outstrip those of the player characters, with the former casually teleporting the party to his domain to offer a solution to their tadpole problem, and the latter possessing enough power to act as a warlock patron for Wyll. However, cambions are listed as a source for an infernal patron in the Player's Handbook, with Lorcan, the patron for Farideh from the novel Brimstone Angels, listed as an example due to his collection of warlocks.
    • Raphael is justified that he's both the son of Mephistopheles and is old enough that he watched the literal fall of the Netherese Empire. Mizora is harder to justify, but given her status and position, she may simply be acting as a "broker" of sorts for Zariel, who is easily strong enough to serve as a warlock's patron.
  • A minor case with mage hand cantrip. In the tabletop game itself, mage hand is a useful non-combat spell for manipulating objects from a safe distance, such as disarming traps or retrieving objects, but that's really the extent of its main uses, and one of the first limits specified in the ruleset as written is that it cannot attack. Also to use it during a combat encounter, it requires using your action to do so. In this game, the mage hand acts as its own entity (even taking its own initiative so as to not rob you of your action), and can attack and shove enemies, even taking opportunity attacks. The hand does have only 3 hit points, but its function is more akin to a summoned familiar than the mage hand proper. The only downside of its adaptation to the game is that you can now only use the cantrip once per short rest, rather than at will like every other cantrip. The exception is an Arcane Trickster rogue, whose mage hand practically becomes a Familiar: lasting more or less forever unless dismissed or destroyed, able to pick locks and disarm traps, enable your Sneak Attacks, and summonable whenever you want instead of once per short rest.
  • Almost every class has had some added ability or functionality from the tabletop. Paladins for example get a new "Channel Oath" ability from their oath atop their usual oath feature and oath spells. Oath of the Ancients paladins can use it as a AOE heal over time, Devotion paladins get automatic radiant damage to enemies who hit them, and Vengeance paladins can make theirs or an ally's weapon deal radiant damage and inflict the dazed condition. Casters who prepare spells can swap their prepared spells out of combat without resting. This leads to every class being more powerful than their tabletop counterparts.
  • In the tabletop version, elder brains are completely immobile, living inside liquid tanks that sustains them and the colony's tadpoles. They are sometimes depicted as hovering just above said pool. Their size varies from the size of a large car to that of a pool. Their only physical ability is to use tendrils to grapple and choke threats, depending on their awesome psionics and spells for protection. In the game the Absolute, having evolved into a Netherbrain, is gigantic, big enough for the entire party to have a fight with a dragon on top of it. It also does not require its tank, being fully mobile. This is apparently the result of possessing the Crown of Karsus, which is the source of its tadpoles' enhanced abilities.
  • In tabletop play, speak with animals only affects creatures with the beast type. Meaning it has no effect on owlbears or displacer beasts (who fall under the monstrosity creature type) or familiars (who, while they look like animals, are celestial, fey, or fiend spirits taking on animal form). The game employs a much broader definition of beasts, greatly expanding the spell's use and allowing its users to make contact and potentially ally with a lot of creatures.
  • In the first two games Boo is an inventory item for Minsc and any ass-kicking done by him is offscreen and may be the work of Minsc's imagination. Here Boo is a summonable pet with a whopping 20 HP and hits comparable to a long sword. He has better stats than a starting PC fighter. To the point where there's several videos online of Boo delivering the killing blow to various act 3 villains.
  • Lightning bolt does potent damage, but has to share spell slots with the vaunted fireball. In 5e it's not common to take it outside of RP reasons because the narrow blast corridor makes it hard to use in comparison, but here the corridor is about twice as wide as it should be, making it much easier to compete with fireball.
  • In tabletop, mind flayers are restricted in their choices for hosts for ceremorphosis to humans, elves, drow, githyanki, githzerai, grimlocks, gnolls, human-sized goblinoids, and orcs — creatures outside the average height range for those races cause the tadpole's evolution to proceed either too fast or too slowly, with both resulting in both the host and the tadpole's death. As a result, races such as the duergar, dwarves, and halflings are considered nonviable for ceremorphosis. Gnomes are also uniquely unsuitable, as while they are more likely to survive the process, the resulting ceremorph is smaller, weaker, more likely to be free-willed, and may also suffer from an imperfect transformation which limits their intelligence and reduces their power even further. In the game, succumbing to ceremorphosis will result in a healthy, full-sized mind flayer regardless of the character's race, even if playing as one of the usually unacceptable hosts. Presumably the tadpoles created by the Absolute allow them to bypass at least some of their usual limitations.
  • Acid splash in the tabletop game is often regarded as one of the weaker offensive cantrips in 5e, using d6s for damage instead of eight- or ten-siders like most other damage-dealing cantrips, in return for with the ability to potentially hit two enemies if they're next to each other. While it keeps the weak damage dice in BG3, it's been changed so that it now hits all targets in a 10' radius, making it actually a fairly good crowd-control effect against weak enemies when you don't want to waste a spell slot to cast shatter or fireball.
  • In tabletop, the disguise self spell is an illusion, essentially a hologram you place over yourself that can't stand up to physical scrutiny, nor can it account for changes in height or number of limbs. In this game, it's treated as a polymorph, i.e. a physical transformation, meaning it allows you to do things like turn into a gnome in order to fit through a small hole, or use equipment that is locked to a specific race, and is much harder to detect. The only downside is that it now can't be used to imitate a specific person, instead being limited to a certain number of preset appearances.
• Batman: Arkham Series:
  • Arguably Batman himself! Arkham Batman is probably the strongest Batman incarnation of all time. In the first game, Batman: Arkham Asylum, he was injected with Scarecrow's toxin multiple times and fought through it with no rest or antidote. In the second game, Batman: Arkham City he can punch Mr. Freeze's suit with his bare hands hurting Mr. Freeze and earlier on took out the immortal Solomon Grundy. In the prequel, Batman: Arkham Origins, he defeated Lady Shiva twice, once when he was still in training; defeated Deathstroke without problems in his 2nd year; beat up Killer Croc; and Bane did the backbreaker on him....and COULDN'T break his back, unlike in the comics and Nolanverse. Really nothing more to be said.
  • The first game, Batman: Arkham Asylum, gives us an actually scary version of the Scarecrow. In other media, Scarecrow was just a guy dressed in a crappy Halloween costume who relied on his hallucinating drugs to strike terror in his victims. In the game, he's a Manipulative Bastard and an Evil Genius who can cause psychological horror without using his drugs. His biography describes him as one of Batman's most dangerously psychologically challenging foes. For good reason too. It gets taken to all new levels later when he becomes the Big Bad of Batman: Arkham Knight and becomes the first villain in any version of Batman ever to unmask him to the world.
  • Whilst Tim Drake in the comics is by no means un-badass, his Batman: Arkham City appearance definitely seems to be aiming for a grittier approach to the character, with a far more chiseled and muscled appearance, a buzz cut, and the idea that he takes part in cage-fighting in his spare time.
  • While most incarnations of Jason Todd are badasses in their own right, none of them are at the level of the incarnation in Arkham Knight, who leads an army of professional killers as the titular Arkham Knight, specifically trained by him to kill Batman and manages to take over Gotham in mere hours.
  • In the comics and most adaptations, Hugo Strange is a criminal mastermind or conman whereas in Arkham City he is a Manipulative Bastard who gets the top on all of Batman's rogues except Joker. Likewise in the comics, Hugo Strange was the first villain to learn of Batman's identity but in the original story, Strange Apparitions, it came about because he trapped Batman and unmasked him and in Prey he managed to trick Batman into revealing it, whereas here he's competent enough as a shrink to create an accurate psychological profile of Batman from a distance.
  • Calendar Man goes from a harmless gimmick villain to being a vicious serial killer who is genuinely menacing, while the Riddler's Obsessively Organized nature leads him to build many a Death Trap, serving as a Wild Card who creates a network of informants in different factions and as an unofficial Knowledge Broker for Gotham's underworld. Mr. Freeze and Clayface likewise have a larger profile in these games, with Mr. Freeze providing Batman the most intricate Boss Fight of the entire series and Clayface being the Final Boss of Arkham City, providing the largest character model as well as being one of the few villains Batman uses lethal force against.
• Batman: The Telltale Series does this with the Riddler, who's usually reduced to a pathetic joke who screws himself over between his Awesome Ego and his compulsion to leave behind clues. Here, Riddler is an international terrorist who was active before Bruce Wayne was even born, had Gotham's crimelords terrified of crossing him, and let himself get thrown into Santa Prisca (the prison that created Bane) just so he could bust it wide open mere minutes later, releasing all the inmates. During the game itself he makes use of horrific death-traps, fights Batman to a standstill despite being a couple of decades older thanks to Awesomeness by Analysis, hands Batman a moral defeat by setting up a no-win situation that even he can't thwart, and kills Lucius Fox. Oh, and he doesn't leave behind clues, either. This is later revealed to be due to being exposed to an experimental virus that enhanced his physical and mental attributes while also decreasing his mental stability.
  • Harley Quinn's backstory does not involve the Joker, meaning that she became a criminal by herself and thus is far more assertive and brutal. She also serves as the de-facto leader of The Pact after Riddler's death and her relationship with "John Doe" (this universe's version of Joker) inverts their typical dynamic, with John being the Sycophantic Servant while she's the one who pushes him around. At first: Joker inevitably turns the tables and assumes the role of the final antagonist.
• Battle Cats Rangers:
  • Tank Cat is one of the game's heroes, and is thus capable of dishing out massive amounts of damage, which is a stark contrast to its non-existent damage output in The Battle Cats.
  • Many of the helpers qualify, but special mention goes to:
    • Gold Cat is a Junk Rare in the original game, but one of the strongest helpers here.
    • Dread Pirate Catley is one of the weakest Cats for direct attack in the original, being made to knock back Red enemies instead of dealing damage. Here, it's the strongest helper outside of Valkyrie Cat and Bahamut Cat.
    • Valkyrie and Bahamut themselves are outclassed by a lot of other backliners in the original, but are the strongest helpers here.
• Several characters in Blade Strangers get this, Quote from Cave Story goes from a cute chibi robot to a muscular gun/blade Dual Wielding badass and fellow robot Curly Brace is more trigger happy too. Umihara Kawase goes from a mere platforming sushi chef to a knife-fighting expert. Guest characters like Shovel Knight goes from a stout knight to a massive powerhouse and in this game Issac from The Binding of Isaac isn't crying because of his abusive mother, his tears are Berserker Tears.
• Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth does this to the main character. In the original story The Shadow Over Innsmouth the main character visits Innsmouth on a whim and is chased out of town before passing out from terror upon seeing a Deep One. His involvement with Innsmouth ends there as the authorities take over. In the game, that's only the end of the first half of the game, with the second half seeing him return to Innsmouth with Hoover, the FBI, and the U.S. Marine Corps and personally destroying the Marsh family and the Deep Ones.
• Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion did this. While characters like Numbuh 1, The Powerpuff Girls, and Samurai Jack were always pretty badass to begin with, the game also has characters like Mac and Bloo, Chowder, Flapjack, and even Captain K'Nuckles able to hold their own in a fight.
• Castlevania:
  • The series as a whole would give this treatment to Dracula. While the count was always pretty badass in the original book he was still vulnerable to all the regular vampire weaknesses (except sunlight) and got killed by an British lawyer and a Texan armed with knives. The Castlevania games upgrades Dracula from a “mere” strong vampire to a Person of Mass Destruction and Reality Warper who as the avatar of The Anti-God Chaos on Earth is essentially a Physical God who can shapeshift into all manner of massive demons (and a big painting) not just a wolf or bat like the novel. Tellingly Death The Grim Reaper himself, is just a lackey to Dracula who is just far more powerful in comparison. He’s also much harder to kill than in the book or most versions of him (barring Hellsing) as even when the Belmonts and other supernatural hunters kill him, Dracula just comes back a century or so later and it takes the combined forces of Julius Belmont and Dracula’s son Alucard sealing Dracula's Castle in the moon, cutting the link of Dracula's soul from Chaos just to make sure he is Killed Off for Real. Although he reincarnates into Soma Cruz anyway.
  • Another character from the book, Lucy Westenra whose main purpose was being the Too Good for This Sinful Earth victim of Dracula, is reimagined in Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls into a good sorceress of the anti-Dracula agency who can resurrect people. This in stark contrast to Mina Harker’s expy Mina Hakuba from Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, who gets the usual Chickification being the meek Satellite Love Interest to the protagonist Soma, unlike the original Mina of novel who actually got involved in the action.
  • Carmilla like Dracula gets this from her original book (which actually predates Bram’s Stoker Dracula), as Carmilla goes from a run-of-the-mill sneaky lesbian vampire who gets killed by Muggles to a very powerful Recurring Boss who has a large array of demonic powers and forms. She’s even depicted as being one of the Elite Mooks of Dracula alongside the aforementioned Death.
  • Frankenstein's Monster a recurring enemy is much more dangerous in the games than he is in the original book or Universal movies having Shock and Awe powers and can make the castle shake by stomping the ground. Igor a craven hunchback in the Universal movie and other media, is much more badass as he accompanies the Wretch in the games and they perform a Combination Attack together in battle.
  • Legion in The Bible was just a regular man with many demons inside him which Jesus removes. In Castlevania Legion is a massive sphere-like floating Body of Bodies and one of the most challenging boss fights in the series.
  • Overlaps with Historical Badass Upgrade but Elizabeth Bartley goes from a regular aristocratic Serial Killer to an all powerful female vampire antagonist in Castlevania: Bloodlines who can shoot fireballs and teleport around.
  • In general the Holy Weapons the vampire-hunting protagonists use are given much more visual flair and overall power compared to most media depictions, where crucifixes and other Holy items just ward off vampires. In the Castlevania games, it’s full on Anime Catholicism territory with the Belmonts and other vampire hunters busting out Holy Hand Grenade powers using talismans which fry vampires and other monsters into ash or summoning massive crucifixes. Even something as simple as Holy Water (which rarely does any real damage to vampires in fiction), is reimagined as basically a Holy Molotov Cocktail that breaks open when thrown and unleashes a sacred flame upon monsters.
• A milder example is the 'commando' from Command & Conquer, who suffered Crippling Overspecialization and was weaker than basic grunts against vehicles. The First-Person Shooter Renegade made him a badass wielding all weapons and more, which included three vehicle-killers.
• CP3D: The Cactus and Plunger Power Card animations were relatively tame in the original Club Penguin. The third dimension allows for new camera movements and more dramatic poses that make them seem more impressive in comparison.
• Season 3 of Crash Team Rumble brings in Elora as a Hero. She goes from being almost entirely reliant on Spyro and supporting him on the sidelines, to fully capable of kicking Ripto's (as well as everyone else's) ass with kicks and tornadoes, and has a complimentary healing power to boot.
• Creed: Rise to Glory takes some liberties with various characters Donnie fought (or didn't fight, or who didn't even exist) in the film Creed. Every opponent except Conlan is hyped up to be much more dangerous and important than they were in the movie — including an unnamed bouncer from the club where Donnie punched out a performer.
• Cyberpunk 2077: The game's version of Johnny Silverhand is significantly more badass than the tabletop version. Tabletop Silverhand was pretty hard, but not the kind of guy who could go toe-to-toe with corporate spec ops units and win, like his video game counterpart. This turns out to be due to Silverhand's memories being heavily colored by a combination of his egoism as well as the process that turned him into a Virtual Ghost that led him to believe in a severely distorted version of the past (most significantly how Morgan Blackhand was absent from events while Johnny was treated as Adam Smasher's nemesis when canonically he was barely a blip on Smasher's radar).
• Darkstalkers being a Monster Mash Fighting Game by Capcom naturally does this to several iconic horror monsters as well as figures from folklore.
  • The crowning example: Baby Bonnie Hood (Bulleta in Japan) whom is based on Little Red Riding Hood, but instead of being a vulnerable little girl who delivers food to her grandma, in Darkstalkers she’s a Fake Cutie Hunter of Monsters who unleashes More Dakka with an arsenal of guns. Word of God states she’s the most dangerous member of the cast (which includes demon lords mind you) despite being human.
  • Frankenstein's Monster is hardly a slouch even when he is Dumb Muscle, but Darkstalkers's Victor is like a fusion of Hulk and Mr Fantastic with the ability to inflate his already massive limbs to effectively empower his attacks. Victor also has Shock and Awe powers which the original monster did not have.
  • The original Creature from the Black Lagoon was a pretty threatening monster with his scaly hide and claws, but his Darkstalkers's expy Rikuo (Aulbath in Japan) is much stronger being able to shapeshift his body, giving himself crab pincers, puffer fish spikes and more impressively has a variety of Making a Splash powers which naturally the original “Gill-Man” lacked.
  • The Wolf Man of series, Jon Talbain (Gallon in Japan) rather than just being a poor schmuck who turns into a Werewolf at the full moon, is a Bruce Lee-esque nunchuck wielding martial artist with Ki Manipulation who as expanded material shows can take on Ryu of Street Fighter fame.
  • The Mummy of the series Anakaris, is way more badass the Boris Karloff version or most Mummies in pop culture, being a shapechanging god-like Reality Warper who can telekinetically lift his entire kingdom and even travel through time.
  • Most Jiangshi (a Chinese Vampire) are depicted as shambling creatures who being unable to bend their limbs hop around. Hsien-Ko (Lei-Lei in Japan) however very different being very flexible and agile as well as having a Hammerspace arsenal and massive claws which Jiangshi of ancient Chinese folklore lack.
  • Morrigan of Irish mythology whom Morrigan Aensland gets upgraded from “mere” shapechanging goddess, to a being so powerful the Dark Messiah fears her strength if she reunites her Split at Birth Soul Jar. Additionally it’s a case of Adaptational Badass for Succubuses in general as Morrigan has various powers (including jet packs and More Dakka techno canons) that the Succubus of folklore don’t have.
  • The series’s Dracula expy Demitri Maximoff is naturally more badass than the literary and film count being more akin to the Castlevania version possessing incredible Playing with Fire powers, Hadoken-like energy attacks, Gender Bender powers and can harness and absorb energy with his Battle Aura — which helped Demitri kick ass of the series’ first Big Bad the energy alien Pyron.
• Deltarune makes several changes to the monsters seen in Undertale. In Undertale, it's stated that all monsters are physically weaker than humans, worsened by their vulnerability to Killing Intent. In Deltarune this doesn't appear to be the case for either Lightner or Darkner monsters. Susie, a monster, ends up having greater attack power and health than Kris, a human, though their strengths are only able to be compared in the Dark World. Likewise, Darkner monsters are able to survive being drained of HP, instead either fleeing the battle or being knocked down.
• The crossover Fighting Game Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax has characters from series with mundane settings be able to go toe-to-toe with characters who have magical powers or above-average fighting abilities. Watch as relatively normal characters such as Kirino, Taiga, or Tomoka (an elementery grade school basketball player), who have no powers whatsoever, can keep up with superpowered adversaries, including, but not limited to: a Flame Haze, a Level-5 Esper, two skilled VRMMO fighters, an inhumanly strong guy who dresses as a bartender, a Level-9 Burst Linker, a magician (two by the time of Ignition),a martial artist and a Valkyria. among others; yet they're still able to hold their own against these adversaries using only regular objects from their home series.
• Taizo Hori, hero of the original Dig Dug, and member of the Mr. Driller cast, pictured on the main page in his appearance in Namco × Capcom. Besides changing his look to one that's more realistic and rugged, the game also altered his background so that he's a former soldier in addition to being a digger of many kinds. Actually, Namco × Capcom has a lot of this.
• A number of playable characters in the Disney mobile RPG Disney Heroes: Battle Mode are characters who have never been officially depicted in their source material as having any sort of ability to fight, most notably Linguini, Olaf, Alice, Clawhauser and Yax, and even Winnie the Pooh.
• Disney's Magical Quest: Pete is typically just a regular thug in the cartoons and comics who can be overpowered by the Mouseton police without much effort, or even a bumbling Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain; here he's reimagined as a badass Evil Overlord with vast sorcerous powers.
• In The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri never does anything violent throughout his journey through the afterlife. In the very first level of Dante's Inferno, he kills The Grim Reaper and steals his scythe, which he naturally ends up using against the souls of Hell and Lucifer. Most of the damned historical figures in the poem qualify here as well; for example, Cleopatra is now a thirty-foot-tall succubus, and the Boss of the circle of Lust. Lucifer, who was a loser in the poem counts too; not anymore, but he is portrayed as the stereotypical raving lunatic.
• Dragon Ball:
  • In DBZ Fighting Games like Super Dragon Ball Z, Supersonic Warriors, Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi and Dragon Ball Fighter Z where characters like Chi-Chi and Hercule are playable alongside other weaker characters like Videl, Nam and Yajirobe, they all get this by default being able to throw it down against and defeat opponents like Frieza, Cell, Buu, Beerus, Whis, Jiren and Broly who can destroy galaxies with their fingertips. Chi-Chi in particular getting this in Super Dragon Ball Z and Budokai Tenkaichi 3 (the latter of which she’s her kid self) is most impressive as she wasn’t particularly strong as a child and even as an adult didn’t do much fighting after becoming a mother, yet in both games she can throw it down with the strongest in the universe using the Bansho Fan. Fighter Z gloriously gives Yamcha this treatment; not only is he a Rushdown character whose speed is "S" and has a fantastic assist move, but his unique dramatic finish against Nappa shows how the fight would go down if Yamcha truly was the badass we want him to be.
  • Captain Ginyu becomes one in Dragon Ball Xenoverse — in the anime/manga, he couldn't use the techniques of those he changed bodies with. Here, however, he's able to use Goku's Kamehameha and even go Super Saiyan with no difficulty.
    • From the same game is Mr. Satan/Hercule — while his moves are weak and over half his skills are useless, his Rolling Hercule Punch and Dynamite Kick are effective if used right, so a good player could make him a Lethal Joke Character.
    • Also from the same game is Krillin. In the original series, his attempt to cut Vegeta's tail to revert him from his great ape form to his original form failed, and it was Yajirobe who did it. In Xenoverse, Krillin succeeded in cutting off Vegeta's tail, and it's treated as if he did the same thing in the original timeline as well.
    • The Earthling race as a whole get this treatment in Xenoverse. In the main series while the likes of Yamcha, Master Roshi and Krillin are incredibly strong in their own right, they are still vastly overshadowed by alien races like the Saiyans and Namekians and can't hope to keep up with the god-like foes seen later in the series. In Xenoverse a Earthling Player Character and other Time Patrollers from Earth are immensely powerful and can match even the likes of Beerus a Physical God, In-Universe even Hit is shocked and impressed at how Earthlings can overcome power gaps through sheer skill and determination.
  • Gohan gets this treatment a lot in Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, which adapted the series' story more closely reminiscent of Dragon Ball Z The Legacy Of Goku. Here he's portrayed as a much more willing combatant against the Saiyans in the game fighting against the Saibamen alongside Yamcha and facing Nappa with Krillin and Tien, while in the original manga and anime he was too afraid to fight for much of the early portions of the battle. Additionally, he fights a weakened Vegeta on slightly more even terms before his Great Ape transformation. Similarly, he is both willing and capable of fighting Cell when he's a Super Saiyan 1, in contrast with his canon reluctance and the Curb-Stomp Battle he received. Plus, Future Gohan is able to hold his own against the Androids before being overwhelmed more effectively than in the Dragon Ball Z: The History of Trunks special (which in turn made him stronger than in the manga).
• Dynasty Warriors: Gundam turns a few notable Gundam characters into this, most notably Elle Vianno, who was pretty inept with the Gundam Mk-II, and Lacus Clyne, whose only moment of piloting a Mobile Suit was guiding the Infinite Justice down to Earth.
• Ebenezer and the Invisible World features Ebenezer Scrooge, the crotchety old man from A Christmas Carol, as a Metroidvania protagonist capable of whacking people with his cane like a sword, jumping across platforms and gaining the assistance of ghosts.
• The Doujin Soft Fighting Game Eternal Fighter Zero features characters from diverse Visual Novels by Key/Visual Arts, such as ONE, Kanon, Moon and AIR. These stories hardly have anything to do with combat, and despite that, in EFZ they were all given amazing powers and fun fighting styles, referencing aspects from the novels themselves, as well as other fighting games, such as Street Fighter, The King of Fighters or Guilty Gear.
• Applied to an item in Fighting Fantasy Legends by Nomad Games. The Pocket Myriad from The Citadel of Chaos was broken, so it could only be used once and if used against Balthus Dire, the Pocket Myriad became a magnificent Sun Sword...which gets you killed (beating Balthus Dire in combat required a special sword found in a cupboard). But in this video game adaptation which combined this book with The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and City of Thieves, the Pocket Myriad goes up a notch. In the Citadel of Chaos, the Pocket Myriad can be used as often as needed and it's the Kryptonite Factor to Balthus Dire. The item creates the Sun Sword which gives huge bonuses against Dire, who has no other weaknesses to exploit in this adaptation.
  • Also applies to the throwing knife, in City of Thieves the throwing knife could only be used in a single encounter and that was against a pair of weak vagabonds. Here you can use throwing knives in any combat encounter you have, including against the bosses. And you can keep re-purchasing the throwing knife at the Port Blacksand market and the Tall Man in Black Tower allowing you to shank an opponent twice before combat happens. Additionally no silver arrow, you buy a silver throwing knife against Zanbar Bone and his undead manservant.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy
    • For twenty years, Garland in Final Fantasy was known for two things: his famous declaration that he "will knock you all down!" and being the first boss in the series. Then Dissidia Final Fantasy was released. Now Garland is a Boisterous Blood Knight with a transforming BFS bigger than entire characters, his hamminess was ramped up, and he got a few shades of Deadpan Snarker. His archrival, Warrior of Light, went from being a Featureless Protagonist to being a Fettered Cape, a paragon for light and goodness that refuses to give up no matter the odds. And the Big Bad of the original game, Chaos? He's raised up from a generic demon to a Physical God that is able to call upon the other Final Fantasy villains to serve him, effectively making him the Greater-Scope Villain of the entire series. And just wait until you see him fight...
    • Firion and The Emperor get similar treatment. Firion went from having virtually no personality to being a Hot-Blooded rebel who is a master of seven different styles of combat, and carries around enough weapons to supply an army. The Emperor went from being a generic, well, Emperor, to being a Chessmaster who turns all the heroes and even a few villains into Unwitting Pawns in his scheme to overthrow Chaos and take over all existence.
    • In the prequel, Laguna Loire also got this treatment. In his original game, he wasn't particularly special in combat, he fired a couple blasts from his trademark machine gun as his normal attack and for a Limit Break threw a grenade and fired his machine gun double-time. In Dissidia 012? He's the living embodiment of More Dakka, packing rocket launchers, a machine gun, various types of grenade, a sniper rifle, and a giant laser cannon in the shape of the airship Ragnarok. And his Limit Break? Calling all his weapons together to form a Wave-Motion Gun.
  • One of the largest upgrades happens in Final Fantasy VII with spells. Meteor and Holy had been recurring powerful Black and White spells, respectively. In the seventh installment they are boosted far beyond that to plot devices as the Black and White Materia and were capable of wiping out or defending the entire planet. The series-wide reference was lost for most western audiences due to the then lack of previous installments and inconsistent translation.^note Holy was renamed to Fade, White, and Pearl in the three that made it over.
  • In most of his appearances since Final Fantasy V, Gilgamesh has been a loveable dimension-hopping goofball whose appearances always entailed comedic shenanigans. His appearance in Final Fantasy XV as the boss of the DLC chapter "Episode Gladiolus", in stark contrast, is a stoic, stone-cold badass who is regarded across Eos as the World's Best Warrior, who killed almost every warrior who crossed blades with him, save for one: the man who took his arm (and even after, he can easily match Gladiolus with just one arm).
  • Final Fantasy VII Remake: Several characters or bosses get this treatment compared to their Final Fantasy VII versions:
    • Remake greatly plays up Cloud's status as an Experienced Protagonist, with him often being regarded as a veteran combat expert by other characters as well as putting on his Super-Soldier traits in full force, particularly in cutscenes where he performs all kind of crazy combat feats. He's also shown to be able to defeat enemies alone (such as Reno) that he would never be able to in the original game. Additionally Cloud is shown to be able to resist Sephiroth’s control over him in Remake, unlike the original game where he was completely susceptible to him before Tifa fixed his mind.
    • Tifa was always pretty badass in gameplay, but story-wise her most notable canon battles was a girly slap fight with Scarlet and getting beaten up by Loz. Remake however makes it clear Tifa is the strongest combatant next to Cloud himself, with her being able to perform insane feats of strength in cutscenes and finish off powerful foes like Eligor. She even sends Sephiroth flying with a somersault kick to save Cloud and Aerith.
    • Aerith goes from the White Mage to The Red Mage using more offensive magic and shows skill in hand to hand combat, effortlessly beating down Don Corneo's mooks. She can even take on Sephiroth and land the final blow on him. Her timid ingenue traits from Crisis Core are gone completely.
    • Yuffie is way stronger than she ever was in the original game and following titles where she was mostly all talk and relied primary on trickery. As seen in Intergrade, she's able to take on massive Shinra mecha, Dark Action Girl Scarlet and even an Ax-Crazy Super-Soldier such as Nero.
    • Don Corneo effortlessly disarms Leslie when Leslie threatens him with a gun, compared to him having no combat prowess in the original.
    • The only reason the Guard Scorpion is remembered in the original is because of the memetic Tutorial Failure as a combination of bad translation and an unfortunately broken-up set of instructions making new players eat his Counter-Attack. In Remake (where it's renamed the Scorpion Sentinel), it serves as a Wake-Up Call Boss for players that haven't got used to the combat system. The damn thing goes absolutely ballistic, tears up the entire reactor room while bombarding Cloud and Barret with bullets and missiles, has a barrier system, can discharge an EMP field, and just when you think it's finally about to kick the bucket, it has an auto-regenerative emergency mode that forces players to chop it down to size fast.
    • In the original game, the Airbuster was something of a pushover once you managed to lock its movement, and wasn't much of a challenge. Here, if the player doesn't go out of their way to sabotage its development, it lives up to its designation as a Super Prototype.
    • Compared to Reno, Rude is portrayed as being very strong and more dangerous. While Cloud nearly kills Reno in their Duel Boss, Rude only stopped fighting Cloud and Aerith because he was called off, with it being treated less like a victory, and more like a draw of sorts. Notably when he shows up to fight alongside Reno in the Sector 7 Pillar, the game paints it as being much more serious now.
    • Rufus Shinra was an underwhelming Duel Boss against Cloud that went down pretty quickly and mainly relied on his attack dog Dark Nation to do the real damage. In Remake, he is far more threatening and impressive, carrying around an ornate shotgun that can split into a pair of Hand Cannons, pulling off various Combination Attacks with Darkstar, tossing around coins and shooting them out of the air for a variety of deadly effects, using his shotgun to propel himself around the helicopter pad as a sort of improvised Flash Step, and parrying Cloud's BFS swings with his gun.
    • Scarlet in the original game relied on Mooks and her only fight was a trading slap Cat Fight with Tifa. In Remake she's pretty much the Baroness of Shrina being a powerful figure who wields great power and influence and in Intergrade puts up a real fight piloting a Mini-Mecha.
    • In the original game, Shinra defeated Wutai in a war and Wutai was reduced to a tourist attraction, with only a few members like Yuffie trying desperately to restore them to their former glory. In the remake, the war ended in a ceasefire. Wutai is still an active political power and widely considered a threat by Shinra, who want to start another war to wipe them out. Yuffie is on a mission from her government instead of a desperate remnant.
  • Final Fantasy Record Keeper puts characters from all over the franchise — including a handful of NPCs who never saw combat in their home games — on roughly equal footing, from blind witch Matoya, Fairy Companion Echo, and Non Action Girl Minfilia.
  • In Final Fantasy, Bikke and his pirate crew have to be chased out of the town of Pravoka before your party can do any business there. You don't fight Bikke himself, and his pirates are as easily defeated as normal enemies. In Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, where you get to fight Bikke head-on, he comes armed with a large two-handed axe and a box full of molotov cocktails and takes a good deal of damage before you can take him down.
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses' Fleche is the younger sister of Imperial general Randolph, and doesn't see any action on the front lines of the war. The closest she gets is a failed Assassination Attempt on Dimitri on the Azure Moon story route after he threatened Randolph with Cold-Blooded Torture. In Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, she takes up swordsmanship and is entrusted with protecting key positions for the Imperial army as a supporting NPC on the Scarlet Blaze route, and appears as a boss in Part II of the Azure Gleam and Golden Wildfire routes.
• Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage featured Mamiya as a full playable character. In the series, she was shown to be reasonably affective against small groups of Mooks, but against large forces or serious Martial Artist types, she'd inevitably turn into a Damsel in Distress in need of rescuing. Being a playable character, however, means that she's now fighting on par with Kenshiro himself — tearing through armies of hundreds if not thousands, and singlehandedly disassembling top-tier bosses. It probably helps that she's picked up an Automatic Crossbow somewhere — heck, she can even pull a SECOND one out of Hammerspace for one of her Signature Moves.
  • Lin, the Token Mini-Moe Kawaiiko in the series as an adult has the same weapon usage as Mamiya. But what differentiates her from Mamiya is that she can pick up a steel girder as a weapon as the playable men can do and Mamiya can't. Damn...
• Arthur from Ghosts 'n Goblins is a little guy in a suit of armor. When he appeared in Cannon Spike, he notably was changed into a giant, muscular weapon of destruction.
• Some of the gods in the God of War series are depicted as being much stronger than the Greek Myths presented them as:
  • Ares, the Big Bad of the first game, is presented as a titanic warrior the requires a MacGuffin for Kratos to have a fighting chance against, where in the Greek myths he was a coward that would run away from a fight at the first sign of trouble despite being immortal (though Ares as an Adaptational Badass is also done in every other adaption of him — including Roman mythology)
  • Persephone in Chains of Olympus, who was simply mentioned as being dragged off by Hades in the Greek myths, is presented as being able to fight Kratos in hand-to-hand combat.
  • God of War (PS4): Baldur was best known in the Norse myths for dying. Here, he is portrayed as a super-strong, fast and immortal fighter that manages to give a lot of trouble to Kratos.
  • Kratos himself, in the Greek Myths Kratos or Cratos was a minor deity whose single scummy role in Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound was to coerce Hephaestus in torturing Prometheus. In the games Kratos is a ridiculously strong berserker who can decimate the entire Greek Pantheon, Titans and kill multiple Norse gods.
• Unlike in the original Gradius, Xaerous Brain is not a Zero-Effort Boss in the fan game Universe, but has plasma cannons and a regenerating barrier.
• The titular character of Guenevere can be upgraded from her traditional Damsel in Distress characterization from the original legends to a Action Girl swordmaster, a Lady of Black Magic, or The Strategist of her husband's army.
• Hades:
  • Zagreus, similar to the Kratos above example is a minor god in Greek Mythology, being a wine god like Dionysus whom he is a Decomposite Character of. In the game Zagreus is a One-Man Army, Lightning Bruiser who personally fights his way out of the Underworld defeating the Furies, Theseus, Asterius the Minotaru, Thanatos and his father Hades along the way.
  • Like most adaptations, Ares here is portrayed as a competent and calculating War God with Soft-Spoken Sadist vibes completely unlike the Dumb Muscle Boisterous Weakling and Dirty Coward seen in the myths. His sister Athena (whom the ancient Greeks much preferred) in her dialogue with him is cautious of Ares and respects him as a genuine rival, unlike say The Iliad where she rightly thinks he's a loser and curb stomps him.
  • Aphrodite and Dionysus generally aren't combative gods in the myths, but here they provide powerful boons to Zagreus allowing him to hypnotize and intoxicate enemies to an effective degree. Likewise Demeter is a mostly peaceful Earth Mother who at most is a fierce Mama Bear, in the game she is The Dreaded feared by other gods and has turned most of Greece into a Glacial Apocalypse.
  • Asterius was a mindless beast in the myths. Here he is an intelligent armored, battle axe-wielding warrior, who has been offered a seat of honor in Elysium by Theseus after the latter killed him and since then the two have become effective Bash Brothers.
  • Satyrs in Greek Mythology are usually harmless and lustful pranksters, the Satyr Cultists seen in the game are anything but harmless waging war on the Underworld they are powerful enough to be avoid extermination from Hades and give his son Zagreus trouble.
• Halo: Reach does this to the Spartan IIIs. When first mentioned and seen in the books Halo: First Strike and Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, they are largely considered a step down from the stronger and more effective Spartan IIs, being cheaper produce and more expendable in battle. In Halo Reach however the Spartan IIIs among Noble Team and the one you play as, are just as strong and badass as Master Chief himself being able to halt and bring down most of a Covenant fleet by themselves. Justified a bit, since it's specified Noble Team are unique in that they were given MJOLNIR armor and had at least one Spartan II Jorge on the team who ironically dies first.
• Heroes of the Storm:
  • In Heart of the Swarm, Abathur's only purpose was evolving the Zerg. In Heroes, he's still not a fighter, but gains a wide variety of Mission Control type abilities such as summoning mines and spawning locusts, and can place a symbiote over an ally's head to aid them. Both his Heroics also involve him fighting "directly". He can either mutate a minion into a monstrosity that can be controlled, or clone an allied hero to join in the fight.
  • Li Li is probably a bigger example. She went from the tag-along niece of prominent brewmaster Chen Stormstout to a very powerful (if somewhat auto-piloted) healer. She even made it into the game before Chen!
  • Murky the Baby Murloc went from a non-combat companion pet to a bursty (although EXTREMELY squishy) fighter who can go toe-to-toe with characters like Kerrigan or Diablo.
• The Hobbit from 2003 does this to Bilbo. Sure, he doesn't get to fight trolls or dragons but he can fight hordes of goblins, giant spiders, the undead and liches. He can break enemy shields with his sword, and create a shockwave on the floor with his walking stick that sends enemies flying. And he can pole vault with the stick, too.
• Hyrule Conquest takes the defenseless people of The Legend of Zelda and turns them into powerful warlike races; The Anouki are the most extreme example.
• Hyrule Warriors does this quite extensively, as The Legend of Zelda does depend on the player via Link being the only chosen hero. The player characters vary in how they approach this. Some, such as Shiek, Darunia and Midna were implied badasses in their own games, but we never got to see them act that way. Zelda and Impa have been implied to be badasses in some of their games, but make the jump to full-fledged badasses here. And then there are those who became badasses totally under their own merit, such as Ruto or Fi, with the most prominent example being Agitha, who was just a slightly loopy sidequest-giver in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Downloadable Content and Legends add even more of these, both implied (Twili Midna, Skull Kid, Tetra) and self-made (Tingle, King Daphnes, Medli, Marin, Ravio).
  • Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity takes this up a notch. Due to taking place 100 years before The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Link, Zelda and Impa are in their prime, and the Champions are all alive and well as opposed to Posthumous Characters. In addition, thanks to the intervention of Terrako and the New Champions, the heroes actually beat back the Calamity instead of the original timeline where they failed, allowing Zelda to use her full power and King Rhoam to join in on the action. Special mention goes to Master Kohga who goes from a joke fight to a Fighting Clown who's strong enough to take on all four Blight Ganons in his Guardian of Remembrance scenario, Hestu, Purah and Robbie who all fall under the "self-made" category, and Calamity Ganon who becomes a full-on Lightning Bruiser after absorbing Astor.
• Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: The Troodon appear as a more serious threat than in the film.
• Injustice: Gods Among Us Characters like Batman are shown being able to survive being punched into orbit thanks to competitive balance. In-universe, it's the use of Kryptonian nanomachines that handwaves Badass Normal characters being able to fight toe-to-toe with Superman.
• Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds differs significantly from all other versions of the story by giving the Martians immunity to earthly bacteria. They’re also playable in this version, meaning you can fully have the Martians complete their plans of conquering England with presumably the rest of the world following suit.
  • The humans in this game, are actually able to consistently harm the Martian vehicles! In the novel, the only times, the humans killed a martian was by a lucky artillery strike at the vulnerable cockpit. In addition, the vehicles the humans uses such as tanks weren't available in that time period — so humanity has better technology than in the novel.
• Alan Grant in just about every single video game adaptation of Jurassic Park. In both the book and film, he's The Worm Guy who largely gets by running and hiding and doesn't ever kill anything. In games, he becomes a badass Action Hero who expertly wields a plethora of guns and who can kill legions of dinosaurs singlehandedly.
• Kart Fighter is a bootleg fighting game starring the cast of Super Mario Kart (yes, really), so this was almost inevitable for half of the characters (namely Peach, Toad, Yoshi and the Koopa Troopa).
• Mickey Mouse gets this in Kingdom Hearts and Epic Mickey, becoming a Badass Adorable who fights freakish Eldritch Abominations. The former is especially notable in that he's also a king as well as a Keyblade Master.
  • Donald Duck goes from a short tempered household name to a Black Mage who can cast Zetta Flare, and Goofy is a Badass Normal captain of the guard who fights just as well as the characters WITH magic. There's also Chip 'n Dale, who go from regular, Badass Normal Rescue Rangers to building inter-dimensional gunships. Minnie Mouse may also count, but we only get so little out of that Escort Mission in Kingdom Hearts II.
  • Of course, this is just an expansion of the currently underutilized in America side of Mickey as a great adventurer. Comics have always been a place for his badass side to shine, especially in Italy.
  • Also from Epic Mickey, there's the Phantom Blot, a minor (though admittedly effective) criminal mastermind from the comics and a few cartoon appearances, who becomes a horrific monstrosity.
• Jack Driscoll in the 2005 version of King Kong was a pretty meek guy whose every attempt at being heroic always inevitably failed. In Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie, however, he's the human Player Character. Despite having no military training, he wields a variety of firearms, can throw spears like a pro, and kills all sorts of dinosaurs and monsters before getting off the island.
• The biggest draw of Kirby: Revenge of Dream Land, a Game Mod of Kirby's Return to Dream Land designed to push players to the limit, is the fact that every single enemy, up to and including the Final Boss, has been upgraded to pose more of a threat to Kirby. Most of the bosses have all-new attacks and other skills they never used in the base game, such as Whispy Woods, who now coats his bark in invincible silver metal as a reference to his appearance in Kirby and the Rainbow Curse.
• In the Kung Fu Panda movie, Po was a total noob when it came to martial arts and only began to make progress when Master Shifu brought him to the Pool of Sacred Tears. In the original Kung Fu Panda video game, Po demonstrates some skill well before that point, going toe to toe with various Mooks from the Black Hoof Boar Clan, the Gorilla Army, the Imperial Golden Croc Gang and the Lang Shadow Army.
• The Legend of Spyro:
  • Spyro is far more of a fighter than his incarnation from the classic games, and defeats enemies much larger than he is. He's also much more magically powerful, enough so as to be capable of pulling an exploding planet back together by his magical power alone.
  • In the original games, Hunter toes the line between being a semi-competent goofball and an outright Idiot Hero, and often needs to be bailed out of trouble as much as he tries to help Spyro. In the Legend series, he's far more competent and a much more skilled fighter, all of his goofball traits are gone, and he's even more articulate in his dialogue for good measure.
• The LEGO Adaptation Games tend to do this:
  • Smug Snake Dolores Umbridge gets this trope of all people in LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7. In the original books, she is portrayed as mean, but very incompetent when it comes to actual magical knowledge and ability and is never shown participating in real combat. However, when a herd of angry centaurs fire arrows at her in the game, she employs some impressive martial arts moves, such as casually avoiding an arrow, followed a backflip and even kicking one arrow away. She is also a boss fight in the final year, in contrast to the books, where she is knocked out by a single spell.
  • Green Lantern, who was a complete joke in The LEGO Movie, becomes the overall best playable character in the video game adaptation owing to having the super-rare flight ability, a projectile-based attack, and the completely unique yet frequently needed green brick building ability.
  • Virtually every character counts; except for some jokes that can't do anything (like the Gonk Droid and Han Solo In Carbonite) is an example because everyone is playable so everyone needs to be capable of fighting, even if they didn't do much in the original story...or in the cutscenes of the game itself! So you can have Sam taking out hordes of orcs with a frying pan.
• Leifeng Pagoda is a sorta-continuation of the the Chinese literary classic, Lady Whitesnake, with players assuming the role of Xu Meng-jiao, but instead of a scholar like in the novels Meng-jiao's video game counterpart is re-imagined as a sword-wielding Hunter of Monsters who slays gigantic demons and takes plenty of names throughout.
• Madagascar: In the film, the fossa were terrified of Alex. In this game, they will fight him.
• In Mafia II, the Bombers, The Triads and the Tongs, and The Irish Mob are all small fry compared to the far-more influtential Mafia in Empire Bay. In Mafia II: The Betrayal of Jimmy, however, the former 3 are bigger, better organized and led, and are now on par with The Mafia in terms of influence, with each gang having their own established front businesses, rackets, and operations. They even have far more competent Mooks, down to each of them having their own set of Professional Killers on par with the Mafia Soldatos.
• Marvel vs. Capcom:
  • Phoenix Wright, a fairly normal lawyer, is playable in Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. Among the cast are Physical Gods such as Thor, Amaterasu and the other Phoenix to name a few. He's set up as a Lethal Joke Character, with abilities focused on, appropriately, defence.
  • In the same game regular human beings such as Chris Redfield and Mike Haggar respectively fight the Hulk in the animated intros, in the comics they'd be crushed instantly.
  • Even Ryu of Street Fighter, who is never by any means a wimp, gets this treatment. In Street Fighter, all variations of his Hadoken are only Energy Balls/Fireballs, whereas in the Capcom vs. series, the higher-grade Shinku Hadoken becomes a Kamehameha Wave-like Wave-Motion Gun.
  • Dead Rising's Frank West in Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite manages to beat up Thanos at one point, even he can't believe it. But hey Frank's covered (Infinity) wars, you know.
  • In general thanks to Competitive Balance, characters such as the modestly powerful Street Fighter characters, non-fighters like Mega Man’s Roll or outright non-superpowered Badass Normals like RE1 Jill Valentine can all throw down and defeat reality warping/god-like foes such as Onslaught, Shuma-Gorath, Apocalypse, Thanos and Galactus.
• Marvel's Avengers:
  • MODOK is no slouch in the comics, but his status as the game's Big Bad takes him up several notches. While most versions of the character had some form of resources, here he has the full public backing behind for much of the game, and manages to pose a serious threat to the Avengers, in addition to his abilities of technokinesis. By the end of the game, not only does he break out a fully-weaponized version of his rocket chair, with robotic arms and missile launchers, he also summons a reconstructed Kree Sentry.
  • Ms Marvel aka Kamala Khan, while she has her moments is a inexperienced rookie in the comics who is babied by Marvel's heroes regularly. Here however Kamala is much more competent able to keep up with Hulk in a smashing contest and in the climax turns herself into a giant to defeat the Kree Sentry which she has never been able to do in the comics.
  • Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow already very badass in the comics, but she's still Overshadowed by Awesome in both the comics and films and often has a sideline role in most Avengers stories. Here she defeats Taskmaster in her very first gameplay segment and throughout the game she can easily keep up with Iron Man, Thor and Hulk as they destroy armies of foes and can defeat villains who would usally cream her in the comics.
• Mega Man Battle Network
  • Bass.EXE when compared to Bass from the Mega Man (Classic) series, went from a somewhat challenging rival of Mega Man to the Super Boss of the franchise, and with good reason. He is also considerably more unhinged than in the Original series.
  • Gospel/Treble, Bass' Loyal Animal Companion and always The Unfought unless combined with his master, is now an Eldritch Abomination, the Final Boss of Battle Network 2.
• Metal Slug Code J, a loose remake of the 90s arcade game Metal Slug, upgrades the badassery for most of the characters.
  • The players went from a One-Hit-Point Wonder to having their own lifebars, and can survive multiple grenade hits or two tank rounds. But the same goes for the enemy soldiers who went from getting killed by a single bullet to having lifebars as well. Shielded soldiers in the original game panic once they lose their shields, while in the remake they regain their composure and fights back once their covers are blown. Also, rebel sergeants from the original games are ranked In Name Only, despite being an elite soldier they still die from one hit; in the remake the sergeants lives up to their Elite Mook status, requiring around 7 to 10 pistol shots to kill.
  • The Big Shiee boss has been upgraded to having a missile launcher, and the player will spend much of the game fending off its missiles besides dodging it's main cannon, an attack absent in the original games. It also becomes a Recurring Boss that is fought twice.
  • The Mosque Artillery, one of the weakest mid-bosses from the original game, has been beefed up where it's turrets can absorb roughly triple the amount of damage. It's missiles also increase in speed once it Turns Red, a trait absent in the original.
  • The Ohumein-Conga Giant Crab monsters have been upgraded, from a recurring Giant Mook enemy to two King Mook bosses, where their health bars comes in layers. Their bubble attack can spam all the way to covering the whole screen as well.
  • Big John from the original series, one of the easiest Breather Boss of the franchise, gets an upgrade where its descending claws has the ability to electrify surroundings, and its fireball launcher can fire multiple projectiles at a much faster rate, as well as having a powerful and hard-to-dodge energy beam the original version lacks.
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor / Middle-earth: Shadow of War:
  • Sauron receives a huge dose of this due to taking aspects from the movies. In the source material, he never fights anyone unless he is forced to and always end up losing. Here, he is an Physical God and a terrifying enemy so powerful the heroes can only stand against him when wielding an Ring of their own. In addition, its mentioned that Sauron lost the ability to shapeshift when his physical body was destroyed during Numenor's sinking and he was locked into a dark-lord monstrous appearance. This doesn't happen in the games, where he takes a more handsome appearance to deceive his victims into accepting his gifts.
  • Shelob was just a Giant Spider that even a Non-Action Guy like Samwise Gangee was able to drive away with his sword, while Sauron regards her as nothing more than his "cat" — a creature that is not entirely his, but still lives in his domain. Here she is an shadow-weaving Animalistic Abomination considered dangerous enough for Sauron to send all of his Nazgul to hunt down.
• The guy from Minecraft (who's apparently named Steve? (? included)) got this kind of treatment in his cameo appearance in the PC version of Super Meat Boy. Just like in Minecraft Steve? can both lay blocks in the game world as well as dig through anything, making the usually challenging platforming game comically easy. Essentially this ability goes so far beyond game breaking that Steve? is basically bending the game over a table and having his way with it.
• Minecraft: Story Mode: The Command Block is depicted as an extremely powerful artifact with properties that can greatly empower a Wither. Minecraft proper's use for them is to generally for scripting or convenience purposes in non-Creative Mode modes.
• When Freddy Krueger first showed up in Mortal Kombat 9 he seemed like more of an Adaptational Wimp, having lost most of his supernatural powers and being forced to rely almost entirely on his Wolverine Claws to fight. Then you remember that he only has his powers in the dream world while in the physical world he's pretty much just a foul-tempered burn victim with knives on his hands (who, to be fair, seems to have picked up some MMA skills at some point). In the movies, getting dragged into the physical world is basically a death sentence for Freddy, as the first movie in the franchise showed us he can't even outfight an untrained teenage girl in the real world. So watching him hold his own against people like Liu-Kang and Shang Tsung without his nightmare powers is actually pretty incredible.
• Shaggy in Multi Versus ate a magic crystal thinking it was candy, and it transformed him into something more powerful. He suddenly gained muscle mass and in this game, he can fly around and punch things hard, and he can shoot energy projectiles by channeling his energy. He ascended into a Dragon Ball Z character.
• Oink!: In this game, the Big Bad Wolf's breath is strong enough to blow down the brick house.
• Everyone in One Piece: Pirate Warriors. As in, One Piece characters (such as Nami, who is powerful but comparatively weak in comparison to the rest of the cast) that would realistically have very little chance of beating up powerful characters such as Logia and Haki users are perfectly capable of doing so in this. Some characters actually acknowledge this.
  Nami: (after beating a strong enemy such as Teach or Akainu) "No way... I won?"
• From Oriental Legend, a video game based on Journey to the West:
  • The game removed Sun Wukong's weakness against water entirely, and he's perfectly capable of kicking ass on a riverbed without any problems. In the novels, Wukong is effectively paralyzed by water, a weakness demons frequently exploit.
  • The sidekicks of Wukong, in general. Bajie, Wujing, Long Ma all went from waiting for Sun Wukong to save their asses to competent fighters, who single-handedly defeat enemy demons without breaking a sweat.
  • In the second game, Tang Sanzhang himself (a Non-Action Guy in the novels) is a playable character, and can defeat demons with or without his disciples.
  • Lady Earth Flow, the Rat Demon from the novel, went from a Dirty Coward to a difficult boss.
  • The demon brothers of Chechi Kingdom, the Tiger, Deer and Ox, are bumbling villains in the novels, but in the game they're a Boss Bonanza who can put up quite a fight on their own.
• The Over the Hedge game makes RJ, Verne, Hammy and Stella, all non-combatants in the movie, weapon-wielding badasses capable of taking down hundreds of mind-controlled animals.
• In Pac-Man World, Toc-Man is barely present and doesn't directly interact with Pac-Man until the very end. Pac-Man World: Re-PAC gives him a more menacing redesign, increases his presence in the story and world, and has him showing up right before every other boss to unleash them on you. His boss fight has also been redesigned: in his first phase, he has a machine gun attack fired out of his hand and a jetpack-powered dash attack; in his second phase, he powers up with a Chrome Ball, requiring Pac-Man to use one himself to damage him, and attacks with a shockwave-inducing Ground Pound and a massive barrage of cannons; and his third phase has him eat two Power Pellets to grow giant. And when he's seemingly defeated, he still isn't quite done with Pac-Man, as he smacks him into the former's cake, leading to a quick-time event where Pac eats a Power Pellet himself to finish Toc off, making Pac an example as well.
  • The other bosses (except the Clown Prix, which is otherwise the same except you're now driving in first-person) are also deadlier than their original incarnations, mainly as they all now have two or three phases: the HMS Windbag's second phase has it start firing more shots at you, Anubis Rex's second phase gives him a laser attack (though the fight is still easier overall due to the Rev Plates used to expose his weak point now having flooring between them instead of requiring precise jumps), King Galaxian's fight is more of a Bullet Hell, and Krome Keeper has a less comical design, can attack with retractable claws, his second phase has him attach missile launchers to his shoulders, and his third has him attach cannons to his arms to fire a sweeping laser.
• In Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, due to the change in gameplay where everyone has a main Persona and a secondary Persona that adds moves, HP, and SP, the starting Personas for the Persona 3 and Persona 4, which are respectively Orpheus and Izanagi, are now on par with the rest of the casts' own Personas and level up normally. In their home games, they are starter Personas that are intended to be fused after Level 6 or so, due to how the nature of how their home games' fusion system works. Orpheus in particular is weak to two elements, and while he's still initially weak to them, in Q, when he evolves into Messiah, he'll lose his weakness to lightning; Izanagi will similarly lose his wind weakness when he becomes Izanagi-no-Okami.
  • In Persona 4: Arena all the characters have crazy Kung-fu skills, and have crazy combos with their Personas.
  • Persona 5 Strikers: While in the base game the main heroes are only capable of fighting a few enemies at a time, Strikers allows them to handle lots of them.
• The Fighting Game Phantom Breaker and its spin-off Beat 'em Up called Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds have teen geniuses Kurisu Makise from Steins;Gate, and Frau Kojirou from Robotics;Notes:
  • Kurisu is the only normal human ^note At least in the Fighting Game; she was the only normal human in the Beat 'Em Up before the Frau DLC, but she can fight and keep up with superpowered opponents with her multiple kicks, and using several lab gadgets that she takes out of nowhere, such as a Ray Gun or a flamethrower; She's also one of the two characters who have two supers.
  • Frau was added to Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds as a DLC character: in Robotics;Notes, she was a brilliant programmer, but socially inept Hikkikomori, but she's more than capable of taking down her bizarre opponents using several remote-controlled robots, or with help of other characters from the visual novel.
• This applies heavily to the entire roster in Playstation All Stars Battle Royale, but it's particularly notable with Fat Princess, who goes from being an immobile Adipose Rex who mainly ate cake and played the flag in her game's Capture the Flag gameplay to being able to smack people in the air with her scepter or jump around and crush them with that massive weight of her's. In fact, due to Gameplay and Story Segregation, she has more combo-potential than Sweet Tooth and is a better close-combatant than Colonel Radec, a trained knife-fighter and "expert" in personal combat.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Legends: Arceus: Unown has been a gimmick Pokémon since its introduction in Generation II. It's a Psychic-type with unremarkable stats; it has 28 different forms resembling the letters of the alphabet, a question mark, and an exclamation mark; and it's only capable of learning one move, Hidden Power. All of that is still the case in this game...but there's one key difference. Previously, Hidden Power changed its type depending on the IVs of the Pokémon using it. Here? Hidden Power changes type every time you use it so that it will always be super effective against its target, and Unown is the only Pokémon that can use it.
  • The trademark trope of famous ROM Hack creator Drayano60. He's known for taking Pokemon Games, making them significantly more difficult, and buffing weaker Pokemon to make them more viable in an in-game playthrough while leaving the core experience of the original completely untouched. The idea proved to be so popular that it spawned an entire genre of Pokemon ROM Hacks explicitly designed to emulate Drayano's work.
• Pokemon Crystal Kaizo is a super-hard Pokémon ROM Hack that makes every wild Pokemon, trainer, and especially bosses, into badasses. Team Rocket especially, as they turn from a generic bad guy organization with laughable com-mon rosters to a army of criminals with powerful stolen Pokemon, capable of locking down Goldenrod, to the point that the player needs to fly to get in, blocking the path to the department store, and they heavily guard stairs and doors. They almost block off the path to the underground as well.
• All the classes from Ragnarok Online that show up in Ragnarok Battle Offline got themselves some massive power boosts, in order to be able to deal with the many bosses that are tossed in their direction, who are also taken from Ragnarok Online and didn't exactly lose power. Curiously, some particular attacks got buffed hard enough to qualify for this, like Magnum Break going from a mediocre Splash Damage hit to a fiery whirl of sharpened death, and Lightning Storm going from a crappy AOE attack to an electric cataclysm that can fry screens worth of monsters.
• Due to its crossover nature, many a party member in Rakenzarn Tales ends up being much tougher. For example, Dirk the Daring was already badass, but here he can take more than one hit before dying. Ed, Edd n Eddy are surprisingly viable combat choices. The normally goofy Derpy Hooves can fight on the front lines as well as anyone else. And Kyuu is poised to become the most powerful party member in the game with proper training.
• The Resident Evil lightgun Wii games invoke this a bit, e.g Jill Valentine in RE3 was plenty skilled but in Resident Evil The Dark Side Chronicles Jill goes Guns Akimbo, does a Wall Run and even snaps a zombie’s neck with her Murderous Thighs. Also Steve Burnside from Resident Evil – Code: Veronica was pretty much a whiny dumbass, but the Wii Game makes Steve much more competent and cool.
• Resident Evil 2 (Remake):
  • Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield were pretty badass in the 1998 game but they’re certainly more hardy in the remake given they can both physically repel the likes of Mr X, G-Creatures and the fully mutated William Birkin with their bare hands despite being rookies at this point in their careers. Claire in particular freely gets the Minigun in the ending unlike the original where Leon got more firepower and at the end of the second scenario both Claire and Leon respectively impale Birkin’s final form in the eye with a broken steel pipe effectively defeating him. Whereas in the original they just fled from him and blew up the train to kill him.
  • T-00 was tough in the original, but could be defeated repeatedly by Claire and especially Leon with enough bullets. In the remake however... Mr X is utterly unstoppable and will only be briefly staggered by Leon and Claire's attacks (even RPG and Minigun fire) the only option is to run the hell away from him and progress the story to point where you can actually kill him.
  • William Birkin as the G-Monster is just as tenacious as in original game, but in this version Birkin is strong enough to take down Mr X himself by impaling him through the chest with his claws and tearing a chunk out of the Tyrant.
  • RE2make zombies aren't just cannon fodder to fill corridors like in original, they're actual threats (especially at the start) and complete bullet sponges to boot.
  • Marvin Branagh in the original game was just a dying cop who spouted exposition, in the remake he saves Leon/Claire from getting munched on by zombies and is a source of comfort and guidance for the first part of the game.
  • Annette Birkin gets a bit of this, in the original game, she was just a Mad Scientist who shot at people and failed miserably to look after her daughter. In the remake Annette easily takes down Ada Wong twice but her motivations are more heroic as she doesn’t want the T-Virus getting taken by third parties, she also loves her daughter Sherry dearly.
  • Ghost Survivors gives Katherine Warren this treatment albeit uncanonically, in the original and the main story she's preyed upon by Chief Irons and killed. In her Mini-Game, she kills Irons, fights through armies of zombies and escapes.
  • Similarly Robert Kendo was just a poor sap who got munched by zombies and more tragically in the main game of the remake he committed suicide after being being forced to Mercy Kill his own daughter. In his Mini-Game his attempted suicide is interrupted thanks to a phone call and with will to live restored, Robert gears up and fights his way to freedom.
  • Even Sherry Birkin herself is much closer to Little Miss Badass compared to her helpless 1998 counterpart, Sherry in the remake actively tries to escape from Chief Irons and even wounds him with acid to face.
• Resident Evil 3 (Remake):
  • Carlos Oliveira, in the original he was pretty flaky compared to Jill (who gives him Get A Hold Of Yourself Man at one point) and performed a total of two genuinely badass things: shooting the missile in Nemesis's RPG before it was fired and holding off the zombie horde. In the remake Carlos is vastly more competent being a One-Man Army with a Chris Redfield-esque Megaton Punch that can send the huge Hunter-Betas flying and manages to overpower Nemesis to save Jill three times throughout the story, unfortunately this does result in making Jill weaker and more damsely by comparison.
  • Brad Vickers, an abject coward in the original who pathetically cared more about looking after his own skin than helping his teammate Jill before Nemesis got him. In the remake Brad is the poster boy for S.T.A.R.S and shows a helluva lot more backbone, not only warning Jill about Nemesis's attack before it happens but even pulls a Heroic Sacrifice holding a door shut against the zombies allowing for Jill to escape.
  • Patrick Tyrell, in the original was a minor U.B.C.S. member whose one scene is him in a state of panic pointed his gun at Carlos out of suspicion before getting killed by a bomb in the safe. In the remake Tyrell is a muscly commando same as Carlos (whom he plays Bash Brothers with) and has his role expanded to a main character who aids Jill in the later half of the game.
  • Nikolai Zinoviev gets this along with Adaptational Villainy. In the original game as The Mole he relied on stealth and subterfuge and did little to Jill beyond shooting at her in the ending, in the remake he is much more effective and sinister trapping Jill with Nemesis twice and in the climax he overpowers both Jill and Carlos with martial arts and uses Carlos as a Human Shield against Jill.
  • The Hunter Beta, already fairly tough to deal with the original but they could still be killed efficiently with the right firepower, in the remake they are absolute Demonic Spiders who can perform a Flash Step, One-Hit Kill with their claws and have armored scaly hides.
  • The Hunter Gamma like the Betas were more annoying than dangerous in the original game, with their advantage being their speed and jumping attacks. In the remake while slower, they are way tougher being able to resist Jill's More Dakka and can instakill her with a swallowing attack and need to be either shot inside thier mouths or burned with flame rounds to be killed.
  • Nemesis' final form was relatively easily taken out with the linear cannon in the original game, only needing one direct hit to kill it. Here, Nemesis's final form (which is the size of a building) requires three shots before dying, with the last one having to be literally shoved down its throat to finish it off. Inverted with Nemesis's regular form, as he can be put down more easily compared to the original game.
• Resident Evil 4 (Remake):
  • Downplayed with Ashley, who now tries to be more proactive instead of just cowering around while still overall being a Damsel in Distress. She's still susceptible to panic and terror at the horrific situation she's trapped in, but puts more effort in overcoming her fears through small but genuine acts of bravery such as helping Leon kill a Regenerador by making it fall off a folding bridge should the player lure it over to that spot, and even saves Leon's life several times over the course of the game. She also expresses an interest in becoming a trained agent like Leon, something she didn't have in the original game.
  • The dog who can assist Leon against the first Gigante gets not only a stronger badass intro by howling in front of the moon with more intensity, but even causes the Gigante to stagger by biting its ankle when it previously just acted as a distraction.
  • Played straight with Leon himself (continuing on from his already more competent RE2make version). In the original game, Leon loses control of himself to the plagas and begins to choke Ada late into the game. In the remake, he never succumbs to the infection and manages to hang on until Ashley is able to remove the Plagas from him, with several moments throughout the game showing him actively fighting it. Gameplay-wise RE4make Leon is also helluva lot more badass than he was in the original game being able to parry a Ganado’s chainsaw! Like he’s Raiden from Revengeance and he’s more of a Lightning Bruiser in his melee move set as seen by the Krauser fight.
  • Salazar is less cowardly than his 2005 self. In the original, he panicked and made a hasty retreat after Leon stabbed his hand with a thrown knife, but here he simply rants in anger as he's being shot thrice by Leon, never showing a sign of fear. His boss form is also more impressive: rather than having to fuse with the Queen plaga and the surviving Verdugo he transforms on his own, and his monstrous form is now a nimble wall-crawler that can easily outmaneuver Leon rather than being fixed to the ground.
  • Mike the helicopter pilot is now capable of evading the Ganado's counterfire, even managing to dodge incoming fire from an anti-air gun. His death comes not as a result of getting hit by an RPG while distracted, but Saddler himself unleashing a swarm of Novistadors on him.
  • The Ganados who besiege Leon and Luis are a lot more persistent and numerous this time around. Rather than retreating after suffering too many casualties, they're actually winning the siege when Ashley ends it by finding a way out for Luis and Leon.
• Marian of Double Dragon was the Damsel in Distress girlfriend of Billy Lee, but in River City Girls she develops into an Amazonian Beauty Action Girl in her own right before being Promoted to Playable in the sequel.
• Liu Shan in the original Romance of the Three Kingdoms is the definition of Sucksessor, completely inept at fighting and ruling, and in the first sight of danger, he surrenders. Dynasty Warriors turns him into an actually Badass Pacifist by the virtue of being playable. Not exactly top tier, but much more competent, savvy and in a way, virtuous like his dad, although he's a bit scatterbrained (or so he presents himself to public). On the assault on Cheng Du, he fought against Sima Zhao first before retreating, rather than surrendering on sight. Only after their next encounter he surrenders. ^note And the reason he surrenders wasn't because he's scared as hell, but to preserve the people of Shu from the Hopeless War brought forth by his subordinates who simply doesn't know when to quit. In 8, the implication of Hopeless War and 'subordinates who doesn't know when to quit' is absent, but Liu Shan still fought Sima Zhao as the latter enters the throne room to the end before surrendering.
• Saiyuki: Journey West does this with Sanzo/Xuanzang. In the Journey to the West, Xuanzang was a Non-Action Guy who got kidnapped a lot. This game's version of Sanzo, while still the physically weakest member of the party and lacking the Super Mode transformations the others have, compensates by being able to summon giant floating Bodhisattvas and use their attacks (like, for instance, summoning a giant sword the size of the battlefield to cut an enemy in half).
• While Oscar's an utter wimp and a Fake Ultimate Hero in Shark Tale, his combat prowess and survival abilities are boosted in the tie-in game to the point where he not only survives every encounter he has with a shark by outrunning/outwitting it, but he actually manages to beat a giant eel, Lenny and even a hammerhead shark in hand-to-hand fights.
• Shuihuzhuan: Liangshan Yingxiong is based on The Water Margin, but with some changes to the source material. Of note, Lin-Chung's handmaiden Jing-Er is now a very competent Action Girl who flips enemy mooks all over the place thanks to her combat hoops, while the Corrupt Politician Gao-Qiu who isn't a combatant becomes a powerful Final Boss using two gigantic axes in battle.
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game: In the original Scott Pilgrim and even the movie, Kim, Stephen Stills and Wallace are all pretty much Non-action guys and gals, but in the game we see them being just as battle capable as Scott and potentially defeating all seven Evil Exes by themselves.^note Given how Scott Pilgrim takes place in a world that runs on a combination of side-scrolling beat-em-up and RPG rules, it's entirely possible that we just never see them fight in the comics, since they're primarily focused on Scott and his enemies.
• The original The Simpsons arcade game from 1991 took a rather combatically inept family and made them able to take on the entire town of Springfield and then some with household items (Marge), toys (Bart and Lisa), and bare fists (Homer).
• Spider-Man (PS4):
  • The Shocker (while he was actually as a legitimate threat when he first appeared in the comics) is largely regarded as an incredibly lame C-List jobber villain due to his silly costume and the fact Spidey effortlessly defeats him in the rest of their encounters past Shocker’s first appearance. In the game however he wears Powered Armour, allowing him to travel around New York at great speed and he actually gives Peter a genuine fight and overpowers him in their first bout in the bank.
  • Electro due to a combination of hideously tacky costume and unimaginative use of his Shock and Awe powers is mostly regarded as a joke in the mainline 616 universe barring a few comics. In the game Electro on top of a cooler design is closer to Static Shock, being able to Flash Step around with electricity, faster than Spidey can track and is apparently such a Person of Mass Destruction that if he ever learns how to properly control his powers Peter fears he will be too of a threat for even the Avengers to handle.
  • Kingpin is usually pretty strong for a non-powered man in the comics but is still a human with limits to his strength and toughness. In the game however much like his Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse incarnation, he’s a freak of nature being able to clobber the superhuman Spidey and survive getting smashed through multiple stories of concrete and steel while having a Free-Fall Fight with the superhero. Gameplay-wise he needs to be webbed up in order to be overpowered and defeated.
  • The Rhino goes from a B-lister to someone who can easily keep the Spider-Men on their toes, even managing to defeat Peter at the start of Spider-Man: Miles Morales and only being beaten by Miles's venom blast. Although Rhino has actually given the Hulk a challenge in the comics, so this version is pretty on point compared to other incarnations.
  • Hammerhead got this multiple times over. In the comics, he was knocked out during a brawl and thus was unconscious during the operation that gave him his unique metal plate, whereas in the game's backstory, he was shot in the head and not only survive, he was conscious enough to make the decision to have the plate installed. He's also smarter than the thug of the comics and his conversion into a cyborg was a decision he himself made (as opposed to Mr. Negative saving him as in the comics) and it turned him into a hulking monster rather than just merely granting him Super-Strength and durability.
  • Screwball is more of a genuine supervillain than the annoying asshole she is in the comics, including managing to break some prisoners out of the Raft and even being smart enough to hack Spider-Man's tech.
  • While the comics Taskmaster is no slouch, he's still largely a Badass Normal with the added photographic reflexes, who gets by through being very smart, calculating and Crazy-Prepared to battle the Avengers (though Charles Atlas Superpowers are at play). He has the weakness of not being able to mimic true superhuman abilities (at least not perfectly unless he pushes his normal-human physique to breaking point), thus can't properly replicate Spider-Man's style. This version's portrayed as unambiguously superhuman, and his boss battle has you facing off against him using Spidey's own replicated moves that he learned by watching Spidey in action.
  • Spider-Man: Miles Morales does this to the Tinkerer. As opposed to the non-combatant of the comics, this version has tech that allows her to go one-on-one with Miles.
  • Mary Jane in the game has her profession changed from model actress to Intrepid Reporter who has the sneaking skills of Solid Snake and even knocked one Demon mook out before Spidey can. On the other hand the game fails to highlight MJ’s surprising unarmed combat and Damsel out of Distress skills from the comics.
• Stardew Valley Expanded: In the original game, the "Adventurer's Guild" is merely a pair of lonely old has-been hermits, clearly a parody of such guilds in other media. In this mod they're portrayed as genuine heroes, with the Stardew Valley "branch" of the Guild being part of a much larger organization tasked with defending humanity.
• Star Wars Battlefront (2015):
  • Greedo, who's best known for being an overconfident punk that Han Solo dispatched with ease, is capable of keeping up with the likes of Boba Fett here. In the hands of a skilled player, he can even rack up quite an impressive body count.
  • The Red Five, Luke's ship from A New Hope, comes with firepower, speed and armor far exceeding that of a normal X-Wing along with the ability to significantly repair itself mid-flight and an invulnerable (if temporary) shield. In the films, the Red Five was completely ordinary, it was Luke's piloting that accomplished so much.
• Suiko Enbu (AKA Outlaws of the Lost Dynasty): Chao Gai from the Chinese classic novel Water Margin was a skilled military tactician, but also an ordinary human being without exceptional abilities. Here in this game, he becomes an undead fighter capable of Ki Manipulation and can also power up into a Super Saiyan-esque super form in the event an opponent proves to be more difficult than he expected.
• Super Don Quixote: The Don Quixote of the book was a delusional Hidalgo. This Don Quixote is a full-fledged warrior who defeats huge numbers of enemies.
• Super Robot Wars tends to do this quite a bit. Boss and his Boss Borot originally represented the Joke Character tier in the early games, but upgraded to low-medium usefulness by the Super Robot Wars Alpha series; towards the modern era, it's not unusual to find Boss become a Lethal Joke Character. Likewise, Bright Noah, already a badass in his own right and a competent ship captain in the early games, ascends to become the overall leader of the heroes, including the command of a battleship that can take down Angels.
  • The explanation for Boss is the fact that by the time of Super Robot Wars Judgment, the original Mazinger Z has been displaced by its Mazinkaiser and Shin Mazinger iterations, where Boss is canonically no pushover in either series.
  • Sometimes the Crossover nature of Super Robot Wars is what provides the change for a character: take Shinji Ikari in the Alpha games, who breaks out of his usual personality after meeting a multitude of different characters from other Humongous Mecha series that want to befriend and socialize with him. This in turn leads to such a change he effectively Retcons the events of The End of Evangelion and averts the Downer Ending of the film in the last Alpha game! In Super Robot Wars V, which adapts the Rebuild of Evangelion saga, Shinji is able to prevent himself from initiating Third Impact, save Rei, obtain EVA-01's ultimate form and weld it to kick Mazinger ZERO's ass and help save a captured Kouji Kabuto.
  • Since Super Robot Wars GC, the Mazinger Z of the Mazinkaiser OVA gets a lot more screen time before its crushing defeat is played out. Even more so, in Super Robot Wars DD, that Mazinger Z gets the Jet Scrander, which it never got to use in the anime.
  • The Granteed mech itself in Super Robot Wars: Original Generation The Moon Dwellers. Granteed, at best, was a Game-Breaker in its original incarnation thanks to the gameplay but it was just another mech the Fury have made. Come The Moon Dwellers and it now houses the soul of the Fury's guardian god, and as the Granteed Dracodeus, it supposedly has the power to take on Perfectio, a being who can't even be killed as it is the incarnation of despair itself. Finally, The Moon Dwellers ends with the Granteed Dracodeus destroying the indestructible Cross Gate. Fans now see the machine as one of the most powerful machines of the entire series.
  • The Great Mazinger in Super Robot Wars V. While Great is strong, it's usually underpowered compared to its fellow Dynamics. Here, it's able to not only defeat Black Getter, but also fight Shin Getter to a standstill.
  • While Mazinkaiser was always a powerhouse, the Shin Mazinger influences allow him to be even more amazing with his attacks in Super Robot Wars X, with the machine firing its Turbo Smasher Punches while flying. Kyoshoryuku Beam, while to the same extent as Mazinger Z's, still outright melts its victim, and knocking his opponents skywards with an uppercut firing the Kaiser Nova attack at them. Oh, and let's not forget, he wrecks Mazinger ZERO's shit.
  • In Super Robot Wars T, Tetsuya and the Great Mazinger get to spend a lot less time as a Badass in Distress via the Mazinger Z: Infinity storyline.
  • In Super Robot Wars 30, Jona Basta is the one who receives the change. Instead of being an average and unchanging pilot, being around other pilots who care for him and want him to grow, more or less rebelling against Michele's desires, allows him to grow as a pilot, being put at the same level as others.
    • In the same game, we have the Tem Ray Circuit. In the original Mobile Suit Gundam Amuro's father, Ten Ray, gives him a circuit board that he claims would boost the Gundam's power. However, Amuro sees it as the piece of junk it was and tosses it. When it appears in games, it drops the stats of whoever is using it in exchange for a flat $10 Repair Cost. In 30, it's instead the second-best item^*Can move two extra spaces, increases accuracy and mobility by five points and gives all ranged weapons a extra final space before the Haro^*Same as the Circuit but increases accuracy and mobility by twenty-five points
• Due to the series' nature, Super Smash Bros. brings the fighters in many a Nintendo character, even for those who never showed fighting prowess. Particularly strong examples are Villager, who brings his everyday tools and deep pockets to battle; Wii Fit Trainer, a trainer of one of the most peaceful activities possible who uses yoga to beat opponents into submission; and the Miis, who gained fighting prowess never featured before, on par with characters such as Mario, Link and Samus.
  • This also extends to certain characters like Inkling, Charizard, and Sonic losing the Super Drowning Skills of their home series, like everyone else, they will still drown if they stay in the water long enough. Also as a little easter egg, they take a small amount of damage while they're swimming.
• Slash of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was depicted as a meek lackey of Bebop and Rocksteady in the cartoon, only helping them because he was being withheld a toy palm tree from them. In the Super Nintendo version Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, he is easily That One Boss in the Prehistoric Turtlesaurus level, plowing through most of your turtles with spinning attacks, a sword with a long reach, and the ability to block which you do not possess.
  • In general, the villains of the franchise are far more competent in the games than in the show. Shredder, while not totally incompetent, is usually the Final Boss for a good reason. Occasionally he even has One-Hit Kill moves!
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters:
  • Compared to his canon portrayal in the original cartoon (a scrawny filthy guy who lives in the sewers talking to rats) the Rat King is the Final Boss of tournament mode (Karai is the Final Boss of the storyline mode) He has added some pro wrestling moves to his moveset, and looks like he's done more steroids than Batista.
  • April O'Neil too (Genesis version only), being a playable character and a full-fledged Action Girl in the game, as opposed to the Designated Victim she usually is. (Probably due to the need to include a female hero character.)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge also has April O'Neil become an Action Girl, since the plot doesn't involve her getting kidnapped or remaining on the sidelines. Even better here, since not only can she hit enemies with her microphone and studio camera, but can also revive downed turtles in co-op mode with pizza!
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the tie-in arcade game based on the film, somehow does this to the T-1000. Already an Implacable Man in the movie, it's game counterpart can take far more punishment and keep on going. For instance, it gets instantly frozen solid by exposure to liquid nitrogen, while in the game it can have a literal waterfall of nitrogen dousing it and continue fighting. Also, in the movie seven shotgun blasts from Sarah sends it staggering backwards, followed by a grenade to the stomach from the T-800 which is enough to send it plummeting into the pool of molten steel. In the game it absorbs hundreds of rounds and multiple explosions, shrugs off multiple grenade blasts and keeps on coming until you pushed it over a railing by way of More Dakka.
• The Skaven of Total War: Warhammer II are an interesting case due to balancing; in the lore and on the tabletop, the Skaven are a race where Chronic Backstabbing Disorder is ingrained in their DNA, and their various mad science gadgets are subject to the will of the dice and might explode catastrophically the first time they fire. Translating this one-to-one in a video game would essentially make the Skaven unplayable, as a player's generals and even individual units would be constantly mutinying and anything more complex than a spear would stand a high chance of blowing up and rendering the unit lost. So in game, non-Legendary Lords have a loyalty meter that can be improved with rewards and success in battle, Skaven artillery works just as well as any other factions, and the only real infighting beyond dissatisfied lords is the occasional rebellion here and there and a number of public order penalties. This has the side effect of making the Skaven a top-tier faction verging on Game-Breaker, as they're a race that brings tanks, machine guns, and nukes to a setting where most other factions haven't figured out gunpowder weapons yet.
• In Toxic Crusaders, Yvonne and Mrs. Junko (Toxie's Mom) are normally neutral allies who stay out of the Crusaders' heroics. For the 2023 licensed game, they join the battle and are able to keep up with the boys.
• Bumblebee in his Transformers: War for Cybertron incarnation is a Hot-Blooded playable character who can easily rack up a triple-digit kill count over the course of the Autobot campaign. He doesn't have the raw power of Optimus Prime but he makes up for it with speed, skill and determination.
• Starscream in Transformers: Fall of Cybertron is probably the deadliest incarnation of the Decepticon to ever exist. For starters, he actually fights his enemies. Except for Megatron of course, but he did take on Optimus Prime, and successfully captured him. Despite his failures in a short period of time as a leader of the Decepticons, in combat, Starscream is a force to be reckoned with in this story.
• In Warhammer 40,000, the Tau Fire Warrior is a basic grunt unit. When adapted to Fire Warrior, the eponymous Tau grunt is able to single-handedly take on the forces of Chaos, and be able to take out several contingents of the Emperor's finest Space Marines. The novel, however, delves into some of the Tau lore and explains it a bit better: Kais is fighting a different battle, only his enemy is the very warlike and self destructive aspect that pushed the Tau to the verge of extinction that they thought they no longer had to worry about. His mentor explains that it is something every Fire Warrior has to face and come to grips with.
  • It's also implied that the same Fire Warrior would eventually grow into Shas'O Kais, the leader of the Tau forces in Dawn of War.
• Siegfried from the Wild ARMs series was a fighter but he was a fairly medium level boss who your party had a habit of beating every time they fought. Then comes Wild ARMs: Million Memories where, not only is he a lot harder to beat (due to him having a good range and you having very little room to move on the field), the following cutscene shows he's absolutely trounced your party (of eleven people, no less.) Not only that, he's frighteningly competent at being a villain this time around; being the one to free Mother right before your party, getting Rudy (yes, that Rudy) to betray everyone he cares about in exchange for taking Mother down, and then sacrificing himself to give you a chance of saving Filgaia.
• The real St. Louis class cruiser was a mediocre and ultimately failed warship which was overweight, its armor belt lay entirely below water, its broadside was mediocre, and it was too slow to bring it to bear. It was primarily known for the fact that one of its ships, USS Milwaukee, grounded on a sandbar trying to assist a grounded submarine and had to be decommissioned in place because it was too badly stuck. In World of Warships, the confined arena space means that the speed doesn't matter nearly as much; the nine-gun broadside is a serious threat to battleships at its own tier and even the tier above it; its large rudder makes it very maneuverable, with a tight tactical circle at its maximum speed; and the lack of modeling of underwater hits means that it's a very difficult ship to score citadel hits on. Overall, the same traits that made it a poor ship in the real world make it a Mighty Glacier in the game.
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown saw the return of enemy types from the original X-COM: UFO Defense, with some of the more pathetic enemy types given makeovers that make them more frightening to look at and even more frightening to fight.
  • In the original game, floaters had pathetic accuracy and looked like bastardized Superman copies. In Enemy Unknown, they look like cybernetic abominations, are better shots, and can more easily flank your soldiers.
  • Mutons retain their green-and-purple coloration, but look less like burly men in jumpsuits and more like alien hulks with rebreathers and armor plating.
  • Chrysalids remain dangerous enemies, but now look less like cybernetic lobsters and more like large insects with blades for legs.
• Bandit Keith is at his best in Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction. In the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, he was a washed-up has-been who lost to a rookie in spite of cheating, and the anime version of him was cooler, but not by a large margin. In this game he leads the Neo Ghouls in taking over Domino, kidnapping Ishizu, and seizing the Winged Dragon of Ra, which he then duels the player with. Even after he loses the duel, he then gets you to hand over Ra anyway, and is only defeated when the card fries him with lightning. And even then, he's promptly possessed by Reshef, gets back up, and breaks the Millennium Puzzle, which lets Para and Dox steal the pieces and capture Yami Yugi.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, Devack was a villain whose story arc was cut short, and he didn't have much presence. In Yu-Gi-Oh! BAM, he's a major villain and brainwashes you, your friends, and Kaiba thanks to his neuro-needles.

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